Drax has a new video out. This shows how Second Life and Oculus Rift are being used to support amputees.
[youtube igl4X8vI0js]
General News
Second Life Drama About Pictures
Seems I missed most of it… I’m not disappointed. Seems Iris Ophelia (RL: Janine Hawkins) wrote an article for Paste Magazine titled 10 Best MMO’s. Second Life was listed as 6th, not bad. My Myst-Uru MMO didn’t make it at all, but it never went massive… But, it wasn’t the writing or 6th place that bothered people. It was a bad picture of what SL looks like.
People took it to Twitter and soon the Lab had posted 30± new images to their Flickr account, bringing it to a collection of 99 images of SL, Blocksworld, Patterns, and other Linden Lab products. You can see them here: Linden Lab @ Flickr. Iris/Janine sent a nice image to Paste Mag and got the bad one removed. By the time I saw the article it had been replaced. So, my first thought was, “Huh! Nice image for a change.”
Second Life’s Shipwreck Island
This looks Interesting… I’ll be checking it out.
Oceania is proud to present Shipwreck Island, August 18th – 24th! Join the adventure for one week of a Special Edition Preview of Oceania Fishing, Custom Prizes, and so much more! Explore the incredible sim-wide build, hunt for hidden treasure, and stumble upon a Pirate secret or two! All games and prizes are absolutely free!! Join the SL community in celebrating the end of Summer and sneak a peak at what Oceania has been up to!
Cash Prizes to top fishers at the end of the week!
- 1st Place – 10k!
- 2nd Place – 5k!
- 3rd Place – 2.5k!
I suspect those cash prizes are L$. I’m not that into fishing… except at a club or two… and a different type of fish. So, I won’t be winning.
Second Life Bits 2014-34
India on Second Life
There is an article in India Times’ Economic Times on a company making US$16k/month from virtual animals, Fennux. It seems there are 1.2 million of the little guys in SL.
We find they think there are about 4,000 users logging into SL from India. I am not sure how they know that. Also, that they spend 67,000 hours in SL. I wonder if the Indian government is logging their Internet activity?
See: A Tumkur start-up VentureNext earns Rs 10 lakh a month by creating virtual creatures.
Second Life’s New User Avatars
Designing Worlds has a show up in which they interview people running Japanese new user help regions. I watched the show on SLArtists, the Treat.tv site seemed to be down this morning, at least I could not access it. The video is here: Designing Worlds DW 245 – Japan’s New Residents. The Designing Worlds page that should have the video is here: Designing Worlds visits the Japanese regions to learn how they support new users – now on the web!
About 3:30 minutes in, they talk about the problem the new user avatars are causing. They feel this is a MAJOR obstacle to improving player retention.
The new mesh avatars for new users was thought by some to be a definite problem for new users. The thinking was they would create more problems than they solve and harm player retention more than help. The people doing support in beginner areas are confirming the problems are manifesting. The question they are hearing often is, the promos say we can customize our avatars, so why can’t I change my avatar?
Second Life’s Necronom VI in Video
I tried taking pictures of Necronom VI (NVI). But, the lighting is often animated, which doesn’t show up in the still images. So, Saturday I took some time to make what I think was a last visit to NVI and take some video. I’m not a machinamist… or even that experienced with FRAPS. So, I forgot to turn off the cursor for most of the video. But, I think I caught enough to show what NVI was/is like.
[youtube -rgHQjkd6-c]
This video is uploaded in 720p format. That means it looks best in the default YouTube viewer or smaller, not full screen… over 1024.