08 Thursday May 2014
Posted in Uncategorized
I’ve tried making another ‘meme’, as the young hip kids call it these days.
There are two versions, large and facebook header size, that one will fit perfectly as your FB header without your profile picture covering the text.
I completely stole the text from a meme about reading books 🙂
Feel free to use and share these everywhere.
Full version.
The facebook header size version.
07 Wednesday May 2014
Posted in Improving Second Life
During an interview for ‘Designing Worlds‘ I met Brooke Linden and DaveR Linden and I noticed that they both had rather good looking mesh avatars.
So I asked them if their avatars were two of the new starter ones that are going to be released next week.
They confirmed that this was the case, so with their permission, I hereby reveal two of the 24 new avatars future users of Second Life will soon be able to choose from.
You can see them in action and hear them share some very interesting things in the next episode of ‘Designing Worlds’ that will be broadcast on the 19th of May, so make sure you keep an eye on the Designing Worlds website.
06 Tuesday May 2014
Posted in Oculus Rift, Virtual reality
Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe was a guest at TechCrunch Disrupt yesterday and spoke about an idea they have been thinking about; creating an Massively Multiplayer Online Experience (MMO) for a billion users.
“This is going to be an MMO where we want to put a billion people in VR”
He also said that this is going to take a bigger network than exists in the world today,” but getting together with Facebook is a first step in the right direction as Facebook has about 1.3 billion users today.
Important is also that he mentioned that this idea was one of the reason they decided to sell Oculus to Facebook.
They want to reach as many people as possible, especially those who aren’t really gamers.
“We know with Oculus, with a virtual world, if you’re putting on this pair of glasses and you’re gonna be face-to-face communicating with people, you’re gonna be jumping in and out of this new set of virtual worlds, this is gonna be the largest MMO ever made,”
“This is gonna be an MMO where we want to put a billion people in VR. And a billion person virtual world MMO is gonna require a bigger network than exists today. Why not start with Facebook and their infrastructure, and their team and their talent that they’ve built up?”
A lot of people, myself included, have been talking about the possibility of Facebook and Oculus were planning to build a virtual online world, it now seems this indeed is the case.
In the chat he even calls it the ‘Metaverse‘.
As we speak they are visiting universities and recruiting the best of the best, getting students involved, asking them to help them create the new virtual reality world.
It is difficult to predict where this is going and how fast, but if they succeeded in creating an online Virtual World where the users can actually build and do what they want, they will turn out to be a huge competition for Second Life and High Fidelity.
It is still early days and we don’t have to get worried yet.
But this is big.
And I can’t help wondering if the Oculus-Facebook team are now looking at both Second Life and High Fidelity.
Regardless of the current state of both, there is plenty of interesting stuff there to buy, borrow or steal if you want to start your own Virtual world.
In the chat Mr. Iribe also said that Facebook promised them that although bought by their company, Oculus would be able to remain independent (like Instragram) and could decide to use or not use any part of Facebook.
You can watch the full interviews here at the Techcrunch website, a few interesting things about the general future of VR are being talked about as well.
As I wrote before, more and more people are now thinking that VR is going to become part of our lives, even if you’re not a gamer.
06 Tuesday May 2014
Posted in Improving Second Life
Recently Ebbe Altberg, CEO of Linden Lab announced on twitter that we were going to get new starter avatars, giving people who are starting their Second Life a choice of (hopefully) better avatars than the ones they can pick now.
Ebbe was a bit too optimistic when he said the new avatars would arrive in March, but today he told me they would arrive in Second Life “before the end of next week”.
This is quite exciting and perhaps the first step towards improving the new user experience, something most people agree about is rather bad and when improved could make Second Life a lot better and maybe even sort out the huge retention problem we’re suffering; a lot of new people don’t stay in SL very long.
The first of these new avatars has already been spotted as Ebbe himself was using one during his talk at the 7th Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education Conference last month.
