Mr. Moon & Vertiigo’s Second Life

Tags

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;

Second Life Destinations : A New Travelogue Video Series

Tags

destination guide, destinations, youtube

Today Linden Lab announced that their wonderful Destinations video series will now be a weekly thing.
We can now expect there to be a short (60-90 seconds) video that gives us a look at the creations and communications in Second Life.

I think this is a wonderful idea and something, I think, similar to some of what I’ve suggested in the past.
The Destination Guide is not mentioned in SL’s official announcement (you can read it by clicking HERE), but if I’m not mistaken all the videos so far have been or still are in the Destination Guide.

As I’ve said before, I love the Destination Guide and think it is one of the, if not the best tool Linden Lab has at their disposal to bring new people to SL and to keep them there.
It is a wonderful showcase of some of the best that SL has to offer.
I’d love to see it used more, for instance by loading the page for people when they first join SL or perhaps let people pick their first teleport from the destination guide inworld from the starter’s island.
Either way, I hope LL is going to make a video for every place in the destination guide and eventually will somehow embed these videos in the destination guide itself!

The destination guide deserves a little more love and attention I think.
There are a few places on there who perhaps shouldn’t be there, for instance sims that have vanished or completely changed their theme and no longer offer what they promise in the destination guide.
Of course a while ago LL started the ‘Places pages’ which started out quite promising but then went a bit quiet.
I’d love to see the destination guide expand a little by for instance a few more pictures per destination, a video and maybe just allow those sims that have been picked the option to maintain their page in the destination guide.

Anyway, back on topic!
This is a great little video series and I look forward to seeing lots of them being made and uploaded every week.

You can find all the videos so far by checking out the playlist on youtube by clicking HERE.

Sansar Youtube channel opens with impressive new video

Tags

channel, draxtor despres, loz hyde, sansar, youtube

Today the official Sansar youtube channel was officially opened with a brand new video made by Draxtor Despres.

The video shows Loz Hyde (of Meshworx fame) who was invited to join Sansar before its official opening and who has been working on a location he calls The Grand Hall.
And grand it is!

 

I’ve seen probably all the Sansar footage Linden Lab released, what was leaked here and there and all the screenshots I could find but to be honest, so far most of it didn’t look that different from what you could see in Second Life.

But with this video, for me at least, this all changes.
What we see is stunning.
The building is not new, not specifically made for Sansar, it also exists in Second Life
This means that we can actually go inworld to check it out and then compare it to what it looks like in Sansar.
You can find the building inworld by clicking here for a slurl.
I think it looks a lot better in Sansar, the light, the textures, the reflections, the effects, it is all absolutely amazing.
Of course much of that is thanks to the talents of Mr. Hyde, but you can see that the technology of Sansar is clearly superior to that of Second Life and pretty much any virtual world out there at the moment.

I’m the first to admit I’m a little behind on what is going on in the gaming world (the joys of owning a MacBook) but I would even say that the way Sansar looks in this video comes very close to the kind of big commercial games people are playing today.

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In short, for a first official Sansar video, they’ve done rather well and placed something online that is rather impressive.

Drax told me this is the first of a series of Sansar videos he’s making so watch this space.

You can see the video here;

 

Youtuber streams visit to 1920s Berlin sim live.

Tags

Beau Hindman, video, youtube

Beau Hindman, a games writer and youtuber, recently visited the 1920s Berlin Project and decided to stream his exploration of our neighbourhood live.

It was fun to watch, Beau is very enthusiastic about Second Life and wants to show his viewers how wonderful our virtual world can be.

He has streamed visits to Second Life before (check out his playlist by clicking here) but of course when he came to Berlin us locals paid even more attention.

See him struggle with the idea of locked doors, peek through windows, bump into a few people, plan to rob our baker  and above all, enjoy himself and be impressed with our little city.

Enjoy!

Finally a funny Second Life noob experience video

Tags

experience, funny, noobs, video, youtube

Canary Beck shared this video on Facebook and it is hysterical.

