Virtual Worlds – Page 108

November 28, 2014

DX Exchange Enter The Virtual Marketplace Arena

Inara Pey has a post up regarding the new DX Exchange marketplace for Second Life : DX Exchange offers SL Marketplace alternative. The post details a lot of the ins and outs of the new Marketplace but it also points out some of the challenges facing DX Exchange.

The DX Marketplace has an aim :

It is our ambition to create a special place for Pro designers, who make good quality goods, of their own creation to display their collection. A place for them to stand out from the crowd of products and designers inSL.

For the customers, it has to be a tidy, well organized place where they can be sure to find only goods of ‘good standing’.

From a merchant point of view Inara states :

all goods can be sold at 0% commission for the time being (commission will eventually be 4%)

I’m not convinced that undercutting the commission from the SL Marketplace by 1% is really a selling point because commission is only due when an item is sold. I’m sure merchants are happy to pay an extra 1% commission, which in reality costs them nothing, for volume of sales. The reason commission doesn’t really cost merchants anything is because they know if they make a sale that commission is due, so therefore they build that into their pricing. Customers pay the commission in all reality, not merchants. Obviously commission will dictate pricing in many ways, but 5% for free listing is pretty low already. There’s not much wiggle room here.

This would be different if listing fees existed, but they don’t.

However Inara does point out something about DX Exchange’s Marketplace that is interesting :

There are some important points to note about this site when compared to something like the SL Marketplace. In particular, the engine used to power DX Exchange is Magento, and the stores within it are pretty much self-contained e-commerce sites contained within the DX Marketplace “wrapper”. This is important on two counts:

Merchants have access to virtually the full range of Magento e-commerce tools. These include not just product listing and sales reports, but options such as customer tracking, , creating and generating custom reports, running a store newsletter and / or blog, a range of CMS functions, setting custom search terms for product finding, and so on. In fact, far too much for a review such as this to cover.
Each store actually stands as its own e-commerce site, with its own dedicated URL (if people want to use it), its own shopping cart and its own checkout.

I believe that DX Exchange’s advantage may well be in those dedicated URL e-commerce sections rather than as a direct competitor to the SL Markeplace as a marketplace on its own.

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November 27, 2014November 28, 2014

Second Life – It Started With Da Boom

Originally, during the Alpha period, the grid was known as Lindenworld. As we were getting ready to launch the Beta, we decided we needed a name that would convey the expansiveness, involvement and complexity we hoped would characterize this world as it grew. We started by debating the merits of a ‘place’ name versus a ‘descriptive’ name. We believed a place name would give people a sense of destination, and possibly some added layer of meaning. And we thought a descriptive name would help people understand this new concept of a shared, 3D collaborative space.

We had a lot of ideas for place names — one of my favorites was Sansara, which was not only euphonic, but had an interesting meaning in the original Sanskrit, meaning roughly ‘ever changing world’. Ultimately, though, we chose to go with a descriptive name, and looked at many derivatives of Terra, Viva, and life. We kept coming back to Life2, and then landed on Second Life as more interesting, more evocative and more what we hoped the world could become as it evolved and grew to be as big as life.

And that’s how it came about! – Robin Linden, former VP of Marketing and Community Development

Second Life grew out of Linden World and it landed with Da Boom. Da Boom in this case being the first region to be born in Second Life.

This quickly grew to sixteen regions :

Da Boom, Ritch, Zoe, Stanford, Federal, Freelon, Minna, Natoma, Taber, Welsh, Clyde, Hawthorne, Shipley, Clara, Varney and Stillman. Those sims are all still there by the way and you can happily explore them.

The first resident, Steller Sunshine, was a busy bee and there’s a climbable beanstalk in Welsh.

Taber is the home of Fairchang Park which offers freebies and has a lot of old original character to it.

The park is also dedicated to Garth Fairchang and there is a bench there with his name on it.

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November 26, 2014

Visiting The Royal Courts Of Second Life

If you want to visit some of the Royal Courts of Second Life a good starting place is the Ning site of : Royal Courts of Second Life. That’s far from the only place but it’s a very good starting point if you want to explore the grandeur and opulence of some of Second Life’s more regal areas. The areas have a definite European feel to them, such as the Italian themed Rocca Sorrentina. This place is considered to be some sort of Royal Retreat.