Although new, better looking avatars are a great step in the right direction, I do worry about new users having to deal with mesh avatars and that some of these sometimes seem incapable of moving their mouths while talking.
03 Saturday May 2014
Posted in High Fidelity
On his excellent blog Daniel Voyager just mentioned a video he found on youtube.
In it uploader Chris Collins shows the first few minutes of what it is like to start up the High Fidelity alpha version.
The video is unlisted but accessible, so I hope he doesn’t mind me sharing it with you here.
Some of the things I noticed;
The team behind High Fidelity seems to use Hifi as an abbreviation as well, which was to be expected, but still fun to see.
Chris is trying Hifi on a Macbook, these have fantastic trackpads, its what I love most about my Mac.
Hifi is using this to let you look around, by placing two fingers on the pad, you steer where the eyes are looking.
I love that.
Other avatars will appear as blue balls till you get close enough.
The second you log in, you’ll see your avatar looking at you and using your webcam to pick up your facial expressions, which I think is a pretty fantastic idea.
I’d love to see that in SL.
VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) seems to be working right away, so far I’ve not yet seen any evidence of other ways of communicating.
This may become an issue as many users of virtual worlds prefer to not use their real life voice.
There is text chat, of course, but at the moment this is global, you chat to everyone at once.
It isn’t quite clear yet how you can text chat with someone next to you without everyone listening in.
The avatar building window is very basic, mostly just a few lines of words, but it seems you’ll be able to upload your own avatars later.
I am sure the avatar building tools will improve a lot but it is interesting to hear about creating your avatar outside of the virtual world.
Chris also does a bit of building, rezzing a few voxels.
The whole UI appears to be very basic and easy to handle, but there also don’t seem to be that many options and possibilities yet.
Which is to be expected from an Alpha testing phase, but it would be nice if they can keep it all as user friendly as it is now.
Visually it is not very impressive, yet.
I know, its alpha testing phase and unfortunately I have not yet been able to try it myself, but I am just a very visual type of person and have to confess I am very narrow minded when it comes to virtual world, I just want to know if I could create my authentic and realistic historical reconstructions there.
I want complicated buildings with photo realistic textures and right now that is still very far away.
I’m just obsessed with virtual building and I don’t want to just rez some cubes and stick em together, I want to do mathematical complicated architecture.
At the moment Hifi looks like Minecraft and although that is a fantastic game, it failed to appeal to me because of its graphics.
So if you’re like me, this is something we have to look past in this early stage of Hifi.
Either way, Hifi keeps getting more and more interesting but it is also clear that they still have a long way to go if they one day want to offer us a world that looks as good or better than Second Life.
Can’t wait to give it a go myself!
(Yes, that was a subtle hint towards the Hifi team)
Update; The video is now set to private and can no longer be seen online.
24 Thursday Apr 2014
Posted in Improving Second Life
There is a new wave of enthusiasm and excitement going trough the virtual reality community lately.
I too have felt the new atmosphere in SL and it has made me want to revisit some of the ideas I have about improving our virtual world but also share some new plans that have popped into my mind.
Yes, I may have said some of the things I’m saying before, I may be repeating myself.
I’m old, it is allowed.
Reputation
This to me is one of the biggest problems SL has; it either has a very bad reputation or people aren’t even aware it (still) exists.
But this is something that can relatively easily be solved.
For starters, SL needs to get back into the media’s interest and in a good way this time.
Luckily the Oculus Rift and the coming Virtual reality renaissance are already doing this, SL is being talked about again and not always in a bad way.
Suddenly we’re part of something big and interesting again that is happening right now.
But educators are still scared to mentio
n it or suggest a school or museum to use it because of its past.
People still think that SL is just a place where weirdos come to either pretend to look like Barbie and Ken or do all sorts of kinky stuff.
And of course that is true, but there is more to SL than just that, and Linden Lab and us, the users of SL, have to try and make people realise that there is this whole other side as well.
