High Fidelity Pick of the Day: Mexico

Today’s High Fidelity Pick of the Day is the colourful and cheerful domain called simply Mexico. It’s Día de Muertos (Day of the Dead) and the air is full of floating lanterns! There’s a real sense of unified artistic style in this domain that I really like. 

HiFi Mexico 1 25 Feb 2018HiFI Mexico 2 25 Feb 2018

Visit the graveyard and the pueblo village. You can pick up a free sombrero to wear from one of the carts in the central square, or a decorated skull facemask.

To visit Mexico, you’ll need to download and install the High Fidelity software here. You don’t need a VR headset; you can run High Fidelity on the Windows or Mac desktop. Once you have installed the software, log in and select GOTO from your tablet menu in your VR headset (or from the menu along the bottom of your screen if you’re in desktop), search for “Mexico” and you’re there!

HiFi Mexico 4 25 Feb 2018.png

High Fidelity Hijinks: DJ Phlash at Rust Nightclub

High Fidelity DJ Phlash at Rush 9 Feb 2018.png

Note: This is the first in a new category of blogposts about events in High Fidelity, which I have decided to call “High Fidelity Hijinks”. (I’m not sure I’ll keep the name, but it works for now. It’s sufficiently alliterative.)

Yesterday evening I visited the Rust domain in High Fidelity, where I joined about thirty other avatars who were dancing to music spun by DJ Phlash. Apparently, he performs every Friday from 4:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. Pacific Time.

The evening was notable for the presence of High Fidelity CEO Philip Rosedale (he’s on the far left in the picture above), the founder of Second Life. The avatars present were able to dance by clicking on the coloured square tiles beneath them (unfortunately, you could only do this in desktop mode; it didn’t work when in a VR headset).

I also was able to use HiFi’s new ability to directly pay another avatar in order to “tip” DJ Phlash 100 HFC (High Fidelity Coins, the in-world currency in HiFi). I really have no idea if that amount was too much or not enough; it’s kind of hard to judge what a currency is worth when it’s so brand-new, and there are so few things to buy!

High Fidelity has been very generous in giving out HFC to its users: I got 10,000 HFC when I first set up my wallet as part of the beta test, and I just got another 5,000 HFC when the person-to-person payment system was launched. (Note that only users with pre-existing High Fidelity accounts got these HFC grants. As far as I am aware, newly-created HiFi accounts don’t qualify for them.)

All in all, it was a fun evening!

UPDATE Feb. 13th: I have decided to rename this new category High Fidelity Highlights, rather than High Fidelity Hijinks.

The Sansar Newsblog Has Changed Its Name to RyanSchultz.com

The SansarNewsblogis now

I have decided that I’m not going to wait for Linden Lab to issue brand guidelines for Sansar. I am rebranding the Sansar Newsblog under my own name. (I’ve held the domain name for well over a decade, and this is the perfect place to finally use it!)

All of the old blogposts are still searchable and accessible, and almost all the Sansar-related blogposts have been tagged with the tag “Sansar” to make them easier to find. All the old URLs should still work as before.

Along with the new name comes a new focus. I will no longer be focusing near-exclusively on Sansar in this blog. Instead, I will be expanding my coverage to provide “News and Views on Social VR, Virtual Worlds, and the Metaverse”, as my new blog tagline now states. Platforms covered will include, but not be limited to:

Note that I do not plan to write much about Second Life and its many Opensim-based spin-offs; there are already over a thousand avid bloggers who do an excellent job of that! I plan to focus on the newer platforms, especially those that support virtual reality.

I will be closing the Facebook and Google+ groups I created for the Sansar Newsblog, and creating new groups for this rebranded blog.