Second Life – Page 43

October 20, 2015

Second Life Prepares To Get Spooky

I’m back from sunnier climes and straight into British Autumn, which today has been rather pleasant. I’ve survived the horror of learning that the Balearic Islands are planning to impose a quite frankly barmy tourist tax next year, which will only encourage another modern horror on the Islands, all inclusive holidays. Seriously, there’s no need for all inclusive holidays in the Balearics. The drunken debauchery is horrendous, and this is coming from someone who is no stranger to drunken debauchery, but there’s a thing such as moderation which all inclusive completely ignores.

I’ve also survived the horrors of the queues and prices of refreshments at Palma airport. However this was all balanced out by sun, sea, beautiful walks and very friendly locals who made my visit very enjoyable.

Now as I prepare to recover from my holiday excess I note that Second Life is preparing to get spooky. The Destination Guide has a haunted category where you can keep an eye on spooky destinations and Linden Lab are joining in the fun with a creepy crawl and a photo contest.

The creepy crawl call to arms went out on october 6th with a blog post from Xiola Linden; Second Life Creepy Crawl 2015 – Call for Venues. Alas entries had to be in before October 20th. Those who have applied to be a host venue should hear back from Linden Lab in the next few days, the plan is :

A-haunting we will go! This year we’re going to take inworld meetups and Halloween shenanigans and mix them together for a frightful mashup of mind-blowingly fun times.

The Creepy Crawl will be taking place on October 30th – more details to follow for those who just want to come along for the fun!

So keep your eyes peeled on the offical Second Life blog for more details. However don’t worry if you’re not part of the creepy crawl, there’s a photo contest that is still running and you have until November 12th to take part in this contest.

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October 5, 2015

Ebbe Altberg Talks To Geek Dad

Derrick Schneider over at Geek Dad has been talking to Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg about Project Sansar. There’s not really a lot new in this article, but every article seems to reveal a little bit of something that may have been missed or overlooked in other articles. These pieces are slowly starting to fit together.

For example Derrick posts :

What happens when your Second Life city gets too many people inside? Lag. And then you’re sort of stuck. In Sansar, says Altberg, a successful multiplayer experience can automatically spawn a new instance of itself when you hit some limit: Linden’s jobs website asks for experience with Amazon Web Services, so it’s easy to see where they’re going: Scale up behind the scenes so the creator doesn’t have to think about it.

I don’t think it’s any surprise that Project Sansar is looking at cloud based delivery, this has probably been mentioned before. I know instancing has been mentioned before and I know I’ve had someone post that instancing has been mentioned before when I’ve posted about instancing! So a lot of the information about Project Sansar is already out there, but it’s scattered.

However an interesting part of the Geek Dad article comes in terms of experiences. Linden Lab have invited people to alpha test Project Sansar and one point that has been mentioned is that Linden Lab are currently looking for people with Autodesk Maya experience. Now you may have thought this was to get 3D models inworld, but it appears there’s more to it than that :

The initial focus is letting people make experiences, and the authoring tools will reflect that need. “How many things in your home did you make,” asks Altberg. “But it still reflects your identity. We didn’t make the chairs in this room or the table,” he continues, gesturing around to encompass the reinforced brick walls, “but we are making an experience.”

There’s a lot more in the article, including talking of a Project Sansar downloadable client and talk of content ratings, with Ebbe suggesting that Linden Lab do not want to impose strict censorship, but it seems they do want content ratings to be there from the outset, which I think most people would agree is a sensible idea.

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October 2, 2015October 2, 2015

Microsoft Buy Havok From Intel, What Does This Mean For Second Life? Hopefully Nothing!

Microsoft have purchased the physics engine Havok from Intel, report IGN, several other good news outlets (and some bad ones). There’s also a blog post from Microsoft in which they state :

Microsoft’s acquisition of Havok continues our tradition of empowering developers by providing them with the tools to unleash their creativity to the world. We will continue to innovate for the benefit of development partners. Part of this innovation will include building the most complete cloud service, which we’ve just started to show through games like “Crackdown 3.”