Up till now LL has has not been doing well when it comes to improving their reputation.
Their advertising often shows very pretty young avatars who are either shopping or suggesting something sexy might happen.
The Bikini advertisement they are using right now caused a bit of a stir, to be honest, if I had seen that ad before I joined SL, I probably wouldn’t have, assuming SL was just another IMVU, or worse.
But this post is not just about complaining, I also want to offer some ideas and suggestions.
And when it comes to advertising, I am not just talking as a user.
I graduated from Film school, made a few short movies that got every positive reviews, wrote and directed things for TV, owned my own production company, etc, etc.
Not to mention that my father worked at an advertisement company while I grew up and he brought his work home.
So if you permit me, I’d like to share a few ideas for SL advertisements, for free.
And when I say free, I am of course telling lies.
If LL uses these ideas, I really wouldn’t mind a pile of cash 😉
When SLGo went live, they had a nice, cute, advertisement.
It was well made, unfortunately it reinforced some of the ideas people have about SL, that all we do is shop, flirt and dance, but it looked good.
The most valuable and interesting thing about Second Life are its users and Linden Lab should use them and what they make to promote SL, in a good way.
Imagine the following advertisements;
A very slick and smooth video shows a game, someone flying a mini airship with a cannon, dirty children running trough Victorian Steampunk like streets being chased by a scary man, explosions, smoke, danger…
It looks like an advertisement for a new game… coming to your computer soon… for free!
Then a young chap who is playing this on his computer turns around, looks into the camera and says; I made that!
‘Second Life; make your own game’
An idea of course based on one of SL’s best creators Loki Eliot.
We see an avatar walking into a bar, other avatars turn around, wave at the avatar, welcome him back, they chat, they dance, they laugh.
It is busy and very social, a bit like Cheers perhaps, and maybe, why hide it, there is the promise of romance in the air.
But then we see a guy behind his computer take off his Oculus Helmet, smile because he has just spend some time with his friends and then we see that he is (of course) cool and handsome but lives in the countryside, has a touch job far away from society, maybe gamekeeper in Africa or he works on an oil rig, or perhaps he is even a soldier at the front who now has to go back to do his duty.’
We see a typical ‘soccer mom’ (I hate that word and btw, it’s called football), at home in a kitchen, she is designing clothes on her computer and selling them in Second Life.
Her teenage son comes in, pretends he is not interested but can’t avoid peeking at the monitor.
He has to confess, that last dress she made is actually pretty cool.
She tells him sales are good, he grins and asks her if that means he’ll get a new computer for his birthday.
Mum says they can’t afford that but then checks out her Linden Dollar balance, she smiles and we see her open another window and start searching for that new computer.
A timid and shy teenage girl living in suburbia, in a very boring household where everyone just watches tv, in a very quiet and soft voice she tells her parents she is going upstairs, she gets no reply.
She goes up to her room, logs into SL and we see her avatar get on stage at a full club, everyone cheers.
Then she starts singing, she has a great voice and sings something that is completely opposite to what her character in RL seems to suggest she would sing.
She rocks.
We see her in her little room, perhaps with the Oculus on her head, singing and swinging, having a great time.
We switch to another user who is in the audience, at home in RL he is also enjoying her show, he is a cool kid.
In the background we see his father, busy on the telephone behind a desk, there are gold records on the wall, he hears the music his son is listening to in SL, the man stands up, walks over, gets excited and then holds the telephone by the computer speaker.
It is clear that this shy teenage SL user is about to be discovered.
A high flying career guy at a fancy modern office tells his secretary he is going home, he is going to meet some old friends.
He lives in a nice fancy apartment, he has a good job, there are pictures everywhere of friends, parties, his wife is there, perhaps kids too.
He puts on his Rift and starts up Second Life.
His avatar is suddenly a kid, he is in a basement, everything there is 1980s, the posters, the computer games, the books, the toys.
