Second Life and Virtual Worlds
Grid Survey Milestone – You may know that Tyche Shepherd maintains a survey of regions in Second Life. You can find the latest information at GridSurvey.com. But, the milestone is the update published at SLUniverse, New SL Sims in past week. Daniel Voyager noticed the 100th post in a thread started in 2008. If you … Read more
Mesh Body Addicts is running their first survey of 2017. Please stop by and answer the questions. There are only 13… Luckily it isn’t Halloween. No fear.
See: Mesh Body & Head Survey 2017
I’ll have more to say about this video in a following article.
Daria lists 26 bodies in the survey when asking which you wear most often. 26! Plus, “other”… Amazing. In only a few months we have a load of competing brands and models.
If you have ever pressed Ctrl-Shift-1 to reveal the Viewer Statistics panel and wondered what all the stuff means, there is a good explanation of the items in the panel over at the Firestorm Viewer Wiki. See: Firestorm Viewer Statistics. Almost the same information is available in the SL Wiki: Viewer help: Statistics.
I think on both sites they have simplified the text for the less techy users. I think that is a bad idea, as the people looking for explanations of how the items in the panel work are likely tech savvy.
The first four items listed on the pages are the source of a lot of confusion; FPS, Bandwidth, Lost Packets, and Ping. So, I’ll provide a bit more information.
From a speech by by Philip Rosedale, former Linden Lab CEO – 28 minutes. Philip uses Second Life to show what is happening in virtual worlds and how it will affect society. His thinking is interesting and in some ways a bit scary.
The video is the basis of an NPR show TED Radio: Why Build a Virtual World? Follow the link to see the video. I can’t embed it, only the audio portion, which is 9 minutes. The video and audio have different content. Both are interesting.
NPR/KPBS presented a radio show titled Screen Time. Philip Rosedale was a guest for the show. The audio above is also here: KPBS: Screen Time. The video is where some of the sound track for the show came from. The video is more interesting than the audio. The radio show has more context and less content, the audio is only 9 minutes long. It is worth checking both.
Someone got the idea to run a poll of which sex is more fun, RL or SL/Virtual sex. RL won, no surprise there. But, 36% thought Second Life™ sex was more fun… hummm.
On a side note: It is the owner of Basilique, the place where the Lindens are doing their meet up today, that conducted the study: Canary Beck.
Maria Korolov posted a link to a recent study of sex in SL in her: Survey: virtual sex less fun, but more liberated.
The full study she refers to is here: Second Life sex versus real life sex. It is long and well worth reading. I touch on JUST the parts I found really interesting.
No surprise, they found in a 2012 study and this recent study that sexual practices in Real Life and Second Life differ. So, you are not the only one that is more kinky in SL than RL.
Writing the annual review is a lot of work and takes time I will be using for RL projects. Ciaran and others have written their reviews of 2014. I’m going to skip mine this year. But, I do have some thoughts on 2014 and the coming 2015.
I have been tracking concurrent user numbers for the past 3 years.
There has often been a discussion about whether or not there is a seasonal aspect to the use of Second Life. I think the chart answers that question. It shows most clearly in the peak concurrent users line and a bit less in the minimum line, but it is still there.
Notice that about July-August of each year there is a low point in the numbers. From then to February-March the numbers increase to a peak then start to fall to the February-March low point. It seems pretty consistent from year to year for the last 3 years.