2nd Life 2nd Try

I've been interested in trying out 2nd Life, especially after watching .hack. Anyway, I've been trying to get on since last Wednesday and only just succeeded today after an initial crash. The following is a screen shot of how far I got (as Elsie Broek), reduced down to size for LJ:

...and that, was as far as I could get.  I spent most of the time editing (or at least trying to create) my appearance, but there wasn't any feedback as to how I looked - only strange blocks of brown-pink squares that didn't alter at all. Very frustrating, because I just couldn't see how my avatar looked to others. I accidentally "flew" for a bit and then couldn't seem to leave the "waiting area". Eventually I set my gestures to "Bored" and "crying".

My PC runs at 350MHz, and even with a good graphics card and broadband, that just doesn't seem anywhere near fast enough. In fact, the slowness seemed to be a "trigger" for me. It reminded me of when I was a child with epilepsy. On phenobarb, dilantin, and mycilan three times a day, this is more or less what life was like.

Not something I really want to explore too much, until a) I know what I'm doing, and b) have a faster machine.

2nd Life (again)

I persisted, and after a couple of crashes and changing the settings for resolution, it actually ran!

I was also to change my appearance. According to Kevin, the images didn't show last time because the bump mapping was turned off.OK, not a great looker is she, but I was trying to get something similar to my own face. You can just see the latex gloves at the bottom of the screen.

Even so, I think I need to put this aside for now, while I do a couple of pages of web comics instead - won't get that done playing around with 2nd life!