Other avatars teleport in, all young boys, they laugh, they chat, they play 1980s music and computer games.
We see that behind these avatars are all business men who are living all over the world and who have clearly not been together as friends since their childhood.
A big strong muscular guy is hammering iron onto an anvil, he finishes a sword and leaves the forgeand walks trough the narrow busy streets of a Medieval town.
Everywhere people are working and making something, they agree, that is one nice sword the blacksmith made.
He walks to a castle and hands over the sword, the lord of the castle tells him that the sword is really good, he will get an A+.
The blacksmith takes off his Oculus Rift and turns out to be a 12 year old kid in an Irish classroom.
He is excited, and asks if he really just got an A+.
The lord of the castle takes off his Oculus and turns out to be his teacher who confirms it.
Black and white, we see a young pretty avatar dance with a sailor, the settings is a 1940s sim.
Vintage cars, big band music, a dance hall.
They have a great time.
The girl takes off her Oculus Rift, she turns out to be an 80 year old lady, a tear rolls down her cheek, on the table next to the laptop we see an old black and white photo of her in the 1940s, with a sailor next to her, on their wedding day.
Ok, I know, I got a bit carried away, some of these are a bit silly and over the top, but try and imagine what the target audience would think about them.
Also just forgive me, I’m used to writing drama and have way too much imagination and love for melodramatic romantic stories.
It is not about avoiding adult content, I would be fine with showing someone who in RL is perhaps “in the closet” and who uses SL to realise they are actually attracted to the same sex and explore this.
Or someone who is a very dull office typist but who has a double life as some sort of dominatrix.
It is not about making SL appear better than it is, all of what I suggest is already possible, SL has some stunning places but so much of it will never even be seen by new users who don’t stay long enough and only see the 5 year old abandoned half empty shopping malls.
The idea is that we show that SL has many options, it lets you be who you want to be, that everything you see is made by regular people and that there are real people behind every avatar who do all sorts of different things in SL.
We need to show the world that, yes SL is for shopping, yes it has hanky panky but it has so many other options as well.
If you can manage to make one or lots of small videos that show, in a positive light, the many ways people use SL, you may end up with something that they will want to share with their friends and family to show them what it is they do in SL while now they probably don’t want to tell anyone they even are in Second Life.
A good advertising agency can probably stuff all these ideas into one commercial, they can without doubt also come up with better stories.
SL has creativity, romance, education, an exciting future and so much more.
Stuff all that into one video, even into one picture.
Sure, show bikini babes, but add someone in a medieval dress or a space suit as well!
I know that young people who are interested in social interaction, shopping and romance are the biggest business in SL, but I also know that the advertising that is bringing in these people does not bring users to SL that stay very long.
If the advertisement policy was working, we wouldn’t have such bad retention, more about that later.
The last SL advertisement video I saw did show a very diverse selection of sims and possibilities, but it didn’t link this to real people actually building all of that and using it.
We need to let possible future users know that everything we see was made by regular folk like them.
Another thing LL has to keep an eye on is how the media represents Second Life.
Why are there still stories being published with screenshots from 2007?!
Do journalists not check the LL press page?
Does the actual Second Life website not have a press page?
I looked, I couldn’t find it.
Imagine you’re a lazy journalist, you have a deadline, you have to write about Second Life.
You look at the SL website, can’t find a press page, you don’t bother checking the Linden Lab site.
You need screenshots, they need to be in the public domain so you don’t get hassle with copyrights.
You look for them, all you can find is some old screenshots of weird people doing weird things, well what a coincidence, you think that is what SL is all about so this will illustrate the article perfectly…
People, not just journalists, are lazy.
They want to spend 5 minutes on Wikipedia, 5 minutes on google an then write their article.
So you have to offer them ready made information packages.
When I still made movies and had press viewings, we made sure they got whatever they needed to write their review, a folder with copyright free pictures, background information, facts & figures and some extra stories.
