On Saturday I was a guest of Bernhard Drax (a.k.a. Draxtor Despres in Second Life and Sansar) on his long-running weekly podcast, The Drax Files Radio Hour.
We talk about Douglas Rushkoff’s provocative article, Most VR is Total Bullshit. But Drax and I also discussed many other topics in social VR, including mentions of Sansar, High Fidelity, AltspaceVR, VRChat, Rec Room, Decentraland, and the forthcoming Facebook Horizon. We also talk a fair bit about Facebook in general—and Drax takes me to task for rejoining the Facebook social network!
This year’s Spookzilla Hunt (SLURL), with dozens and dozens of Second Life stores participating, takes place from October 25th to 31st, 2019. There’s a row of vendor plaques lined up along one street near the spawn point, where you can pick up each vendor’s hunt key to see what prizes you’re hunting for! Each vendor has a differently coloured and patterned ghost that you are searching for. And some of those ghosts are fiendishly hidden! Set aside a few hours for this hunt.
Please note that this is not a free hunt; hunt prizes vary in price from L$10 to L$25 each. But this year there are also many tables of free gifts from the various vendors scattered throughout the sim, so even if you don’t feel like hunting, pay a visit anyway!
Here is one of the hunt prizes by ANTAYA, the red and black Victorian-era Lamia gown, absolutely perfect for my vampire roleplay avatar!
The lace detail at the neck is particularly lovely!
Here’s all six of the hunt prizes from Baetik, a complete witch’s outfit!
The outfit pictured here consists of five separate hunt prizes:
a witch headpiece with horns
a matching witch choker
witch shoes
witch staff (with or without animation and on/off particle effects)
a long black witch’s gown with a high collar
There’s also a black crow with a hold animation, too!
This final look is a more traditional witch’s outfit from N.MA, complete with hat and flyable broom! The outfit comes in five separate hunt pieces:
Persephone Hat
Persephone Dress
Persephone Shawl
Persephone Broom (ridable!)
And a set of HUDs to allow you change the colours of the hat, shawl, dress, dress trim, and various aspects of the waist cincher to any of 20 different colours!
This is easily the most versatile witch outfit you could ever own! Here’s another couple of examples from the thousands of combinations you could create—good witch, bad witch, and everything in between!
The black pumps in the three pictures above are from a free set of women’s classic pumps by Marquesse, available from the excellent freebie store at Ajuda SL Brasil on the third floor (here’s the SLURL).
VR Education Holdings, the group best known for the Apollo 11 VR and the Titanic VR experiences also released a proprietary virtual reality (VR) education platform at the end of 2018 called ENGAGE. Today, the company has announced that the platform has been selected by Facebook for its Oculus Independent Software Vendors (ISV) programme.
Working with enterprise developers and software companies, the Oculus ISV programme looks to accelerate customer adoption of VR solutions built for Oculus enterprise products. In conjunction with Oculus for Business, during 2020 VR Education Holdings expects to make ENGAGE available to Oculus enterprise clients via a special portal, accessing its specialised training and education solutions.
When I recorded my Metaverse Newscast interview with Chris Madsen, I confirmed with him that the ENGAGE is already a profitable platform. But to be part of the Oculus ISV program means even more opportunities to partner with various companies looking for training solutions in VR! Congratulations to the company behind ENGAGE, VR Education Holdings!
(You might be wondering when that episode is going to be released. Unfortunately, my producer and main video editor, Andrew William, is currently very busy with real-life work. We do hope to release the interview sometime before the end of this year. Sorry for the delay!)
One of my Second Life avatars is a ball-joined doll (BJD) made many years ago by COCO Designs. It’s a fully mesh avatar that looks like a china doll! The Bavarian dirndl outfit and brown boots I bought at the original COCO Doll Store, which is long gone. I had just assumed that COCO shut down that original store due to poor sales.
The hair came from a store that has since closed down, called Bewitched Hair, and although it is an older flexiprims style, I love it because it reminds me of a doll’s yarn hair!
Well, guess what? Today I discovered by accident that COCO Designs still has a BJD doll store (at this exact SLURL)! And the best part is, everything is at a discount! You can pick up a boy doll or a girl doll body for only L$99 each! Here’s where you buy the girl doll body:
And the best part is, you can pick up a collection of nine heads to match that body, for free, as part of an extensive freebie section for BJD dolls!
So let’s take a look at what we can put together using the L$99 body and several freebies from the free gift area:
This avatar is wearing:
Avatar Body: BJD Doll body by COCO Designs (L$99)
Avatar Head: Emily (one of nine different doll heads available free from COCO Designs; comes in both open and closed-eye versions)
Hair: Bounce hair in candy apple red by Bewitched Hair with matching Willis bangs (this store is no longer on the grid, but you can buy several styles of rigged mesh wigs to fit this doll for only L$99 each)
Dress: Slip Dress in red (free from COCO Designs; it replaces the upper part of the body that came in the BJD Doll body package above )
Shoes: red ballet shoes (free from COCO Designs; they come with legs and feet to replace the default ones in the BJD Doll body)
TOTAL COST FOR THIS AVATAR: Only L$99!
If you like, you can add an ornate, animated doll key to her back—yet another free gift from the COCO BJD Doll store!
But wait, there’s more! In the freebies section, there are also two mesh avatars from Alice in Wonderland, the White Rabbit and Alice herself! Here’s what the Alice mesh avatar looks like:
There’s even a Toto attachment, where she holds the little dog in her arms! And here is the White Rabbit, who comes in two versions, in or out of costume:
So, if you are still looking for Halloween costume ideas, how about going out as a doll, or as a character from Alice in Wonderland?
