CNET News.com feature: 'Second Life,' the promise and paradox
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Blog: A recap of what went on at the 'Second Life' convention this weekend in Chicago.
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The third annual Second Life Community Conference features plenty of hopeful talk about lofty new possibilities for the virtual world.
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Blog: What would the Second Life experience be like if it was in the first life. The makers of a video have the answer.
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Members of the Second Life online world criticise the handling of a serious security breach.
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Al-Qaeda may horn in on horny teens US intelligence officials are growing increasingly wary of Second Life and other virtual worlds, which they say could soon become havens for terrorists, money-launderers and criminals engaged in corporate espionage.â¦
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Gamers have been able to get a taste of the technology behind the widely anticipated Half-Life 2.
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(InfoWorld) - When Intel looks to the next few years of computing, the dollar signs look a lot better in three dimensions, full motion, and high definition. The rise of what Intel calls the 3-D Web will transform the way people use the Internet with a far richer experience, exemplified today by Second Life but turning more realistic and being deployed in medicine and business, CTO Justin Rattner said in a last-day keynote address at theÂ Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco. The best news for the chip giant, however, is how much computing power all this will take. "This may be the killer app of killer apps," Rattner told reporters after they keynote. "As people demand a more immersive, a more realistic experience, they're just going to push the computing demands to unprecedented levels." The pressure on central and graphics processors has already soared as Internet use expands from traditional Web pages to applications like Google Maps, Google Earth, multiplayer online role-playing games, and Second Life. Going from surfing the traditional Web to traversing Second Life can increase CPU load by three times and graphics processing load by 20 times, he said. Servers need to work harder, too. A server that could support 2,500 concurrent players of the online game World of Warcraft, for example, could only support 160 Second Life participants, Rattner said. Rattner's keynote was colorful and entertaining for an IDF presentation, full of animation and simulations, but he outlined how much farther this richer experience has to go. For example, the kind of realism people expect from movies requires shadows and reflections that move with objects in a scene, he said. Daniel Pohl, a research scientist at Intel, demonstrated high-definition environments in the game Quake that included those elements and others. They demanded nearly all the processing power of a server with dual quad-core Intel x5365 chips. In medicine, doctors are aiming to allow surgery on virtual patients. With current technology, they can simulate cutting a rectangular patch of skin and opening it up in real time, but it would take far more processing power to do the same with a curved piece of skin or something like a cleft palate, according to Joseph Teran, a UCLA assistant professor who participated in the keynote. Other challenges for making the 3-D Web a reality include user interface and standardization, Rattner said. Tasks that take computer artists hours, such as creating shadows or reflections, need to be automated so that the average person can create user-generated content in an elaborate online world. Humans also need a better interface with the online world, Rattner said. He demonstrated the SpaceNavigator from Logitech's 3DConnexion division, which can be pushed and pulled to interact with a virtual environment, and the Novint Falcon, a three-dimensional game controller with force feedback. In addition, the mostly proprietary world of virtual worlds needs to embrace common standards so that, for example, avatars from one world can enter another, Rattner said.
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Unless you have been living under a rock for the six months, you will have noticed that the virtual world Second Life is much in the news.  According to its home page, there are currently around 1,700,000 residents, who are spending $600,000 â that's real, not virtual, money â in the world each day.  These figures are a little deceptive â there are typically only 10,000 to 15,000 residents online at any one time, and the money flow is not a rigorous measurement of economic activity â but there is no doubt that Second Life is growing very rapidly; moreover, we are beginning to see it enter the mainstream in a way that has close parallels with the arrival of the Web ten years ago.
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Titled 'The Entrepreneurs Guide to Second Life,' the book is a how-to guide to building a profitable business in the popular virtual world.
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When Toyota Motor Corp. wanted to promote its new Scions to young buyers, it turned to one of the growing number of digital design companies doing business in the popular online universe "Second Life."
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Plus: The one-world video game challenge. Read these stories and more from around the Web on News.com Extra.
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Retailers and manufacturers are setting up shop in Second Life, the three-dimensional online world, hoping that users will steer their avatars to real world stores.
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By Michelle Kessler  SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Second Life doesn't scare Jim McCann.    Sure, the CEO of 1-800-Flowers.com knew almost nothing about Second Life's virtual world until a young employee pointed it out.
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Sun's next press conference won't be held at the company's Santa Clara, Calif. headquarters; rather, it will take place in the virtual world of Second Life. The event, to be held Tuesday, would be the first by a Fortune 500 company to be held virtually.
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Big Blue is investing big to see how it can make 3D virtual environments pay off for the company and its customers.Images: Big Blue in 'Second Life'
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Over the weekend, BBC Radio 1 kicked off the U.K. festival season with "The Big Weekend" in Dundee, Scotland, featuring acts like Pink, Snow Patrol and Mylo. But not all fans who caught the show did so in the real world. Instead, the BBC simulcast the concert on an island it created in Second Life, an online virtual world, where fans could listen to the music, mingle, dance, even dive down a mudslide&#x2014;all with no lines for the bathroom.
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In the second part of a CNET News.com interview, the Microsoft co-founder discusses Vista, the Xbox 360 and Windows Live.CNET's Vista guide