Virtual Worlds – Page 15

September 5, 2017

Mitsumi-Town Tokyo in Second Life is Simply Stunning

Hamlet Au over at New World Notes recently posted an article about Mitsumi-Town Tokyo in Second Life . Lead developer for the project, Eripom Moonwall, spoke to Hamlet :

Lead developed by Eripom Moonwall, an SLer who actually lives in Japan and has built up a successful SL weapons business in her spare time as a Tokyo-based financial consultant. Working with two producers, four builders and one “advisor of traffic laws and infrastructures” (as she describes the role), Ms. Moonwall and her team took three months to make Mistumi-Town what it is today. And they’re only 70% done, she tells me.

There’s more in the article by Hamlet, so it’s well worth a read, but more than that, Mitsumi-Town Tokyo is well worth a visit, it’s simply stunning.

The design really feels like a city and makes great use of building upwards as well as using the ground and even going underground.

The impressive looking roads and other transport options demonstrate an attention to detail that really makes a design feel immersive.

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September 1, 2017

Sansar Still Doesn’t Look Like It Will Eat Second Life and That’s a Good Thing

Back in December 2015 I wrote; Project Sansar Won’t Eat Second Life. I still hold that view. A major bone of contention, that is still being raised today, was the probably infamous cannibalisation comment from Ebbe Altberg :

Yes, so this is the cannibalisation effect. It’s obviously real; and all I can say to that is, it’s better it’s us than someone else. Because it’s going to be someone, some day. and so we’ve decided it has to be us. It is a complex thing, and we want to make sure that we make it easy for users. Because in the beginning, Sansar might look all shiny and whatnot, but it’s not going to have the level of complexity and sophistication of Second Life, that’s been developed for almost 15 years now. It will take time for a lot of the things that you all love and do in Second Life to be something that you could completely do in Sansar.

Now something that gets somewhat overlooked here is that the cannibalisation comment was prompted by a question, which suggested that the team running Sansar have an interest in cannibalising Second Life.

Another point to note is that Linden Lab have launched Sansar and it’s fair to say that it looks shiny but very definitely lacks the complexity of Second Life at this moment in time.

My early observations of Sansar also back up another of my beliefs regarding Sansar, it’s a different product, with some overlap, that will likely attract a different audience to Second Life. This isn’t just because of the technical differences, it’s also because of the format. Second Life is a virtual world, Sansar is a set of virtual experiences and with Sansar, the experience comes first, whereas in Second Life, it’s the virtual world that comes first.

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September 1, 2017

Second Life Is Very Much Still Around

“Second Life, is that still around?” is a comment that appears on an all too frequent basis when Second Life gets discussed beyond Second Life circles. Not only is Second Life still around, this year it officially celebrated its 14th birthday. Second Life is unofficially older than that, Steller Sunshine entered the virtual world on 13th March 2002.

14 years is quite a good run in technology circles but Linden Lab are most definitely not giving up on Second Life, as we can see from a recent blog post by Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg; Celebrating 14 Years of SL with Investments in Its Future.

The blog post informs us that Linden Lab are very much still investing in Second Life, they are still very much sharing the love with residents and they are looking forward to Second Life’s 15th birthday.

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August 25, 2017

Thereafter – A Post-Apocalyptic Virtual Event Runs Until August 27th

Thereafter, a post-apocalyptic themed event, opened in Second Life on August 17th, so the bad news is that I’m late to notice this, the good news is that the event runs until August 27th, so you still have a chance to visit.

The blurb from the event tells us :

Thereafter is a Second Life theater, music and sales event celebrating humanity and society in a post-apocalyptic world. Join us as some of SL’s most cherished content creators contribute exclusive items that provide the backdrop and costuming for live theater events set in a post-apocalyptic, Shakespearean environment. Highly regarded live musicians and DJs are scheduled to honor the favored and familiar sounds of a post-apocalyptic world.

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August 18, 2017

High Fidelity Roadmap Highlights New Currency And Content Protection

High Fidelity’s Philip Rosedale has published a couple of blog posts regarding High Fidelity’s roadmap for currency and content protection. The posts really need to be read in full to be fully appreciated and they are rather lengthy and technical, but I would certainly urge content creators to read them, there are some very interesting ideas and proposals at play here.

The first post, Roadmap: Currency and Content Protection, outlines plans for a new currency, HFC :

We are getting ready to deploy blockchain software to create a new currency for virtual worlds, called HFC. This currency will be a public blockchain with a consensus group made up of multiple parties, and ultimately independent of High Fidelity’s control.

That line about being independent of High Fidelity’s control is important for a few reasons, the glaring one being what would happen if High Fidelity went away, which is answered in the post :

Q: Will my money and digital assets survive if High Fidelity goes away?

A: Yes. Because the HFC blockchain is a public ledger, anyone can (and many will) make a backup of the data. If High Fidelity were to disappear, someone else will startup a new blockchain from that backup and provide the same service of accepting new blocks to write to the ledger. Also, both High Fidelity and the blockchain software we are using are open source.

There’s a lot more in the post, it covers security, privacy, wallets and stable exchange rates. The last point is relevant because it explains why High Fidelity want to create their own currency rather than using existing options. This is definitely worth reading.

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