I think that if you can steer the media a bit in the right direction the odds of them writing something positive about you or at least something that is true and up to date increase.
Make it easy for them, stick a big ‘Media enquiries’ button on the SL website, just in case they don’t visit the Linden Lab website.
Keep the press page updated, the current ‘Linden Lab in the News’ section seems to suggest Linden Lab has not been in the media since October last year.
Journalists want to know we’re already experimenting with the Oculus Rift!
As for copyright free images, they link to their flickr collection where they have only 10 pictures that, although good looking, are not very exciting or showing the many different sides of SL.
Many of us would be happy for LL to offer the pictures we make for press use, so why not look at the art we make and ask the makers if you can add them to the copyright free collection the media gets to choose from?
I’ve already uploaded some of my snapshots to Wikipedia Commons so there are at least some up to date pictures there.
If the media does not portray you the way you want to be portrayed, make sure they have easy access to the side you do want them to see.
Don’t ignore misconceptions, fight them.
Tier
The high costs of Second Life remains an issue, it is stifling creativity and stops Second Life from growing.
Land in SL is expensive, maybe the price is somehow justified, but it is still a lot of money that many people can’t afford and there is competition out there that offers more for less already.
Stopping the discounts scared many educators away and Tier is also stopping a lot of people from starting a project or opening their shop.
I’ve written before about tier and I understand that actually lowering tier is a scary thing to do, even for a big company, as they risk losing a lot of income and can’t be sure the alternative will actually work.
I suggest that in stead of just lowering all tier, LL should add more kinds of tier.
That is what big companies do if they have a product that their customers feel is too expensive, they offer special deals, discounts, give away extra’s and above all; offer more choice.
We already have the discount for educational sims back, but why not add other options for regular users such as making tier lower just for the first two months to give people an incentive to start something new, reward sims that are doing well by lowering their tier after a few years, and above all I think Linden Lab should expand their merchandise.
At the moment you can only buy 3 types of region in Second Life!
You can buy a full region, it costs $1000 (!) to buy and has a tier of $295 a month.
Or get a Homestead region, it is the same size but you get less prims and less people can visit it at the same time, it costs $375 to buy and $125 a month in tier.
Or you can get a so called Openspace Region, it costs $250 to buy and $75 tier a month.
Real dollars, not Linden dollars.
I personally feel that all these prizes are much too high but besides that, why are these the only options available to us?
I don’t know much about the technical side of maintaining Second Life, but to me it doesn’t seem like it would be a lot of extra work to sell 2 half regions in stead of 1 full one.
Why can’t we buy a full or quarter region?
Just split a region in 2 or 4 parts, or just create completely new regions of different sizes.
They shouldn’t be next to each other, otherwise you might as well rent it from a landlord, they should look and feel like regular regions, should be place able in the middle of nowhere, just smaller.
A quarter sim would get you 16384 square meters, 3750 prims and would allow 12 avatars to visit at one time.
But it would also cost you $250 to buy and have a tier of about $74 a month.
Still a lot, but cheaper than the other offers and you would actually own your own land and not have to rent.
This may be just what someone is looking for who does not want to buy a full region.
All I am saying is that Linden Lab should look into creating more alternative choices for the customers.
I’m sure we can come up with more than 3.
And although this would create some cheaper alternatives for the users, the land will still give Linden Lab the same income.
Because when I started buying land, I didn’t care about the size but about the costs, the amount of prims and how many people would be able to visit at once.
I would have been really happy with just half a region.
Another idea I’ve had is to create ‘part time sims’.
A lot of social life in SL is centered around clubs, running these can be a lot of work and it is very difficult to break even.
But most venues don’t have a show on every day, maybe just one or two in the weekends.
The rest of the week the club is empty, just using up recourses.
So why not offer sims that are only online in the weekend?
Activated only 8 days in the month, turned off the rest of the month.
