Second Life and Virtual Worlds
When it comes to currency exchange Americans tend to be ignorant of how it works. Europeans that travel are much more knowledgeable, at least in my experience. That knowledge difference seems to have led to some conspiracy theories about the recent price of Linden dollars.
The image is the list of pending buy and sell orders placed in the Lindex market as of 9AM PT 5/24.
Last week the first phase of the Experience Tools feature arrived for Premium Members of Second Life™. I think by now most bloggers have covered the arrival.
According to Google we are the top three reporting on Experience Tools. There are plenty of links leading to the SL Forum and Wiki. So, finding information on how to use the Tools and what they can do should be easy.
The financial people think it is Facebook and Apple that are positioned to win in the Virtual Reality War. But, it won’t be a fast war. It will last years. Quoting Chris Ciaccia :
[A] Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster stated that virtual reality is likely the next key trend in technology, writing, “We liken the state of virtual and augmented reality today as similar to the state of mobile phones 15 years ago. It likely will take a decade before mainstream adoption as necessary improvements in displays and applications as well as lower pricing are needed to drive demand.”
They expect new virtual everythings to open up; gaming (obviously), live sports, concerts, immersive cinema and social experiences will have a VR version. The article, Facebook and Apple are Poised to Win the Virtual Reality Wars, gives us, at least me, some new ideas about VR can be used.
Everything ends. It is just a matter of when. We hear this story of Second Life™ ending all the time. It is not new. Lots of Chicken Little. That SL has not ended, does not mean it won’t. The sky COULD fall. But, I think we will have plenty of warning should the end draw near.
I came to Second Life from Myst Online, which has closed and come back a number of times. So, I’m used to games I like closing. Rizom is another one I liked and played for a time. It too closed and came back. Others just closed.
Shug Maitland wrote What Does Second Life Need? I like that she thinks. Now she has me thinking.
A recent article of Inara’s got Shug thinking. All signs are that SL1, our current Second Life, and what I call SL2, the new virtual world Linden Lab is building, will run simultaneously. Shug’s question is can SL1 compete with SL2? Good question.
I’ve heard and read lots of opinions. But, few include why they hold their opinion.
Shug and many of the rest of us agree we need a better avatar, Avatar 2.0. The starter avatars we have now are probably the direction the Lab will go with SL2. The skeleton, skin, and animation will likely all get better.
This is the last month before many schools start the 2014-15 classes, which in a round-about way makes it vacation time for families. Lindens are people with families and they take vacations. Those Lindens that supply us with information on the server side of things are on vacation. So, Oz and Caleb Linden are filling in. But, with a few people gone the work seems to have slowed, suggesting not much is happening… happening in the sense work progresses to where we can see change.
I think we are seeing the affect of a smaller team working on Second Life™. Previously vacations did not slow the pace of releases by a noticeable amount.
The result is there isn’t much news to write about. I think because of the reduced pace of change you see blogs covering more subjects. I know I am writing smaller blurbs about what is going on, thus the ‘bits’ articles.