Virtual Worlds – Page 61

July 22, 2015July 22, 2015

Ebbe Altberg And Peter Gray Talk To MMORPG About The Future Of Online Experiences

First things first, some readers may find the website of MMORPG a little garish, it’s a bright site and very busy. I mention this because this post is about an article by Neilie Johnson on MMORPG; Linden Lab Looks to the Future of Online Experiences. The article is based on an interview with Linden Lab’s CEO Ebbe Altberg and Linden Lab’s Senior Director of Global Communications, Gray Of The Lab From San Francisco (AKA Peter Gray).

Whereas there are no ground breaking secrets revealed in the interview, it is worth looking at some things again. Firstly the proposed land model for Project Sansar, or what is known about it so far. The article reiterates that the plan for Project Sansar is to have much lower land costs than the USD$295.00 a month region cost in Second Life, with sales tax on the increase compared to the 5% Marketplace commission. There are no figures provided but I think it’s fair to say that this has been mentioned enough times now for it to be a reality.

The article also touches upon the fact that Linden Lab have learnt a lot from Second Life. Although the minimum age requirement will be 13, Linden Lab feel that they will be able to segregate content so that minors aren’t running into unsuitable content.

One of the things I’ve seen said about Project Sansar when comparing it to Second Life is that the Project Sansar development team will look at the way some things are done in Second Life and decide they would not want to start from there to achieve that in Project Sansar. Content and land restrictions are areas where Project Sansar can take a new approach and one that could very well deal with some of the problems we’ve seen in Second Life. The experience of the issues that have been raised in Second Life are an advantage here.

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July 21, 2015

ANSIBLE – An OpenSim Inspired Virtual World That NASA Might Take To Outer Space

PC Mag have an interesting article by Sophia Stuart : Inside NASA’s Version of the Holodeck. What makes this article interesting is that NASA’s version of the Holodeck looks like OpenSim and it seems like there may be a very good reason for that.

The crux of the article focuses around an interview with virtual world and virtual reality legend Dr Jacquelyn Ford Morie, founder and chief scientist of All These Worlds LLC. I’ll use just part of Dr Morie’s bio to exemplify her credentials :

Dr. Morie has 25 years experience in developing innovative techniques for rich, emotionally evocative virtual reality (VR) environments. As part of this pioneering work, she invented a scent collar to bring the emotional power of smell to immersive experiences, and developed new types of functions for VR, such as connections to multiple sensor and feedback systems to make VR more effective. Dr. Morie spent 13 years as a Sr. Research Scientist at USC’s Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT), which she helped found. While there, she created novel VR telehealth care activities using her deep understanding of art, computer animation and human behavior to enhance patient engagement with these programs.

Impressive stuff, and from the PC Mag article we learn about some things that are a little closer to home for this blog. Dr Morie is quoted as saying :

“In the early 90s, I was participating in networked VR like Dactyl Nightmare, BattleTech, and Virtuality, but they weren’t totally open worlds, they were applications. But I could see the potential, even then” Morie explained. “So, the first virtual world that I really took part in was Second Life.”

However Second Life is of course closed in many ways itself, so, yes I’m getting there, OpenSim comes into the equation. Dr Morie’s work had came to the attention of none other than NASA. They asked Dr Morie to write a technical document on how virtual worlds could be used in space. Two companies were asked to work on a prototype of this. One was Dr Morie’s All These Worlds LLC and the other was Smart Information Flow Technologies (SIFT). However they didn’t just build a protoype, they built the whole damn thing.

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July 20, 2015

Taking A Lick At The McFly Project

LICK in Second Life is interesting. This is the home of The McFly Project and connects differing worlds, from the creepy fairground landing point where you can test your feats of strength to a futuristic landscape that you can use vehicles to travel around.

I wasn’t quite sure what I was looking for, although I did wonder if I had found the Droid I was looking for at one point.

The landscape and items are extremely engaging and so is the exploration, following the clues I found myself in an underwater cavern, with a hint that I needed to pull a lever.

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July 18, 2015

Second Life Going Gothic As H.P. Lovecraft Festival Approaches

I saw the above advert for Second Life last night, it says “Explore The Gothic Scene“, which straight away made me think of Marsha Warwillow and SL Goth Magazine. The magazine is as you would expect, largely about gothic culture in Second Life :

slGoth Magazine is an independent showcase of gothic Second Life residents, places, philosophy, fashion, entertainment and events. The articles are written by resident avatars and cover a variety of topics in the gothic community. It is published monthly in-world and is a wearable HUD which supplies landmarks and gifts from sponsors.

I interviewed Marsha back in January, the interview came in two parts, part one and unsurprisingly, part two.

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July 17, 2015

Relay For Life Weekend In Second Life

This weekend in Second Life is Relay For Life Weekend. Now if you’re wondering what Relay weekend is, it’s explained on the official Relay For Life in SL website : What is “Relay Weekend” in Second Life?

Relay For Life is the signature event of the American Cancer Society and has been active, and continually growing in Second Life for 11 years. In 2005, the first Relay For Life of Second Life (RFL of SL) was attended by a few hundred avatars and raised almost $5,000 US dollars for the American Cancer Society. Five years later, in 2010 the Relay For Life of Second Life raised over $220,000. The 1 MILLIONTH US dollar was raised in 2011 when more than 2000 volunteers raised over $375,000. In 2012 we passed the 1.5 million dollar mark. In 2014, we passed the 2 million US dollar mark and we are approaching the 2.5 million dollar mark quickly.

Relay Weekend is a fun-filled, overnight event that unites SL individuals throughout the world to celebrate survivors (anyone who has ever been diagnosed with cancer), remember loved ones and raise money for the fight against cancer.

For more information about RFL in SL please visit the American Cancer Society Region anytime, day or night, all year long.

A host of activities are planned for Saturday and Sunday, a full list of which you can find out about on the page I linked to above.

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