From Japan to SL

The other day I attended a meeting discussing Virtual Reality (VR). There were some talk about whether the SL is a kind of VR or not. Personally I think that there are bilateral characters in VR, one is to set an extension of RL in a virtual world, and another, to express a world that cannot exist in real. I think SL also has the double sides. If both were mixed at the same place, it would be strange. If you appeared in full dress on the planet Pandora with floating rocks, it is an OOC that cannot be accepted as just being out of place.




On the contrary, if you make a beautiful tropical shore, it will be disgusting to see Na’vi there. SL seems to be free accepting everything, but every world might have some rules, expressly or impliedly.




There are many beautiful SIMs simulating real world. It could be OK to dress up when walking around the city of Paris. There were the old Western towns, the medieval world, or old Japanese cities.




Even in the realistic world, it is possible to do things that cannot be done in real. It is possible to walk on the center line of the Champs Elysees. When I started SL, I loved to enter the areas that cannot be reached in real life, so I visited many famous sightseeing spots in the world.




Tried to stand at the tip of a church tower. This is not composite but I stood there actually, which was hard to do. This should be out of manor, so I did it when nobody is there.




At the start of SL, there were many companies trying to use SL for development or advertisement for their products. Some local town tried to simulate a station square to investigate the flow of people. But at that time, most of SL user‘s behavior was different from RL, so it did not work and everyone left SL.




The person who would like to connect SL to RL and the one who loves free fantasy world might be still following different paths. SL has accepted both of them intentionally, but I wonder if it was good or bad, and worrying where to go in future.




The same thing could be said for the use of an avatar with different gender. Some SIMs are prohibiting avatar that does not match with the real gender. Personally, I feel that it is OK to be free like the character setting in TV games. I have been using female avatar normally, but also used male one for overseas travel. I have kept my age and gender secret, but someone knows the real identity, who heard my voice or noticed my real photo in my old article.