Here's the results of my survey last week, asking if you experienced any motion sickness when visiting SecondLife.com's new-ish homepage. I posted that question after receiving some reports of people having that sensation, so was curious how widespread that reaction is.
Turns out, a fair amount:
Reaction was nearly evenly split, with 46% saying they felt motion sickness "a little" or "a lot" when visiting the Second Life homepage. (I'm personally in the "little" category.) If you haven't visited the homepage lately, you can check your own reaction by using a browser that doesn't have your credentials pre-cookied (as that might take you right to your account dashboard) and go here.
The new homepage is a cool montage of fun, fullscreen video with quite a lot of panning and zooming:
If I had to guess, motion sickness sensations are most likely triggered by the tracking shot of a rollercoaster diving into a funhouse tunnel, and what looks like a dolly zoom shot of three SLers entering Murdoch's Slaughterhouse. (Above.) A dolly-zoom shot was famously first used by Alfred Hitchcock for Vertigo to convey, well, vertigo. (Explainer video below.)
Not everyone seems to be getting the full animated homepage. "I just see the usual static SL homepage," reader Jonathan P. reports. "What are we supposed to see?" And also, a majority of people who took the survey report feeling no motion sickness.
Overall I understand what Linden Lab is going for with this new homepage, quickly conveying a wide variety of virtual experiences and avatars in a high energy montage. The SL homepage gets nearly 7 million monthly visits. But if one million of these visits are from potential new users, and nearly half feel a bit woozy just looking at the website, how likely do you think they are to create an account?
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Wagner James Au / New World Notes 
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