The Beauty Factory womenswear store in Second Life has a great promotion in support of Breast Cancer Awareness Month: if you join the store group, called BF. Beauty Factory Store., for L$250, everything pink in the store is FREE! All you have to do is join the group (if you are not already a member), then click on the pink outfits marked with a pink ribbon as shown below.
Please note that you will only be able to click on each item ONCE, so make sure you Accept it when the blue pop-up window appears! If you stumbleclick, you won’t get a second chance!!
Just look for the pink ribbons on outfits of any shade of pink: soft pink, hot pink…
Here’s the official announcement from their store group:
From Oct 26th to 28th, Beauty Factory will set all pink outfits in our store for free in support of Breast Cancer Awareness Month (Pink October). Join the in-world group to get it!
STARTING NOW!!!!! RUN ♥
In total, I scooped up 155 separate items of pink womenswear—tops, pants, casualwear, lingerie, boots, purses, skirts, dresses, gowns, complete outfits—for L$250, which works out to ONLY L$1.6 PER ITEM! If your avatar loves to wear pink, that’s an incredible bargain!
UPDATE Oct. 27th, 2021: Today I learned about another everything-pink-is-free sale happening at a second store on the grid, called Flamingos. You have to join the Flamingos store group for free, to pick up all the free pink items of womenswear. Today is the final day, though, so you’d better hurry!
I picked up approximately 50 free items at Flamingos—tops, shorts, dresses, lingerie, etc. Be sure to hit the store today!
The October round of the MEN ONLY shopping event in Second Life runs from Oct. 20th to Nov. 15th, 2021, and there are trick-or-treat pumpkins at all the vendor booths. While some of the pumpkins are tricks (no gifts), others have a free present for you if you click on them (you will first need to join the “MEN ONLY by Flair for Events” group; this group is free to join).
Here are four gifts for men which I quite liked, modeled by one of my male alts. First we have this complete men’s outfit from ALANTORI—shirt, black pants, and black loafers—which come with a HUD to change the shirt to one of ten colours. This dressy ensemble comes in sizes for Signature and Slink male mesh bodies, as well as a version for classic, system avatars (along with body alphas). Please note that this is the kind of outfit which should work well on other brands of mesh bodies (e.g. Belleza Jake or Altamura), provided you alpha out the body underneath it, using that body’s HUD.
This black Markus pullover from INSIGHT (with the added touch of a pair of sunglasses hanging from the neckline) comes in the following sizes: Belleza Jake, Signature Gianni, and Meshbody Legacy.
The gift from JUSTICE are these beautifully-detailed Reilly pants, which come with a HUD to change the metals on the buttons and the chain to any of 6 different metal textures. These casual brown pants come in sizes to fit Signature Gianni and Geralt; Belleza Jake; and Slink male mesh bodies.
There are (of course!) some Halloween-themed gifts at the October round of the MEN ONLY event, such as these fun and funky skull-adorned black combat boots from Lapointe & Bastchild:
Novata Second Life has released a 7-minute video highlighting a few more of the gifts you can pick up at the MEN ONLY shopping event:
UPDATE: The draw has been completed and the ten winners have been notified by email.
The MetaMovie presents Alien Rescue, running October 29th to November 21st, 2021
Yes, that’s right, for the first time ever, the RyanSchultz.com blog is throwing a contest! I’m giving away ten free tickets to participate in the MetaMovie’s latest production in NeosVR, Alien Rescue!
VERY IMPORTANT! In order to enter this contest, you *MUST* comment on this blogpost, giving me your name and a using an email address which will be used to contact you if you win. That’s it; that’s all you have to do to enter! 🙂
Please read the entire technical requirements section of the ticket-buying page on the MetaMovie website, BEFORE you enter this contest! NeosVR requires a PCVR setup (i.e. a tethered VR headset). There is also a desktop mode for non-VR users or those who prefer a 2D option; any modern PC with a dedicated graphics card will work for Alien Rescue in Desktop Mode. THERE IS NO MAC VERSION!
I will be using the Pick Giveaway Winner plug-in on my WordPress blog to select ten commenters at random. I will do the random draw at 10:00 p.m. Central Standard Time, on Tuesday, October 26th, 2021, so please do not delay in entering this contest! I will be contacting the winners using the email addresses they have provided when they submitted their comment on this blogpost (NOT via Discord or any other method).
I will email each of the 10 winners to let them know that they have won one Sidekick ticket to Alien Rescue (prize value: US$20), along with a special discount code that can be used for any of the upcoming shows. Winners must buy their tickets from the MetaMovie website via EventBrite, where they will enter the discount code at time of purchase, resulting in the free ticket.
UPDATE Oct. 25th, 2021: The RyanSchultz.com blog is giving away ten free tickets to go see Alien Rescue!The deadline to enter the contest is 10:00 a.m. CST, Tuesday, October 26th, 2021.
The MetaMovie is exciting beyond words. It may actually be now doing what history will see as the beginning of a brand new interactive movie entertainment industry.
—Karel Hulec of NeosVR (where Alien Rescue takes place)
This afternoon, I had the privilege of participating in the impressive new MetaMovie production Alien Rescue, created and directed by Jason Moore and starring Marinda Botha, Nicole Rigo, Kenneth Rougeau, Craig Woodward—and you!
