Mr. Moon & Vertiigo’s Second Life

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mr. moon, vertiigo, youtube

Youtuber Mr. Moon has visited Second Life and made quite an impressive video about it with his old pal Vertiigo.
I have bumped into both of them a few times in games such as Rust, DayZ, etc, don’t ask what happened.
One of them may even have ended up in a dungeon in my castle, in a non pervy way of course, honest.
I may even have annoyed them with stories about Second Life, as I often do when playing games.
Because yes, I may be a fat old cat lady living in a farm in the middle of nowhere, I’m also a gamer and have been one since Pong.

Of all the games I’ve played and still play, of course none have gotten as much attention from me as Second Life.
It is where I hang out daily, meet my friends, spend time in the world I created in stead of some world a game developer imagined, even manage to make a little bit of a living there but above all, it just allows me to experience things I just never get to do in any of the games I play.

It is always interesting to see a relative newcomers experiences in the virtual world many of us have become so familiar with.
It is always annoying to see someone have a better computer and less lag than me though.

I’ve been trying to get LL to get more youtubers into trying SL, they can get you the kind of publicity you can’t buy!
Mr. Moon for instance has over 400K subscribers, his video has had over 60K views.

Of course they mostly hang out in dodgy clubs, ugly old sims, meet horrible rude people, there’s some hanky panky (thankfully blurry) and they do a fair bit of swearing.
Just so you know.

It’s funny though.

But underneath all that there seems to be a genuine curiosity and admiration for what they find during their exploration.
At the halfway mark the video changes, Mr. Moon chats with long term Second Life residents, asking serious questions, getting serious answers.
He starts to see some of the things that make SL great and wonderfully describes them.
He is talking to an audience of gamers, many of whom will have no interest in SL or look at it with certain preconceptions, but I reckon he got their attention.
He shows SL looking good, visiting wonderful spots with graphics settings set to high.
Anyway, it may bring some new people to SL, which is good 🙂

But I hope Verts & Moon come and spend more time in Second Life and make more videos.
If I bump into them I won’t lock them in a dungeon, again, I promise.

Enjoy;

SL machinima filmed in 1920s Berlin selected for prestigious film festival.

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"second life", 1920s berlin, amelie marcoud, machinima, video

Recently well known Second Life machinima maker Amelie Marcoud made a wonderful almost 17 minutes long video completely filmed in 1920s Berlin in the style of a silent movie.

The end result is very impressive, you can see it here;

Today Amelie announced that the video has been selected for a film festival;

It brings me so much joy to know that The Fiancée has been selected by an international film festival called Lift-Off. The film will be shown on Vimeo-On-Demand next month, amongst other magnificent filmmakers; some of which worked with Disney’s Pixar. I never thought any of my work could make a SL/RL crossover, it feels surreal. Once again thank you to everyone involved in the film and cheers to our first film laurels!

It is very exciting that this wonderful video filmed in our 1920s Berlin Project is now getting the attention it deserves.
Congratulations to cast and crew!

Ode to VR, a Second Life Machinima

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amelie marcoud, machinima, uploadvr, virtual reality

Today Amelie Marcoud, 1920s Berlin tenant, released a machinima titled ‘Ode to VR: the future of Virtual Reality’, shot in Second Life.

A wonderful video, not to be missed;

Ode to VR: The Future of Virtual Reality from Amelie Marcoud on Vimeo.

(If embedding failed, try clicking this link)

1920s Berlin machinima reaches 20.000 views

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pepa cometa, The 1920s Berlin Project

Last March Pepa Cometa, well known machinima maker, made a wonderful video in my 1920s Berlin project.
It was so popular that it didnt take long to get over  10.000 views and it had even been shown on a very popular German television program!

Recently it has gotten some attention again and was shared on Italian and Russian websites, which made the view counter jump up again and just now it reached 20.000 on Vimeo alone!

That is quite impressive for a video that isn’t about trolling, people having babies or doing the hanky panky.

I’ve written before about how I think we need to make more Music Videos made in Second Life because I think they are an excellent bit of publicity for our virtual world.
And this video has proven that point.

20.000 views, that is a great excuse… for another view!

Enjoy!

