Google Releases 3D World Lively

Google发布3D世界Lively

一款类似second life的在线虚拟社交网站，在看到google官方博客上的帖子之前怎么也不会想到google会在毫无征兆的情况下推出这一服务。第一时间上去感受了 一下，后来再登陆就出现问题了，第一次选过ID了，第二次还要选，选过之后又说你已经选过了，空着又点不进去。感觉是一款仓促发布的产品，基本的问题还有 一大堆，但是google进入一个领域总是使人感到兴奋，他们会不断的完善，就像美国人拍连续剧，开头看很垃圾，但是他们总能根据观众的兴趣改善剧本，然 后票子赚的满钵满罐。现在google有了建模软件sketchup，并且已经有很多建好的模型，google还有一个google earth，通过lively整合一下，简直可以说是前途无量啊。这下google的广告可要做到游戏里了，second life要着急了，微软又有几年要追了。

from Google Blogoscoped by Philipp Lenssen

Google just released Lively, a 3D world where you can chat with others and create your own rooms. Traces of this program appeared back in 2007 under the name of My World (this project also received the rumor nickname Google metaverse; TomHTML, Tony and I also lately saw traces of something called Google Rooms, though we aren’t 100% sure it’s related). After installing the desktop setup for Windows – yes, this is one of the rare Google products which isn’t completely browser-based – you’ll be forwarded to lively.com again. There, you can pick from a number of available rooms, and sign-in with your Google account.

Google刚刚发布Lively，一个虚拟的三维世界，在里面你可以和别人聊天，也可以创建自己的房间。这项服务的出现可以追溯到2007年，那时候的名字为My World(当时传言的另一名称为Google metaverse)；TomHTML, Tony和我最近看到了一项称为google rooms的服务，但是我们不能百分百确定和Lively相关。要使用这项服务先要安装windows下的桌面软件，这也是google为数不多的不完全是基于浏览器的服务之一。点击桌面图标后还是回到lively.com的页面。选择一个房间，使用google帐户就可以进入了。

I experienced a couple of problems with this service right now; from odd user name restrictions (I ended up re-selecting my Google ID name, even though they asked me to pick a new name at first), to very slow loading (I mostly saw skeletons at first), to finally, a program crash (the message “Lively has encountered a problem and an error report has been sent” appeared and the program closed). These may be launch problems, though, and nothing permanent... we’ll see.

刚开始使用这项服务我遇见了一些问题。先是奇怪的名字限制（虽然他们一开始也让我选择一个新的名字，最后我还是不得不重新选择我的google ID名字。）到后来奇慢无比的载入（刚开始我看到的是满屏幕的骷髅），再后来程序就挂掉了（出现的信息是：Lively出现问题，错误报告正在发送中）。或许这些都是些刚开始发布时的小问题，没有什么大不了的，先别下定论。

Once you logged into a room, you can start customizing your avatar. First you can pick from a base type – like male, female or animal – and then you can fine-tune your hair, skin color, eyes and more. You’ll then see yourself surrounded by other avatars, and there’s background music and lots of laughing, grunting and other noises. The graphic has a lighthearted cartoon touch, reminscient of something like a Lucasarts 3D game. When you talk by using the chat box at the bottom, your words appear as speech bubble above your character.

进入房间之后你就可以打扮你的虚拟形象了。先选择一个基本的形象，男，女或者是一个小动物-然后慢慢调整你的头发，肤色，眼睛等等。你会看到你周围的虚拟形象，听到背景音乐，人们的笑声和谈话声各种各样的声音。画面漫画感比较强，会使人很怀旧的想起Lucasart一款三维游戏。使用下面的对话框聊天时你的话会出现在你的虚拟形象头顶上的泡泡里。

You can then move around by kind of dragging your avatar (clicking your avatar switches to self-navigation mode, and clicking outside it switches to camera navigation). This may be an unusal mode of navigation at first, but after some seconds it works very well.

