Day: May 17, 2018

Drax’s Our Digital Selves Documentary is Now Available to Watch on YouTube

Cody and Donna at Linden Lab
Cody Lascala and Donna Davis at Linden Lab headquarters in San Francisco (still from the documentary Out Digital Selves)

Earlier this month, I had written about Draxtor Despres (a.k.a Bernhard Drax) and his documentary on the experiences of people with disabilities in virtual worlds, titled Our Digital Selves: My Avatar Is Me. Drax interviewed 13 people with a variety of disabilities for this film. Among the locations which Drax visited for this documentary were the corporate offices of High Fidelity and Linden Lab (the latter is the company behind the Second Life and Sansar platforms).

Today is Global Accessibility Awareness Day,  the purpose of which is to is to get everyone talking, thinking and learning about digital (web, software, mobile, etc.) access/inclusion and people with different disabilities. So Drac decided to release his documentary today, instead of tomorrow as he had originally intended!

ODS POSTER us_686x1020_final_preview.jpg

I was able to watch a preview of this documentary, and I enjoyed it very much! I think you will too.

Linden Lab Announces New Moderation Tools for Sansar Experience Owners

Little did I know, when I was writing my recent blogpost about dealing with trolls in virtual worlds, that Linden Lab was already working on new tools for experience owners to combat trolling, griefing and harassment in their Sansar experiences!

Today Eliot, the Community Manager for Sansar, sent out an announcement to the official Sansar Discord channel that there were two new tools, a kick command and a ban list:

Kicking a user out of an experience

As an experience owner, you have the power to kick users out of your experience if they are causing abuse or griefing. To kick a user out of your experience:

  1. While visiting the experience, go to Nearby Chat.
  2. In the input field, type the command %%Kick <Avatar ID> , where <Avatar ID> is replaced with the user’s Avatar ID. For example, if a user’s Avatar ID is @carrot, type %%Kick carrot. This kicks the user out of the experience.

…

Banning users from an experience

To ban a user from an experience, you need to add the user’s Avatar ID to the ban list. To add a user to the ban list:

  1. Access the publishing options panel from the My Experiences app.
  2. Under your chosen experience in the My Experiences panel, click the Publishing options Publishing_options_button.png button.
  3. Under Who can visit, click Edit list next to Banned users are never allowed to visit.
  4. In the Edit ban list panel, click Add.
  5. In the Add Someone panel, type the user’s full Avatar ID and click Search.
  6. Select a name from the search results and click Add selected.
  7. Repeat as many times as you like until all banned users are added.
  8. Click Done to close the Add Someone panel.
  9. Click Save to save your list and close the Edit Guest List or Edit ban list panel.

Note that the new kick and ban tools operate independently of each other:

Kicking a user does not automatically ban that user from an experience. Likewise, adding a user to the ban list does not automatically kick them out from the experience either.

Here’s an animated GIF that Eliot shared showing how to add someone to the ban list for an experience:

Banliat 17 May 2018.gif

I’m glad to see Linden Lab developing and releasing these moderation tools, before they are needed, rather than scrambling to catch up after trolling gets out of hand, as it has in VRChat!

Building a Portal Between the Real World and Social VR Spaces: SVVR’s MULTIVERSE Initiative

Portal 17 May 2018.png
A portal between High Fidelity and a real-world event (picture from the Road to VR website)

Kent Bye, in a news report on the Road to VR website, writes about the fifth anniversary of the immensely influential organization known as the Silicon Valley Virtual Reality (SVVR) meetup:

Today is the five-year anniversary for Silicon Valley Virtual Reality meetup, and founder Karl Krantz is announcing a couple of new initiatives as SVVR reorganizes itself as a public-benefit corporation. They’re going to be formally announcing their MULTIVERSE initiative that is going to be bringing Reality Portals to VR events, which will allow people virtually attend VR events put on by SVVR and others through social VR experiences like High Fidelity. They’ve created a screen that can be placed at VR events that provides a low-latency window into a VR world (and vice versa), allowing for serendipitous interactions between co-located events and the virtual attendees.

Among the first participants in this initiative will be High Fidelity, according to this press release:

Celebrating five years connecting the global VR community, SVVR is proud to announce MULTIVERSE — an open design initiative powering real-time, live event communications between real locations and virtual worlds.

Reality Portal is the first project to be launched as part of the MULTIVERSE initiative. It offers ‘natural interaction telepresence’ between people in the real world and people in remote locations, represented as avatars. Serving as a two-way window, Reality Portal enables real-time communications between real world and remote attendees and speakers at live events worldwide.

“Geography, platform fragmentation and exclusivity creates communities in isolation,” says Karl Krantz, SVVR partner and founder. “We’re offering the community an open bridge for overcoming location, closed ecosystems and toxic echo chambers. MULTIVERSE is our vision for fostering an open, sustainable and healthy future for global communications.”

Launching in late 2018, the open-source MULTIVERSE Development Kit will provide creators with everything they need to connect real locations and virtual worlds through pop-up Reality Portals and merged world spaces of their own. High Fidelity, Unity and WebVR/XR SDK support is in active development. MULTIVERSE technologies are currently utilized during live, SVVR-powered events.

