A PIECE OF PLACE

Modeling the Digital on the Real in Second Life

C. ONDREJKA
Linden Lab, USA

Abstract. Digital worlds exist as synthetic models and have no need for the constraints of
the real world. This freedom allows digital worlds a vast design space of representational
choices, ranging from near correspondence to the real world to complete abstraction. The
digital world Second Life was designed to allow its residents enormous creative freedom and
to be as broadly appealing as possible. Second Life chose to mirror the real world in many
important aspects in order to provide a place that felt familiar and comfortable, while
granting freedoms not possible in the real world. This Article will cover the environment of
Second Life, the reasons for the choice and the challenges that arose.

1. Choices
Digital worlds have been imagined in many forms, from the “lines of light” of Gibson’s
cyberspace (1984) to the real world of Stephenson’s “Street” (1996). Freed from the limitations
of real-world geometry and physics, digital worlds can choose any topological, representational
or physical rules that they want. The forty-odd years of networked gaming and digital worlds
indicate that many options were explored (Koster 2002), from early examples that used text and
hyperlinked worlds through space simulations with graphics and physics, all the way to Second
Life’s simulation of real world rigid body dynamics, fluid flow and visual appearance.
Launched in 2003, Second Life is a digital world unlike any other. It was designed to allow
residents to control nearly every aspect of their world. From the shape of their avatars to the
design of their homes, from how they spend their time to what types of affinity groups they form;
Second Life’s design was focused on fostering creativity and self-expression in order to create a
vibrant and dynamic world full of interesting content. One of the most important sets of
decisions involved the design and presentation of the world itself. Built upon a unique grid and
streaming architecture (Rosedale and Ondrejka 2003), Second Life’s technology is uniquely
suited to the requirements of user creation.
These requirements were to make the world user-created while still maximally interesting and
approachable for new users, to foster community and to scale smoothly with population growth.
A digital world that mirrored the real world was chosen because it provided the best solutions to
these diverse requirements. Before delving into the requirements, some background on Second
Life is needed.
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2. The World of Second Life

Second Life is a continuous and persistent world that attempts to model the surface of an Earth-
like world in a reasonably life-like way. The sun rises and sets, objects fall under the effect of
gravity, trees and grass blow in the wind and clouds form and drift.
Second Life runs on a grid of computers with each one simulating approximately 16 acres of
land and the airspace above that land. The computers are also running a full rigid-body physical
simulation of the all of all the objects on and over the land, a simplified solution of the Navier-
Stokes equations to simulate the motion of the wind and streaming routines to send all the data
needed to view the world to anyone who is connected (Rosedale and Ondrejka 2003). Each
computer is edge-connected to up to 4 other machines, allowing objects and visibility to
seamlessly cross between machines, resulting in a perceptually continuous space. One could, for
example, choose to travel across the entire world (Au 2004).
This trip would take you some time, as the world of Second Life is already large and is
currently growing at a rate of 300 - 500 acres per month. The current world is show in Figure 1.

Figure 1. The world of Second Life on June 4, 2004

Each of the grey-outlined squares represented in Figure 1 is a single computer. Currently

approaching 200 machines, Second Life covers over 3,000 acres of space. This topology allows
new land to be added easily as required by population growth.
In addition to the land, nearly a million independent primitives are also being simulated by the
system. Primitives are the building blocks of Second Life and allow residents to create anything
that they imagine. Using a constructive solid geometry approach (Ondrejka 2003), residents
create collaboratively in world, in real time.
Residents of Second Life participate in a wide variety of activities, from building homes and
holding parties to entrepreneurial activities of all kinds. Multiple universities have sprung up in
3 C. ONDREJKA

order to educate the population about the world. Several groups are raising virtual currency in
order to auction it for real-world currency and then make donations to non-profit groups (VERTU
2004 and Lindens for Life 2004). Residents currently engage in hundreds of thousands of player-
to-player transactions per month, generate over US$40,000 in real-world wealth per month
through the auction of virtual currency and spend tens or hundreds of US$ per month in order to
own virtual real estate within Second Life. Armed with an understanding of Second Life, it is
time to delve into the reasons for modelling it on the real world.