First 360 degrees video recorded within Second Life

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"second life", 360, 360 degree camera, 360 degrees, Arduenn Schwartzman, draxtor despres, Electric Shepherd, The 1920s Berlin Project, vimagine, virtual reality

Imagine being able to bring your 360 degrees camera into Virtual Reality, just set it up in the club, house, park or city that you’ve build yourself in Second Life, record it and then share it online with people from all over the world.

Let them get a taste of where you live in VR, let them look around and even give them the feeling they’re actually there by looking at it with their VR headset.

This is now possible!
Yesterday Electric Shepherd from Vimagine (who also worked on the ‘Virtualize it’ documentary for ‘Der Spiegel’) and Draxtor Despres came to 1920s Berlin to test out an amazing 360 degrees camera to film the, as far as I know, first 360 degrees video shot Live in Second Life in real time.

The camera rig was made by Arduenn Schwartzman (of Warbug fame), it has audio and video syncing capabilities and all recorded tracks are then aligned in post production.Even though this is still just an early test, it is already very impressive.

I can imagine short clips like these made in sims all over Second Life being used to show outsiders what life in our virtual world is like and the things that they can experience there.
Because these can also record busy events with lots of people and with many things happening at the same time!

Not only are these just fun videos on youtube, but they are very impressive when viewed through the Gear VR, the Cardboard VR or other headsets.
And not just that, it will also allow me to show off my sim in a whole new way to people who may not have tried Second Life, don’t know how SL works or who don’t have a computer that can handle SL.

And imagine making a full length machinima with this technology!
We could be making 360 films while people in RL have only just experimenting with it.
Once more the people in SL are groundbreaking.

You can see this pioneering footage here;
(not all browsers support 360 degrees video)

Some technical details send in by Draxtor;

• We are simulating a goPro Rig of 6 cameras, filming each with 1080 by 1080 (which is already too low = SL can handle more but we need the screens for FRAPS to capture it that high, working on it!!)
• I filmed this test myself so there is no syncing which means the Zeppelin dissapears into the cloud at one point: to do live action in SL we need to film at same time.
• Syncing is no prob: we have an automated system made by Arduenn Schwartzmann which syncs the six cameras with sound and a visual cue. But again = we need to figure out higher resolution = who has the computers to make it happen, are the colors in sync as well, is the SL lag an issue when aligning the cameras later on (f.e. a dance or fast car race or airship battle etc).
•  I am working with spatial audio on a RL project so next step will also involve inserting some sounds and dialogue which is spatialized.
• All in all the workflow we have is SUPER FAST = plop down the virtual camera rig in SL and shoot, export, stitch, correct = DONE = faster than RL 360 !!!!!!
• Big benefits of SL for this = inserting virtual sequences into a RL 360 video = much faster and easier than constructing it via other CGI options because you can film it in REAL TIME and the assets are all there. Yes maybe render engine less able than Unity or Unreal but a LOT easier and ultimately not worse than RL 360 at this point in the game!

And this article wouldn’t be complete without this earlier 360 degrees video in VR experiment by Zuza Ritt;

1920s Berlin machinima shown on German TV

Tags

machinima, pepa cometa, television, The 1920s Berlin Project, tv, zdf

National TV station ZDF in Germany today showed part of the 1920s Berlin machinima made by Pepa Cometa.

The show, called ‘Volle Kanne‘, is a sort of morning talkshow with a short item about the interesting things they found online.

The machinima Pepa Cometa made and put online 3 weeks ago has had over 13 thousand views so far and has impressed many people.

It is great that it now reaches an even larger audience in Germany, as quite a large percentage of SL users are German.

You should be able to watch the item by clicking here, Berlin is mentioned around 1:00.

Thank you for the heads up Maddy!

 

Second Life video about 1920s Berlin has 10.000 views within 2 weeks

Tags

machinima, media, pepa cometa, PR, publicity, The 1920s Berlin Project, video

The stunning machinima made by Pepa Comata about The 1920s Berlin Project in Second Life has been watched over 10.000 times since it was uploaded two weeks ago!

It has been picked up by a few websites and shared on Facebook and twitter, reaching an audience beyond those who know and use Second Life already.