If we spread Tier across 30 days it turns out a full region costs about 10$ a day and by only using the sim 8 days a month LL could lower the tier for a full region to 80$ a month.
Of course, as I said before, I have no idea what the possibilities are, but I am sure there are some.
Either way, you could give people more options without lowering the tier per actual square meter.
And this way Linden Lab can test how many people are actually interested in buying smaller regions at lower costs and test if lower tier does actually increases the amount of people buying land.
Retention
Now this is a big one, still.
I think we’re going to get a lot of new excited VR users trying SL out (again) when the oculus Rift and/or other headsets become available to consumers.
But according to LL figures we already have a lot of new people signing up every month.
Problem is, they don’t stay long.
After trying SL as a noob the new CEO of Linden Lab Ebbe Altberg came to the conclusion that first moments in SL for new users are pretty bad.
To be fair, I haven’t tried the new user experience myself for a long time, but this video I shared last week gives a pretty good idea and well, it is rather horrendous;
In previous blogs like this one and this one, I’ve suggested a few possible solutions;
-Let new users create their custom personal avatar on the SL website before they even start the viewer.
-Give new users an online tutorial on the SL website where they can figure out the basics and also learn how to use the search function (or check the destination guide), choosing their first landing location so that their first steps in SL are in a place they picked themselves.
To my previous suggestions I want to add a new one.
At the moment new premium users get a free Linden Home, in general people don’t seem to be very excited about this offer.
There isn’t much you can do with these buildings, you don’t get a lot of prims and there are so many rules.
It doesn’t really represent the SL slogan “Your world. Your imagination”.
But the idea of giving new users a home, a place to go to, is a good one.
Why not give every new user some land without a building on it?
For free!
Ok I know this will cost Linden Lab but it will also make the first visit to SL a lot more fun and the odds of new users returning a lot greater.
After all, they now have a place where they can try building something, they know where to go to unpack their shopping and where they can invite people to who they meet.
Not to mention that they could begin their Second Life there in stead of being thrown in at the deep end, between the freaks and grievers.
But make it a temporary deal, new users get their deserted island in the sea but it will only be there for a month or so.
When that time runs out those who have stayed in SL will probably want to find a new home so they can keep the house they’ve build or keep enjoying the other benefits of having your own piece of land.
That means that they will rent something from a landlord and thus support the SL economy or they may decide to buy land from Linden Lab.
And it also means that Linden Lab can stop building portals, creating in world tutorials, etc.
Education
I’ve just blogged about this and seeing the Irish school class using another virtual world in stead of Second Life for their amazing history lessons made it clear that Linden Lab has to do more work to get education (back) in SL.
More discounts, more freedom, more options.
Why is this so important?
Because it shows a whole different side of SL and thus it is good for its reputation and second of all, it is a way to get future generations involved with Second Life at an early age and this increases the chance of them returning to it after school.
But above all, it uses Virtual Reality for something really worth wile and valuable.
The video I shared with you has gone a little bit viral, people are discussing it everywhere, that could have been free PR for Second Life.
But teachers need some security, they need to be able to make sure their pupils don’t teleport out, don’t get grieved, don’t bump into things that will freak out the parents.
They will need to be able to download and save the things they and their pupils made.
Oh, and I want more group options, improved basic avatar animations and 24 hour days in SL 😉
Anyway, lots of ideas and plans, let me know what you think and add your own in the comments!
23 Wednesday Apr 2014
Posted in Uncategorized
I was part of the beta test group for SLGo, the service provided by Onlive that lets you enjoy Second Life in Ultra settings on mobile devices but also on your old no good computers that stopped being able to handle SL long time ago.
As I wrote here on my blog, I was quite impressed with it and so seem most of the people who actually give it a go.
We weren’t happy about the prizing but luckily the Onlive people listened to us and made some drastic changes there.
I’ve been sharing my experiences with the Onlive people directly and they’ve asked me if I could ask you, my blog readers, to share your ideas on their service.
