Sunday 25 November 2007

Al Jets Graphically into Kowloon

I've been on something of a marathon photoshoot this weekend, culminating in the simply stupendous Kowloon sim. Once again, my thanks to my friend Lem for telling me about it.

I want to keep this brief, but a tiny bit of background is in order. The sim is owned and built by Jet Graphics, a Japanese company with (evidently) great expertise in textures and 3D modelling. Although called Kowloon, the sim portrays the grimy, slightly seedy backstreets to be found in many Far Eastern cities. From my own limited travels, I recognised the ambience of both Kowloon and parts of Tokyo.

The sim is a masterpiece in many, many ways: the dense texturing; the ambience; the intricacy of its winding passageways and the amazing array of fabulously bizarre (but inexpensive) goods on sale. You could spend a lot of time here, and still find yourself coming back to explore further. If you tire of exploration, there is a sandbox, and they also host music events - or you could ride one of the slightly grubby (mechanical?) pandas! Here's my photoset - I know they're dark (it really should be seen in midnight mode - the default for the sim), but you can always click on 'em to see a bigger version of the image:


















God knows what it must look like in Windlight! Oh... and a couple of tips: remember to click on doors, many of them will open and, watch out if you head into the theatre, you might not get out again so easily!

1 comment:

Nock Forager said...

Additional info! The SIM is based on Playstation's game "KOWLOON'S GATE" at 1997. If you try it, You would know how that's SIM recreated it's atomosphere. Wikipedia page: http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%AF%E3%83%BC%E3%83%AD%E3%83%B3%E3%82%BA%E3%82%B2%E3%83%BC%E3%83%88 (Sorry, written in Japanese...).