Second Life Residents have been making vehicles as long as there have been the scripting calls available. There’s also vehicles like the freebie bike on Help Island that work as attachments, so chances are there’s some more advanced vehicles floating around long forgotten corners of the grid that don’t need control input.
As Hamlet notes, the “popularity” of Nissan Island is waning (yes I know I could SLURL that up, but I choose not to because of what you’re about to read). Yes this might be due to recent problems with the grid, but I think it’s more to do with the fact that only “Tourists” and Nissan fanboy/girls and employees would want to drive around in a Nissan, whereas a “Resident” would drive around in the car that reflects their image- whether they’ve bought it, won it or made it. Since the hype surrounding Nissan in SL has died down, the influx of Tourists signing up to SL to get a Nissan died with it.
By Tourists I mean the kinds of people who come in because of:
- press releases companies such as Nissan make
- regurgitated old news Slashdot spits out that everyone in the SLogosphere already knew about
- regurgitated old news traditional media spits out that everyone in the SLogosphere already knew about
People who casually “play” Second Life and treat it as a “game” could also be considered to be Tourists.
By Resident, I mean people who:
- Work in SL.
- Realise that SL isn’t a game.
- Can handle the concept of Second Life as the Metaverse.
- Can handle the concept of Second Life/the Metaverse as a digital nation.
By the point Can handle the concept of Second Life/the Metaverse as a digital nation.
, I mean those that are aware that a nation only needs to be considered a nation by the citizens of the nation to be a nation, and that the views of others- those outside the nation in question (Tourists, naysayers, shortsighted unimaginative people, and “international” law)- are entirely irrelevant for internal affairs, and only come into question when the nation interacts with external entities.
Getting back on topic.
Residents always produce what Residents want. Tourists only get the stuff that comes across their limited scope.
A Nissan car will always just be a Nissan car. A Nissan car cannot fly, cannot transform into a boat when it hits water, cannot be pimped out unless you have full mod rights over it (I’m not going to find out if you have full mod rights). A Nissan car in SL is about as effective as a toy car. It’s just a verbatim prim clone with little imagination. Which is all a Tourist, fanboy/girl or employee would probably care for.
Cars made by Residents for themselves and for resale will always be better than these toys car manufacturers give away in an attempt to seem hip. Even if the likes of General Motors and Nissan start producing concept vehicles in SL, Resident vehicles will still be better. Perhaps not higher quality, but still better.
If you think higher quality means something is better, compare the experience of the old Megadrive (Genesis to everyone else) Sonic the Hedgehog games to the 3D games in the franchise. That includes Sonic 3D on the Megadrive- that sucked compared to the original setup. Compare digital recording to analogue recording. Compare Tringo on the web and gameboy to Tringo in SL. Compare digital remastering techniques design to touch up scratches on film stripping out brush strokes in animation.
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