Day: January 22, 2021

Second Life Steals, Deals, and Freebies: A Fairytale Princess Look for Zero Linden Dollars!

Have you joined the RyanSchultz.com Steals, Deals & Freebies group yet? I will be posting EVEN MORE news and tips on finding fabulous freebies and bargains in Second Life than I post here on the blog! More information on this brand new SL group here.

One of Ryan’s top ten tips for freebie hunting (found at the end of my recently-updated All-In-One Guide to Freebies in Second Life) is this sage piece of advice:

Be patient: Freebies can come and go; freebie stores like The Free Dove and Ajuda SL Brasil rotate their freebies regularly, so it’s worthwhile to visit every couple of months, just to see what’s new. It can take some time to pull together a complete look from various components picked up as freebies at different times from different stores and events.

Well, today I have the perfect example for you on how you can combine freebies from three different locations on the grid to create this beautiful princess look, something straight out of a fairytale!

A Disney princess look for zero Lindens!
A closeup of the sheer overshirt and floral crown

Watch and learn how I created this look, step by step!

First, pay a visit to the Designer Showcase shopping event before it closes on January 25th, 2021, to pick up a very generous gift from the Tori’s Stylez booth (exact SLURL), a fatpack of the lovely, bare-shouldered Sylvana ballgown (just click the gift sign at the bottom of the booth; you will need to join the Designer Showcase VIP group for free to pick this gift up):

This gown comes with a HUD that allows you to select one of 16 different colours for the gown, but that’s not all! The Sylvana ballgown features a double skirt, and you can set the overskirt to be sheer or opaque using the HUD! Also, the top part of the gown and the skirt are two separate pieces, so we are going to combine the skirt of the Sylvana gown with a matching bodysuit for the top part of the gown!

Now, teleport to the Shy Doll store (which is located on a sim that only allows a maximum of 20 avatars at one time, so you might have to be patient). On a gift wall in the store are two free group gifts, the Alissa bodysuit and optional matching sheer shirt in rose pink and hologram purple! The Shy Doll Updates group is free to join.

If you’re lucky and get there before the vendor runs out each day, you can also snag a free L$500 gift card to the Shy Doll store, which you can use to pick up another two colours of the Alissa bodysuit and shirt combo! (If you happen to be too late to pick up the gift card, try again tomorrow.)

The final piece of this princess outfit is this glorious Spring Roses crown, which is a free gift from Aisling. Just teleport in to the landing (here’s the SLURL), select the teleporter to Aisling, then click on the gift in the gifts area as shown in the picture below (there’s no need to join any group):

Now, wear the rose Shy Doll bodysuit and sheer shirt, add just the skirt from the Sylvana ballgown gift, and tint it to match using the HUD. The beautiful floral headpiece is the perfect crowning touch!

The complete princess look

If you find that the beribboned, sheer overshirt is a tad too much, simply remove it for a beautiful bare-shouldered ballgown look, as shown below. You can also use the included HUD to turn the sheer overskirt opaque if you prefer a less fussy look.

There you go…simply add a few animated Disney birds and animals, and you’re all set to become the next fairytale princess! (Knight on a white horse is optional.)

All non-store pictures were taken at the Lost Unicorn sim.

A List of Upcoming Social VR Research Events and Conferences

Last year was a watershed year for social VR research! When I first started writing this blog three-and-a-half years ago, social VR conferences were a bit of rarity, but now they seem to be popping up all over. So I thought that today, as one of the bloggers who covers any and all aspects of social VR, I would do my best to pull together a sort of calendar of what events and conferences were coming up.

This list will lean strongly towards academic and corporate research events and conferences pertaining to social virtual reality, as opposed to arts, entertainment, and shopping events. If you feel that I have missed something important, please feel free to leave a comment and I will update this blogpost accordingly. Over time, I hope that this will become a comprehensive list of such events.

Educators in VR UniVirtual Experience: Spring 2021, in AltspaceVR and on other platforms

The Educators in VR group (website, Discord server, Facebook group, Twitter feed), which regularly holds events in AltspaceVR, is one of the very best places to learn more about ongoing research into applications of virtual reality in education!

Plans for the successor to the phenomenally successful Educators in VR 2020 International Summit are already underway (and conference organizer Lorelle VanFossen tells me that she already has “evil plans” for me as a volunteer! 😉 ). Although dates have not yet been announced, it will be pushed back from February to sometime this spring, and it will be called the UniVirtual Experience.

CHI 2021 Social VR Workshop: May 7th, 2021 in Mozilla Hubs

According to the website set up for this event:

This is the 2nd CHI Social VR workshop. It is intended for continuing interdisciplinary discussions regarding proxemics, social cues, and virtual environment designs, which were identified as three important aspects of Social VR communication in our CHI 2020 Social VR Workshop.

The deadline for submissions to this workshop is February21st, 2021.

7th International Conference of the Immersive Learning Research Network (iLRN 2021): May 17th to June 10th, 2021 in VirBELA

Building on the highly successful iLRN 2020 conference, which attracted 3,600 attendees from around the world, iLRN 2021 will be spread out over a four-week period to avoid scheduling challenges, and to give attendees more opportunities to participate. Here is their call for papers and proposals (PDF document with deadlines, etc.).

As I said up top, I will be updating this blogpost over time as I learn of new events to add. Please leave a comment (or ping me via my blog’s Contact Me page) if you know of an event, workshop or conference to add to this list, thanks!