Second Life – Page 36

November 10, 2015

Second Life May Be Losing Regions But It’s Not In Betamax Territory Yet

“Betamax? Is that still around?” I pondered today as I read news on The Guardian that Sony are going to stop creating Betamax cassettes in March 2016. The main reason that Betamax appears have continued long after many felt it had departed is due to the use of Micro MV cameras, which use Micro MV cassettes in Betamax format. However all good things come to an end and over 40 years after its release and almost thirty years since Betamax lost the video format wars, Betamax finally seems to be going beneath the technical waters.

Which brings us on to Second Life. Daniel Voyager recently reported; Second Life regions drop under the 25, 000 mark. Daniel’s blog post was based on a report by Tyche “Statto” Shepherd over at SLUniverse, where Tyche announced :

Well as I predicted , a milestone of sorts was passed this week as the Grid dipped below 25,000 regions for the first time since June 2008.

The scores on the doors on November 8th were :

24,985 Regions
17,888 private estates
7097 Linden owned

The net loss of private regions for this year stood at 712 on November 8th. However let’s compare this to some previous years to try and get a picture of what’s going on.

11/11/2012 – Total Private Regions 21,334. Year to date loss of 2,523 private regions (-10.58%)
10/11/2013 – Total Private Regions 19,462 . Year to date loss of 1,530 private regions (-7.29%)
09/11/2014 – Total Private Regions 18,735. Year to date loss of 538 private regions (-2.8%)
08/11/2015 – Total Private Regions 17,888. Year to date loss of 712 private regions (-3.8%)

Therefore we can see that this year we’re seeing an increase in the rate of net losses of private regions compared to last year, but the rate of losses is still a lot lower than in 2012 and 2013. Let’s play about with some more figures.

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November 6, 2015

Daden Awarded Grant For Virtual Field Trips, Second Life Is Good For Your Health & Bigger Than You May Think

I’m having a busy week with birthdays and visitors from the emerald isle, so I’m a bit behind on virtual world news but I will highlight a few interesting looking stories that are doing the rounds.

Hypergrid Business report : Daden awarded £230,000 for virtual field trips. I might need to acknowledge some bias here. I come from the same city as Daden. However I won’t allow that to cloud my judgement. The Hypergrid Business report article informs us :

Daden Limited – a virtual reality specialist based at the Innovation Birmingham Campus – has been awarded nearly £230,000 by Innovate UK for its Virtual Field Trips as a Service initiative.

The funding has been awarded in phase two of Innovate UK’s Design for Impact Competition, which aims to identify and then support innovative technology that has been proven in pilot projects in education, but is yet to have a national impact. Daden, working with The Open University (OU), the Field Studies Council and Birmingham-based Design Thinkers UK, has been awarded the funding to develop its Virtual Field Trips as a Service concept as a national service for schools and universities.

The article further states :

From November 2014 to April 2015, Daden worked with teachers and students at Washwood Heath Academy in Birmingham, virtual world educators in Second Life, university lecturers at a Royal Geological Society workshop, and a range of other stakeholders to understand the potential, challenges and key features of any virtual field trip service.

David Burden added: “Virtual Field Trips as a Service is intended to support, not replace, physical field trips. It will help students and staff better prepare for a field trip, can provide additional context and gives a focus for post-field trip data analysis, revision, virtual visits to comparative sites, and provides a catch-up for those who may have missed the physical trip. Whilst this funded project is focused on UK education there are obvious opportunities overseas, particularly for virtual ‘exchange’ field trips.”

The issue of virtual field trips keeps coming up. Field trips are certainly seen as a good use case for virtual worlds and virtual reality so it’s encouraging to see a company who are embracing the concept.

Continue reading “Daden Awarded Grant For Virtual Field Trips, Second Life Is Good For Your Health & Bigger Than You May Think”

October 30, 2015

The Drax Files: World Makers Ep 33 – Luxembourg 1867

Episode 33 of The Linden Lab sponsored Drax Files : World Makers takes us to Luxembourg, but in a sci fi style twist it takes us to Luxembourg in 2015 and Luxembourg in 1867 at the same time.

