The first leg of the Volvo Ocean Race at sailonline.org was invaded by a large and chatty group of folks from virtual world Second Life’s sailing fraternity. Since then, I have had an exciting ride as a passenger on a wiz class dinghy, and several sailonline stalwarts have actually bought themselves boats and started learning to sail them.
The world of sailonline and that of Second Life couldn’t be more different. The two don’t compete, they are complementary. You can take part in either as pure recreation, or you can take either as seriously as you would their real life equivalents.
If you are already both a dinghy sailor and an experienced player of interactive gaming machines it may not take you long to become skilled enough to take part in a race in Second Life, but it would take me at leas a week – first I’d have to get the hang of moving around and doing things in Second Life. Anyone who has sailed his own yacht can understand sailonline.org in minutes.
The biggest difference between the two is the pace and the timespan of an event. Second life sailing is a deliberately speeded-up representation of dinghy racing, which makes each race exciting and demands concentration and physical co-ordination – like any Nintendo or Playstation game, but with multiple opponents. Sailonline.org races run in real time over real-life distances, and they simulate the navigator’s desk in an expertly-crewed boat where the navigator does nothing but navigate. ‘Round-the-cans’ races take a few hours and need attention several times per hour, but a leg of the Volvo Ocean Race takes nearly a month and needs the navigator’s attention a couple of times a day – except when winds are fickle and hard to predict at the local level.
I showed you the sailonline console in an earlier post. This video shows you what a Second Life race feels like in the basic boat (the advanced wiz class is more hectic) but doesn’t give you a feel for how to play the game yourself – the best way to do that is to join Second Life, and when you’ve got the hang of the basics, go over to one of the sailing clubs and ask for a demo.
Great article. Thanks for telling folks about SL sailing. Let me expand a bit on the information you have provided. As mentioned in the SAIL ON broadcast (your link above) a clubhouse has been created for sailonline.org skippers who make the virtual jump to SL. Additionally we have started a wiki specifically for SOLers who come over to Second Life. Before SOLers in SL learn to sail, they need to learn some basic skills in SL living. The wiki made the early learning curve go much faster. Check it out at http://slsailing.pbwiki.com/. Finally, the boat you sailed was a FIZZ, not a Wiz. But I think I like your name better.
Thanks, Mark. The wiki sounds an exccellent idea. I’ll start my studies immediately. Forgive my hazy memory – the ride was too exciting to leave much space in my brain for remembering the name correctly…