beta: breathe deep..

One difference between Twinity and Metaplace on the one hand and Second Life on the other, is that avatars in both Twinity and Metaplace visibly breathe, while avatars in Second Life do not. Certainly for Twinity, this makes a lot of sense, given their strategy of mixing real and virtual. This is how it looks like (movie courtesy of my wife Maria):



This movie shows her sitting quietly in a cinema chair; yet she breathes like she completed the Berlin marathon a few seconds ago! Watch that clip again and try to breathe in the same pace as Maria; it feels really uncomfortable. Same for Metaplace, the avatar breathes at a much high pace than a normal person does. The point is that I as a player identify with the avatars, and the breathing movement of the avatar somehow impacts my breathing. Just looking at it makes me feel like I'm running out of breath myself!

So here's to both Twinity and Metaplace: I like the natural breathing effect, but please, slow it down to a more natural pace?

As an aside, this movie was made with Twinity's built in movie camera, which records .ogg and lets you convert to .avi on the fly if so desired. Neat!