I didn’t have to travel particularly far for the first spectacle on my tour of the illusionary world that is Second Life. Within sight of the newbie greeting plaza, to the south, stands the towering glass and concrete edifice that is ‘Nexus Prime’, and this will be one of the first things the more astute and curious newbie will notice, there at the edge of the clipping plane.
Gibson: 190, 200
(New! Interactive VanHemlock! Press your Red Button Now! The above ‘secondlife://’ link, when clicked, will fire up your copy of Second Life, if you have one installed. It will then open your worldmap, and waypoint the co-ordinates I’m yattering on about. Head on over to follow today’s monologue first-hand! I’ve no idea what happens if you click it without SL installed – probably very little.)
Nexus Prime is the collaborative work of the ‘Tyrell Corp’ in-game ‘group’. A group is what passes for a guild in SL, although players can belong to something like twenty simultaneously, based on varying interests. These groups offer IM-chat channels, shared object permissions (move, edit, sell, etc), and can even jointly own land. Presumably this Tyrell lot exists purely for the design, construction and maintenance of Nexus Prime, and frankly it looks like a full time job right there.
The city occupies all of one ‘Sim’ (65,000m2 or so) and spills over into several adjoining ones, and is a stunningly complex affair. Taking the cyberpunk near-future urban theme, it pays obvious lip-service to many popular sci-fi sources; Bladerunner primarily, but with leanings to many derivative sources such as Anarchy Online, Anachronox, Neocron and so on. Nothing startlingly original, true, but for me, the magic is in the attention to detail and the painstaking execution. The place is quite literally a warren, and extremely stratified; as one flies up through the structure, the styling of the city changes, growing more opulent with altitude. Let’s start at the bottom then:
Nexus Prime: Docks
At sea level, the dock area represents the most squalid section of the city; a place of corrugated tin shacks perched precariously over filthy water. Many of the shacks have interiors, and are suitably full of detritus. Slightly above, the wharf is stacked up with dozens of large shipping containers, and behind those begins a rat-run of red-brick factory workshops and dingy warehouses full of rotting crates. It is excellently done, and reminds me a great deal of the outskirts of Omni-1, the corporate capital city in Anarchy Online and is also it is reminiscent of some of the 'Outzone' sectors, industrial suburbs, of Neocron. The depth of contrast between the well-off of the Grim Near Future, and the poor is a central theme to such imaginings, and works well here.
Nexus Prime: Street Level
Here we have the lowest level of the city proper, a claustrophobic ravine of crumbling brick and pitted steelwork. Very Bladerunner, and although you can’t see it here, at certain times of the day, low wafts of yellow particle effect smog drift lazily across the asphalt. I kept expecting to see Deckard’s police flier come swooshing down out of the tangled clutter overhead. That sunset by the way, shouldn’t be there – the canyon ends a little further along with a stark brick wall – just my clipping distance settings chopped it off. To the left and right narrow alleys snake into the foundations of the great buildings above – several marked off with police tape. Wonderfully atmospheric – just needs Vangelis on the playlist while exploring and perhaps a bit more 'rain-slicked'.
Nexus Prime: The Lost Chapel
Further up, suspended in the underside gantries of the avenue above lies a fantastically anachronistic steam-punk chapel, done out in riveted iron, cogs and stained glass. It’s difficult to see in this light, but the sheer unexpectedness of it being there is a delight. Inside a control panel activates a large moving planetarium in the roof, while doleful bells mourn. Clearly one particular member of the Tyrell group has a penchant for the past. The building reminded me a lot of the Mechanist structures in Thief II: The Metal Age, and the contrast it brings to the brick, concrete and glass buildings all around is masterful.
Nexus Prime: Main Avenue
On top of the melancholy deprivation of the ground levels, lies the dynamic faceless optimism of the main avenue. This view is from the newbie plaza direction, and what visitors are meant to see first; gleaming glass and order. The pink robot in the foreground is inanimate, but could easily be made ‘real’. It seems remarkably like the high-end Engineer pets form Anarchy Online – someone is a fan, clearly. The sunrises and sunsets in Second Life are quite spectacular by the way, and clearly something Linden Labs have gone that extra mile to get right, and best of all, Debug Mode allows you to locally reposition the sun to where you want, for your client only, meaning sunsets on demand!
Nexus Prime: Corp HQ
The headquarters building of the Tyrell Corp. They actually had a scripted elevator up to their lobby, but I fell off, or didn’t have permission, or something, but presumably, many of these buildings have similarly well-crafted interiors. Note the pieces of corporate art sculpture in the foreground, and billboard on the right. Streaming video can be placed on any surface by the object maker, and turned on or off by the viewing client. I turned mine off to save bandwidth a bit. It’s these sorts of detail that put a project like this on the map, as opposed to my very simplistic and blockish works to date. The artworks even have little plaques with them, explaining what they mean.
Nexus Prime: Rooftops
A very Matrix-like roofscape. Note the spaceship parked to the right of the shot. I’ve no idea if it actually flies, but wouldn’t be surprised. The clouds are a nice touch, and they actually drift about. Given that you can actually fly like Neo too, you can imagine the fun to be had up here, although precision flying with those rooftops is a tricky affair.
On the whole, it seems that this style of urban futuristic cityscape is quite rare in SL. Predominantly, architectural design in Second life tends toward the contemporary, historical, or the high-fantasy, so it was quite refreshing to see this place. It does seem a shame that most people, when given the opportunity to quite literally build anything they can think of, tend to come up with structures not unlike something you’d find in modern day St Tropez. Still, I’m sure there are more gems like this to be found in there yet.
Knowing a bit more about building, as I now do, I look at Nexus Prime and see months, if not years of dedicated and loving craftsmanship, and can’t help be impressed. Indeed, the place seemed at least as functional and detailed as the cities in Anarchy Online and Neocron, which is quite suprising right there, given the the latter two titles are commercial projects made by Real Developers. My one major criticism, and it is an unfair one, is that the place seemed so empty.
While I was flying about, snapping pics, I saw perhaps three other people on the radar, which is quite bad, considering the Newbie Sandbox is in the Sim nextdoor and the Newbie Welcome Plaza in the one to the north. When I think of Bladerunner, which the city is so obviously a homage to, I see hordes of thronging pedestrians, all carrying fluorescent strip-light umbrellas and skittering bicycles, noodle bars and steaming air-cars, and of course, lazily drifting advertising blimps, and perhaps because the static display was so good, I felt the absence of these dynamic human finishing touches all that more.
But it’s hardly the fault of the SL Tyrell Corp that few people can be bothered to take the time and come and see their work, and apart form the emptiness of it all, the overall effect is both awe-inspiring and inspirational, and definitely worth a visit.