So directly from them to you;
1) If you haven’t tried SL Go… why?
2) If you’ve tried it and were not compelled to continue… why?
And as this is my blog, I’d like to add my own request;
3) If you’ve tried it, share your experiences!
Were you impressed, how did it work, do you have any ideas and suggestions on improvement?
As for myself, I rather like the service, I’m not a very mobile person but am very happy to now be able to use SL it on my old laptop again.
I haven’t used it very much (yet) for three reasons;
-I don’t have a European power plug for the tablet I borrowed and haven’t had time to get one.
-The viewer is based on the official SL viewer and well, I’m just so very used to the Firestorm viewer.
-At home I have a super alienware laptop and fast internet so I can enjoy SL at ultra settings anytime but I’m very happy to know that if something goes wrong I can still get into SL now on my old laptop and I am considering leaving my heavy alienware at home next time I go visit my parents and use SLGo there full time on my much smaller and lighter Macbook.
-One issue I’ve found irritating is that when Onlive decides that my connection isn’t good enough, my only option is to exit the entire service.
I’d prefer it if Onlive just returned me to a menu or just allowed me to start anyway because my connection is good enough and may just have a temporary drop.
So anyway, share your ideas, opinions, suggestions and experiences with SLGo in the comments, they will reach the Onlive folks.
21 Monday Apr 2014
Posted in Uncategorized
On the 9th of April Linden Lab send a lot (if not all) of SL users who frequently transfer Linden Dollars into real money, a message requesting information about your RL identity.
This has to do with current US “applicable laws” where Linden Lab is forced to obtain information identifying you as their customer.
I had heard about this before but assumed it was only something big users were confronted with, people who made thousands of RL dollars with SL every month.
But it seems also people who really don’t make that much money have to now fill in a form and send RL identity proof.
I am sure a lot of people will be upset about this but even worse is that this request may have escaped your attention.
When I received it I assumed it was spam and even after I had read it, I still thought it was a phishing attempt.
Some people don’t get the notification at all and it ends up in their spam folder or gets drowned out in other emails.
This happens because LL thought that the best way to get this rather important message to us was by creating a case, aka a ticket, in the support section of the SL website.
So the first thing you would have heard about this is an email telling you ‘a new case has been created’.
I immediately thought; “I didn’t create a support case, this is weird, I don’t trust it.”
I had no idea Linden Lab could create support cases for me!
So that is why it is probably a good idea to check your email for an email from ‘support@secondlife.com’ with as a title ‘case has been created’.
And just to be sure, also visit your support history page by clicking here.
Especially if you have recently made a Process Credit request to Linden Lab and you haven’t received your money yet.
If you don’t do this, if you’ve missed this, they may put an hold on your account and you can wait on your payment for ever.
I don’t know what the exact amount is that triggers this whole issue and if you never ever make any money with Second Life, this is probably not something for you to be worried about.
But it seems that the amount is not very high, after all I’m not making a lot of money myself.
Luckily the Support people were very friendly, patient and quick to respond to my questions.
So, if it takes longer than usual (about 5 days) for your Linden Dollars to be transferred to your RL wallet, go look into this.
19 Saturday Apr 2014
Posted in Virtual reality
After Roberta was diagnosed with cancer, having not long to left to live, her granddaughter Priscilla (Pri), a video game art designer, decided she wanted to to something nice for her gran with the help of virtual reality.
Roberta had been confined to her house and had told Pri that she so wished to travel or even just simply walk around her own yard, but the illness made this impossible.
Pri emailed the developers of Oculus rift and asked them if perhaps they could help Roberta go outside again.
They send her a devkit the same day.
Soon Roberta was exploring a lovely villa in Tuscany.
This touching video shows her being able to go “outside” one more time.
Afterwards Pri and her gran had plans to have more VR adventures and travels but unfortunately Roberta died 4 weeks later.
