Month: January 2020

UPDATED! Come Say Farewell to High Fidelity with a Final Dance at The Palace

Today marks the end of an era. High Fidelity is essentially shutting down its platform today (more details here). Longtime user Dr. Fran noted that the HiFi user forums have already been taken down:

But we are not leaving without one last epic dance party!

Xaos Princess posted the following message on Twitter:

Today we’re gonna party like it’s 1999 in VR! Fire up your Steam or Oculus client one last time or download it at https://highfidelity.com/download and join us at 3:00 p.m. PST in https://metaverse.highfidelity.com/places/ThePalace to say farewell to the best virtual world ever!

All are welcome to join us, but if you have never set up a High Fidelity avatar before today, you are simply out of luck, as High Fidelity has also shut down their official website, so you can no longer create accounts:

While privately-hosted domains such as ThePalace will continue to run for a while, eventually usage will dwindle down to nothing, as older users move on, and no new users can create accounts to take part in any events. Eventually, even the domain names will disappear as they expire, and you will no longer be able to visit them, even if you still have a working account.

UPDATE 5:48 p.m.: Well, after a few technical difficulties (including having to replace a hand controller battery and rebooting my computer twice), I made it into The Palace! The party is still going on, and there are about 25 avatars in attendance—the largest crowd I have seen in HiFi in quite some time.

Chaka dancing on stage

It was wonderful to see and talk with old friends like Thoys, Piper Peppercorn, Xaos Princess, and Flame Soulis.

Like I said, the end of an era. High Fidelity is the first victim of the social VR wars, but I suspect it will not be the last platform to fold in this rapidly-evolving and ever-changing market.

UPDATE Jan. 18th, 2020: After I left the party, High Fidelity CEO Philip Rosedale himself showed up (see red arrow)!

Thanks for the picture, Carlos!

11th Augmented Human International Conference in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

Most of the time, I have to travel to another city to attend a conference. In this case (for a change), the conference is actually coming to me!

And believe me, at my age, not having to fit my cranky, fat ass into the ever-shrinking economy-class seating in an airplane for 2 to 4 hours in order to get somewhere is a major deal. Winnipeg is a relatively isolated northern city (check it out on a map or globe, it’s a full day’s drive north of Minneapolis and two day’s drive to the nearest Canadian cities of Edmonton, Calgary, or Toronto). And I do not travel well, which is one of the reasons I find social VR so appealing in the first place.

The Augmented Human International Conference is coming to Canada for the first time in May 2020. My university, the University of Manitoba, is hosting the 11th Augmented Human conference from May 27th to 29th, 2020, in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.

Selected areas and topics of interest include but are not limited to:

Brain-Computer Interfaces and Artificial Intelligence
– Hardware and Sensors
– IoT [Internet of Things] and Ubiquitous Computing
– Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality
– Alternative or Novel Feedback Modalities
– Muscle Interfaces and Implanted Interfaces

Smart Home and Smart Cities
– Ambient sensors, Wearables, Smart Objects
– Smart Textiles, Augmented Fashion, Art and Tourism

Medicine, Rehabilitation and Sports  
– Tele-rehabilitation
– Tele-Assistance
– Smart Assistive Devices
– Bionics and Biomechanics
– Biomimicry and Exoskeletons
– Sensory Substitution and Fusion
– Interfaces, Services and Applications
– Holograms, HMDs and Smart Glasses
– Serious Games and Augmented Sports

Political and Social Sciences
– Ethics, Trust, Privacy
– Human-Factors, Safety, and Security Aspects of Augmented Humans

If you wish to submit a paper to this conference, here is the form. The deadline for paper receipt is January 29th, 2020. All submitted papers will be peer-reviewed by three independent referees from the International Editorial Board. Accepted papers will be published in the ACM’s International Conference Proceedings Series (ICPS) and are eligible for publication in the Augmented Human Research Journal.

Here is the conference registration page. If you are coming, and you want to meet up face-to-face somewhere in Winnipeg, I would be delighted!

I Will Be a Presenter at the Educators in VR 2020 International Summit

I am happy to announce that my application to speak at the Educators in VR 2020 International Summit has been accepted! This six-day conference will be held entirely on various social VR platforms such as AltspaceVR, ENGAGE, and Rumii, instead of in a real-world physical location. (No need to book airline tickets or hotel rooms!)

