Day: May 29, 2018

UPDATED! Second Life Steals, Deals, and Freebies: The Afrodite Female Mesh Body by LUCYBODY

UPDATE Nov. 4th: It has been reported to me that the Afrodite mesh body is no longer available as a Midnight Madness gift at the LUCYSHOES/LUCYBODY mainstore, and I can confirm this. It costs L$1,000 now. Thank you, LittleMe Jewell!

For a current, up-to-date list of free or inexpensive options for mesh avatar heads and bodies for female Second Life avatars, please see this blogpost. For a current, up-to-date list of free and inexpensive options for male mesh avatar heads and bodies, please see this blogpost. 

Here’s another freebie tip that I picked up from Cat Pink, whose YouTube videos about freebies and hunts in Second Life are often quite informative. Did you know that you can pick up a beautiful, full Bento mesh body for female avatars, with 256 possible skin tones, a complete set of nail lengths and colours, and a complete set of detailed alpha cuts, for FREE? All you need is a group space and a little patience.

Teleport to the LUCYSHOES/LUCYBODY store, enter the store, and take the fourth aisle to the left, after the wall marked GIFTS:

Afrodite 5 29 May 2018.png

There’s a Midnight Madness board. Join the LUCYSHOES/LUCYBODY group for free (there’s a group join board right next to it), and then touch the Midnight Madness board to register yourself.

Afrodite Body for Free 29 May 2018.png

Once the board gets 100 hits, everyone gets a free, fully-featured Afrodite body by LUCYBODY.  After 100 hits, the board resets to zero. I was very lucky and I hit the board when it was at 99, and I got my Afrodite body within a couple of hours!

I was expecting this to be a disaster, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was easy to use and looked good on my avatar! The Afrodite body has a few nice features that you won’t find on other freebie/dollarbie female mesh avatar bodies, like the free Altamura Valentina or the dollarbie eBody Classic/Curvy models available at Ajuda SL Brasil. With the addition of the LUCYBODY Afrodite, there are now three options for female mesh avatar bodies for those without the Linden dollars to spend on more expensive mesh bodies! More choice is always good.

Like the eBody models, it comes in a variety of skintones, but with a bonus feature: the HUD has 8 basic skintones, each of which you can adjust using 32 tint panels to give you a total of 256 available skin colours! The nails HUD has 7 options for nail length and 24 colours and patterns built right into the HUD. The Afrodite body has Bento fingers (like the Altamura Valentina, but unlike the eBody dollarbie versions) and the detail on the hands is actually quite lovely.

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One thing I like about the Afrodite LUCYBODY is that it has the most detailed alpha selections of any mesh avatar body I have ever seen! You can basically wear just about anything with this body and make it work with all these alpha cuts! In the picture below my avatar is wearing a dress designed for Maitreya Lara by Maci (a group gift; the group is free to join), and it fit with a minimum of fuss. I like that!

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Here’s another picture of the avatar in a sharper light. I am also wearing the Lulu Bento mesh head by Akeruka, and to hide the slight seam between head and body, I am wearing the Nina choker by RxK, a free gift from Ajuda SL Brasil. The feet are Slink-compatible, so any shoe created for Slink feet will work with this mesh body (you might just have to adjust the foot size for the best fit; they recommend 32.)

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Second Life Steals, Deals, and Freebies: Ricielli Hunt Prizes

Two or three times a year, Ricielli offers its shoppers a hunt for very easy-to-find objects in its store. Each hunt prize is either women’s clothing or footwear from the Ricielli collection. These are all uniformly well-designed, beautiful mesh items. You pay only L$15 for each hunt prize you find.

If you go to the Ricielli main store, you can still take part in their Easter hunt. But thanks to Cat Pink and her YouTube channel, I discovered a tucked-away place on the Ricielli sim where you can pick up all the previous hunt prizes, still for L$15 each!

Here’s the SLURL to the location for all the past hunt gifts. Each hunt prize collection has a sign which tells you what is in each package before you buy it:

Ricielli 29 May 2018.png

L$15 each is an absolute steal for such well-designed clothing and shoes! Here Vanity Fair is wearing the green Gigi blazer and undershirt combo with black leather leggings, which are both Halloween 2017 hunt prizes:

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Total cost for this outfit (not including shoes) is only L$30!