The main protagonist in this episode is Second Life resident Cyperpiper Roelefs (AKA Pit Vinandy outside Second Life). What makes this episode particularly interesting is that the physical world footage takes place not only in the streets of the City of Luxembourg, but also in the Fort Thüngen Museum and the City Museum of Luxembourg

Inside the museum lies an exhibit; Pfaffenthal 1867 – A virtual walk through the historic Pfaffenthal. This is an exhibit that visitors access through computers as they enter the virtual world of Second Life to find some pretty damn impressive recreations of the historical location.

This is an exhibit that also takes advantage of more modern developments because as well as ten computers, there are also two Oculus Rift headsets available for people to immerse themselves deeper in the virtual experience.

At its heart this is a history exhibit, which utilises the virtual world environment to tell the story of how in 1867 there was a bit of a crisis in Europe (this is not unusual by the way!) when France wanted to buy Luxembourg. However those pesky British were having none of it and during negotiations it was decided to allow Luxembourg to become an independent nation. The aim was partially to prevent war between Germany and France. There’s a lot more to it than this!

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October 29, 2015

Take A Five Hour Creepy Crawl Tour With The Lindens On October 30th

Xiola Linden has urged people to get their costumes ready and join some Lindens on a five hour creepy crawl tour on Friday October 30th. In the linked blog post Xiola says :

It’s creepy, and kooky and you don’t want to miss it!

This Friday, October 30th from 10:00am SLT until 3:00pm SLT – you are most cordially invited to join us inworld for the 2015 Second Life Creepy Crawl! “What is the Creepy Crawl?” you may ask. It’s a scary-good inworld event where Lindens and Residents get dressed up in their best Halloween costumes and roam from spooky spot to spooky spot for music, dancing, and celebrating! It’s going to be a bit like a ‘pub crawl’ without the need for taxi fare.

Costumes are strongly encouraged for this event – some come out and show off your best. I am still deciding between 4 different costume choices I’ve put together and may have to wear all 4 at some point during the crawl. It’s a good thing we’ll have 5 hours to run amok and have fantastical fun. Just keep in mind that this event is for General and Moderate audiences when perfecting your look.

Xiola is a lady of many outfits it should be pointed out. However Xiola won’t be the only Linden on the tour, although the names of the others have so far been kept under wraps there’s a good chance you’ll get to see Lindens inworld, yes they really do make inworld appearances.

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October 28, 2015

Are Virtual Reality Experiences Deficient In Value?

On October 14-15 Oxford Martin School hosted a workshop; Cyberselves in Immersive Technologies. The blurb for the workshop reads :

On October 14-15 2015, the Oxford Martin School hosted the ‘Cyberselves in Immersive Technologies’ symposium on virtual reality and telepresence, sponsored by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council. The multi-disciplinary symposium brought together technologists, psychologists, neuroscientists, philosophers and cultural theorists looking at the future societal and ethical impacts of virtual reality and immersive technologies.

After this workshop, Dr. Hannah Maslen, a Research Fellow in Ethics at the University of Oxford, published a post over at Practical Ethics; Virtually reality? The value of virtual activities and remote interaction. This post touches upon the benefits, concerns and drawbacks of virtual reality in Dr Maslen’s opinion and certainly makes for an interesting read.

Dr Maslen seems to have some knowledge of Second Life, she references the virtual world more than once, however she also goes back to the 1970’s to take a look at experiments in comparing virtual reality with the physical world :

In 1974, Robert Nozick used the Experience Machine thought experiment to argue against the view that human wellbeing consists only in pleasurable experiences, no matter how complex or apparently real.

There have long been concerns that virtual reality will take us away from the physical world, that we will be immersed in the machine and that we will become addicted to a reality that isn’t real. However we’re a long way from being anywhere close to that point and in her post Dr Maslen points out that at this moment in time, in terms of virtual reality that is plausible, we know where we are :

The main difference between the Experience Machine on the one hand and plausible virtual reality on the other, is that when we use immersive technologies we know that this is what we are doing.

Dr Maslen also points out how virtual reality experiences are different, depending upon the platform, for example using Second Life to drive around in a vehicle would be a different experience to using a driving simulator to drive a car. The technology, the software, the immersive nature all play a role in providing different experiences.

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