The Alphaville Herald

Orange County Choppers Builds Intel A Bike

by Pixeleen Mistral on 07/04/07 at 10:28 am

by Onder Skall — courtesy of Second Life Games

What does Intel need a bike for? Alright, I get it – it’s an illustration of the “raw power” of their new quad-core processing… whatevers. If they’re really interested in bringing this message of hardcore super-powerful computing awesomeness, though, why in the world would they want to create an SL version of the bike? SL is kind of the OPPOSITE of a demo for “raw computing power”.

Let’s take a look at some another Intel PR effort for a moment. Here’s a quote from intel.com about the Versu stunt:

To help reach the fickle Generation Next, Intel in early October launched an innovative promotional campaign in New York to put Intel® Centrino® Duo mobile technology with the Intel® Core™2 Duo processor front and center for hip Webheads plugged into the digital lifestyle. The take-home message: Intel wireless technology is “dope,” and the only road to cool-street runs through Centrinoville, baby.

Uh-hunh. Sounds… real “dope”. How I love PR hacks. This bike build is starting to seem a little less random and a little more like an effort to get me to drive “the only road to cool-street”. Hoo-boy.

So, back to what we care about: this Orange County Choppers bike. Where is it, can I drive it, and how does it handle? Will it make me think of Intel’s “quad-core raw power”, or just of sim lag? According to the Millions of Us blog the bike was unveiled on the 3rd and the island “Intel Ignites OOC” opened at the same time. I checked it out, and it turns out there’s a bonus: you can make your own copy of the bike and take it with you! Finally somebody in PR figures it out: be interactive or be gone!

Building a bike is tricky, but I’ll give them a little wiggle room there. I don’t see a lot of “build your own vehicle” shops around SL, so for being among the first (if not THE first), we’ll accept that it’s a bit user-unfriendly. TD Goodliffe was nice enough to post a little walkthrough with pictures over on vtoreality.com:

First teleport to the sim. Upon arrival you’ll see a sign with a map showing where everything is at, pay attention to the garage and enter.

STEP 4. Hop on and find a preferably straight piece of road to start burning virtual rubber.

Summary: basically this is a super complicated way to rez a bike you can’t customize in any way. You just click-rez-click-rez-click-rez until the bike is finally in one piece, poke at the HUD again and again, and eventually you get a bike you can drive that de-rezzes as soon as you get off. A sky blue one. In my case a sky blue one with handles I couldn’t reach. Hooboy.

The whole island is, for the most part, just road. I have to hand it to them; Millions of Us built a really nice driving space. As far as how the bike actually handles, well, it’s not exactly the “raw power” we were hoping for. The controls are awful, so plan on spending some time running into things. Don’t get me wrong, the bike moves, and it’s kind of fun, but in no way do you feel like it’s “powerful”. Here’s me at a jump that they put at an angle so you’ll usually drive into the river (which you can’t drive out of):

Try this: when you go, bring another freebie bike with you. Rez and compare

So yeah, it’s free, but unless you’re an OCC fanatic you just won’t have much fun here. Bring your own bike and maybe… after all, the sim is usually empty.