Yes, you don’t just watch Alien Rescue; you’re a key part of the show! There are two roles: Hero and Eyebot. The Hero is the one audience member right in the centre of the story, where they role-play with the cast. Heroes can say or do anything they want, and they can even affect the storyline (the woman, who was the Hero of the performance I attended, landed up giving a hilarious nickname to one of the characters, which became a running joke throughout the rest of the performance!).
The rest of the audience are small, mute Eyebots, who only communicate with the actors via red, green, or yellow lights, but who play an integral part in moving the story forward (often by scouting ahead and warning the Hero and the other actors to hidden dangers). Even better, you can maneuver your Eyebot to catch the performance as it unfolds from any possible point of view! You can choose to follow a particular character if you wish, or you can just wander around as you please, and follow your fancy.
The actors in Alien Rescue are all professionals with years of VR acting experience, physically located across the globe, from New York to South Africa, from Kansas to Connecticut. This troupe has been working closely together for nearly three years. All the actors used the HTC Vive Pro Eye headset, which features eye tracking, along with the newly released Vive Facial Tracker, which tracks the movements of the mouth and the lower face. These added expressions—subtle shifts of the eyes, a blink or a wink, a slight grin or a strong grimace—help bring their avatars to life. Here’s a demonstration of just how realistic avatar movements can be with these features enabled.
At times, the action splits into two separate conversations or scenes. One example was when we all entered a laboratory through a series of dark, winding corridors, while the two actors ahead of me (leading the group) were having one conversation, and the two actors behind me (acting as a rear guard) were having a second one! As an Eyebot hovering between these two groups, I heard snippets of both conversations, which felt like a very natural and intuitive way to learn more about the characters, much as if you were drifting from conversation to conversation at a cocktail party (only this one was with random, weird alien creatures popping up!).
Speaking of alien creatures, all the imaginatively designed avatars in Alien Rescue were created by the very talented Chris McBride (NeosVR username: Ultranique), whom I interviewed in season one of the Metaverse Newscast (back when he was still practicing his artistry in avatar creation on the former social VR platform of High Fidelity, before he moved to NeosVR to work on the MetaMovie project):
And here’s another Metaverse Newscast interview I did with director Jason Moore (again, two years ago, in High Fidelity, when Alien Rescue was still in its earliest planning stages):
(Fun fact: I was the original Hero, and was the very first person to experience the MetaMovie Project, many years ago in High Fidelity, on their first project, called A Very Old Mystery in New New York.)
The set for Alien Rescue is just absolutely insane in its overall dimensions (the following quote comes from the press kit I received). The production design was by Zach Harris (NeosVR username: Nexulan), who managed the entire design team.
With seven large and detailed maps (game lingo for levels, or areas of a world), Alien Rescue immerses audiences into a dark and spooky sci-fi environment with barely-lit passageways, creepy labs, and eerie soundscapes. The crown jewel is the incredible Blackhawk Spaceship, at 160 meters long (nearly two football fields) and 55 meters high, with four levels and over twenty rooms. And, our maps are all connected using a custom programmed ‘instant teleport’ system that reduces load time from one map to the next to zero seconds. Audiences traverse the world of Alien Rescue seamlessly and instantaneously, without the typical “loading screen” found in most VR games and experiences.
The Blackhawk starship (designed by Michael Biszko a.k.a Aegis Wolf)
Jason Moore tells me:
Lead Programmer was Raul Anthony “RueShejn” Ybarra. He did all of the programming using LogiX. He invented the ‘instant travel’ system that gave us those seamless transitions from map to map, he’s a freaking genius.
This afternoon’s performance was the last of a series of private, invitation-based shows before the official premiere next week. According to a press release:
This form of live storytelling in the metaverse is truly new, therefore the prestigious Raindance Film Festival has selected the work to have its world premiere there in late October 2021.
I am telling you right now: you do NOT want to miss this event! It’s the most incredible and imaginative thing I have experienced in virtual reality all year (and trust me, I’ve seen a lot in these past twelve months of pandemic lockdown). The MetaMovie project is a genre-defying mix, combining elements of cinematic storytelling, video games, role playing, improv, and immersive theatre into something completely new, different, and exciting. GO SEE THIS! I loved it!!
Now, a few important points. You can experience Alien Rescue in flatscreen, desktop mode, but obviously for greater immersion, virtual reality is the way to go! Experiencing Alien Rescue in VR requires a PCVR setup. All major VR headsets will work: HTC Vive, Valve Index, HP, Oculus Rift, and Oculus Quest (tethered or Air Link). The minimum graphics card requirements are a Nvidia GTX 1060 or AMD RX 570 with a minimum of 8GB of RAM. A wired connection is strongly recommended!
You should know that you will need a higher-end CPU and GPU on your personal computer to experience the show comfortably in VR; I have an Intel Core i5-6600 chip and an NVIDIA GeForce GTX1080 graphics card on my PC, with 16GB of RAM, and I crashed—twice!— while loading the map for Alien Rescue (however, once the world was fully loaded, I encountered few problems). Every so often, one of the actors’ voices would get all robot-y, but any such audio problems were temporary.
The show is approximately an hour and a half long, from beginning to end, and if you stick around, you might even win an award for your participation in a ceremony held in the credits lounge. (I won two awards!)
