Virtual Melbourne has arrived

Melbourne Laneways is a new build featured on ABC Island. It was created by Gary Hazlitt and Ben Zabelin from The Project Factory on behalf of the ABC and Multimedia Victoria, who have produced an associated publication titled ‘Would Your Business Benefit from a Second Life’ (download here).

The public launch was held this evening (Thursday night) at 7pm AEST with a good roll up of aussie residents:

melblaneways4.jpg

The creators describe the build as such: “The project uses real-life images of graffiti, architecture and objects found in Melbourne’s iconic city streets, and recreates these to produce a completely interactive world where people can explore mysterious laneways, clubs, puzzles and cafes.  
 
Head of Virtual World Development at The Project Factory, Gary Hayes, says: ‘We wanted to catch the vibrancy of the Melbourne Laneways and the architecture of Federation Square.  Second Life gave us the ability to animate these buildings and give them the movement that we feel they want.’ ”

There’s a lot to explore in a fairly modest area. Without giving too much away, here’s some glimpses of what to expect:

melblaneways3.jpg

melblaneways2.jpg

And there’s even a cafe you can drop by with a well-known face behind the counter:

melblaneways11.jpg

It’s great to see an iconic part of Melbourne in Second Life. Now, where’s Hobart?

Check it out in-world

Comments

  1. Lowell Cremorne says

    Thanks DaveMark – all fixed 😉

  2. Wow, I just was having a meeting with a friend about Second Life in Melbourne CBD, and did not know about this. Spooky.

  3. BTW A bad link in the story, I note http://www.projectfactory.com/ when it should be http://www.theprojectfactory.com/

  4. Wow, I just was having a meeting with a friend about Second Life in Melbourne CBD, and did not know about this. Spooky.

  5. BTW A bad link in the story, I note http://www.projectfactory.com/ when it should be http://www.theprojectfactory.com/

  6. Lowell Cremorne says

    Thanks DaveMark – all fixed 😉

  7. Hey Lowell

    A new fun, promotional video of Laneways here



    and a medium rez download with the correct credit spelling! here

    http://www.muvedesign.com/SL_Melbourne_Laneways

    Oh and a little web 2.0 tip for SLOZ, to encourage people to comment always have a prominent sidebar called ‘Recent Comments’;-)

    Gary

  8. Hey Lowell

    A new fun, promotional video of Laneways here

    and a medium rez download with the correct credit spelling! here

    http://www.muvedesign.com/SL_Melbourne_Laneways_Hazlitt.mp4

    Oh and a little web 2.0 tip for SLOZ, to encourage people to comment always have a prominent sidebar called ‘Recent Comments’;-)

    Gary

  9. Great effort to anybody who puts some effort in to improve the Aussie culture on SL…

    No wonder the SL numbers in australia are *dropping* and not growing… There’s *nothing to do* and it is boring!..

    This effort is most commendable , though, and anything to do with community events will make me want to spend more time in SL..

    The pond opened up about 8 months ago now. Can anybody list 1 thing that they have done in terms of entertainment to bring the community together, other than the original builds, which where done by Gary Hazlett…

  10. Great effort to anybody who puts some effort in to improve the Aussie culture on SL…

    No wonder the SL numbers in australia are *dropping* and not growing… There’s *nothing to do* and it is boring!..

    This effort is most commendable , though, and anything to do with community events will make me want to spend more time in SL..

    The pond opened up about 8 months ago now. Can anybody list 1 thing that they have done in terms of entertainment to bring the community together, other than the original builds, which where done by Gary Hazlett…

  11. Very interesting concept. Hopefully other cities will follow

  12. Very interesting concept. Hopefully other cities will follow

Trackbacks

  1. […] Have you had a look and what do you think? My impression so far is that SydSim is an extremely poor competitor to its Melbourne counterpart. […]

  2. […] we discussed furries in-depth with Australian furry, Wolfie Rankin. – the Melbourne Laneways presence launched in Second Life. – the much hyped virtual world Project Outback bit the dust. – we […]

  3. […] in the area it does inhabit. The Sandbox remains the most popular area, but themed areas like Melbourne Laneways provide a lot of ongoing interest as […]

  4. […] was launched in October 2007 as a joint initiative of the ABC and Multimedia Victoria. Unfortunately, its days are numbered, […]

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