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TECHNOLOGY HiPiHi WorldA visit to virtual ChinaBy Surfdaddy Orca
I found HiPiHi surprising easy to learn after upgrading my PC to support Simplified Chinese. The newly released English interface (partially translated) is a major convenience for an “overseas visitor” like myself. Of course, as an experienced Second Life resident, I had a good idea what I wanted to do when I visited HiPiHi. I was impressed that there were no menu bars to master, with only a simple set of buttons and pop-up menus at the bottom of the HiPiHi viewer window.  HiPiHi World Login A word of caution. Like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, you need to remember that you are not in Kansas when you visit HiPiHi (right, Toto?). As an “overseas visitor,” you are subject to the regulations of the People ’s Republic of China. You are reminded of this in the HiPiHi Terms of Service: “Users of this community may not made remarks include which damage the Constitution and the law, undermine national unity, fabricated or distorted the facts, spread feudal superstition and obscenity, pornography, and other violations of the constitution and administrative laws and regulations of expression.” See the Quick Start and notes at the end of this article regarding the installation of Simplified Chinese and changing the HiPiHi interface from Chinese to English. Following the instructions in these notes will save you considerable time. China: An Emerging Online Culture China ’s population spends a cumulative 1.8 billion hours online each week, compared with 129 million hours in the U.S., says Ken Marlin managing partner at investment bank Marlin & Associates in a recent Business Week article. That ’s a lot of hours.  According to recent (2005) figures cited in the English version of China Daily, the Chinese mainland has 111 million Internet users, an increase of 17 million over that of 2004. The number of broadband users in the mainland grew 21.5 million in 2005 to top 64.3 million, surpassing the number of narrowband users. With such an explosion of online users, it ’s no surprise that Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, and other software companies continue to invest heavily in China to provide the server farms that power fast-growing applications such as Internet search, Web-based e-mail, and social networking sites. There is simply a staggering amount of IT infrastructure to build out to support a growing Chinese broadband Internet user base that is projected at 10 to 20 million new users a year for the indefinite future. This is not without controversy. The Golden Shield project or “Great Firewall of China” blocks content to China by preventing IP addresses from being routed through standard firewall and proxy servers at Internet gateways. Both Google and Yahoo have been criticized in the United States for providing Chinese versions of their search engines that block content. Google argues that “While removing search results is inconsistent with Google ’s mission, providing no information (or a heavily degraded user experience that amounts to no information) is more inconsistent with our mission.” The New York Times summarizes the other side of the issue in a December 2007 Op-Ed piece entitled “Yahoo Betrays Free Speech.” The Chinese spend an average of 15.7 hours online every week according to the China Daily. Second Life blogger Wagner James Au reports on a recent visit to Beijing, “China ’s city streets are a constant swarm of people moving beneath skylines of skyscrapers. The weather has been a staggeringly humid 90 degrees each day of my visit, and in Beijing ’s canopy of sun-obscuring smog, there ’s not a single patch of blue.” He goes on to comment on the appeal of a virtual world for the average Chinese urban dweller, “In a place like this, an online world of open spaces, clear lakes, and leisurely community”largely accessible in air-conditioned Internet cafes”will probably seem less like casual entertainment than an irresistible value proposition.” The Trees are Reflected in the Ponds I enter the virtual world of HiPiHi to find the open spaces and clear lakes. With scenic vistas and humbling beauty, HiPiHi ’s current platform is similar to Second Life in both looks and features. HiPiHi residents buy land and shape their environment with a library of prefab, customizable artifacts (clothing, furniture, homes, and so forth). As a long-time Second Life resident, I was pleasantly surprised to see objects actually reflected in water, something I have had to simulate using “reverse objects” as a builder in Second Life.  HiPiHi World has beautiful reflective water. I feel welcome in the “overseas zone” of HiPiHi. I find the English overseas zone forum most helpful in the otherwise native language Chinese forums. Xu Hui comments, ““Oversea zone is a fun place for our oversea residents to interact with each other. Here you will get help from the HiPiHi team. You can also give your advise to HiPiHi, or post anything you would like your friends in the world to know about.” The Heavenly Duke Creates the Things There are 16,000 or so beta users/testers are drawn from the Chinese regions along with a few hardy English-speaking testers like myself in the overseas zone. I never saw more than a dozen or so avatars in the overseas zone at any given time during my visits, however. There are four distinct, highly poetic beta phases:
1. Sundering the Heavens and Splitting the Earth When I download my HiPiHi Help and Support PDF, I discover that I am participating in the 3rd phase, which turns out to be “object creation.” The heavens have already been sundered (“terrain editing”) and Nu Wa has given me tools to “change the appearance of my avatar.” The mirage turns out to be the “economy” and “social systems.” Hopefully this mirage will end up being more than just an empty optical phenomenon! I ’m reminded of one of the favorite children ’s book purchased in Shanghai, China: “Havoc in Heaven.” Monkey King leaves the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit and fights his way through a series of adventures to triumph in the Hall of Miraculous Mist. I can easily imagine Monkey King sundering the heavens, dispatching Nu Wa and the Heavenly Duke, and shattering the Mirage to emerge triumph at the end—both technically and financially. According to Hui Xu, “Every phase is given a distinctive theme, in the hope of guiding users in the creation of the virtual world. This arrangement mirrors the real evolution of human society, from barbarians to civilized society. We want to let the users experience the course of civilization, instead of forcing most of our arbitrary creations down their throat from the get-go, which will surely confuse them.” Using the HiPiHi Viewer As mentioned, the HiPiHi viewer uses a button bar at the bottom of the window, and no menu bar. Having done a fair amount of user interface (UI) prototyping, I appreciate this simpler, more spartan approach to UI design. 
