OpenSim SciFi may seem like an odd fit at the Second Life Science Fiction Convention, indeed your first thought may well be “These aren’t the droids we’re looking for.” However you would be wrong because in a similar fashion to storytellers, SciFi spread across OpenSim and Second Life with the communities working together even if the technologies don’t. I caught up with Lani Global to chat about OpenSim SciFi.
First things first, I had to make sure that Lani wasn’t an evil sith Lord or lady, she frowned and then replied :
“I doubt that the OpenSim universe has been conquered as an empire yet, but there are many trying!”
However more importantly, how popular is SciFi in OpenSim, this was a question that received a warmer reply :
“Sci Fi is probably one of the most popular themes in OpenSim.” Lani told me, she also told me that she has her own Hypergrid enabled OpenSim location “My main region called “Lani” has been enabled for HyperGrid since 2010. It gets about 15,000 unique visitors per year, and about 20% of them are via HyperGrid.”
The 2015 Second Life Science Fiction Convention officially launched earlier this evening and there were no glitches. As a Dwarfin this was unchartered territory for me as I boldly went where no Dwarfin has gone before, to experience space, the final frontier.
The convention, which is part of the Second Life Relay For Life fundraising effort for The American Cancer Society spans six intergalactic sims, the links are the SLURL’s :
The event opened with an opening ceremony at Merciless Ming’s, which is based in Fhloston Paradise, but don’t worry if you missed it, there’s more entertainment planned for today.
Set your phasers to stun. Be prepared to go where no man has boldly gone before, well with the exception or the organisers, the builders, The Lindens and maybe some others. However besides them, the big news is that the 2015 Science Fiction Convention in Second Life opens tomorrow.
The event is part of the Relay For Life fundraising in Second Life effort on behalf of The American Cancer Society and as with many events there will be vendors, events and much more.
The event will be running February 20th Thru March 1st and features six sims :
Pern Sound Source: Pern – Planet, with dragons. And, Anne McCaffrey
Magrathea Source: Douglas Adams Magrathea will build planets specifically tailored for you. Want a planet made out of solid gold? What about one where everything’s made of jello? The pebbles on the beaches are all precious jewels?
Risa Source: The pleasure planet mentioned or featured in several episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation. In particular it was featured in the episode ʺCaptain’s Holidayʺ.
Fhloston Paradise Source: Fhloston Paradise was the name of the resort hotel/ship where Corbin Dallas/Leeloo went in 5th Element and got to see the Diva sing
New Vegas Source: Babylon 5, The Mars city New Vegas is very heavily implied to be such a place, right down to the name
Sihnon Source: In the TV series Firefly Sihnon is where Inara was taught the skills to become a Companion.
If you’re read my other two posts reviewing then there’s nothing new here in this one, it’s just a merging of the two posts to make it easier for future reference. This means it will be a long post, with pictures, videos and probably some errors.
January
January started with a look back to 2013 and the number of private region losses. The scores on the door from Tyche Shepherd displayed a slow down on the number of regions leaving the Second Life grid, something that would continue during 2014.
2012 Net Private Region Losess – 2865 (12.0%)
2013 Net Private Region Losses – 1719 (8.2%)
The virtual world of Kitely moved to a different pricing model which largely did away with the pay by the minute options as these had not been popular.
The Blackened Mirror Poster
Season 2 of The Blackened Mirror was taking a mid-season break but would return by the end of January. The show was recorded in Second Life.
Linden Lab were Raising The Roof : The HTTP Project. This project, which had started in 2012 was aimed at improving HTTP communications to improve the end user experience. Linden Lab would continue working on improvements during the year.
Second Life users were getting frustrated by tax and account information requests from Linden Lab. They would continue to be frustrated by these requests throughout the year despite Linden Lab improving their communications and information on these issues.
Then came the storm to warm up many a chilly January evening, Cloud Party announced that they would be closing their virtual doors on February 21st.
This was quickly followed by even more news to warm up January, Aston Villa fan and Linden Lab CEO, Rod Humble, was leaving Linden Lab. This created a Twitter storm.
In this post I will review 2014 from a largely virtual world perspective for the months January to June. This is part 1 of 2 as part 2 is still a work in progress but will hopefully appear tomorrow. I’ll combine both posts into another post for easier future reference once they are both completed. These posts will miss lots of big and interesting stories because the nature of the beast demands some brevity. These post may well look longer than they actually are at first glance because of images and pictures. The aim of posts such as these are to give a brief overview of the year, rather than an in depth review. An in depth review is too long for a blog post, it may make for an interesting book.
Anyway, on with the show, as they say.
January
January started with a look back to 2013 and the number of private region losses. The scores on the door from Tyche Shepherd displayed a slow down on the number of regions leaving the Second Life grid, something that would continue during 2014.
2012 Net Private Region Losess – 2865 (12.0%)
2013 Net Private Region Losses – 1719 (8.2%)
The virtual world of Kitely moved to a different pricing model which largely did away with the pay by the minute options as these had not been popular.
The Blackened Mirror Poster
Season 2 of The Blackened Mirror was taking a mid-season break but would return by the end of January. The show was recorded in Second Life.
Linden Lab were Raising The Roof : The HTTP Project. This project, which had started in 2012 was aimed at improving HTTP communications to improve the end user experience. Linden Lab would continue working on improvements during the year.
Second Life users were getting frustrated by tax and account information requests from Linden Lab. They would continue to be frustrated by these requests throughout the year despite Linden Lab improving their communications and information on these issues.
Then came the storm to warm up many a chilly January evening, Cloud Party announced that they would be closing their virtual doors on February 21st.
This was quickly followed by even more news to warm up January, Aston Villa fan and Linden Lab CEO, Rod Humble, was leaving Linden Lab. This created a Twitter storm.
