I got to log a few more minutes in the Chinese virtual world of HiPiHi this morning, which was pretty interesting. I somewhat randomly teleported around to some of the more popular locations, which is how I found this beautiful castle pictured above. It was largely a facade, with no rooms or furnishings on the inside. Much of what I found in HiPiHi was similarly austere and empty.
But most importantly I ran into my first avatar!
Like Second Life, you can look at a map of the entire world which shows you the various continents and islands, as well as green dots representing logged in avatars. There were only a couple of green dots when I logged in today. But when I teleported to their locations, they were no where to be seen.
Then, while checking out this castle, this avatar named Gideon appeared near me in the air. I tried to say hi (in English) and offered him friendship, but got no response from him. He just floated around for a few minutes and then disappeared. Weird.
Here's a cool propaganda-ish poster I found. Anyone care to translate?
Soon after, I found this set of military vehicles sitting in a grassy area. None of them seemed functional, although its likely that there were Chinese instructions on how to drive them that I couldn't read. I have no idea what they were supposed to be depicting, if anything.
This cargo plane was pretty sweet. It appeared to be escorted by a couple of jets and dropping some of packages by parachute. Hmmm.