The buttons on the button bar are translated into English and fairly straightforward to figure out even without the benefit of the HiPiHi World Interface English Translation PDF file. The English PDF translation file is basically a set of screen shots showing how to perform essential actions using the Simplified Chinese user interface. The buttons and associated pop-up menus include the following:
I found later as I learned to move around that many of the second-level dialogs and dialog boxes that are displayed after clicking a button are still rendered in Simplified Chinese. However, even without knowledge of Mandarin, I found that I could quickly figure out how to use most of these dialogs. Learning to Move Around as a Newborn When I first logged in to HiPiHi, my avatar appeared as a headless, shadowy wraith. This turned out to be a language settings problem on my Windows XP computer (see the Installation Notes at the end of this article to properly configure an XP computer to handle Simplified Chinese). After correcting the language settings problem, I logged in again to find my avatar standing in a bamboo forest wearing a white undershirt and underpants”the badge of being a overseas “newborn” in HiPiHi, I guess. I quickly looked around, but I didn ’t see any pandas chewing on the bamboo.  Surfdaddy as a newborn in HiPiHi World Perhaps because I had to deal with being headless earlier, I ended up in a place where I did not see the “floating crystals in the new resident ’s born place to learn basic operations” that were advertised in the e-mail I received with my verification code. This, I assume, is a set of tutorials similar to Second Life ’s orientation island. But then again, I have a “jump right in and try it” engineer ’s learning style. Which is exactly what I ended up doing. I found the most helpful piece of documentation to be the English PDF translation file, particularly the section on shortcut keys. I also found it useful to print out the PDF and use the section on the shortcut keys as a “cheat sheet” reference to navigate inside HiPiHi. Here ’s a sample of the shortcut keys:
So far, so good. The arrow keys make sense. Here are a few more shortcuts:
Yeah, flying and swimming. Got that, no problem. How about the camera? I want to be able to look around easily.
Straightforward enough, but I had to keep my cheat sheet in front of me. When I realized that I could click on the screen, rotate around my avatar by rolling my mouse, and zoom in and out using my mouse ’s scroll wheel, I was ready to move on. Changing My Appearance I figure it ’s about time to get out of my underwear so that I don ’t look so conspicuously like a newborn. I press the Home key on my computer and find a nice level surface with no other avatars nearby. I click the Individual Panels button and select Personal Settings. The Personal Settings dialog box appears.  Changing My Appearance I first try the Costumes button to see if I have any clothes available. I see Shirt, Jacket, Pants, Skirt, Gloves, Socks, and Shoes. I try each one, but discover that I am unable to load a default garment onto my avatar. I quickly check my “backpack” inventory to see if I ’ve been given any clothes. I click the Backpack button and find that nothing happens. Darn. Well, I guess I can at least have colorful underwear! I go back to the Personal Settings dialog box and click the Costumes button again. This time I click Underwear pants and find I have textures and colors available to select. I discover that I can adjust the waistline and length of the “underwear pants.” So, as a longtime surfer with the avatar name “Surfdaddy,” I decide to create a pair of blue board shorts. I do the same thing for my “upper underwear” and create a light gold rash guard (used by surfers to protect their chests from chafing when paddling a surfboard). I then try the Head, Face, and Body buttons. I find that I can adjust my waist, hips, leg length, hair color, hair length, foot size, and a number of other settings. I decide to keep my hair long but to make it slightly lighter, more blond than black. I make my chest slightly bigger and my hips narrower. Now that I no longer feel like everyone ’s looking at me in my underwear (you ’ve had that dream”nightmare”I ’m sure), I ’m ready to explore the rest of HiPiHi. Teleporting (“Lightening Transmission”) I click the Map button and see a global map of the HiPiHi “genesis” world. I decide to explore some of the more popular places.  The World Map gives me a listing of locations, but unfortunately they are in Simplified Chinese. I have the option of clicking a convenient Birth Place button, which gives me the comforting feeling that I won ’t get lost when I start to teleport around. By moving the cursor around, I am able to select locations on the map. I move my cursor to a picture of an airplane and click the Lightening transmission button. I feel like the Chinese equivalent of Zeus. When I first arrive at my new destination, I appear to be in the water. Gradually, I realize that I am standing on flat land as the scene is rendered or “rezzed.” I push the F key and my avatar starts to fly. I see an amphitheater area with a video screen and fly over to it. I try to click on the video screen to see if I can view the video. No luck. I ’m sure that I don ’t have the video settings correctly configured even if video is enabled in this beta version. I see nothing in the English PDF translation file about this, so I decide to try another lightening transmission”but I end up clicking the Birth Place button instead Making My First Friend I instantly teleport to the bamboo forest area where I was “born.” I notice that there are two avatars standing nearby dressed in nice looking clothing. I decide to strike up a conversation.  I can see that the avatars are Chinese speakers by the Chinese characters over their heads. They can see that I am an English speaker by the English label “Surfdaddy” over my head. Undaunted, I begin a conversation by clicking the Chat button and typing into the Chat text box:
