The Top 10 Things About HiPiHi
10. It’s surprisingly fast. Even though it’s served from China, we’re seeing 75-100fps typically on a midline system. Of course, the maximum concurrency is low, so we’ll reserve judgement on heavier use for later.
9. Water effects are quite nice. From the reflections, to the distortion of your avatar when you’re underwater, this is nicely done.
8. You swim!!! Yeah, that’s built right into the system. Take a dunk and you end up swimming through the water, complete with realistic sound effects. No scripts required!
7. There’s weather. There are days when it rains. The water ripples, dulls, and loses reflectivity. The palette of the world slides to gray. It may not be everyone’s, er, cup of tea, but it’s nice to see some variation.
6. On the fly ground retexturing. Yeah, I know, now I’m getting developer-geeky, but it’s neat to be able to pick a tool, set the size, pick a texture, and redo your plot on the fly.
5. It’s a contiguous world. Want to swim from the mainland to the islands? Go right ahead. Want to fly from one side of the world to the other? Sure.
4. The flight engine. Whoever did their helicopter knew their stuff. This is responsive, nicely realistic, and very usable. Also, the helicopter appears to be made of irregular prims, which is neat in and of itself.
3. Inventory preview!!! Yes, you can see what’s in your inventory (and relative size) before you whip it out and surprise yourself. This is a great feature.
2. The distance algorithms. Yeah, it’s clear that fog is covering something up, but again, it’s nicely done. The world melts away rather seamlessly into a fog of brilliant white, like there’s always something just on the edge of your vision, waiting to be discovered.
1. The whole surreality of spending time in a Chinese virtual world. It’s a helluva trip. The very fact we’re wandering around in virtual worlds from every corner of the globe and comparing their relative merits is hugely exciting. And then there are the random people who walk up and start speaking Chinese . . .
June 5th, 2007 at 12:07 pm
That is nice water. When I code water it looks like a throbbing blue tarp is eating the land.
June 5th, 2007 at 3:34 pm
HiPiHi Report Adds Salt to SL Wounds
Via the Metaversed blog comes word of a post over on media agency Centric’s blog listing “The Top 10 Things About HiPiHi” (Link). I won’t list them all, but will instead cull the top three I think matter most and list them in o…
June 6th, 2007 at 6:34 am
[…] Ieri un articolo di Centric riportava le “Top 10 things about HiPiHi“. […]
June 6th, 2007 at 10:44 pm
[…] many, but there’s some new screens and some commentary about what it plays like over at Centric - Agency of Change. It’s basically a top ten list of notable things they saw in […]
June 7th, 2007 at 2:00 am
It’s good, all this improvement. It will provide more competition and force LL as well as other competitors to implement the appropriate changes and improvements. This whole field is a critical new social medium (web 4.0?) to come and evolution needs to speed up.
I worry about sex in prude china though. A large part of this whole thing is the potential of people to liberate their souls and free sexual expression is a big part of that. Fascist-repressive paternalistic regimes the government of China (or the US neocon-republican party for that matter) don’t like that and will seek to stomp it out.
June 16th, 2007 at 10:05 pm
I just sent in my application for the beta program. I hope they take me, I’m really curious to see what it’s like.
I wonder if the folks in charge of the various virtual worlds are giving any thought to a system that would allow one to maintain a constant identity from one virtual world to the next.
I hope they are thinking of ways to provide communication from one virtual world to another. It should be possible to exchange text and still images without too much added complexity or sharing of proprietary knowledge.
June 25th, 2007 at 9:39 am
“I wonder if the folks in charge of the various virtual worlds are giving any thought to a system that would allow one to maintain a constant identity from one virtual world to the next.”
Some folks are. And some of what may be happening now might facilitate it. By that I mean the way the architecture may be going: various virtual worlds sitting on top of a Croquet layer. You might want to keep tabs on The Meshverse Journal which posts about that sort of thing.
June 29th, 2007 at 6:54 pm
I’m enjoying using the Hipihi beta.
Anyone else that has tried Hipihi have any comments on their experience?
July 7th, 2007 at 4:02 pm
“And then there are the random people who walk up and start speaking Chinese . . .”
OMG! It IS just like Second Life then!
July 16th, 2007 at 11:24 am
[…] The Top 10 Things About HiPiHi […]
July 20th, 2007 at 5:03 am
please keep your eyes on the HiPiHi new event “Vote Your most Concerned HiPiHi Policies!” That’s interesting.
Check the following link:
http://forums.hipihi.com/main-read-11-ff80808113d2c36c0113e2f3c8e97555.html
August 21st, 2007 at 8:23 pm
[…] slick. More comparisons and pros/cons are helpfully covered at sites like Spunlogic and Centric. But if you're going to lick Linden Lab's crib notes, please don't copy the wrinkles […]