Ciaran Laval

July 10, 2015

Discovering A Sticky Situation At The Pink Dragon

Sometimes in Second Life you find yourself in some very odd locations and today was one of those times. I headed to a region called Dragons Hearth, expecting to find dragons and adventure. I did find dragons and adventure of a sort, a sort I wasn’t expecting. I also found a lot of ice cream, sweets and Gingerbread.

Dragons Hearth is home of The Pink Dragon and upon landing you are handed information about the region and rules regarding roleplaying, which is described as light roleplaying. Upon exiting the initial landing point you will see a pirate ship, you will also see lollipops, a castle and an area entitled “Fairytale Deathmatch“. I did not witness any of these events myself!

As I said earlier this is a roleplaying region, the notecard provides information about the roleplay, here’s an extract :

The Pink Dragon Realm floats within the universe of DnD but is away from its mortal Realm. Those who are not Natives of the land are brought here from the mortal world by the same way as the Queen and King once were, by touching what is known as ‘The Pink Flower’… a flower magically encased by glass and is only found by a certain special few. The Realm itself a spindle of all sweet dreams, virtue and hope from all it’s Citizens. Created by the worshiped deities the Goddess of Sorrow Sappherios and God of Happiness Dorai Asha.

I’m not sure how much in theme the current region is. Giant teapots aren’t mentioned anywhere in the texts I read.

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July 9, 2015

Notification Project Viewer May Save You Time

I have had to go to some very dark corners of Second Life to create this blog post, very dark, the lengths I go to in order to get the right shots!

In a virtual world far far away, Aki Shichiroji pointed out that notifications in Second Life were untidy and not well organised, especially for people who receive a lot of notifications. I can’t quote Aki directly because the original Jira post has now gone dark. This is because the issue has been resolved in many ways.

How has the issue been resolved, I hear you ask, well Linden Lab yesterday announced, New Project Viewer: Get Your Notifications Sorted :

The Notifications Project Viewer is an improvement for sorting your notifications. This new feature is based on your feedback: a notifications floater with four tabs sorting your incoming notifications into System, Transactions, Invitations, and Groups and allowing better interaction with them as well. Those who deal with high volumes of money transactions, group notices, group invites, or inventory transfers now have a better way to review their messages and identify which notices need immediate attention.

I’ll try and explain what is changing, with some screenshots.

So on logging in, after clicking the chat bubble which alerted me that I had notifications I see the above. Now I can see that I have four tabs, one for System messages, one for Transactions, one for Invitations and one for Group notices. At a glance I can see I have one System message and 25 Group notices. Now I have a choice here on which notices I consider to be the most important. A merchant may want to pay more attention to any transactions first, whilst someone awaiting a group invitation may want to look at that first.

The messages default to collapsed, to expand them, you just click the downward arrow :

Now I can see the full message, in this case, that I’ve received too many notifications and my instant messages were capped.

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July 8, 2015July 8, 2015

Draxtor Gets The Inside Scoop On High Fidelity

Draxtor Despres recently visited High Fidelity and got an amazing inside scoop on what Philip Rosedale and the team are doing as well as some marvellous discussion regarding the way virtual reality may be headed.

Inara Pey has already done a magnificent job of covering Draxtor’s show in a blog post on the subject, The Drax Files Radio Hour: giving it the HiFi! I will most definitely echo Inara’s comment at the end of her article :

If you’ve not listened to the entire show, I urge you to do so – as noted above, it is one of the best in the series.

I’ll also add that Inara’s blog post is most definitely worth a read too. What makes this episode fascinating is that although the interview is with people involved with High Fidelity, the subject matter covers the past and future of virtual worlds and virtual reality. Second Life gets mentioned, as does Oculus Rift and various controller devices.

There’s also some interesting discussion regarding how people use devices. For example Philip Rosedale discusses how when people look at a monitor, they move their eyes instead of their head in many ways, that’s because it’s easier for us to do so. However when someone uses a headset, they are more likely to move their head to look around, in a more natural manner similar to how we do when we engage with people in a physical environment.

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July 7, 2015July 8, 2015

Where Second Life Leads, VR Looks Set To Follow With Charitable Giving

In another “Second Life, yes it’s still around” post I’m taking a look at areas where Virtual Reality is likely to follow Second Life’s lead, in particular charities, nonprofits and social causes.

Earlier today I was reading an article by Erin Blakemore on Smithsonian.com, Virtual Reality Could Be the Next Big Thing in Charitable Giving :

Sometimes, all it takes to inspire more charitable giving is a visit to a place or person in need. But not every situation or location is accessible to the average donor. That could be changing, writes NPR’s Linda Poon, thanks to virtual reality experiences designed to increase empathy and charitable giving.

The linked article by NPR’s Linda Poon is well worth a read too. Virtual Reality may well be able to take people to places and scenes that will increase their empathy to charitable causes, but the concept of charitable causes being able to extend their reach via Virtual Worlds has long been a practice in Second Life and other similar virtual worlds.

Erin Blakemore’s article acknowledges this and points to the Nonprofit Commons, which has a presence in Second Life. The Nonprofit Commons explains a bit about itself on their website :

Nonprofit Commons was designed to lower the barriers of access to Second Life, to create a community of practice for nonprofits to explore and learn about the virtual world, and to investigate the many ways in which nonprofits might utilize this unique environment. Through this community, we provide free office space to qualifying groups, meet and network, create a cooperative learning environment and foster outreach, education, fund-raising, all in a virtual space. Our focus is on providing an accessible entry-point to Second Life and on creating a community of nonprofit organizations (NPOs) for effective collaboration and support. We believe that Second Life is a wonderful place not just to entertain, but also to educate, inspire, and work together to assist our fellow avatars (and the humans behind them). You do not have to be a resident of the Nonprofit Commons to get involved with our community. We welcome all who wish to join us as partners, collaborators or supporters.

The Nonprofit Commons are under the leadership of TechSoup and rely on the help of volunteers to aid their good causes.

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