Big Gurl in the Tour Balloon
This past week I downloaded the second virtual world ever to reside in my computer, Heritage Key. After naming my avatar, Big Gurl, and adding the program to my applications, I entered into the HK world. I was immediately aware of the vast difference in graphics between HK and SL. Everything in HK was frequently re-rezzing itself and it was all gray and boring. It simply was not up to the caliber of SL. Once I got over the dreadful scenery, I noticed my avatar's appearance. It was worse than the graphics. I looked like a middle-aged, chain-smoking, has five kids under the age of eight mother. Being used to the typical tall, thin and clear-skinned avatar of my SL account, I instantly set to work on changing Big Gurl's "look." After literally 30 minutes of toying with the shape of her face and the height of her hair (by the way, who thought of those adjustments??), I was barely satisfied. Big Gurl had blonde hair, was taller and thinner than the haggard mom she started as, and had somewhat of a cute outfit on. Still, the appearance adjustments were not even half the quality of those in SL.
Then I began to walk. Walking was a joke. I could barely go three steps without getting caught in that awkward "i'm a newb" half flying-half falling position. When I tried sitting to escape that stance, this is what happened to me:
Needless to say I was embarrassed. I tried to stand up and this is what happened:
I was getting more and more frustrated, especially since two other avatars, one named Viv Trafalgar and the other, I believe, was RightasRain , had entered the room. They definitely knew I was a first time HK-er. One of them asked me if I knew I was in the floor. Humiliated, I replied yes. In vain, they attempted to help me out of the ground, but I wasn't able to un-stick myself until i tried sitting and standing up multiple times. I did finally get out of the ground, but that was not the end of my issues. My cute appearance had evaporated, leaving me with green legs and a gray torso and face.
Basically, Heritage Key was awful. I was really disappointed with its performance, and I wasn't even that impressed with King Tut's tomb. The program repeatedly logged me out, so by the time I arrived at the tomb I was too frustrated to take any pictures. Thank god we only have one assignment in this subpar world.
Rule 1:
ReplyDeleteBuy an Ethernet cable. Students complained about that but I rolled my eyes. You have plugs in every room and a cable for the $1000+ plus laptop costs $8 on campus, less at Staples.
It will make SL and HK much faster. You've a Mac, so you only need to turn off the airport in the top bar of the screen (so much easier than for the poor Windows users), plug in the Ethernet cable, and open the client software for SL or HK.
Rule 2:
Remember you are an "alpha tester." You are spotting bugs, as a pioneer. I'd say you found some huge ones :)
Rule 3:
The project is not a waste because of rule 2. Rezzable already plans to roll out an improved client, partly (I hope) based upon my own negative review of their site.
Rightasrain is the Rezzable CEO. I'm glad he and Viv (a good friend from both HK and SL) saw you flailing about.
ReplyDeleteI've asked the Rezzable folks to read this post, my (and your) snark and all.
"Subpar" seems such a suitcase to me. But you were angry. We'll let it stand.
GET A CABLE.
We were glad to have the opportunity to help suggest strategies for getting out of the floor situation - I remember greeting you and offering assistance that day. There's no reason to feel embarrassed, you did a great job asking questions, and we were happy to assist. I appreciate that you took the time (inworld) to thank us for our help. Thank you also for letting us know about the issues above. The alpha testing Iggy mentioned is very important, and, having been a tester (alpha, beta and gamma) myself with a number of projects, I'm glad to have it.
ReplyDeleteThat kooky skin bug you saw often turns up under intermittent network connections so can be a problem when using wifi. Especially in areas where there's a lot of folk on the network. It happens when there is a dropped network packet while your clothes update. A cable would probably help.
ReplyDeleteWe're also in the process of updating things to a newer version of the client that has less problems with this bug. Thanks for the feedback.
Actually the quality of the items is identical to SL as we made most of the prims there in the first place. Clearly you had a bad experience and we are interested to see you write about it. Most of the issues are related to your connection speed. The viewer just needs more bandwidth at this time. I am sure we will be able to improve this in next few releases, but for best results (if that is what you want) plug-in.
ReplyDeleteGood news: I just got a cable :)
ReplyDelete