January 2015 – Page 5

January 14, 2015

Linden Lab Announce Additional Payment Options For Second Life

Linden Lab have explained the mystery of the Skrill payment option news in a blog post : Additional Payment Options for Second Life. The post explains :

As you may have seen, a company called Skrill recently announced that we’re working together to provide additional payment options for Second Life users. Our relationship with Skrill allows Linden Lab to offer Second Life Residents many more options for their payment activity (like buying L$ or paying account fees), including additional local currency options for Residents outside the US.

The post goes on to explain that some Second Life residents are already using Skrill, as it was soft launched a few weeks ago. However now other Second Life residents can add a billing option of using Skrill for Second Life, instructions are in the LL blog post I linked to above.

However there is a discrepancy between the two announcements regarding processing credits and I think it’s safe to say that Linden Lab’s announcement carries all the weight.

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January 10, 2015

A Visit To Paris In Second Life

Paris in Second Life is quite an impressive location, spanning four sims and two centuries it portrays the French capital in a very good light. There are a number of visitor attractions and they include : Theatre Sarah Bernhardt, Moulin Rouge, Eiffel Tower, Maison Victor Hugo, Carousel 1900, Grand Roue Ferris Wheel, Moulin de la Galette windmill, Notre Dame Cathedral, The Champs Elysees, Arc De Triomphe, The Louvre and The Gallery Of Machines.

Most of the sims have an early 1900’s feel to them with vintage cars and people wearing Edwardian era style clothing, the people in this case being models rather than bots but they do help to add to the ambience.

There’s quite a lot to see and do. Shopping, Art galleries, theatres and tourist attractions being some of the main activities. Part of the income to pay for these sims comes from renting out shop and room spaces.

Four sims means there’s a lot of legwork to do to see it all, however there are options on your mode of transport. Taxis, which are populated at various points being one means of transport that can take the weight off your virtual feet.

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January 9, 2015

Allons Enfants de la Patrie – Paris In Second Life Is Worth Visiting

I’ll be doing a more in depth post on Paris in Second Life in the near future, at the moment, not at all surprisingly, it has a theme related to real life events about it and even in virtual worlds there’s a sense of mood. However it is a rather stunning build and contains a historical 1900’s theme in parts.

Obviously The Eiffel Tower is a central focus point and here you’ll find people gathering around, some with placards, some with Mesh avatars I can’t see due to the AMD drivers not playing nicely with Second Life. However there’s much more to this location than the Eiffel Tower.

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January 8, 2015

The Virtual Reality Battle For Standards Is Coming

There’s a lot of excitement around about the future of Virtual Reality (VR from now on). There are a lot of gadgets, devices and potential. However there’s also going to be the inevitable battle to win the war on standards and protocols.

We’ve been here before in many ways, Blu-Ray v HD-DVD. Those of us who are a bit longer in the tooth can remember VHS v Betamax. There will be lots of other examples. Arguments will always rage about which format was the better one and why the better one doesn’t always win, but generally one format wins and the same surely has to be true for VR.

Initially we’ll probably find experiences optimised for the Oculus Rift, or optimised for a rival headset. Eventually, for the sake of consumers, that optimisation for a brand will need to be replaced by optimisation for a standard. For example consumers won’t want a headset for Second Life, a headset for Linden Lab’s next gen Virtual World, a headset for OpenSim, a headset for a game or MMO and so forth. Consumers will want a choice of headsets that work pretty much across the board. Obviously some headsets will be better than others but they should all work to a set of standards and protocols that mean software developers optimise their product for those standards and protocols.

At CES 2014 the BBC reported that Valve were making steps in this direction :

Valve designer Brian Coomer says the company is “days away” from releasing a VR software development kit that will give game makers a standard way to provide an interface for VR controllers.

I’m not quite sure what happened there because I haven’t heard much about this since. However at CES2015 noises are being made in this direction by Razer with their Open Source Virtual Reality (OSVR) Hacker Dev Kit.

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