Havok shares Microsoft’s vision for empowering people to create worlds and experiences that have never been seen before, and we look forward to sharing more of this vision in the near future.

Now if you’re wondering what this has to do with Second Life, it’s because Havok is the physics engine that Linden Lab use in Second Life to simulate physics, gravity, collisions, etc. So what does this purchase mean for Second Life? I have absolutely no idea, but hopefully it won’t change a thing.

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October 2, 2015October 2, 2015

Watercolors In The Rain Brings David Lavigne’s Book To An Interactive Art Installation In Second Life

It is 1888, a battle-torn and weary America is still reeling from a war against itself. Although it has known peace for twenty-years, old hatreds still remain. American born Aubrey Lancaster has fled to London with her family, hiding from the secrets of their past and looking to start over. Aubrey soon finds that London has problems of its own. A killer roams its streets, one unlike the world has ever seen before! In the realm of vampires, werewolves, druids and witches, catching a killer is nothing more than opening your eyes to what really exists around you, a world which very few can truly see. But, make no mistake, it is there!

So reads the blurb on Amazon for the book Watercolors In The Rain (The Whitechapel in Red Series Book 1) by David J Lavigne. Now parts of that book have made their way to Second Life, courtesy of an interactive art installation supported by The Linden Endowment For The Arts.

We are invited to take a journey into the mind of the author at the installation, which has been put together by a team working with David Lavigne to bring chapters of the book to Second Life and the scenery is pretty damn impressive. I could be a tad biased here, I like this sort of thing. I’m also a massive fan of storytelling in all its forms.

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October 1, 2015

Virtual Reality Investment News Continues To Cement Second Life’s Place In Virtual Reality History

The current hype wave regarding virtual reality is now moving on to more and more news about the investment stage of the process. What I find interesting about many of these articles is that many of them refer to Second Life and Linden Lab as points of reference. I’ve talked about this before but the more of these articles appear, the more Second Life’s place in VR history gets cemented.

This is exemplified well in two recent articles. The Irish Independent talk to one time Linden Lab employee and now venture capitalist, Ethan Kurzweil. Ethan is the son of Ray Kurzweil. Ethan worked on new customer acquisition and user retention at Linden Lab over nine years ago and talks to Adrian Weckler in an article entitled “The billion-dollar investor’s guide to getting startup cash in Ireland“.

The second article is by Chris Owen at The Huffington Post and is entitled “Virtual Reality Industry Rapidly Gaining Investment – and Momentum“. Whereas both of these articles talk about where they think Second Life went wrong, the fact that they are still today talking about Second Life also points out that Second Life went right in a lot of areas.

The Irish Independent article is about more than virtual reality, it’s more about investment and in particular why investment in Dublin may be a good choice rather than San Francisco, but Second Life does get discussed. Ethan Kurzweil points out that a lot of things that happened outside of Second Life, such as Skype, Whatsapp, Telepresence etc. were the sort of ideas that people thought could all be embraced by a platform such as Second Life.

However Ethan also points out one of the reasons for Second Life’s longevity, the sticky factor. People stay in Second Life. The comment comes in response to a question about the Second Life economy, or more to the point, the fact that Second Life had an economy. Ethan points out that there’s still an economy in Second Life :

There still is. It’s still a profitable company based on the Second Life product. The one thing that probably everyone underestimated is just how sticky it is. I haven’t worked there in nine years. But there are probably users who are just as sticky, just as loyal and just as highly monetisable as they were back then.

However Ethan also points out some of the flaws with Second Life. I know many Second Life users don’t agree with these sort of sentiments but I see them repeated far too often to dismiss them :

Yeah, not the way that they implemented it, because it’s too hard, too nichey and too geeky. But I do think there’ll be a way to engage in a virtual way that is more immersive than what we have now. And maybe it’s a VR thing and not a flat world like Second Life had.

The flat virtual world society are at this point shouting “We told you so!”

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