Going to Mardi Gras in a virtual world instead of New Orleans has some real advantages. No airfare, no hotel bills, no travel time. While it can't equal being in New Orleans in person, it's more realistic for most of us.
Until lag strikes. If you've been in a virtual world any length of time, you know what lag is. It's like you went to New Orleans and suddenly, instead of a hurricane, the laws of physics went haywire. Gravity increased. Air became thick as molasses, making walking impossible. The speed of light plummeted to barely a crawl. There are huge blotches of the scene around you, walls, floats, costumes, that you simply can't see. That's what lag is like, and it struck Mardi Gras in Second Life hard today.
The floats that people worked so hard to create never moved an inch. Much of the scene was mottled with grey, where textures simply were unable to render. All movement slowed nearly to a standstill.
Sadly, this happens all too often in Second Life parades. The number of parades and processions that this writer has seen proceed as planned are just a fraction of those that don't. Nonetheless, there is more to the Mardi Gras than the parade.
There are three days of events on Second Life's Mardi Gras. Today is just the first day. You can find the schedule here: www.examiner.com/second-life-in-national/mardi-gras-second-life-this-weekend. A lot of work and planning has gone into this event, and apart from the Mardi Gras events, the New Toulouse sim is worth a visit: clicking slurl.com/secondlife/New%20Toulouse/144/174/23 .
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