Monday, March 15, 2010

Twinity welcomes Therians, expanded Berlin and more

There's lots of news happening in Twinity. Time for a short update on an expansion of online Berlin, the arrival of the Therians (the former inhabitants of There), a visit to the Pergamon Museum and a new release!



Welcome to Twinity, Therians
Last week, veteran virtual world There.com closed it's doors, meaning an experienced population of virtual world users was looking for a new place to hang out. Many of them are currently giving Twinity a try: the landing places in Berlin and London remind me of the starter islands of Second Life a few years ago, with lots of new users stumbling around! Metaversum has extended a warm welcome to these new users, by creating a special welcome package for Therians. Metaversums' Jeremy also stepped in, by writing an honest, open blog entry discussing some of the cited reasons for There's demise and how Metaversum deals with those issues. He also engages Twinizens (old and new alike) by soliciting specific user feedback, but so far he hasn't gotten much, which is a bit of a shame. If you have anything to say to Jeremy, please go post your thoughts.

Time will tell whether the Therians can grow accustomed to Twinity, but let's hope they do. We welcome them all!



Berlin growing
It may have been lost in the noise surrounding the arrival of the Therians in Twinity, but last week, Berlin grew a bit. Additions were made in the western section of the city, adding amongst other things the famous landmark "Gedächtniskirche" and the Kurfürstendamm. By the way, if a German talks about the Ku'damm, don't get confused: he's just abbreviating 'Kurfürstendamm' :)

Pergamon Museum
I hadn't noticed before, but the Pergamon Museum, which is famous for it's collection of antique artefacts from the classical period, can also be visited in Twinity Berlin, and a part of it's collection can be admired. Do pay a visit some day!

Twinity Berlin: Pergamon Museu...

New release
This morning, a new release of Twinity was deployed. Apart from a short news message and a teasing blog entry, there's not much hard information as to what this release contains - street lighting perhaps? Release notes, anyone?

Sered Woollahra blogs at Sered's lives and lives in Second Life, Twinity, Eve Online and OpenSim.

2 comments:

Andreas said...

Hey Sered,

we fixed a lot of bugs and added some cool new effects so that Twinity looks much better at night:

* Screen space ambient occlusion
* object fading

We also added the skateboard to go faster through the cities. It will be released this week.

Andreas

Maria Wingtips said...

Thanks Andreas! Putting the occlusion on system menu as an option was a smart move; much better performance now. Thanks!

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