After Navigational Event Blog

a. 1. The waterfalls beneath the Grand Canyon were strangely realistic - I think that someone must have spent a long time making them just so.
2. Above, towards the snowy peaks made for skiing, I noted that some 'Northern Light' effects had been applied; while not remotely convincing, they DID give me a few ideas.
3. Entering the Great Wall while flying gave me the opportunity to look at the Wall's upper decorations - why did they spend so much time creating this upper story if no one - theoretically - was supposed to see it at all, or restrict flight if they were?
4. The strange skies of our third location haunted me. I had no idea that one could apply that kind of effect to an entire island - I can't imagine what that must've cost to create or maintain.
5. Although it took a lot of time to watch load on this machine, I found the bright, vivid environment of our third location beautiful, particularly the white grass and floating particles.
6. The choice of music at our third location was incredibly useful - I found myself regretting that it was a stream, as I wished to take a few of the songs home.

b. Flight and walking were easy - the former was standard fare from both games and real life; the latter a fantasy.

c. Far more pleasurable was the act of flight itself. Something about unlimited travel at far greater speeds was amazing.

d. The camera and positioning it was far and away the most challenging aspect. It became obnoxious largely due to just how much control - and how few tools - one has over the camera. Irritatingly, because the screen possesses only X and Y axes while Second Life has X, Y and Z axes, this naturally caused some confusion and made it much harder than a more limited camera situation would be.

e. Because we are affected by physics and must also see through our eyes exclusively, we cannot obviously actually fly, nor can the jarring camera situation actually occur in this actual world (at least without some kind of hallucinogens in play...) However, running, jumping and falling, while exaggerated, was right enough, and made sense; one did not also, usually, fall through floors or walk through walls, so that too was maintained nicely.

f. The feature of flight, again, is revolutionary and largely unexplored in virtual worlds. Whether games or simply containers like Second Life, Flight is usually abandoned for more familiar activities like running, jumping and (dare I say it!) mechanical transport of some kind. Even in interactive media that DOES feature flight (and it is almost always in a game), one is left with some kind of meter, or one is made to glide (without ascending) or cannot stop or turn in midair, or some other such limitation. Here, where combat is restricted, there is no limit, and therein is an excellent tool. I would therefore argue that instead of clinging to gravity and viewing flight as a transient thing meant to limit play or movement, that we should be able to abandon this limit within cyberspace; perhaps even find ways to create puzzles or other aerial structures for those that must have games in everything.