Artificial Life – Timeless style

I bumped into Timeless Prototype the other day in SL. It had been a while. I asked what have you been up to and he answered. Come over and have a look. So I TPed into Primula Risa on Delphic
Timeless (of Multigadget, multichair and the london eye fame) had started an artificial life sim in motion. Svarga is of coure the famous one but Timeless is doing some other interesting things.
The area is full of trees, mushrooms, ornate plants and flowers that all grow before your eyes, much of the flowere work is that of Spiderkitten Mirabeau and Timeless has worked with SK and brought them to life. The positioning and seeding is all in the hands of the weather and of the random flow of seeds that you see fluttering around the place.
The things that initially attracted my attention were the fish that Timeless has created. Not only are they fantasticaly articulated and organic in their swimming motion but whilst we were talking the fish took an interest in us and congregated around the jetty we were on. Timeless days he has seen all sorts of unprogrammed but interesting behaviour as the fish take an interest in their surroundings and each other. He got me to hover in the water and a fish decided to lift me up and ‘rescue me’ clearly not scared of the predator AV 🙂
Having spent a little time watching things grow and happen it is intriguing how much more involved you can feel as the environment changes around you. The fascination of both the simple patterns of nature with the uniqueness of each part of the landscape as things grow and then die to respawn elsewhere is really good.
I know that under the covers there are some intersting pieces of code, but like all good alife it seems simple, the rules are simple, yet it causes (just like simple flocking) a very complex looking and attractive feel.
I have been looking at putting a-life approaches into some of the things we have in our internal metaverse and we have all talked about the growth of plants and other elements. So it is good to be inspired by such a cool build by Timeless.
I am sure he will add some comments with more details and depth, but you can appreciate it this on so many levels, so go and enjoy it 🙂
I took a whole lot of photos and the odd bit of video, I will need to edit the video up and youtube it. In the mean time heres some pictures from Snapzilla.
primula risa
An overview
mushroom
Mushrooms and flower
flower1
Orchid style flower
bell flower
A very pretty golden flower
Those smart fish
The fish
tateru and SK
Algernon and I also bumped into Tateru Nino and SpiderKitten Marabeau in a small valley on the sim too.
tree
The trees grow in front of your eyes
tree2
Here is a large one
mist
There are some nice touches like the mist over the lake too.
entrance
The entrance
jetty
The jetty
more fish
Surfing fish

4 thoughts on “Artificial Life – Timeless style

  1. I put some fish into the Lotusphere build and discovered that they will school of their own accord! The one in the IBM Sandbox doesn’t. It just sings Frank Sinatra songs to people. 🙂

  2. Pingback: The Grid Live » Primula Rasa: Artificial Life in a Virtual World

  3. Pingback: Time Stands Still. Interview with Timeless Prototype on Second Life | Reality is Relative

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