Linden Lab – Page 37 – Ciaran Laval

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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October 28, 2015

Will Second Life Ever Shake Off Its Flying Penis Tag?

Over at Geek K.Thor Jensen has posted an article; The 11 weirdest MMORPGs still online. I had a feeling that this wouldn’t end well, Second Life is in the list, although rather bizzarely, so is Ever, Jane, a virtual world set in the era of Jane Austen and created by ex Linden Lab Senior Engineering Manager Judy L. Tyrer. Ever, Jane hasn’t even been officially released yet, so it’s an odd fit in a list regarding platforms still online.

However back to the Second Life bit, it’s not the worst I’ve ever read :

There is really no virtual universe quite like Second Life. Ever since it launched in 2003, SL has been a place where any fantasy can come true — as long as it’s able to be rendered in polygons. A million regular users still log on to the service, using the in-game tools to create obejcts, characters, outfits, scripted events, and more. For a brief time, companies tried to use Second Life as a virtual meeting place for promotional events, until they realized that it was easy for griefers to interrupt them with flying penises and other shenanigans

The most infamous flying penis incident took place all the way back in December 2006 during an interview between Anshe Chung and CNET, as Endgadget reported; Second Life millionaire pummeled with penises. That’s almost nine years ago, I guess next year we’ll see a tenth anniversary limited edition on the Marketplace … I’m kidding, don’t try this at home!

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October 26, 2015

Boston Medical Center Receive Grant To Study Diabetes Education In Second Life

Inara Pey has a great post about diabetes education in Second Life; Medical Centre granted $3.5 million to study diabetes education in Second Life. Inara’s post is inspired by an article by Nidhi Subbaraman at The Boston Globe; Second Life shows new promise as virtual forum for diabetes education.

The posts relate to the work of The Boston Medical Center with regards to their work with diabetes education in Second Life. The work began back in 2009 with a pilot study led by Suzanne Adams, a family physician at Boston Medical Center. The idea with the pilot study was to see if a group meeting in a virtual world, could help people to change their eating habits when compared to a group meeting in a physical location. Some participants accesses the program online, others went to the hospital :

“The point was to say, is it at least as good, or is it grossly inferior,” said John Wiecha, director of the Office of Medical Education at Boston University and BMC family physician, who was Mitchell’s colleague on the study.

The result, according to the article, was rather interesting :

The trial was a hit. Mitchell said the Second Life participants didn’t just sit in on the course sessions. They made friends, swapped recipes, had dance sessions, hung out. Most tellingly, participants wanted to know if they could involve their families in the game too.

For the span of the study, the diabetes of both groups improved at the same rate. Sessions online and in real life had comparable rates of attendance. But members of the Second Life group reported exercising more than the group that met in class. This was the most exciting result for Mitchell: The hint that the virtual experience might create a long-lasting lifestyle change.

These results have now led to a $3.5 million grant over five years for further research, as a press release explains :

The National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) has awarded a $3.5 million grant over five years to Suzanne Mitchell, MD, a family physician at Boston Medical Center (BMC), to study health outcomes of minority women with type 2 diabetes who participate in group medical visits to help them manage their diabetes. Participants will receive diabetes self-management (DSM) education and medical advice from BMC physicians either in the online virtual world Second Life or an in-person classroom setting. The study aims to determine the efficacy of virtual world and classroom groups in teaching DSM, to increase all participants’ physical activity levels, and to measure technological development milestones of the virtual group.

The Boston Globe article also quotes Gentle Heron, who works so very hard as part of Virtual Ability Inc.

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October 26, 2015

Looking To The Past Will Help To Move VR Forward

Those of us what have been around virtual worlds for a while can be forgiven for being somewhat bemused by a lot of the hype regarding the forthcoming virtual reality boom, because a lot of what is being discussed as futuristic advances are use cases we’ve all seen before. However there are use cases that already exist that may even pass us virtual world enthusiasts by.

These thoughts crossed my mind as I read a couple of articles today, the first was by Adi Robertson over at The Verge; The Virtual World’s Fair is where VR hype meets theme parks. The article concerns the work of Landmark Entertainment Group, who are famous for building theme park attractions and have plans to dip their toes very firmly into the waters of virtual reality.

What really struck me about this article was this part :

Landmark believes its role is to help solve the “chicken and egg” problem the industry faces: people won’t buy VR if there’s nothing to do in it, and no one will make experiences for VR if people don’t buy it. Christopher thinks the company is uniquely poised to succeed, compared to filmmakers or game developers — who are making a “whole different thing” compared to VR. “We’ve been doing what we call ‘total theater’ in the theme park space for three and a half decades,” he says. “We’re way beyond experimenting with this.”

Whereas I’m not familiar with Landmark Entertainment’s work, it is indeed true that theme parks have been the home to immersive experiences for quite some time. However those are immersive attractions where you go to the theme park itself and Landmark will be building what they call “live centers” that host digital art, zoos and more, with one set to open in China in 2017. However they will also have plans to launch The Virtual World’s Fair :

Landmark Entertainment Group has taken inspiration from its theme park design heritage and the long-standing World’s Fair tradition to create the concept for the “Virtual World’s Fair™,” a virtual reality experience loaded with real-time social interaction, entertainment, education, and shopping, just like a traditional world’s fair, but designed to be enjoyed in-home rather than as a real-world travel destination.

Landmark’s Virtual World’s Fair has been developed in conjunction with the Pavilion of Me ™ (P.O.M.™) concept, a daily-use in-home entertainment portal that reimagines everyday activities such as checking social media, online shopping, watching film and TV content, video chat, and playing video games into virtual reality experiences.

The Virtual World’s Fair will be accessed through the P.O.M. portal donning a VR headset; first-time users will create a personalized avatar, and then journey into the Virtual World’s Fair embodied in their newly customized digital persona. Both the P.O.M. and Virtual World’s Fair will enable social interactions with other people’s avatars (including family, friends, celebrities, world leaders and even total strangers) from around the world.

P.O.M. is scheduled to launch next year, with the complete Virtual World’s Fair experience to follow in 2017.

How well this progresses is of course dependent upon how well the technology surrounding headsets develops and gains acceptance but it’s interesting to see plans such as this in progress.

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