3. Like the Real World, Only Better

So why model a digital world on the real world? Given the enormous computing power of the
Second Life grid, virtually anything would have been possible. However, the goal of a user-
created world made it clear that modelling on the real world – with improvements – made the
most sense.

3.1 THE NEED FOR USER-CREATED CONTENT

Residents of digital worlds consume content at an incredible rate. With the rising costs of content
development, developers have turned to several options to reduce these costs. Massively-
multiplayer online role-playing games solve this problem by limiting the rate of progress through
the game, but this approach doesn’t apply to a more generalized digital world. Instead, Second
Life utilizes the incredibly energy and creativity of its residents by making creation a fun and
integrated part of the experience. This constant generation of new content keeps the world
dynamic and fresh and helps to retain residents over long periods of time.
More importantly, as user create and learn from each other, the overall quality of content
created in world increases. New users learn better approaches to building, get to play with ever-
improving gadgets, can wear the latest fashions and ultimately pass on their knowledge to the
next batch of new residents.

3.2 THE MOTIVATIONS OF PLACE

While user-created content provides a solution to content generation, providing context and
motivation is critical for producing content that is appealing to both the creator and to others.
While economic factors provide one source – and have been discussed elsewhere (Ondrejka
2003) – the real-world sense of place is another important source.
Residents entering Second Life have a great deal of experience in the real world and artistic
and narrative forms derived from it. While exceptions exist (Gibson 1984), even speculative
fiction and movies tends to owe more to the real world than to more abstract forms. Place has
meaning. Up and down has meaning. Most people look more or less human. By providing a
digital world that allows its residents to build upon this massive well of cultural knowledge,
Second Life offers enough familiarity to not baffle new residents and creators. It can still be
challenging, as the multiple digital universities indicate, but it is sufficiently familiar to allow new
users to incorporate themselves into the community.
The real world also provides a rich source of entrepreneurial ideas. There are certainly
business proposals that don’t have real-world analogues, but residents’ freedom to leverage the
vast range of real-world business allows those residents who choose economic motivations to
engage in a fluid, rapid evolution of ideas. These residents can then further borrow from the real
world, because they understand that location, customer traffic and advertising all apply within
Second Life.
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Travel in Second Life occurs in one of several ways. Your avatar can walk over the terrain; fly
like a superhero; utilize land, sea or air vehicles; or utilize the telehub system. Telehubs are the
public transportation system within Second Life and allow a resident to teleport from one location
to another. However, rather than arriving directly at the destination, they instead arrive at the
telehub and can then walk or fly the remainder of their journey. Telehubs provide a place for
residents to meet each other, locations for announcements and, most importantly, create non-
uniform land value. Land near telehubs receives more traffic and is easier to reach. It would be
more valuable for someone setting up a shop. On the other hand, a private retreat should be on
land as far away from telehubs as possible. The exclusion of random point-to-point teleports is
an important component of giving place meaning within the world and allows telehubs to act as
population and commerce centers as the world expands.
The ability to build vehicles that make travel more interesting also has created a market for
vehicles of all kinds, from balloons to motorcycles. Skydiving has become a popular pastime and
many different types of vehicles have been invented to support that activity.
The tabula rasa of new land has also proven to be a powerful motivator. Second Life
computes a full rigid-body simulation of the world, but when creating, residents are free to ignore
most real-world physical constraints, such as gravity and collision between objects. In addition,
since virtually no creation or duplication costs exist, the only significant limiting factors are user
creativity and time. This allows creation to be an incredibly expressive process and leads to
residents who want to build in the digital world what the real world denies them (Au 2003).
Empty land calls out for a park, a home, a game or a business, and residents, unencumbered by
the economic and physical limitations of the real world, realize that they can create all of these.

