Marshall Brain's Blog

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Simulations

I have a friend who is very big into SecondLife.com. SL is a multi-player 3-D world on the Internet where you can build your own place and interact with other users. If you go to the site and click the "Trailer" button, you will see a short movie that shows what is possible in this environment. Personally, I don't have enough time for my first life, much less a second one, but apparently there are lots of people who are very much into the SecondLife scene.

There's also been an incredible amount of buzz around Valve's forthcoming release of the game Half Life 2, where there is so much detail and realism in the environment (including a complete physics engine) that the demos just blow you away:

See lots more Half Life 2 screen shots here, lots of demo movies here, and read reviews, etc. here.

It is an interesting coincidence that one is called Second Life and the other is called Half Life. In a couple of years, when the realism of Half Life 2 merges with massively multi-player environments like SecondLife on the Web, it will be fascinating to see what develops...