Second Life – Page 130

April 3, 2014April 3, 2014

SL Go Updated Pricing Now Includes Unlimited Monthly Subscription

Linden Lab have blogged news of what may well be a very interesting move by Onlive in terms of their SL Go product aimed at mobile devices. The pricing changes include a reduced per hour pricing but more importantly, there’s a monthly subscription plan.

The update prices are :

Monthly unlimited usage subscription plan for $9.95US/£6.95UK. No commitment – cancel anytime
Reduced hourly rates – only $1US/£0.70UK per hour (the free 20-minute trial remains in effect)

However there’s more, when SL Go was initially launched it was only available to people living in Canada, United Kingdom or United States but now the product is available in 36 countries, including The Vatican City, I wonder if his holiness is popping in now and then. The full list of 36 countries :

Andorra, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Latvia, Lichtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, San Marino, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States, Vatican City.

These are really positive and brave moves from OnLive, when the product was first launched there was a lot of debate about hourly fees and what many perceived as a 1990’s pricing model. However Dennis Harper of Onlive did say to Draxtor Despres : “We need to study usage pattern and we may be able to in short order offer a subscription package! “

Well it seems they have indeed studied those usage patterns and decided that a subscription package can be offered.

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April 2, 2014April 2, 2014

SL Share Extends To Flickr And Twitter But What Next For SL Profiles?

Linden Lab have blogged that the SL Share feature that was initially introduced to allow people to share photos, status and check ins on Facebook has now been extended to include functionality for Flickr and Twitter.

Personally I feel Flickr and Twitter are a much better fit for Second Life as both allow people to have their Second Life user name as their profile name, whereas Facebook is still in the bah humbug arena regarding pseudonyms.

In both cases they are taking advantage of features and requirements of the respective platforms, with Twitter the hashtag of #SecondLife is automatically added and with Flickr, they respect the fact that maturity ratings are sometimes required.

However there are also other funky features, such as post processing of pictures, as explained in the blog post :

This update will also introduce a set of post-processing filters that you can run your pictures through to create cool one-of-a-kind images! The new filters were inspired by the images posted to Flickr by Second Life Residents. With more than a million uploads, most of them enhanced by some post-processing, we thought it would be great to include this feature right in SLShare. These filters will work regardless of which social network you choose to share your Second Life pictures to.

However if you don’t like those filters, you can use the advanced features and create your own filters, the wiki has more details.

Now to take advantage of these features, you will need to download a special project viewer, which you can find here.

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April 2, 2014

The Drax Files: World Makers – Episode 18 Singing Like A Canary

Episode 18 of The Drax Files: World Makers is out and has thrown a bit of a curve ball by coming out on a Wednesday instead of Friday! Then another curve ball is tossed in by having two people whom live in London speaking with North American accents! I’ll post the video at the end, which is my traditional style with these videos.

This week’s episode features Canary Beck and Harvey Crabsticks who are engaging in immersive theatre within Second Life. The video follows Drax’s tried and tested formula of mixing inworld footage and real life footage, with a youthful looking Canary and Harvey walking the streets of London. Canary Beck is seen wearing a striped dress, which she manages to just about pull off …. wait wait wait, come back, I don’t mean she pulls her dress off! I mean stripes on film isn’t always a good mix.

The video features a behind the scenes look at their forthcoming inworld production of Paradise Lost, in which we do see Canary with her dress off, but tactfully done. The production features 43 roles, played by 8 avatar actors.

Harvey talks of how the actors in the production are real people, something sometimes missed when it comes to virtual world productions, he also mentions that the audience are real people too, again something oft forgotten.

However this episode also shows the advantages of virtual world productions, whereby they can quickly pull 12 sets together and also encourage the audience to view the show via certain camera settings, giving the production team more opportunity to have the show viewed in the settings they feel best befit the production.

However that isn’t to say an inworld production is easy, there are rehearsals and a few hundred hours worth of script development in their production of Paradise Lost. However one of the beauties of virtual world collaboration is again highlighted when it comes to working together, they don’t need to be in the same building to work together and although they are both in the same city, they find it easier at times to meet up inworld to avoid the trials and tribulations of travelling across London to meet.

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March 31, 2014

European Online Services Suffer DDoS Attacks

Earlier this evening when I logged into World Of Warcraft, there was a warning that things may be a tad slow. They were not. When I logged in later this evening, I saw the following message :

A couple of my friends asked me if I was lagging, which is a question I sometimes get asked when I’m down the pub, but they were referring to lag and latency in the game. I was fine, they clearly were not as after not responding for a while both disconnected.

The issue it seems is due to a series of DDoS attacks on some European Online services, but certainly not all. The message from WoW indicated it’s not Blizzard under attack. Some Second Life users in Europe may have had a rough evening too.

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March 29, 2014

Facebook Should Not Buy Second Life For The Sake Of Both Companies

Bopete Yossarian has started a thread over at SLUniverse to discuss an article that appeared this week on Gamasutra : Why Facebook should buy Linden Lab. The article is posted by a community member called Nick Harris, rather than a regular member of the Gamasutra staff, the opinions in the article are therefore not the opinions of Gamasutra or its parent company.

The article doesn’t really delve into the reasons why Nick Harris thinks this is a good idea, which sort of undermines the article. However the idea is an interesting one, so is the idea that Microsoft or Yahoo! should buy Linden Lab. The ideas are interesting in terms of discussion but generally lack any real meat on the bones.

The article also falls into the trap of saying :

Facebook have tried to retain its dominance through simple critical mass, if that is where everyone is, if you have to join Facebook to not miss out on invites to your friend’s impromptu parties then their hope is that you will and you won’t mind the data mining they do on you for market research and the targeted advertising. You aren’t in a position to complain, really, as it is a service they are providing to you for free.

This is a pet peeve of mine. Facebook is not free, it’s an exchange of resources. They provide the service, users provide the content, Facebook then realise value from said content. Although there’s no money exchanging hands in terms of basic usage of Facebook, there is a trade of content for service. However that aside, the author really doesn’t make much of a case for Facebook to buy Second Life :

Not only is this primarily a social nexus like Facebook (a place where you can project whatever version of yourself you choose others to see, either using a younger image of yourself, or making an effort to dress up for the photo when you are actually a slob in real life, or use someone else’s image entirely out of low esteem, or some catfish scam), but you are encouraged to create an escapist alter ego through which to indulge your fantasies, to travel without time, cost, or hassle to “see the sights”, to meet new people who share your interests unrestricted by enormous geographical separation.

Whereas I can see to a degree what he’s trying to get at, he seems to be missing a gaping point about the differences between Second Life and Facebook.

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