3.3 COMMUNITIES THAT GROW

Residents use digital worlds in diverse ways. Communities improve many of these activities, and
the topology of Second Life allows groups to work together in very real-world ways. Users who
find that they enjoy spending time together can decide to build homes near each other or to work
together to create a central meeting place. Merchants who have complimentary needs can work
together to create shopping destinations. For example, several casinos have popular clothing
stores associated with them so that patrons can look their best.
Affinity groups can work together over large areas and time periods. Many group builds
extend over a full simulator (16 acres) or more, resulting in large themed areas. These large
areas, with their consistent appearance and goals, also result in destinations for new users who are
looking for specific activities within the world. By actively recruiting new residents, groups build
their knowledge and skills, resulting in further improvements to the world. This feedback has led
to residents often pioneering new ideas before the developers.
The collaborative nature of the world also allows groups to form in very ad hoc ways.
Residents meet each other at open houses, classes, while acting as the “Welcome Wagon” for
new users and while creating. All of these activities take place within the shared space of the
world and others can generally observe and join quite easily. When combined with the tendency
of most users to create in a very self-expressive manner, this leads to residents having a much
more complete picture of each other than in other online forms, such as chat. The real-world
context also helps the community context, as many activities are immediately recognizable by
new users.
5 C. ONDREJKA

3.4 SMOOTH SCALING AHEAD

Modelling on the real world also enables Second Life to have excellent scaling properties. Each
individual machine is only connected to a maximum of four other computers, no matter how large
the world becomes. If Second Life had chosen a more abstract model that allowed machines to
connect to more than four neighbours, the hub machines could easily become overwhelmed as the
world grew. Instead the grid expands smoothly as the world grows.
The mapping of land to machines also allows the economics of land ownership to correctly
manage expansion. Each new machine adds 16 acres of land to the world, which is purchased by
the residents. By monitoring the amount of land users own and what they are paying each other
for it, the rate of expansion can be accurately controlled. In addition, selling land directly to
residents provides a powerful alternative to the traditional subscription-based revenue models of
online games.

4. Real-World Challenges
Modelling on the real world, combined with Second Life’s size and complexity, has resulted in
some challenges. The most important challenges related to place are navigation and zoning.
Navigation is difficult because on top of the normal challenges, the world is incredibly
dynamic, so landmarks vanish, people move to new locations and stores change inventory with
much greater frequency than the real world. As the world grows, this will continue to be a
problem. Currently, Second Life relies on a combination of searchable descriptions, tracking of
resident movement patterns and a rotating list of points of interest to reduce the problem.
Zoning has also transferred from the real-world. Second Life only imposes two types of
zoning on its users, Rating and Safety. 16-acre regions can be rated either “PG” or “Mature” in
order to limit what types of adult activity and content take place within them. In addition, regions
can be “Safe” or “Unsafe”, which determines whether player-to-player combat is allowed and
whether or not your avatar can die. As expected, residents would like additional zoning options
and the ability to enforce their zoning decisions on other users. While those features have not
been added to the system, some groups of users have managed to purchase enough land to create
and manage their own zoning rules.

5. What’s Next?
Second Life has been live for about a year and has just scratched the surface of creating place
within a digital world. As the representational fidelity and population increases, what new uses
will residents find for Second Life? With nearly a dozen university classes from disciplines as
diverse as urban planning and game design having used Second Life, will broader education and
research be next? Will the rapid prototyping potential be leveraged by architects, social scientists
and augmented reality researchers? Modelling Second Life on the real world has led to a broadly
appealing digital world with an incredibly diverse set of residents and behaviours. These
residents, their creations and their communities are a deep vein of knowledge and creation
waiting to be mined.

References
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visited on June 6, 2004)
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Au, WJ: 2004, The Trek Begins, at <http://secondlife.blogs.com/nwn/2004/03/the_trek_begins.html> (last visited on

June 6, 2004)
Gibson, W: 1984, Neuromancer, Ace Books, New York.
Koster, R: 2002, Online World Timeline, at <http://www.legendmud.org/raph/gaming/mudtimeline.html> (last visited
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Lindens for Life: 2004, Lindens for Life Homepage, at <http://www.lindensforlife.org/> (last visited on June 6, 2004)
Ondrejka, C; 2003, Escaping the Gilded Cage: User Created Content and Building the Metaverse, at
<http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID538362_code374671.pdf?abstractid=538362&mirid=1> (last
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Rosedale, P and Ondrejka, C: 2003, Enabling Player-Created Online Worlds with Grid Computing and Streaming, at
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Stephenson, N: 1992, Snow Crash, Bantam Books, New York.
VERTU: 2004, VERTU Homepage, at <http://www.vertuous.org/> (last visited on June 1, 2004)