I will be speaking on the topic of applications of commercial social VR platforms to libraries (specifically, academic libraries, although much of what I will say equally applies to special/corporate libraries and public libraries). This will be the first time I am speaking from my dual perspective as an academic librarian and as a social VR blogger!

I will most likely be giving my presentation from the ENGAGE educational social VR platform, where they already have a virtual recreation of the famous Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford that I could use! You can see it in this short video clip below:

I’d like to thank the organizers, Lorelle VanFossen and Daniel Dyboski-Bryant, for inviting me to come speak! They are also on the lookout for volunteers to help run the Summit:

This event will not happen without volunteers helping to moderate, film and record, and help with logistics. If you would like to volunteer in addition to speaking, or have students, co-workers, or others familiar with social and educational VR platforms willing to help, please use our Volunteer Form to let us know how you may help. 

https://forms.gle/XhmNDn4tm3HuiK4z6

So please consider becoming a volunteer. Thanks!

Fabulous Freebies for Female Avatars from the Sinespace Shop

This blogpost is sponsored by Sinespace, and was written in my new role as an embedded reporter for this virtual world (more details here).

It will come as no surprise to you that I have brought Vanity Fair, former Second Life supermodel, over to Sinespace. And with the free items of clothing I will show you, she now has an excellent starter wardrobe, without spending a single penny!

First, we’re going to talk about the quickest way to find those fabulous freebies in the online Sinespace Shop. Simply click on the Shop button in the row of blue buttons along the bottom of your Sinespace client. Then, click on the tab that says Clothes. Finally, click on the word Gold in the blue bar across the top of the listings, and if the arrow next to it is pointing down, click on that arrow once so that it points up. In three easy steps, you now have a list of items sorted by price from lowest to highest. (This technique also works if you click on Silver instead of Gold.)

If you are wondering about the difference between the Gold and Silver currencies used in Sinespace, there is a helpful explanation on their wiki:

Gold

Gold credits can only be purchased for real money by spending users and can be converted back to real money by Sine Wave virtual goods partners.

Gold credits trade at 100 / 1 fixed ratio with U.S. dollars.

Silver

Silver credits are free promotional credits given to users as rewards for participating in the community.

Silver credits cannot be converted to real money but can be used by creators to promote their content to new platform users who have not yet purchased gold.

Pricing strategies

You can set each item you want to sell to gold only, silver only or any combination of the two.

As a guiding principal we would recommend making most of your inventory gold only but offering a few items for silver as well, perhaps 10% of total inventory, to help promote your goods to a wider audience and to give the platform a richer pool of content for new users to explore before they buy gold.

All new avatars in Sinespace start off with 30,000 Silver to help them outfit, style, and equip their avatars.

Did you know that exploring the many worlds that make up Sinespace pays off? Hidden in various places are gift boxes like the one shown below. Click in them, and you will receive a gift of Silver to spend as you like on the Sinespace Shop! So go, and start exploring 😉 …

Please note that in addition to shopping within the Sinespace client, you can also shop using the Sinespace Shop website. All links below lead to item listings on the website, and you can also buy them there. (You can’t use the technique above to sort the store listings on the website, though.)

Here are some of the free outfits! First up is a casual outfit by Tesoromio, consisting of two separate pieces, shiny capri pants and a matching floral top in three different colours: green, sky blue, and purple.

Next, we have the playful, colourful Candy catsuit by B. Rene Gade:

I also wanted to show you a couple more free tops. This is the blue bandeau top from Monks:

And this is the grey female T-shirt by Kozii, with their logo:

All of these items are free! In all these pictures, Vanity Fair is also wearing:

  • the Long Wavy Hair Brown (by Sine Wave; costs 6 Gold or 500 Silver)
  • the Ava skin in Peach (free from the Sinespace Shop; comes in six different skin tones as shown below)
  • the Female Brown Eyes (free from the Sinespace Shop)
  • Flip Flop shoes (part of your free starter wardrobe)
Six different skintones of the Ava skin are free from the Sinespace Shop

Happy shopping!