“The distance between the real world and virtual reality is getting smaller every day,” said Philip Rosedale, founder and CEO of High Fidelity. “Closing that distance and making it easy for people to interact in-person and with their avatar representations interchangeably, no matter the VR platform, their equipment or location unlocks the true potential of virtual reality. Projects like MULTIVERSE, Reality Portal and the VRBA are all exciting steps along that path.”

In addition, SVVR is joining the Virtual Reality Blockchain Alliance, cofounded by open source VR platform High Fidelity. As a member of the Virtual Reality Blockchain Alliance, SVVR will work closely with the community and VRBA members to connect open metaverse platforms and services to people around the globe. Current VRBA members include High Fidelity, JanusVR and Somnium Space.

I wrote about the Virtual Reality Blockchain Alliance a while ago on this blog.

It would be fun to be able to virtually attend real-world events via this sort of portal.

UPDATED! Second Life Steals, Deals and Freebies: Get 789 High Quality Outfits, Jewelry, Shoes and Hair for Only L$101!

This is an update to my surprisingly popular blogpost about visiting four stores in Second Life and getting 218 items for only L$100.

So, I decided to grab a spare avatar and take it to the extreme, visiting the following six stores, each of which offers a large number of group gifts, and picking up every single one:

  • Legendaire (68 group gifts; group is free to join)
  • Scandalize (86 group gifts; group costs L$100 to join)
  • Shoenique Designs (29 group gifts; group is free to join)
  • Virtue (28 group gifts; group is free to join)
  • Coco Designs (35 group gifts; group is free to join)
  • Hilly Haalan (63 group gifts; group is free to join)

And then I hopped over to the following four freebie stores which I covered in my earlier blogpost about the best freebie stores in Second Life:

  • The Free Dove (where I picked up 152 items; you need to join the Free Dove group for free to pick up the freebies)
  • Ajuda SL Brasil (where I picked up a whopping 165 items, not counting obviously older system layer/flexiprim clothing styles)
  • Free*Style Store (12 items)
  • Sexy Shoppers Freebie Warehouse (63 items; you need to join the Sexy Shoppers group for L$1 to get the freebies here)

What did I get for visiting these 10 locations?

GRAND TOTAL: 701 items of clothing, shoes, hair and jewelry for only L$101 (L$100 for the Scandalize group join fee, and L$1 for the Sexy Shoppers group join fee)!

So, let’s take a look at some of the items we picked up in our shopping binge, shall we? (Please click on each picture to see it in a larger size.)

Look #1:

Mesh Head: Giselle Bento head by Altamura (no longer available for free; this was an Altamura gift from last Christmas at the eBENTO event, and you had to join the Altamura group for L$50 to get it)

Mesh Body: Jenny Bento body by Altamura (no longer available for free; this was a gift last Christmas from the Women Only Hunt)

Blouse: cream embroidered peasant blouse by Petite Mort (free from Ajuda SL Brasil)

Jeans: Thalia jeans from the Baby Monkey capsule wardrobe (free from the Free*Style Store )

Shoes: Classic black pumps by Marquesse (free at the freebie store at Ajuda SL Brasil; this shoe comes in four colours; note that the Altamura Jenny mesh avatar body has Slink-compatible feet)

Hair: Portia hair by Firelight (free from Ajuda SL Brasil)

Look #2:

Mesh Head: same as in Look #1

Mesh Body: same as in Look #1

Dress: Artsy dress by Luxe Paris (free from The Free Dove)

Hair: Rima hair by Fabia (free from Ajuda SL Brasil)

Shoes: same as in Look #1

Look #3:

Mesh Head: same as in Look #1

Mesh Body: same as in Look #1

Dress: Virtue Free Dove dress (group gift from Virtue; no longer available at the Free Dove)

Hair: Amy hair by Fabia (free from The Free Dove)

Shoes (not shown): same as in Look #1, but in the white version

Look #4:

Mesh Head: same as in Look #1

Mesh Body: same as in Look #1

Blouse: FDH 8 blouse (group gift from Virtue)

Skirt: white pencil skirt from Marquesse (free from The Free Dove)

Hair: Rachel hair by CHARME (free from The Free Dove)

Shoes: same as in Look #1, but in the white version

Look #5:

Mesh Head: same as in Look #1

Mesh Body: same as in Look #1

Top and Skirt: Velure set from Scandalize (free group gift; group costs L$100 to join)

Hair: Leslie hair by Firelight (free from Ajuda SL Brasil)

Shoes (not shown): same as in Look #1

And there you have it! Now go shopping 😉 …

UPDATE 11:44 a.m.: A commenter on a cross-post of this blogpost to the Your Second Life group on Facebook told me about another store where you join the group for free, with oodles of freebies! The store is called !Soul, and here is the SLURL.

Soul Gifts 17 May 2018.png

Thank you for the tip, Susan Giroso! There are 88 group gifts here at this location!

That brings the new grand total to SEVEN HUNDRED AND EIGHTY-NINE items for only L$101! 

Here’s a look at one of the outfits from !Soul, the Delicate Satin Mesh Dress in a floral pattern, with matching boots (there are seven different patterns available for this outfit).