Meet me at the Casbah: Pics from Virtual Morocco
About a month ago I visited the Casablanca sim (teleport SLURL), a jaw-dropping recreation of Morocco, from the souk market to the mosque to the detailed tilework. Created as an initiative of faculty and students at Johnson and Wales University in partnership with the Moroccan ministry of tourism, it's a must see build.
I took a bunch of pictures that I never got around to posting until now. Enjoy!
An aerial view of the central mosque. Quite lovely.
Every visitor gets these fashionable and helpful fezzes that not only help you get into the spirit of the place but also dispense tidbits of information as you walk around. Sure beats carrying around a guidebook.
Lovely little spice stall. I could use some paprika.
Cool pot stall with a picture of an actual souk shop lending depth to the store.
What's a souk without a sleeping cat?
This sign gives you the live weather forecast in Morocco. 63 degrees and cloudy!
Here's a little tourism booth that dispenses all sorts of helpful information about housing, tours, outdoor activities, festivals and shopping in Morocco. Clearly the Moroccan Ministry of Tourism had a hand in this display.
In the mosque you are asked to take off your shoes before attending prayers.
The roofs of the residential neighborhood all sport one or two satellite dishes, just like in the real Casablanca.
After a long day, nothing beats sitting down to a hooka pipe in the cafe. This is Second Living.
An intelligent fez? What an extraordinarily cool idea! I wonder at what point the ability to explore such places crosses the line and becomes intrusive marketing...so is the Morocco location (ok or rumored Swedish embassy), but not virtual showrooms from car companies? Or is it all fair in love and gaming? We all celebrate these announcements equally, because they add credence to the viability of virtual worlds. I just worry that at some point along the way, we'll wake up, jack in, and realize that we've knowingly recreated the same noisy, cluttered, marketing-infested world on our computers that we'd hoped to escape. Anyway, thanks for all the cool pics from SL.
Posted by: Jonathan Salem Baskin | January 28, 2007 at 09:12 AM
These concerns have dogged Second Life since it's inception 3 years ago. What kind of virtual world do we want? Do we want it to be a complete escape from our RW lives? Or do we want it to incorporate the most interesting bits of the RW, i.e. virtual Casablanca, a tsunami simulator, the spaceflight museum?
The answer is to make your virtual world big enough to accommodate the various desires and preferences of different folks.
Posted by: rikomatic | January 28, 2007 at 10:54 AM