Twinity
I like to check out different Virtual Reality Worlds from time to time, and thought I'd check our Twinity. The blurb on the front page billed Twinity as...
...a 3D online world that links the real with the virtual world based on realistic replicas of the world’s most vibrant metropolises in 3D.
- Create the virtual you
- Build a digital home
- Explore our first virtual city: Berlin
- Meet real people & go out and have fun
It was the phrase "links the real with the virtual world" and Berlin that got my attention. It sounded potentially interesting, so I downloaded the browser and signed up for free, under my real life name.
One feature that did appeal to me was the ability to create a version of your own face based on front and side profile photos you take yourself. I'd seen this in the RealXtend browser but this was the first time I'd seen it work. The results were, well odd (see below):
Yes, this is a reasonable approximation of my face but it seemed impossible to get an expression on it that was generally happy. You have to "buy" actions and expressions using an internal currency and the smile looked like a scowl instead! Maybe it's my face that's to blame (see right - see, I can smile!). Maybe.
Of course Twinity is still in BETA, so some things seem very unfinished. When I first logged in, the things I noticed the most were the differences from Second Life. I first went to the learning centre which seemed a well constructed building with an interior on several levels.
Movement is by use of cursor keys and shift makes your AV run. But there's no jumping and no flying so in general there are areas that exist that you cannot move to because there's no way to get past a fence or railings (though I did manage to accidentally fall into one of the rivers and walked knee deep along it until I figured a way out). When you pop up a map, it's a map of the real Berlin! You can use the mouse to change view and this "sticks" until you change it again. You can also zoom in and out from your AV. If you zoom in too close it becomes semi-transparent so that you can see where you're going.
You can't just walk into a building apart from the tutorial area. Rather you have to select a button and get teleported there instead. Your AV can only sit down or use other furniture (like the trampolines that are mysteriously in the central plaza) only if there's a button that allows you to do so. The only place I found a chair I could sit on was in the labour exchange! Apparently you can work to earn more in-world currency somehow, but the details were literally never clear - almost all the signs in Berlin were just out of focus. Every so often I'd hear background sounds but most of these seemed to be a radio advert (in German) for the film Angels & Demons - very strange having Das Illuminati being shouted at you from nowhere!
In fact everything seemed a little too uneven. I went to visit a famous landmark and discovered that it was an façade only, beautifully rendered, while across a bridge a great grey slab of building loomed. And most striking of all, was the lack of people. I saw one over AV there the entire time I visited called Dirk and they didn't respond or move. Later I checked out the forums and found that the most recent post was three months ago. Most people it seems had got bored and moved on. And I'm not surprised.
Apart from decorating an apartment, and running around the streets trying to find others, there's not much to do. This seems like a failed experiment, a project with promise that was released in Beta way too soon, and without a population big enough to really test it. I hope the real Berlin's a lot more fun, as I hope one day to visit it.
