One of the benefits in being a virtual cat is that I have no need for virtual clothing or accessories. Well, no need doesn't mean that I can't have them anyway.

With the recent influx of real world shoe vendors in Second Life, I thought Virtual Bailey's paws could use a break from the cold hard virtual asphalt.

I first visited the Reebok store. When I walked through the doors, I saw a display featuring "blank" custom RbK's for sale for 50 Linden dollars. You can read about the real world counterpart here. I bought a pair, put them on, and then headed over to the customization kiosk.



Kiosks are often difficult to use in real life, and this one matched my mental model of real world kiosks. The instructions on the wall were in a very small font, and the controls on the actual kiosk were too small to be clickable unless you were zoomed in so close that you could no longer see the shoes. Also, why no tie-in to the real world? Shouldn't I be able to buy a real world copy of what I created without having to go to the website and start all over? Virtual Bailey does look fresh in his new shoes though.





Next I headed over to the Adidas store.



The Adidas store sells a3 Microride trainers for 50 Linden dollars. They come in two versions. The black and orange "high jumpers" are supposed to enable your avatar to jump super high and the blue and white "astronaut shoes" are supposed to have a special float feature.

There are "test mats" in the store, but I couldn't figure out how to get them to work. You are also supposed to be able to watch some promotional videos, but when I clicked any of the screens it just tried to load a web page. I ended up buying the blue and white pair.



I'm not entirely sure that I'm using them correctly. I'm not sure if I'm "floating", per se, but Virtual Bailey is walking differently. Once you're wearing the shoes, and the "toggle", you type /adidas to enter float mode.