Game Crazy is using a Google Lively room to advertise an Xbox 360 giveaway. Going to the room will allow you to check the scrolling displays for the different regions of the US to see if a local Game Crazy near you will be participating in the promotion. Also prominently displayed in the center of the wall is a large screen showing game trailers. This is a unique use of Lively, and probably one of the first experiments by a large retail chain in this space.
I went and checked out the space. It uses one of the default rooms layouts and stock assets. In moving around the room and reading the scrolling displays I did find it awkward to view the Northwest screens without fiddling with the display. There was a large column that was getting in my way of viewing the screens. If finally had to use the Viewfinder view to position my view for easy reading of the display.
There is no “in your head” view like in other virtual worlds and MMO’s (at least not that I could find). So really, using the Viewfinder seems like the only good option for unobstructed views. And while you are in this view you are having an “out of body” experience and will appear as a zombie to others in the room who may be trying to get your attention.
It would be very useful to have a way to set viewpoints in a room. You could set a view like the one above for a streaming video and then a user could simply click a view icon or hover over the screen to get an icon to click to lock the preset viewing angle for streaming media. I’m sure there will be many changes made to this environment now that a lot of people are kicking the tires and giving their opinions on how to improve it.
You can check out a full article with a link at Virtual World News:
