Ciaran Laval

March 14, 2014

Whoops! Your Everything search for “Desura” did not return any matches

For a long long time people bemoaned the fact that Linden Lab did not advertise Second Life. This has changed in the last couple of years, Linden Lab have embraced advertising, but there’s another oddity. Linden Lab aren’t exactly embracing Second Life when it comes to their other products.

For example a search inside Second Life for Desura gives us these results :

Image for Desura search — Search results for Desura

If you have to squint, the results for a Desura search within Second Life provides us with “Whoops! Your Everything search for “Desura” did not return any matches” Ok let’s try this again, surely there will be something in Second Life regarding Blocksworld, right? Wrong :

Search for Blcoksworld image — Search results for Blocksworld

Blocksworld is of course a different product but it seems odd to me that you can’t easily find any information about this product within Second Life, which is Linden Lab’s premier product.

Desura is a different platform too, but Desura actually seems to be a bit more switched on when it comes to being friendly to their sister products.

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March 13, 2014March 13, 2014

The Hypergrid Stories Project – Interacting With The Fiction

Nara Malone greets me as I return to Nara’s Nook to start my quest on The Hypergrid Stories Project. Nara recognises that I’m a Hypergrid noob and tells me that if I want to keep my clothes on during this journey, I’m going to have to pack a suitcase. This troubles me but Nara simply explains that if I haven’t got a folder in my inventory entitled “My Suitcase”, then I need to make one and drag my worn items into said folder. This is how you keep your clothes when you travel to a different Hypergrid region. So suitcase duly packed I follow Nara.

Next up Nara points out the books and poetry offerings and almost dares me to walk through one. I hesitate but I’m not one to shy away from a challenge. I walk into Dear Charlie, a story by Tina Glasneck, who recently wrote about the project at Hypergrid Business. Without clicking anything, I’m teleported. However at this stage I haven’t left Greyville Writer’s Colony. However this soon changes.

I’m greeted with chat :

Dear Charlie, You can’t change a monster into a man and I should have known that when Otto walked into the club and smiled at me. [please proceed to Red Light Club in the provided teleporter] [1 of 21]

Walking into said teleporter and again without having to click to teleport, I find myself in the mysterious universe of Hypergrid travel. I arrive safely at my destination and my suitcase was indeed packed, as I am still fully clothed. Phew!

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March 12, 2014

Linden Lab Announce Limited Beta For Second Life Oculus Rift Intergration

Linden Lab have blogged regarding a limited beta for Oculus Rift intergration in Second Life : Second Life’s Oculus Rift Integration is Ready for Beta Testers. This of course suggests that Linden Lab are well into their Oculus Rift intergration. However it should be noted that the beta is a limited beta and to take part, you will need access to the Oculus Rift development hardware.

The point there being that Oculus Rift isn’t yet at the consumer stage, you can’t buy it in the shops. However you can order the development kit, it’s currently priced at USD$300.00. However that’s aimed at developers, such as Linden Lab, rather than consumers so don’t go buying it if you’re not a developer!!!!

The blog post announces:

The Oculus Rift offers exciting possibilities for Second Life – the stereoscopic virtual reality headset brings a new level of immersion to our 3D world, making Second Life a more compelling experience than ever before.

Though a consumer version of the headset isn’t available yet, we’ve been working with the development kit to integrate the Oculus Rift with the Second Life Viewer. We now have a Viewer ready for beta testers, and if you have an Oculus Rift headset, we’d love to get your feedback.

If you have the Oculus Rift development hardware and would like to help us with feedback on the Viewer integration, please write to sl_oculus_beta@lindenlab.com to apply for the limited beta.

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March 11, 2014

Hypergrid Stories Project Launches

I’ve mentioned The Hypergrid Stories Project before, but now Nara Malone, who has a name that sounds like she’s some sort of super sleuth, has unveiled some meaty details about the project. Now this is a catch it whilst its hot deal because in its current form, it’s running until St Patrick’s day.

Now don’t be put off by the fact that this is billed as a Hypergrid stories project, yes it is largely an OpenSim venture, but not exclusively, from Nara’s blog post we can see a list of participating grids and they include Second Life:

Participating Grids

Next Reality Grid: Redlight Hotel from Mike Hart
Metropolis: Independetly Spoken from Crystal Brewton
Craft Grid: Spirit of Arcadia: Cogtown from Virtual Christine, Pitcairn: 111shawn from Shawn K Maloney, Aquarium from Tao Quan.
OS Grid: Virunga Mountains: from Debbie Edwards and Fred Beckhusen, Transmedia Learning 1 and 4 from Nara Malone.
NarasNookGrid: Greyville, Quarterz City, Siobhan Muir 1, Tina Glasneck 2, Series, Shadowling Manor, and Theria from the Greyville Authors.
Second Life: Phaze Demesnes from Debbie Edwards and Fred Beckhusen, Karpov from an anonymous donor.

The project is taking interactive fiction in a new direction, you actually walk into a giant book to follow the story! Then you’ll be teleported to a scene in the story and will eventually find a landmark to the next scene.

The stories are in the short story category, 500 – 1300 words but if you’re not that interested in stories you can follow the poetry trail instead or simply explore the builds.

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March 10, 2014

Philip Rosedale, Ebbe Altberg And Maria Korolov Amongst Keynote Speakers For VWBPE 2014

Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education (VWBPE) will be holding their 7th annual conference in Second Life and OSGrid between April 9th – 12th this year and the keynote and featured speakers have been pencilled in. Some of them should be extremely familiar, especially High Fidelity CEO Philip Rosedale.

Another familiar name for some of you, especially those in OpenSim circles, is Maria Korolov of Hybergrid Business.

Then of course there’s new Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg, who is a late addition to the schedule, so late that he wasn’t in the email I received about the conference!

The full schedule for the conference will be released soon, but here are the known keynote and featured speakers :

Opening Keynote: Closing the Gap: Virtual Reality & Education

Presenter: Philip Rosedale, CEO High Fidelity

Date/Time: Wednesday April 9th, at 1:00pm PDT

Location: Second Life – VWBPE Central Auditorium

Featured Keynote: Connections in an Open Place

Presenter: Justin Clark-Casey, President OpenSimulator umbrella Overte Foundation

Date/Time: Thursday April 10th, at 7:00am PDT

Location: OSGrid – VWBPE Gateway

Featured Keynote: The Coming 3D Future Shock

Presenter: Maria Korolov, Editor in Chief – Hypergrid Business

Date/Time: Thursday April 10th, at 10:05am PDT
Location: OSGrid – VWBPE Gateway

Featured Keynote: Using Virtual Worlds and Gamification to Enhance Learning

Presenter: Andrew Hughes, CEO Designing Digitally

Date/Time: Friday April 11th, at 7:00am PDT

Location: Second Life – VWBPE Central Auditorium

Featured Keynote: TBA

Presenter: Ebbe Altberg, CEO Linden Lab

Date/Time: Friday April 11th, at 1:00pm PDT

Location: Second Life – VWBPE Central Auditorium

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