Two gamers decide to give Second Life a go and are realising that it is the best game ever.

I laughed so much.

Go ahead, enjoy.

Warning; some rude language.

Streaming Second Life to Youtube and why I’d like LL to add it as a feature

Tags

"second life", PR, promotion, streaming, video, youtube

Streaming games to Youtube is big business.

People all over the world broadcast their game playing online and some make a pretty good living out of it.
Millions of viewers enjoy seeing someone else play a game and in many cases it can entice them into buying the actual game, so game publishers are very happy with all this free advertising.

Game videos have now gotten so big that Youtube now has its special gaming channel.

Second Life also gets a lot of attention on Youtube as well but unfortunately most of these videos are far from good publicity for our virtual world.

Some are meant well but completely alienating to most outsiders (try and explain having a baby in virtual reality) and others just enjoy using Second Life to annoy and harass others and create grieving videos.
The latter apparently being very funny to a huge audience as those seem to get the most attention.

It clearly is important for Second Life to improve its reputation, at least on youtube.
Many people watch these videos and I doubt it makes them want to try SL.

So today I decided to try and stream a bit of SL myself.
For the record, I was using my early 2015 model Macbook Pro and Firestorm on a wireless connection, broadcasting trough Wirecast.
I did not bother to tweak the settings or look into many options, it was just a simple first try.

And I must say that it worked rather well but it can be quite a hassle.

The thing is, you need to tweak bit rate and CPU and keep an eye on all sorts of settings before you find the perfect balance between making it look good and broadcast smoothly.
My CPU pretty much went to the max right away.

SL runs pretty decent on my 2015 Macbook Pro but when the region is laggy and there is a crowd, things slow down and using shadows and such is pretty much out of the question in such situations.
Even people with very good computers often set their viewers only on ultra for making pictures.
But if you can’t show SL at its very best, it is sometimes better to not show it at all.

Spending a lot of time figuring out how to best set everything up is something which many users will not be willing to do or they may not even be able to.
In short, there is no plug & play option.
No “Lets just click broadcast and we’re fine” possibility.

And this is something where LL could perhaps offer their users a really cool service.
One that I’d love to see in Second Life but sort of expect to see in Sansar.

First of all why should LL bother?
As I mentioned, I think it is important to ‘flood’ the media with great images and videos of Second Life, with the best possible quality.
There is no better antidote to the idea that a lot of people still have about SL having bad graphics and has abandoned ugly old sims than showing people how SL can look like.
If LL gets one of the famous youtube gamers to try out SL, they could reach an audience of millions.
Something you’ll pay a fortune for in advertising money.

Also, LL is always trying to get people to become premium members and to be fair, besides getting extra groups, so far they have not offered amazing extras that people got really excited about.
The added option to create or even broadcast video directly from the viewer could be a wonderful incentive for people to become a premium member.

In short; it is in LL’s interest to get lots of good looking and interesting footage out there.

Now, I am not very technical and have no idea what is happening inside Linden Lab, unlike some people seem to think, I am not a regular visitor there, I do not have my own luxury suite and they found all the bugs I hid there.
So my following ideas may be daft or completely impossible.

But, in my perfect world, Linden Lab adds a ‘record’ and/or ‘stream’ button to their viewer that, just like the ‘upload to flickr’ function will allow us to very simply and directly record a video or stream it on youtube.
It would also be nice to have an option to hide the interface but only on the video, not on the actual screen so you can still use the buttons and options but this will not end up op the actual video or stream.
You also have this option in the photo making tool, you tell it to hide the interface on the picture, but you still see it on your screen.

As simple as that.
Of course this may be quite tricky, or even hellish for LL to implement, but I reckon it might be worth it as it would flood the internet with SL videos.

And if only LL could help out the Bright Canopy team or bring the former SL Go team on board and sort out a cheap streaming service for all… then we could start broadcasting amazing high quality videos and show the world what Second Life can look like.

This screenshot may look nice but with everything set to ultra, it became rather laggy.