I couldn’t help imagining what it would have been like if I could have shown my uncle, the war hero who recently died, the house where he grew up but he hadn’t been able to revisit since the war.
When I am old myself and perhaps no longer able to go outside, I know that by then we will be able to keep having adventures, travel around the world, in space and time.
Maybe I will spend my last days revisiting the 1980s, hanging around my childhood home, watching tv, playing with my dog, while my mum cooks dinner.
That must be so therapeutic and calming.
Well done Oculus team, well done.
19 Saturday Apr 2014
Posted in Improving Second Life, Virtual reality
When I saw this, my heart jumped with joy.
During my regular google search for VR and Oculus Rift stories I stumbled across this on the Technology.ie website, thanks for writing about it folks, it made my day.
As you may know, to me the main, if not only, reason for being part of virtual reality is the ability to “time travel”, to recreate and explore the past.
But since I (re)discovered Second Life almost 5 years ago, I’ve been recreating 1920s Berlin and having a great time doing that while also getting a chance to educate people and see them learn stuff, not to mention that they teach me a thing or two as well.
I’ve always felt that virtual worlds are such a great tool for education, especially by using real immersion.
That is why I was so excited to hear about the really cool students from St Kieran’s National School in Broughal, Ireland, who recreated a historic site after a field-trip to Clonmacnoise, a group of preserved Medieval ruins .
Often people complain that Second Life is too difficult to learn, although I think that they do have a point, it is pretty amazing to see a bunch of 10-12 year olds become such experts in it and get to grips with it pretty easily.
Mind you, everyone knows kids are better at computer stuff than us anyway.
After recreating the ruins they had visited in real life in the virtual Opensim world, they got to explore it with the Oculus Rift.
Not only that, they then get to share it with kids in other schools, where the pupils guide each other around the virtual place.
How fantastic is that?
I have to confess that seeing history being taught to kids in such a way brought tears to my eyes, I am so passionate about history and helping children realise how awesome that subject is that when I see it brought to them in a way that I think works very well and may leave a huge impression on the next generation, I just can’t stop smiling.
And I keep saying it, of course Gaming is going to be a huge market for the virtual reality headsets but I am pretty sure that within a couple of years all the other possibilities offered by them will make up a much larger percentage of what it is actually used for; movies, tv, shopping, working and of course education.
This is how I think classes of the future will be taught history, welcome to class kids, put on your VR helmet, lets to travel back in time!
Of course, the next project might be to restore the ruins to see and explore them as they looked hundreds of years ago!
I can’t wait and really can’t put into words how happy this video made me.The project was set up by MissionV, who provide “a highly creative, totally immersive, game based learning environment for schools and industry”.
They seem to be doing a very good job at it because, as the teacher in the video said, the kids queued outside the class room, installed ‘Imprudence‘ at home and their parents got involved as well.
But above all, they learned a LOT, not just history.
Of course this video also was hugely frustrating to me.
Why can’t we use Second Life for this?
Why can’t I make 1920s Berlin safe enough for a class of children to come visit it?
Ebbe Altberg, CEO of Linden Lab, very recently spoke about Education in Second Life and I think that he has to move heaven and virtual earth to enable schools and projects like these to come (back) to Second Life.
MissionV will be available to ALL schools in Ireland from September onwards and they should have been using Second Life, but I doubt they will.
There is something worth fighting for Linden Lab, forget about profits, think about using VR for what it should be used for, be a leader in VR being used for education and give educators the tools they need; more freedom, more security, more options and much, much lower tier.
Imagine what it will do to SL when a whole generation of kids grows up learning with SL, not to mention what it will do for SL’s reputation.
Roleplaying is fun and I truly love the community in 1920s Berlin, but being able to see children run around my recreation of Berlin in the 1920s and learn from it would be a dream come true.
Thank you pupils and teachers of the school and the people behind MissionV, you have no idea how happy you’ve made me.
Enjoy the videos and spread the word!
And the end result of what they’ve been building;
