Sarra’s Second Life

Today I heard about the public beta of the new Linden Lab viewer Second Life 2.0.  Being the second life addict that I am, I rushed home from work to try it out.  I got logged in and everything was different.  It sort of felt like the user interface of an x-box game and reminded me of the Google Chrome web browser.  It looked very promising. I decided to start playing around with it, figured out how to change my preferences, change my windlight settings, and open my inventory.

Then..I looked at plurk and people were talking about web on a prim. Now this was something I had to check out for myself. I rezed my prim, set my url and went ahead and started plurking.  A quick lesson before I get back to the action..to set up web on a prim, rez whatever shape you want to work with, and then when you are in the build menu, select the texture tab.  At the bottom of the menu there is now an option that says media and a plus sign.  Click on the plus sign, add the url to the site you want to visit, and bam..you have web on a prim.

This is where things went down hill for me.  The camera controls were wild. I move a little bit and all of a sudden I was looking in my neighbors window.  Now as I am just starting to get into photography, stable camera controls are a must.  I had a hard time using ctrl alt click, and my scroll wheel sent my eyes flying.  I could not center up on my prim.

The loss of the pie menu in 2.0 was another kick in the butt for me.  I have been on Second Life for over two years, and I am used to the pie menu.  I could just right click and boom, all of my options were there.  I do like the drop down, but it is going to take alot of getting used to for me.

Another bad point for me is the fact that when I logged in, the music was on full volume, and voice was by default on.  I was able to get the music down rather quickly, but it took me about fifteen minutes to figure out how to disable the voice option.  I would prefer that voice and music default to the off position when you log in.  Usually I come in world when my child is asleep, and I am sure the sound of Metallica coming from Mommies speakers would ruin nap time.

Over all I like where the Lindens are going with this viewer.  It has some very exciting new features.  I personally will not give it a positive or negative rating until I spend more time playing with it, but for right now, I just wanted to throw my observations out there and see what others thought about it.