Ciaran Laval

April 18, 2017

Fantasy Faire 2017 Takes A Look At The Sponsors

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Fantasy Faire 2017 is just two days away and Sonya Marmurek has been busily publishing a number of posts in which she speaks to sponsors of the event.

These posts are very interesting because they give you an idea of the wide and varied designs and use cases of Second Life in terms of Fantasy, the obvious ones such as roleplaying, skins and building and then use cases you may not initially associate because they go beyond Fantasy, such as animations and dances.

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April 13, 2017

Ebbe Altberg Talks to The Irish Times About Second Life and Sansar

Marie Boran of The Irish Times has been talking to Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg about Sansar and, inevitably, that also means talking of Second Life too.

The article is entitled Virtual reality is giving Second Life a second lease of life and although it starts off with some negative commentary around Second Life, the article actually goes on to make some positive points about Second Life.

The article also points out that Linden Lab do not consider Sansar to be a replacement for Second Life :

The idea is not to replace Second Life or even phase it out, says Altberg, who describes it as “a very healthy virtual world that will be very healthy for a long time to come”. It is celebrating its 14th birthday this summer and continues to have a dedicated team continually improving content and interaction experiences.

An interesting point is made regarding Second Life in terms of it not being easy to find what to do unless you’re inside Second Life and have familiarised yourself with the platform. Sansar will take a different approach, but let’s not forget that Second Life has also started to take a different approach, when Linden Lab announced that places pages are available to all land owners, the blog post also mentioned :

Many of these pages will also soon be discoverable via popular search engines, such as Google. This means that more people than ever have the potential to learn about your Second Life place!

Sansar sounds as if it will start with the aim of being more easily discoverable for people.

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April 13, 2017

Jem Alexander Brings Some Reality To Virtual Reality Discussion

Jem Alexander over at Develop has published a two part look at Virtual Reality, where we are now and where we go next. These posts are excellent in terms of the reality they bring to the discussion of virtual reality. Part 2 also features a few quotes from Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg, I’ll come to that later.

Part 1 : VR Check-In Where are we now focuses on developers. The article starts by pointing out that the hype cycle has cooled somewhat, although developers are still very excited, we’re not there yet and it’s a slow ride.

Part of the issue is that there are different headsets and hardware requirements, this is a challenge, but not a showstopper for developers. An arguably larger issue is that hardware remains expensive and then there’s the issue of room space.

Lukas Roper, a freelance games developer seems to think the choice of hardware is good as it will improve the quality of VR experiences, but he is also quoted as saying :

“However, as much as engine developers and headset manufacturers present supporting a headset as a simple task, it isn’t, and for each platform you support, you have separate issues to consider.”

Eventually we will need standards regarding hardware so that developers and users can get similar experiences, but early competition to set those standards can definitely be good.

In terms of room space, developers seem to be keen on the idea of seated and room scale experiences, they will of course be different experiences and this is summed up well by Owen O’Brien, CCP Newcastle’s Executive Producer on EVE: Valkyrie when he says :

“I don’t think large audience size and bespoke VR experience have to be mutually exclusive. Not everyone has enough space for room scale of course, but equally you can create a bespoke VR experience that is seated. It totally depends on the market you are going after. At CCP we are pushing forward on both fronts, with EVE: Valkyrie being the seated experience and Sparc our standing experience.“

I agree and a one size fits all solution would be limiting for VR.

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April 12, 2017

Yuri’s Night Coming To Second Life And Kitely

On April 12th 1961 Yuri Gagarin, a Russian Cosmonaut, took the spacecraft Vostok into Outer Space. Twenty years later, April 12th 1981, NASA’s first Space Shuttle was launched. Celebrations of these events take many shapes and forms.

Yuri’s Night is very much part of those celebrations and even goes boldly into virtual worlds, Second Life and Kitely are two virtual worlds you should be familiar with.

The Celebrations in Second Life are co-sponsored by the International Spaceflight Museum and the National Space Society.

They are planning a whopping five hours of celebrations starting at 3pm SLT today.

The event launches (sorry couldn’t resist) at the International Spaceflight Museum in Second Life :

3:00-4:00 pm – Dance to our “Space Filk & More” audio stream.
4:00-5:00 pm – DJ Aristippus spins space-themed tunes and songs of the Space Age.

SLURL : http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Aspen/200/120/3730

Then the party moves on to The Sagan Planetarium in Second Life.

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April 10, 2017

The Drax Files World Makers Episode 44 – Istanbul University

Istanbul University was founded in 1453, over 550 years later it’s still going strong with over 200,000 students and as we can see in episode 44 of The Drax Files : World Makers, the University also has a presence in the digital virtual world of Second Life. I will embed the video at the end of this post.

This episode demonstrates how virtual worlds can be used in education and in this episode we see how Professors at Istanbul University are using Second Life for subjects such as English Grammar, Maths, climate change and more with storytelling, machinima and gamification very much involved in the teaching process.

There are some other very interesting angles to virtual world usage though, with Professor Tuncer Can recounting how one student, whom he had never heard from before, contributing inside the Second Life environment because, in part, he didn’t feel the immediacy of other people looking at him in a physical classroom environment.

Professor Irfan Simsek however, points out that although in Second Life the classroom environment is digitial, he feels it’s important for the virtual classroom to look and therefore feel like a physical classroom.

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