Ciaran Laval

October 28, 2015

Will Second Life Ever Shake Off Its Flying Penis Tag?

Over at Geek K.Thor Jensen has posted an article; The 11 weirdest MMORPGs still online. I had a feeling that this wouldn’t end well, Second Life is in the list, although rather bizzarely, so is Ever, Jane, a virtual world set in the era of Jane Austen and created by ex Linden Lab Senior Engineering Manager Judy L. Tyrer. Ever, Jane hasn’t even been officially released yet, so it’s an odd fit in a list regarding platforms still online.

However back to the Second Life bit, it’s not the worst I’ve ever read :

There is really no virtual universe quite like Second Life. Ever since it launched in 2003, SL has been a place where any fantasy can come true — as long as it’s able to be rendered in polygons. A million regular users still log on to the service, using the in-game tools to create obejcts, characters, outfits, scripted events, and more. For a brief time, companies tried to use Second Life as a virtual meeting place for promotional events, until they realized that it was easy for griefers to interrupt them with flying penises and other shenanigans

The most infamous flying penis incident took place all the way back in December 2006 during an interview between Anshe Chung and CNET, as Endgadget reported; Second Life millionaire pummeled with penises. That’s almost nine years ago, I guess next year we’ll see a tenth anniversary limited edition on the Marketplace … I’m kidding, don’t try this at home!

Continue reading “Will Second Life Ever Shake Off Its Flying Penis Tag?”

October 26, 2015

Boston Medical Center Receive Grant To Study Diabetes Education In Second Life

Inara Pey has a great post about diabetes education in Second Life; Medical Centre granted $3.5 million to study diabetes education in Second Life. Inara’s post is inspired by an article by Nidhi Subbaraman at The Boston Globe; Second Life shows new promise as virtual forum for diabetes education.

The posts relate to the work of The Boston Medical Center with regards to their work with diabetes education in Second Life. The work began back in 2009 with a pilot study led by Suzanne Adams, a family physician at Boston Medical Center. The idea with the pilot study was to see if a group meeting in a virtual world, could help people to change their eating habits when compared to a group meeting in a physical location. Some participants accesses the program online, others went to the hospital :

“The point was to say, is it at least as good, or is it grossly inferior,” said John Wiecha, director of the Office of Medical Education at Boston University and BMC family physician, who was Mitchell’s colleague on the study.

The result, according to the article, was rather interesting :

The trial was a hit. Mitchell said the Second Life participants didn’t just sit in on the course sessions. They made friends, swapped recipes, had dance sessions, hung out. Most tellingly, participants wanted to know if they could involve their families in the game too.

For the span of the study, the diabetes of both groups improved at the same rate. Sessions online and in real life had comparable rates of attendance. But members of the Second Life group reported exercising more than the group that met in class. This was the most exciting result for Mitchell: The hint that the virtual experience might create a long-lasting lifestyle change.

These results have now led to a $3.5 million grant over five years for further research, as a press release explains :

The National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) has awarded a $3.5 million grant over five years to Suzanne Mitchell, MD, a family physician at Boston Medical Center (BMC), to study health outcomes of minority women with type 2 diabetes who participate in group medical visits to help them manage their diabetes. Participants will receive diabetes self-management (DSM) education and medical advice from BMC physicians either in the online virtual world Second Life or an in-person classroom setting. The study aims to determine the efficacy of virtual world and classroom groups in teaching DSM, to increase all participants’ physical activity levels, and to measure technological development milestones of the virtual group.

The Boston Globe article also quotes Gentle Heron, who works so very hard as part of Virtual Ability Inc.

Continue reading “Boston Medical Center Receive Grant To Study Diabetes Education In Second Life”

October 26, 2015

Looking To The Past Will Help To Move VR Forward

Those of us what have been around virtual worlds for a while can be forgiven for being somewhat bemused by a lot of the hype regarding the forthcoming virtual reality boom, because a lot of what is being discussed as futuristic advances are use cases we’ve all seen before. However there are use cases that already exist that may even pass us virtual world enthusiasts by.

These thoughts crossed my mind as I read a couple of articles today, the first was by Adi Robertson over at The Verge; The Virtual World’s Fair is where VR hype meets theme parks. The article concerns the work of Landmark Entertainment Group, who are famous for building theme park attractions and have plans to dip their toes very firmly into the waters of virtual reality.