I go on to explain that I am in the USA. My new friend, it turns out, is in Guanghan, China. I ask him about his clothes. He tells me that these are “system default” and that he obtained these when he registered. I ask him where I can find such clothes. He reminds me that he is new, and says that he is not sure. I realize that I really don ’t have time to look for free clothing right now. I know that I can ’t buy anything in this beta version, so shopping is out of the question. Trying to Buy Land and Use the Helicopter I decide to see if I can “acquire” land as mentioned in the world help PDF, “During the test phase, every resident can own a piece of land free, the area of every piece of land is 10000m2.” The PDF tells me that the “holder” cannot be another resident or HiPiHi (HiPiHi ’s “public land” ownership designation). I must find land “which does not belong to anyone.” I open the World Map again, randomly select a location, and teleport to it. As the scene is rendered, I see buildings and realize that this location is occupied. I try teleporting to another location. This time I find empty land with no virtual structures. I right click on the land and the following menu displays:
In spite of the translator ’s confusion between English verbs and gerunds, I get the gist. I select Occupy this land. The land immediately changes to an orange color and displays a small dialog box with land settings. I notice that the land size is 10000m2 and that the owner is HiPiHi. Darn. I like this particular location. I try teleporting to few more random locations, but I ’m unable to find any land that “does not belong to anyone.” Intrigued by the My helicopter selection in the pop-up menu, I select it figuring that it might be fun to take a helicopter ride. Unfortunately, nothing happens and I realize that I must find my own land in order to try the helicopter. Using the Build Tools Realizing that I can ’t do much with HiPiHi ’s build tools until I can find my own parcel of land, I decide to at least try the tools on HiPiHi public land. I first try the Terrain Editor by clicking the Create button and selecting Create terrain from the pop-up menu.  Unfortunately, the Terrain Editor has not yet been translated into English. I can tell that I have the option to select the texture of the terrain (something that I cannot do on a Second Life parcel without owning an entire island) and that I can adjust elevations and contours, most likely raising, lowering, flattening, and smoothing the land. When I try to adjust some of the controls, I find that nothing happens. As I suspected”I can ’t modify the terrain of HiPiHi public land. Next, I try to create a building by clicking the Create button and selecting Create scenes from the pop-up menu. Again, the dialog box that appears has not been translated into English. I see a list of items in Simplified Chinese on the left and start to click on them. To the right I see images of houses, umbrellas, lamp posts, lawn chairs, and many other items that can be used to create a virtual scene (a “build” in Second Life parlance). I select an interesting house to see what happens. Immediately, I see a ghost-like house structure appear over the land. I ’m able to move it sideways, up, and down. Now we ’re getting somewhere, I think. Unfortunately, after I select a prime location next to the water, I ’m unable to save my template-based creation. I look for evidence of a scripting language, having read that there is a scripting language in the Chinese beta version, but I can find no evidence or documentation on a scripting language in the English version. Adjusting the System Settings Before I end my virtual tour of the HiPiHi world, I decide to take a look at the system settings. I ’m particularly interested in media and graphics settings. I click on the System settings button and select System Settings from the pop-up menu.  A dialog box appears with a set of tabs that includes the following:
Bridging the Worlds of East and West So much for my brief visit to virtual China. Not bad for a trip to a distant and foreign land. I found it friendly and strikingly beautiful”a world of open spaces and water that cost me only the time to configure my PC and learn a new viewer rather than a round-trip ticket to Beijing. I will definitely return to HiPiHi as a beta tester to continue meeting new friends, searching for my own parcel of land, and testing the build tools. I will let you know how it goes in future articles. A recent press release states that HiPiHi will cooperate with “global leaders in the Internet and communication industry to establish a set of relevant hardware and software standards for the development of the 3D platform.” This presents the exciting opportunity of providing some level of interconnectivity between the virtual worlds of East and West, hopefully bringing these worlds”and their real world residents”that much closer together. * * * 
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HiPiHi (“high-pea-high”) is a virtual world very similar to Second Life. Parts of it are stunningly beautiful, and it offers the potential to “bridge the worlds” of East and West through the use of 3D Internet technology. Founder and CEO Hui Xu recently announced that NGI Group is the lead investor in Beijing-based HiPiHi ’s current funding round.
