Ciaran Laval

November 12, 2014November 12, 2014

Draxtor SL Goes To Places And LL To Tour Meauxle Bureaux?

Draxtor Despres takes his Bavarian brand to the streets of America and utilises SL GO from Onlive on his iPad as he shops, skateboards, sits in the woods and relaxes near the beach whilst exploring Second Life on the go.

The video features voice from Torley, who doesn’t quite get the SL GO tagline! However for those who aren’t sure what it should be, here’s the word from the horse’s mouth :

Your World Anywhere.

Introducing SL Go, the best way to experience Second Life in full 3D on mobile devices. No expensive desktop computer needed—just connect and go on your tablet. Experience Second Life’s full visual performance when you’re away from your desktop. And thanks to OnLive’s state of the art data center, rez into your favorite sims faster than you ever thought possible.

SL GO is available for $9.95 (£6.95) a month for unlimited access or $1.00 (£0.70) an hour for pay as you go access. There’s also a seven day trial available. Now you may be wondering why anyone would want to use SL GO to explore Second Life. Drax of course demonstrates one use case, Second Life on a tablet. Another use case of course is older computers that are struggling with Second Life these days.

The seven day free trial should give you a good idea as to whether you think there’s a good use case for you. Another use case of course would be to explore somewhere such as Meauxle Bureaux whilst on the go too, especially now that it has made the Destination Guide!

Hurrah! I said this place should be in the Destination Guide, but there’s more.

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November 12, 2014

The Iron Horde Are Coming But I won’t Be Battling Them

Warlords Of Draenor. Blizzard’s fifth expansion in the World Of Warcraft series launches tomorrow and in typical Blizzard style, they have launched a mightily impressive PR campaign with Videos, storylines, social media hype and a very angry looking ride in a New York Cab!

Blizzard really are an impressive company when it comes to publicity, their cinematic trailers are superb and one wonders if they’ve ever considered extending those trailers into a longer series on their own, although I’d imagine they are damn expensive to make.

Warlords Of Draenor takes a step back in time to create a new timeline and the rise of the Iron Horde to bring new chaos to Azeroth.

There are obviously going to be new quests, new places to explore, new dungeons, an increased level cap and more. Despite all this and despite the buzz I’m seeing around certain circles, I won’t be participating.

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November 11, 2014November 12, 2014

Ebbe Altberg At Endgadget Expand NY – Virtual Reality Beyond Video Games

The Endgadget Expand NY event this weekend saw Ebbe Altberg going coast to coast as he participated in a panel discussion : Back To Reality VR Beyond Gaming. This panel discussion saw Ebbe joined by Matterport’s Matt Bell and BeAnotherLab’s Marte Roel and has been summarised on Endgadet itself in an article entitled : Virtual reality has a future beyond video games, and it’s already started.

The discussion has also been discussed, eloquently, in detail and with great analysis by Inara Pey in an article entitled : Beyond gaming: looking at VR with Ebbe Altberg and others.

The panel was hosted by Ben Gilbert of Endgadget who introduced Ebbe Altberg as “The CEO Of Linden Lab, who you might have heard of from Second Life and other fun products.” This sort of introduction is exactly why I thought Rod Humble was on the right track in terms of expanding Linden Lab’s portfolio. Second Life should really be a tag line of Linden Lab, not the other way round. However it does emphasise yet again the sway that Second Life has in terms of its name.

Host Ben Gilbert then earns cheers from the virtual world fanbase when he says that the people on the panel are not making video games. You see, some people do understand the difference between virtual worlds and games! Ben also earns some bonus points for realising it’s Linden Lab, not Linden Labs. However he only found that out on the same day of the discussion.

Ebbe indicates that beta testing of Linden Lab’s new virtual world may start around the middle of next year, so watch that space. Ebbe also talks up Second Life well discussing use cases such as education, art and entertainment as well as talking of the economic model and how Linden Lab allow users to create the content.

Ebbe makes a good point about lines between the virtual and real worlds when host Ben Gilbert brings up the issue of the lack of the sense of smell in virtual reality. Ebbe feels there are pro’s and cons and that it’s not about reaching equality between the two spaces. That’s a very important point because I feel some people feel virtual reality will lead to some people being lost in the machine but I really can’t see the feared level of immersion some have being an issue for eons, certainly not in this generation of VR.

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November 11, 2014

Radegast Viewer Parked At End Of The Road

Inara Pey recently blogged some sad news regarding the Radegast viewer for Second Life and Opensim. Inara linked to a post from the main developer behind Radegast, Latif Khalifa, in which Latif typed :

It saddens me to have to inform you that I won’t be able to continue work on Radegast or my other opensource projects. My health has been deteriorating over the past few years to this point where my use of computers is down to just a few minutes daily. Not being able to work for several years bring its own set of problems.

Radegast is opensource so if there is interest people could continue improving it.

It’s been a great pleasure working with the Radegast and the wider Second Life communities.

The Radegast viewer won’t be as familiar to people as some of the more popular third party viewers for virtual worlds. That is largely because Radegast is a lightweight client that contains some enhanced accessibility features such as text to speech, which makes it a client that people with visual difficulties may embrace and therefore join virtual world communities.

There’s certainly room in virtual worlds for lightweight clients, even if they don’t come with accessibility features. People may just want to check in when they are on the go, so I don’t think this means the end of the road for lightweight clients and it certainly won’t be the end of the road for clients built with accessibility in mind.

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November 10, 2014November 10, 2014

Drax Files Radio Show Episode 44 Features Interview With Dwarfins Legend Jaimy Hancroft

Episode 44 of The Drax Files Radio Hour With Jo Yardley features an interview with a Belgian chef by the inworld name of Jaimy Hancroft. Jaimy is the owner of the Second Life brand Death Row Designs and also a creator for the fantastical Dwarfins team.

However what makes this interview interesting is just how much enthusiasm Jaimy has for Second Life. Jaimy talks about how she creates, how she enjoys Second Life herself and has great fun with games within Second Life such as The Cornfield and how she also finds the time to make appearances at events and help noobs out when they land in areas of Second Life that advertise themselves to noobs but probably aren’t noob friendly.

In short Jaimy is some sort of RPG wonder woman who seems to be able to bend time and space. However Jaimy also makes some extremely interesting observations, one of which is with regards to the inworld shopping experience and how it’s getting a lift from the number of events that are on the grid these days.

Jaimy points out that although she’s not a fan of the deadlines that events create, events themselves are a great way for creators to get exposure. This is interesting because the Second Life Marketplace has damaged the concept of inworld shopping but obviously not to such an extent as some of us may feel. Jaimy feels that over the last couple of years inworld shopping has improved for her store.

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