Advertisement: Sim in a Box

by Alphaville Herald on 18/06/07 at 8:46 pm

21 Responses to “Advertisement: Sim in a Box”

  1. Cargo

    Jun 18th, 2007

    So this is a success and we get dozens of identical sims? What possible incentive is there to go from one sim to the other, if they’re all identical prefabs?

  2. Brent Recreant

    Jun 18th, 2007

    Exactly, plus, for an advertisement it really sucked.

  3. Flix Saiman

    Jun 18th, 2007

    First off.. its a modular system that has over 4 million possible sim outcomes.

    second.. We are going to be offering alot more mods in the future.. this compnay just opened.

    and to Brent, I dont mind constructive critisim. but what about the ad dont you like?

  4. Bill Haverberg

    Jun 19th, 2007

    First off – great concept.

    I have to say though the builds are pretty uninspired. It might be fun *once* to explore the subway but long run that’s a waste of prims (although – a sim that is a subway station would be pretty cool for a commercial venue – I’d love to see a Japanese subway themed sim, or someplace like crystal city underground [sprawling underground mall in the DC area]). The city center and nightclub are nothing but egostrokes (one of them being a money pit), and the residential section is … yuck. Clearly this is designed for the newbie sim barron looking to make his first money score off of the lucrative world of Second Life. Either that, or its a way to buy cheap land from overextended newbies who’ve just realized its way harder to make Lindens than it appeared in the Forbes article they read. Good think you have the transaction log – makes a great contact list for picking up cheap land, no?

    Alright, now that I’ve bashed it – technically its pretty snazzy. But make a package where people can customize and drop in their own content, and you’d have a tool you can sell.

  5. Uccello Poultry

    Jun 19th, 2007

    So, where is the fun in that? I love to build. Sometimes I build stuff just for fun and stash it away. Just built a 1000 square meter shopping mall for someone because it was fun (and they are a good friend). No pay. Just the joy of building.

    :::shakes her head and sighs as SL becomes more and more like RL:::

  6. Magnum Serpentine

    Jun 19th, 2007

    Hummmm

    Wonder what kind of server they are using because I know full well that the best server they got still cannot get rid of LAG.

    And what I saw in the Video I know if I went there I would be experiencing massive lag. Bright Lights, Video, Close together Buildings and small rooms all produce Lag.

  7. marilyn murphy

    Jun 19th, 2007

    the add is fine i think. it shows the product and displays its abilities. whats an ad supposed to do after all?
    since i will never be a customer i don’t know that my opinion matters.

  8. dandellion Kimban

    Jun 19th, 2007

    this is great. SL is full of different stuff… it was about time to do some prefabs. maybe is someone should open a club? and to make dancefloor with animations in it, so when an avatar click on it it start dancing. does a box contain an extra red denim tank and some flexi silks?

  9. janeforyou Barbara

    Jun 19th, 2007

    Cooool!!!! love it,,there are so many that cant build and need to hire help,, and it cost a lot! This seam to be some thay any can do :-) …only i dident like was the killing…

  10. Khamon

    Jun 19th, 2007

    This is totally cool. I look forward to seeing the new mods and the way people choose to arrange them in their sims.

  11. Wietse Rodenberger

    Jun 19th, 2007

    Actually, i’ve visited the Sim as well and experienced a demo. I have to admit that there is lag, but that is only while it rezzes (under 1 minute). After that, there is no lag to notice. So, before you start complaining about the amout of lag there would be. Go and have a look yourself. The Sim is called SiB, but i’m sure you all know that allready!

    btw: Thanks for you great lecture in Enschede last week, Urizenus!

  12. LaughingMan

    Jun 19th, 2007

    Is this anything like Dick in a Box?
    No, don’t answer that.

  13. Anonymous

    Jun 19th, 2007

    “First off.. its a modular system that has over 4 million possible sim outcomes.”

    Sure… but how many prefabs? doing square root of 4 millions is 2,000… in the video didn’t show 2,000 prefabs…. more like around 20 or 10. It’s just another crap excuse to sell.

    Poor work effort to help people be lazy and common? wtf.

