Virtual Worlds – Page 16

August 16, 2017

AltspaceVR Appears To Have Had A Last Minute Reprieve

I have just about avoiding suggesting that AltspaceVR is getting a Second Life, partially because that may have confused people as to what exactly is going on.

On July 28th a post appeared on the AltspaceVR blog; A Very Sad Goodbye :

It is with a tremendously heavy heart that we let you all know that we are closing down AltspaceVR on August 3rd, 7PM PDT. The company has run into unforeseen financial difficulty and we can’t afford to keep the virtual lights on anymore. This is surprising, disappointing, and frustrating for every one of us who have put our passion and our hopes into AltspaceVR. We know it will probably feel similarly for you.

AltspaceVR had received funding in 2015 and they thought that a deal for another round of funding had been secured, but that deal fell through and therefore AltspaceVR had no choice other than to shut their virtual doors.

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August 11, 2017

Second Life Visitor Seanan McGuire Wins A Hugo Award For Best Novella

At Fantasy Faire 2017 we had a special visitor as part of LitFest, author Seanan McGuire.

Seanan made a couple of appearances during Fantasy Faire 2017, the first was an interview with Saffia Widdershins.

The second included Seanan reading from her own work.

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August 11, 2017August 11, 2017

LoveFest In Second Life Opens August 17th

An image should be here

The sixth annual Lovefest takes place in Second Life August 17th – August 27th. This is a festival to celebrate the work of HP Lovecraft.

An inworld notecard at the Lovecraft inspired Innsmouth region provides the following information :

LoveFest 2017 is the 6th annual HP Lovecraft Festival of Second Life. LoveFest schedules to occur 7-10 days around the birthday of our “patron author” HP Lovecraft – August 20. This year’s Fest will take place August 17-27, 2017, celebrating Mr. Lovecraft’s 127th birthday.

Each year LoveFest prepares a full sim dedicated solely to this event, including:

The Kingsport Merchant Quarter and Waterfront:

Kingsport, Massachusetts – a city out of Lovecraft Lore, known as a community of artists and artisans which thrives mostly from tourism. Featuring dozens of stores of merchants from all across Second Life, our theatre and a full schedule of entertainment and activities for all,
and waterfront warves of market and other interests.

The Miskatonic University Expedition Pier:

Office and staging site for the renowned Miskatonic University’s
worldwide exploratory and research expeditions, this year
taking enlisting team members for a voyage to a remote area
in the South Pacific for a deep sea exploration task force.

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August 10, 2017

Creator David Hall Paves The Way For The Rise Of The Dwarves In Sansar

Elves may have their ears in Sansar but Dwarves have a fortress! Even better than that, and probably of far more interest to you, is the fact that the creator of The Dwarven Fortress, David Hall, has been featured in a Sansar Creator Profile video produced by Draxtor Despres.

The video is short and I’ll embed it at the end of this post but it gives a nice insight into a Sansar creator as well as some of the tools of the trade.

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August 9, 2017

Improbable Development is Possible By Listening to and Watching Developers

Improbable are an interesting company, they have a product called SpatialOS which comes with a blurb of :

Improbable’s SpatialOS platform gives you the power to seamlessly stitch together multiple servers and game engines like Unreal and Unity to power massive, persistent worlds with more players than ever before.

Worlds Adrift is the game that most gets mentioned when it comes to Improbable but they have a Games Innovation Program in conjunction with Google that may be worth a look for smaller developers.

An article on MCV by Improbable CTO Rob Whitehead caught my eye for a few reasons. One reason is that Rob Whitehead was once a teenage Second Life weapons seller. Another reason though is how Rob talks of the development process, which might go some way to explaining some of the thinking behind Linden Lab’s Sansar Creator Beta model :

When building a platform, one of the first challenges is persuading developers that experimenting with it is a good use of their time. The next challenge is learning from all the fantastically inventive ways developers find the edges of your tech.

This is an interesting approach which may explain why some features end users would like to see in different developing platforms appear later in the process.

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