然后你可以拖着你的虚拟形象到处走走了（点一下虚拟形象转到自我移动模式，再点一下旁边转到视角移动模式）这种移动模式或许不太常用，但是试用一会之后还是很方便的。

Selecting a room from the Lively site

Joining a room, like this cafe

Configuring your avatar appearance (with some loading symbols in the room)打扮你的虚拟形象（房间里会出现一些加载的标志）

Clicking on objects, like an armchair, pops up a little dialog to let you e.g. add a comment to the object or interact with it, like sitting down. Clicking on other avatars lets you see their profile, and also initiate actions... like choking, slapping, kissing and much more. Indeed, there’s a whole lot of kicking and beating going on at the moment, and you may find your avatar being body-slammed around the room while you’re busy, say, configuring your hair color. I suppose it may calm down a bit after people are done with testing their moves, or perhaps Google wants to allow all kinds of user types – including World of Warcraft style fighters – to enjoy Lively...

点击物体，比如座椅，会出现一个小的对话框，你可以对这一物体进行评论，还可以与之互动，比如坐下。点击别的虚拟形象可以查看他们的资料，也可以引起一些动作，比如掐一下，拍一下，或者吻一下等好多的动作。说句实在话，现在上面到处都是乱踢啊，乱打啊，你可能会发现你忙着的时候，比如调整头发的颜色，有人在房间里撞墙。我认为这些人测试完这些动作后情况会好一些，也有可能google打算允许各种人物来Lively玩，包括魔兽类型的武士。

If you want to create your own room, you’ll start out with a blank setup. You can then expand a furniture selection sidebar, for instance, to drop a chair, which will be represented by a loading cone at first. Note to move objects, you need to switch on the Move icon to the right, and then drag and drop things. A quiet room like your own may also be the right setting to further customize your avatar (you’ll note that you’ll be able to browse the Lively product catalog for more apparels, like your favorite shoes) or go through your repertoire of moves; from pleading and bowing to ROFLing or dancing, or “see no evil.”

如果你打算建立自己的房间，你拿到的是一个空当当的模板。展开家具选择的侧边栏，比如选择一把椅子，一开始是一个显示载入的圆球。要移动物体，你先要把右边控制移动的图标打开然后就可以拖动物体了。一间属于自己的房间有助于进一步打扮你的虚拟形象（你会注意到你可以浏览Lively的产品目录来选择更多的衣服，比如你喜欢的鞋子）或者是查看你过去动作的记录，比如ROFLing祈求，跳舞啊，非礼勿视啊。

Customizing your room. Google’s Niniane Wang at the official announcement post says, “If you enter a Lively room embedded on your favorite blog or website, you can immediately get a sense of the room creator’s interests, just by looking at the furniture and environment they chose. You can also express your own personality by customizing your avatar’s look, showing people who you are without having to say a word. Of course, you can chat with each other, and you can also interact through animated actions.”布置你的房间，Google’的 Niniane Wang在官方发布帖子上说，如果你进入一个嵌在网站或者是博客上的房间，你一下子就会了解到房间主人的兴趣爱好，只消看看他们选择的家具和环境。你也可以通过打扮你的虚拟形象展示你的个人性格，不用说一句话就可以告诉别人你是谁。当然你还可以和别人聊天，也可以进行一些互动。

Crying on a lonely island (with Monkey Island style clouds in the background)在一个孤独的小岛上放声大哭（背景是猴子岛风格的白云）

Once you’re finished with your own room, you can edit its settings. Like choosing whether you want to have it be publicly listed, whether visitors can move objects, what kind of background music plays and so on. You can also pick a different room type, called “shell,” like an island. And then you can grab some HTML inline frame code to embed the whole thing onto your own website for others to join, provided of course they have Lively installed. A room also has its own URL to share, which takes a form like this one.

房间布置好你还可以编辑一下设置。比如要不要公开，参观者能不能移动里面的物体，播放什么样的背景音乐等等。你也可以选择不同的房间类型，比如壳，像是小岛的样子。这样你可以把HTML代码拷出来嵌入到你的网站上供别人加入，前提是他们也安装了Lively。房间都有供分享的单独的URL，比如这一个 。

All in all I found Lively to be an enjoyable experience so far. Some of its features may get some time to used to and its much to early to tell how well the social features will play out, but it’s one of Google’s more ambitious and fun projects. And Second Life may just have gotten a new competitor...

总之我认为Lively还是很好玩的。有些功能需要花时间去适应。现在讲有多少社会网络的因素在里面还为时太早，但是这也是google的一项雄心勃勃但是很好玩的项目。Second Life又多了一个竞争对手。

[Thanks Martin Porcheron, Luka, Tony and TomHTML!]

[By Philipp Lenssen | Origin: Google Releases 3D World Lively | Comments]