What really struck me about this article was this part :

Landmark believes its role is to help solve the “chicken and egg” problem the industry faces: people won’t buy VR if there’s nothing to do in it, and no one will make experiences for VR if people don’t buy it. Christopher thinks the company is uniquely poised to succeed, compared to filmmakers or game developers — who are making a “whole different thing” compared to VR. “We’ve been doing what we call ‘total theater’ in the theme park space for three and a half decades,” he says. “We’re way beyond experimenting with this.”

Whereas I’m not familiar with Landmark Entertainment’s work, it is indeed true that theme parks have been the home to immersive experiences for quite some time. However those are immersive attractions where you go to the theme park itself and Landmark will be building what they call “live centers” that host digital art, zoos and more, with one set to open in China in 2017. However they will also have plans to launch The Virtual World’s Fair :

Landmark Entertainment Group has taken inspiration from its theme park design heritage and the long-standing World’s Fair tradition to create the concept for the “Virtual World’s Fair™,” a virtual reality experience loaded with real-time social interaction, entertainment, education, and shopping, just like a traditional world’s fair, but designed to be enjoyed in-home rather than as a real-world travel destination.

Landmark’s Virtual World’s Fair has been developed in conjunction with the Pavilion of Me ™ (P.O.M.™) concept, a daily-use in-home entertainment portal that reimagines everyday activities such as checking social media, online shopping, watching film and TV content, video chat, and playing video games into virtual reality experiences.

The Virtual World’s Fair will be accessed through the P.O.M. portal donning a VR headset; first-time users will create a personalized avatar, and then journey into the Virtual World’s Fair embodied in their newly customized digital persona. Both the P.O.M. and Virtual World’s Fair will enable social interactions with other people’s avatars (including family, friends, celebrities, world leaders and even total strangers) from around the world.

P.O.M. is scheduled to launch next year, with the complete Virtual World’s Fair experience to follow in 2017.

How well this progresses is of course dependent upon how well the technology surrounding headsets develops and gains acceptance but it’s interesting to see plans such as this in progress.

Continue reading “Looking To The Past Will Help To Move VR Forward”

October 23, 2015

Shocktober At Raglan Shire

Raglan Shire, the community known for tinies, friendship, creativity and being powered by waffles has taken a turn to the dark side, as they often do at this time of year, with their Shocktober event.

Dare you visit the haunted hotel? How about The Dark Carnival? The Raglan Shire ride of horrors? There’s plenty to see and do here, with a haunted gesture hunt, pumpkin carving, broom races and the all new apawcalypse horror survival game also in the mix.

Continue reading “Shocktober At Raglan Shire”

October 23, 2015

Women Probably Don’t Want To Feel All Alone On A Crowded VR Island

I was in a pub one Sunday afternoon a year or so ago. I was enjoying a pint or two and watching a football match on the telly when a woman entered the bar. There was nothing unusual about this, well not at this point anyway, but then I heard the woman say; “This pub is full of men, I haven’t been in a pub like this for years“. At this point I turned away from the telly and duly noted that the pub was indeed, full of men and that the newly arrived woman was indeed the only woman on the customer side of the bar. There were women behind the bar, men work behind the bar too. I should note here that the pub is not usually as male dominated as it was that day and that plenty of women attend the pub quite happily.

The thing was, it wasn’t until this woman had arrived in the pub and made her comment that I realised that the pub was full of men. I was reminded of this incident whilst reading a post by Hamlet Au over at New World Notes; How to Really Get More Women into VR: More VR Startups Founded & Run by Women. The post links to an article over at Digital LA; Women in VR: 26 Ways to Increase Women in VR.

A few points really stand out to me in terms of visibility :

Attend VR events such as VRLA Expo, Oculus Connect, and more to learn, connect, represent and increase visibility of women in VR.

Create documentary of leading women pioneers in VR. There are many women pioneers in VR who can be role models to girls or others who want to get into VR. The documentary film can be screened at VR events.

Create great content. Women need to start creating their own VR content. “I’m going to start creating my own content in addition to working on projects for others,” said Shannon Gans, founder of New Deal Studios which won the Oscar for Interstellar.

Get YouTubers, Viners and other influencers into VR. If top female influencers across various platforms started to do VR, that would increase women interest in VR. If iJustine (YouTube), Brittany Furlan (Vine), Amanda Oleander (Periscope) were invited to do a VR experience, that would be widely shared among their audiences and drive interest in VR.

That visibility is important and another factor to note is conformity, which leads me to another article featuring VR researcher Jenny Wu; Jenny Wu: VR researcher. Psychology grad. Social media dissenter.

Continue reading “Women Probably Don’t Want To Feel All Alone On A Crowded VR Island”