  14. Flix Saiman

    Jun 19th, 2007

    we are going to be releasing more mods.. currently there are 13 in the system plus one more coming out in july.. after that we are going to release 12 more montly.. as far as the builds. I have only been in SL for about 6 months and this is my first 3d modeling so I am open to critism. I have hired more builders to change the feel of the next set of Sims and am looking for more to add. We are going to also be talking to some of the more intesnse builders in SL (like Electric Sheep and Millions of us. ) about building custom mods for us. And maybe we can find some more really talented builders.. this is just a brand new product our applications are unlimited with this.. but please I am open to critism.

  15. John Hensley

    Jun 20th, 2007

    I’m pretty impressed that they got entire buildings to rotate as a unit after rezzing (although that seems like the hard way).

  16. Gorrilla Gobo

    Jun 20th, 2007

    Can I buy one of these and just take over a public sandbox? If so, Hooooooo!

  17. Khamon

    Jun 20th, 2007

    I’d contact builders directly rather than paying the overhead of using a consulting firm.

  18. Nacon

    Jun 21st, 2007

    “We are going to also be talking to some of the more intesnse builders in SL (like Electric Sheep and Millions of us. ) about building custom mods for us.”

    Hahahahahahahaha, cute.
    Maybe you should try meeting them first before you think about that.

    I don’t think anyone is looking forward to be common all over the place, no matter how many mods you add in.

  19. Anonymous

    Jun 21st, 2007

    Wow… I love the movie more than anything! :)

    The guy should be an SL movie director!!!

  20. Stacey Sugar

    Jun 27th, 2007

    I like the movie, who produced it?

  21. Merlin Alphabeta

    Jun 28th, 2007

    I’m the technical programmer for this product… looking through the comments I’ll try to answer what I can…

    Let’s see, our producers ARE SL movie directors (in fact that’s how we met, they were looking for machinima scripting and automation) They run a soon to be opened property called TV Poker LLC to do machinima from (they might be branching out too – I really don’t know much about that side of their business)

    As far as rotating buildings after they’re rezzed… the rotation parameter passed into llRezObject is currently ignored by SL, so that’s the only way to do it (you can “fake” it by turning everything full alpha and then fading / rezzing it in – but that’s just lag-producing trickery if you ask me)

    I’m very happy with the rez time. There’s a safety factor of 3 in it as well; we could do it in a third of the time, but under high lag conditions it would break down.

    As far as everywhere being cookie cutter… there were over 1000 new sims created in April of 2007. We won’t be selling 100 of these a month. We’ll be very happy to sell 10 a month and even that might be reaching – that would be a 1% market penetration… the chances of running into two sims built with the same mods is going to be pretty low, especially as my partner Flix has indicated we are planning to release more mods in the future (if you go to the demo sim you’ll see several samples for future directions we are considering)

    We do offer lots of customization options (if you look in the video, it’s liberally sprinkled with “your logo here” etc type stuff everywhere)

    Club lag – look its unavoidable. I hate it as much as the next guy. I think we found a very happy medium between visual niceness and overall effect on the client. Keep in mind that most of what is interpreted as lag in a club environment comes not from the club, but from all the AVs and their attachments. In a crowded club, the attachment prim count can easily triple or quadruple the club’s prim count (how many of you have 20 prim hair? How many of your guests are likely to have 100+ flexi prim hair?).

    Running a club – for whoever said that’s an ego stroking waste of money, I run a club in SL and I firmly believe I could not turn a profit without the business that club brings me and my wife. The important thing is to do it right and plan where you’re going to get the money to keep it running ahead of time; don’t just open a club throw a couple vendor spots up and act like you’ve done a good day’s work…

    Mr. Anonymous Coward who posted about combinations – I’m kind of with you when I hear a figure like 4,000,000; you have to count in, how many of those are indistinguishable from others (sure a whopper with double cheese, ketchup, onions, pickles and lettuce is technically different from one with double cheese, ketchup, onions, double pickles and lettuce but should that really be counted as a unique combination?) – however the math is probably solid; what you don’t see in the video is that each mod can be rotated relative to the others when planning your city layout.

    And finally, to all the naysayers saying they like to build. That’s great; good for you. This product is for the businessman who likes to make money, and doesn’t care about building (or for sim managers that would rather focus on other areas of their sim, like RPG story development and building, rather than basic building) Look at it this way, you’re either a brick and mortar that’s heard this second life thing is great for business, or you’re a startup with an idea to get off the ground; either way, you probably want to get your location up and running in a short time frame with minimum hassle – those enterprises are our target market.

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