Inside the decor is rather impressive. However these sims aren’t just produced for eye candy, there are literature events, roleplaying and where there’s roleplaying there are content creators assisting with furniture, buildings and of course clothing.

Sanssouci park captures more of these sort of themes and is a wonderful location to explore. These sort of places need to be seen to be appreciated because I certainly can’t capture shots to do them justice.

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November 25, 2014November 25, 2014

High Fidelity Moves To The VR Tune Whilst Ebbe Altberg Looks To The Future

“Any predictions on what the future holds for virtual reality theatre?” Draxtor Despres asked MadameThespian Underhill in episode 24 of The Drax Files : World Makers. MadameThespian gave a very interesting answer :

In the future I want motion tracking technology, so that our bodies can be used to flesh out the acting, be free from a keyboard and a mouse. Eventually the way an avatar can be manipulated will be so detailed that it will be like being there in real life, totally immersed. Twenty years from now when everyone is doing this and going ‘Oh wow isn’t this cool’, hey I’ve been doing this in a virtual space since 1997, I’m still here, I love it.

The above quote demonstrates quite a few things. The first being that virtual spaces have been around in one form or another for quite a while now. Another being that the future has a long way to go and a further point is that those who are involved in virtual worlds have different ideas on what the future may hold.

However the most relevant part of the quote as far as this blog post is concerned is to do with body tracking. I’ve raised concerns as to whether people are going to be comfortable wearing headsets, setting up motion trackers and whether people will actually embrace having their movements captured. I’m not totally alone in this view, even enthusiasts of new technologies admit that there are concerns in this area.

Ebbe Altberg was asked by Ben Gilbert of Endgadget : What is the greatest challenge that the medium of virtual reality must overcome in the next five years? Ebbe’s answer touches upon these issues of comfort :

Ease of use remains the greatest challenge. In order to truly reach the mainstream, virtual reality experiences will have to be easy, natural and comfortable to create, interact with and consume.

Ebbe also touched upon this on the Endgadget Expand panel : The Future Of VRBeyond Gaming when he admitted that after about half an hour of using the Oculus Rift he feels tired. This isn’t so much about the comfort of wearing the device, it’s more to do with frame rates and resolution in virtual experiences that were not really built with the Oculus experience in mind.

However one could imagine that having to wear headsets or get in tune with a motion sensor may well suit those who have an acting and live performance background, they are familiar with the concepts of dressing up, making eye contact and being fully aware of what their expressions may convey.

Storytelling in virtual reality is a glaring use case that goes beyond gaming and if consumers can afford to get immersed from the comfort of their own home, it’s one that could really take off. We’re in the very early stages of this here but one company who have been happily playing to their peripherals are High Fidelity and they exemplify this yet again in their latest blog post : Rock-Paper-Scissors Showdown: Using Leap Motion at High Fidelity.

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November 24, 2014

Visiting Nova Albion On The Trail Of Salazar Jack

On September 13th 2012 Salazar Jack went missing after an accident in the Forest Of Kahruvel. This is documented on the Kahruvel website as well as a further update on the Poultry Report from December 2013 where we are told that Osprey Therian went looking for Salazar Jack.

Mysterious communications have been appearing on Twitter recently, so I decided to take a look and started my investigation at the location of the last known sighting of Salazar Jack. However all I really found was a stone pillar with a stickman adorned upon it. I decided to work backwards, indeed I went a long way back. I went to the birth place of Salazar Jack, Nova Albion.

The lands of Nova Albion were discovered by Magellan Linden back in 2004 and it does in places have a feel of a land that time forgot. Nova Albion is a set of city sims, Grignano, Miramere, Sistiana and Barcola. Bay City, which was discovered later, is not that far away.

There’s a definite nostalgia to the place, there s a display board featuring videos from Torley. There is a resident advertising board and there’s even a prim from Blondin advertising the showcase, which morphed into the Destination Guide.

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