Month: September 2022

You’re Invited to a Steampunk Party in Sinespace on October 1st, 2022

The social VR/virtual world platform Sinespace is going to be throwing a steampunk-themed party on Saturday evening, October 1st, 2022, at 5:00 p.m. Pacific Time/8:00 p.m. Eastern Time. Residents are encouraged to dress up, with prizes in Gold (Sinespace’s in-game currency) for the best avatar in steampunk attire!

One of the event organizers, Mimi Marie, tells me:

Hi Ryan! Huge Theme this Month. If you have time . Its a great theme with loads of fun. We’ve created a Steampunk region. An amazing region Created by Saphy and filled with all things “Steampunk”, By Mimi and Mizz. . Walls are AI creations that some of us created in [text-prompted artificial intelligence art generator tool] Midjourney. Huge Gold give away For Best in Steampunk attire. Random region games for gold. Plus Music by DJ Spiral.

As you can see, they have a stunning new venue for the party!

The location of the party is called Grimstorp, but it will not be open until just before the event starts. Just click on the Explore button in the bottom row of blue buttons on your Sinespace client, search for “Grimstorp”, and you’ll easily find it! (The example in the image below was for “Zoo”, the previous Zoo-themed event, but it’s exactly the same procedure.)

If you’re brand new to Sinespace, here’s a guide I wrote up on how to get started; it’s intended for those familiar with Second Life, but it should work for anybody.

See you there!

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is sinespace.png

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

UPDATED! The Wall Street Journal Launches a Four-Part Podcast Series on the Metaverse and Second Life

The Wall Street Journal has launched a four-part podcast series called How to Build a Metaverse, with the introduction posted on September 19th, 2022:

We’re in a metaverse déjà vu moment. Companies are spending billions of dollars creating new metaverses, imagining a 3D virtual future. But there’s a metaverse that’s already been around for decades. In this world, people have started businesses, built homes and fallen in love as avatars.

In a new four-part series from The Journal, producer Annie Minoff heads back into that largely forgotten metaverse – Second Life – to tell the story of the metaverse we already have and what it can reveal about the one that’s coming.

Start listening to How to Build a Metaverse on Friday, September 23rd.

You can listen to this podcast via The Wall Street Journal website for the podcast The Journal (here’s a link to the first episode), or via your favourite podcast service, such as Apple, Spotify, or Google. I will definitely be listening in!

As I often say on this blog, Second Life is the perfect model of a mature, fully-evolved metaverse, which newer companies entering this marketplace would be wise to study, learn from, and emulate. This seems a rather appropriate time to share an image which I discovered while browsing on the r/SecondLife subreddit over on the social media website Reddit, directed towards all those newer metaverse wannabees (looking at you, Meta!):

UPDATE Sept. 27th, 2022: I listened to the first instalment of this podcast on Sunday, and I can recommend it highly! Annie Minoff interviews many different people—including former Linden Lab senior staff like Philip Rosedale and Cory Ondrejka—and it’s clear that she has immersed herself into Second Life and its culture a lot more than most reporters! I look forward to listening to future episodes of this podcast.

UPDATE Oct. 4th, 2022: The second episode has dropped, and can be found here: Avatars Behaving Badly (LOL!). Note that new episodes of this four-part podcast will be available to listen to on Fridays.

Thank you to Zella Jane for the heads-up!

Birds of a Feather Presentation at SIGGRAPH 2022: The Dancers of VRChat Talk About Their Dance Communities

CGVR, a member of the RyanSchultz.com Discord server (now over 700 members strong, hailing from any and every metaverse platform!) shared the following two-hour video presentation with me, and I wanted to share it with my readers:

This was a “Birds of a Feather” presentation held during the SIGGRAPH 2022 conference held August 8th to 11th in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. According to the session description:

This Birds of a Feather is for attendees interested in the dance scene, communities and clubs in VRChat — including but not limited to “Calibrate”, “Club Poseidon”, “Club Zodiac”, “VRDancing”, “VR Dance Academy”, “VRPD”. We will talk about experiences with virtual reality dancers, what to make sure of when dancing in VR, how is it different from the real world, what are the pros and cons, and perhaps also a dance performance. The session is hosted and funded from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No. 101017779 (CAROUSEL+).

Organizers:

  • Noshaba Cheema – Max Planck Institut, DFKI
  • Archantos – VRPD
  • Chatmans – VRDancing
  • Pieter van der Linden – VIVITNet
  • Carmen MacWilliams – Grassroots Arts and Research
  • Kenny Mitchell – Edinburgh Napier University, Roblox

And the dance communities involved in order of appearance in this video:

Thanks to CGVR for the heads up!

Second Life Creator Spotlight: The Beautiful, Whimsical Librarian Gown by BlueMoon Enterprises

Solas NaCrealai, the proprietor of the BlueMoon Enterprises store in Second Life (SLURL), is well known for her wonderful fantasy and historical outfits for both female and male avatars (she is also the co-owner of Silvan Moon Designs with Bee Dumpling). Solas is a master at her craft, as can be seen by her latest creation, this whimsical and romantic Librarian Gown!

The Librarian Gown in Teal

This beautifully-draped gown comes with an optional corset made from the spines of old library tomes, decorated at the back with accordion fans of book pages, and laced up the back. The fabric of the skirt is adorned with beautiful handwriting in gold.

The Librarian gown comes in five colours: teal (as shown above), plus olive, plum, rust, and a steel grey colour called “dark”. You can remove the book-spine corset for a simpler look.

The Librarian Gown in Rust
The Librarian Gown in Olive
The Librarian Gown in Plum
The Librarian Gown in Dark

The Librarian Gown will be available at the Engine Room shopping event, which runs from tomorrow, September 20th, to October 20th, 2022. The Librarian Gown is for sale at a 25% discount at the event, at a price of L$338 per colour, or L$1,350 for the entire fatpack of five colours. Snap it up at the sale price before the Engine Room event ends!

Pictures taken at the Library of Angel Manor Estates.