A nice article about the video was published on ‘The Creators Project’, you can read it by clicking here.
They have close to a million ‘likes’ on Facebook and amongst these readers quite a few were impressed even if some were surprised to learn Second Life was still even around.

One viewer commented;

I’ve been meaning to uninstall Second Life from my pc. Good thing I didn’t.

On twitter the video was also shared and received a few wonderful compliments;

@RoblemVR @1920sberlin Beautiful piece of art to be experienced. infact this kinda aesthetics are essential & also the missing piece in vr

— Vino (@vino3d) April 7, 2016

This shows the power of well made, good looking machinima but of course also of networking and social media.
People are impressed and intrigued, not just with our 1920s Berlin sim but also with Second Life still being around and looking this good.

 

It also shows why it is so important to try and offer as many users as possible a visually pleasing experience when visiting Second Life.
Right now a minority get to experience our virtual world the way it looks in this video.
Having graphics set to ultra and shadows on is something many computers can’t handle.
That is why I hope Sansar will be able to do that for more users or that LL will at least offer a streaming service.

About a year ago, I wrote an article called ‘Music videos shot in Second Life and why we need more of them.’ and in it I mentioned a video by Pepa Cometa as a good example of what is possible.
I’m so glad she choose to accept my invitation to come to Berlin and make this wonderful video.

Let’s hope many more videos like this one are made, they allow us to show the world that SL CAN look good and is about more than just shopping and hanky panky.

Go on, have another look;

 

 

New Drax Files World Makers Episode 30: Maylee Oh

Tags

drax files, draxtor despres

Another splendid Drax Files episode has been released today, as usual Draxtor Despres managed to make an impressive and wonderful short documentary about one of Second Life’s creative and talented inhabitants.

Enjoy and share!

Drax writes;

Paris, France based Maylee Oh makes a living by designing female apparel for avatars who live in the virtual world of Second Life.

“I can run my own business the way I like in terms of product and customer service!” says the 28-year old who worked for the better part of 8 years to establish her brand “The Secret Store”.

She is using a mix of creative tools such as Blender and Photoshop to arrive at a a unique and simple style that is quite popular among the millions of avatars from all around the world roaming the vast digital universe.

And even being a freelance designer does not mean being lonely in front of a computer because Maylee’s international collaborators share a virtual workspace in Second Life, they work indeed side by side and can productively socialize as if they were together in the physical realm.

The concept of virtual goods and services as a means of income may still be esoteric for many says Maylee but she adds: “…when skeptical friends say it is a waste to spend money on dressing up an avatar I usually reply that they are buying my time, my idea of style that they can make their own. It is not a waste. A lot of thought and work went into this. Everyone including me wants to make their avatar look good, because clothing is personal expression! What is wrong with that?”

Quite so!

For more information about Maylee check out http://www.thesecretstoresl.com/

Big thanks to Marianne McCann and all the great extra actors who participated in making this episode. Special thanks to Maylee’s
office colleagues – sorry to keep you from working during this production!

All animated images by Maylee Oh.

A German tale, stunning Machinima made in the 1920s Berlin Project

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"second life", film, machinima, ole etzel, The 1920s Berlin Project

Well known artist Ole Etzel, who was the subject of an excellent ‘Drax Files’ episode, moved in to a small dirty damp apartment in our 1920s Berlin sim and created a wonderful machinima in the dark streets and alleyways.

‘A German Tale’ tells us the story of an old man looking back at his childhood in Berlin.

I’m extremely excited with the end result and proud that Ole picked the city I build for this production.

In RL I’ve been to Filmschool, owned a tv/movie production company and have been a writer and director and I’m very impressed with this video, it makes me wish I had the time to start making machinima myself.

I started the 1920s Berlin Project because of my passion for history and saw in Second Life a way to share and even contaminate people from all over the world with this love for the past while at the same time teaching them a few things while learning new things myself as well.

This film does the same and I hope it grips you the way it gripped me.
It brought tears to my eyes, not just because of the story but also because I’m just so happy to see my Berlin used in such a way.

Enjoy this first episode, and of course, on behalf of everyone in 1920s Berlin; frohe Weihnachten!