UPDATED: Staramba Spaces—Another Blockchain-Based Virtual World, Built Around Celebrities

Hey, have you ever wanted to be next-door neighbours with Paris Hilton?

Yeah, me neither. But a new blockchain-based virtual world called Staramba Spaces plans to give you that opportunity, according to this article from the CoinTelegraph website titled Company Creates Decentralized VR World Where Public Can Meet Celebrities:

An established company that is listed on the stock exchange in Frankfurt is creating a decentralized, social virtual reality world which gives users the chance to rub shoulders with some of the world’s biggest celebrities.

Staramba has already created what it claims is the world’s largest database of 3D avatars, which features 7,000 stars. They specialize in creating lifelike avatars for Hollywood studios, as well as companies like Konami, the brand behind the ProEvolutionSoccer video game – with its scan of David Beckham featuring prominently in the title’s 2019 edition.

Its upcoming venture, Staramba.spaces, allows users to immerse themselves in a virtual world and engage with their idols in a whole new way. Training sessions with an internationally renowned football star would become possible – as well as enjoying a singalong with a famous musician.

The platform also offers users the opportunity to buy virtual plots of land. Examples highlighted by Staramba’s white paper include the prospect of becoming a neighbor to Cristiano Ronaldo or Paris Hilton, or gaining a prime property with a balcony that overlooks the grounds of a major football club.

These investments could prove lucrative, as it will be possible to rent out these plots to other users – or sell a desirable space at a premium. The company envisages that demand will be high because properties in the most fascinating locations with the highest footfall are going to be finite.

Aaah yes…playing the land scarcity card again. Buy now, because there are only so many coveted spots next to Paris Hilton! Decentraland and its many investors are another social VR space trying to pump up the prices of its virtual land using that angle as well, and it seems to be working…or is it just creating a financial bubble?

Here’s the Staramba website:

Staramba 1 29 May 2018

(Which reminds me, I need to post an update to my popular blogpost about stupid pictures promoting virtual reality. This one definitely belongs in that category!)

Of course, there is the requisite, slicky-produced promotional video, with “pre-alpha in-game footage”, whatever that means:

Staramba will use a cryptocurrency called the Staramba token as an in-game currency. They plan an initial token offering (ITO) this summer. The actual platform, to be called Staramba Spaces, is not expected to launch before the fourth quarter of 2018.

Staramba 2 29 May 2018

Staramba has signed agreements with various celebrities and sports clubs:

Staramba has already forged a series of partnerships – including with top-flight football clubs such as Bayern Munich and Real Madrid, the world’s number one table tennis player Timo Boll, and wrestling legend Hulk Hogan.

Other official licensing partners include the English Football Association, Paris Hilton, SLASH and KISS. It expects further A-listers from the worlds of entertainment, music and sport to join in the future.

I wonder how much Staramba is paying Paris Hilton for the use of her likeness…I mean, who is actually going to get excited about hanging out with a 3D-scanned replica of a celebrity like Portuguese soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo?Staramba 3 29 May 2018

Again, this is yet another blockchain-based social VR space that I plan to watch (from the sidelines) as it develops. Mark my words, all of these companies in this increasingly-crowded marketplace are not going to survive.

I’ll leave you with yet another promotional video for Staramba Spaces, featuring Paris Hilton herself. Turns out she’s an investor in the project. “That’s hot.”

UPDATE June 20th: A recently published due diligence report on the Staramba ITO by the self-described “open, collaborative ICO due diligence” service called ConcourseQ has plainly stated one rather obvious problem with Staramba’s planned platform:

Drawing 3D models of the celebrities does not mean that those celebrities have accepted to interact with their fans on the Staramba platform.

Now, I don’t know anything about the bona fides of the people who run ConcourseQ, so you can accept or reject their recommendation as you see fit. But they have touched on the one thing that has been bothering me the most about Staramba Spaces: How much interaction with real celebrities will you actually get, with all this talk of “lifelike scans” of celebrities and soccer stars? Why would you want to hang out with a 3D scan of a famous person in the first place? And, for the love of God, why would you want to be neighbours with Paris Hilton?

I guess we won’t find out answers to those questions until Staramba Spaces launches later this year. I can’t wait to see what they have to offer.