“I like to dream with my eyes”: The BBC Reports on Lessons the Metaverse Can Learn from Second Life

Have you joined the RyanSchultz.com Discord yet? You’re invited to be a part of the first ever cross-worlds discussion group, with over 600 people participating from every social VR platform and virtual world! We discuss, debate and argue about the ever-evolving metaverse and all the companies building it. You’re welcome to come join us! More details here.

Premium Second Life members can get a lovely Linden Home (image source: Linden Lab, via BBC)

I often say that 18-year-old Second Life has many lessons which newer metaverse platforms would be wise to learn from, and it would appear that the BBC agrees! Yesterday, in an article titled Zuckerberg’s metaverse: Lessons from Second Life, reporter Joe Tidy wrote:

It has been about 10 years since I first entered the virtual world of Second Life, arguably the internet’s first attempt at what every tech giant is now racing to build: the so-called metaverse.

The term metaverse was coined in the 1990s in a science-fiction novel, Snow Crash, where it served as a virtual-reality successor to the internet, where people live large portions of their lives in virtual environments.

Second Life peaked in the late 2000s with millions of users and hundreds of excitable headlines about people devoting hours of their daily lives to live digitally.

Since then, I assumed it had died a slow and quiet death. But how wrong I was.

One of the people he met in-world was Rei:

Our avatars bumped into each other after teleporting to a seaside world modelled on a strange rundown 1960s Scottish fishing village. He told me he had been spending time in Second Life for about four months after “getting curious about all this metaverse stuff”.

Rei is not a fan of Zuckerberg’s vision of the metaverse. “They’ll want to control everything. But I think the people should be in charge and it should be fully open,” he told me.

The entire article is well worth a read, especially if you are not familiar with Second Life and its history. SL’s massive marketplace where avatars can buy and sell user-generated content are just one of the reasons why Second Life is still so popular (in fact, many newer social VR platforms such as VRChat and Rec Room are hard at work at building their own in-world marketplaces!).

There are indeed many lessons which the newer social VR platforms (such as Meta’s Horizon Worlds, still in closed beta testing two years after it was first announced) can learn from the both the successes and the scandals of Second Life’s 18-year history. Joe ends his article:

Back in Second Life, I asked Rei one last question before I logged off: why does he keep coming back?

He answered: “I like to dream with my eyes”.

So, I’d like to take this opportunity to invite you—if you have never done so, or even if you haven’t been in SL for a long time—to come pay us a visit! You might be surprised by what you find. Second Life still is a vibrant place, 18 years after its founding, with tens of thousands of concurrent users in the virtual world at any time of the day or night.

The Second Life website (just click on “Sign Up” in the upper right-hand corner to get started)

Thanks to Neobela for the heads up!

Second Life Steals, Deals, and Freebies: the Free Leah Female Bento Mesh Head by Kalhene

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.

I have a lot of new people now following me on Twitter, and visiting my blog. If you are new to my blog, welcome! In a blog which I originally began a little over four years ago, covering virtual reality in general and social VR platforms in particular, many of my newer readers are no doubt puzzled and/or bemused by my regular blogposts about Second Life, which at the ripe old age of 18 is seen by many outsiders as quaint, outdated technology. You might be asking yourself: Why do I bother with SL, when there are so many newer platforms out there?

It’s because I still see Second Life as the perfect, mature, fully-evolved model of a successful metaverse, which many newer platforms would be wise to study, learn from, and emulate. I often joke that I got my Ph.D. in Virtual Worlds from the University of Second Life, and one of the lessons I learned is this: that people are willing to invest considerable amounts of time, energy and money in avatar customization! There’s a reason why SL has a marketplace with 2 billion user-generated assets to date, and still boasts an annual GDP of US$600 million! Many content creators earn a not insignificant amount of income by creating and selling mesh avatar heads and bodies, clothing and footwear, hair, makeup, and nail polish, etc.

One of those Second Life content creators is Kalhene, whom I have written about often before on this blog (here’s a link to all my blogposts about Kalhene). If you join the Kalhene store group for free, you can now pick up a lovely female Bento mesh head called Leah for FREE! Just teleport here, join the Kalhene group, and slap this sign to the right of the Kalhene Erika store entrance:

While the sign says the Leah mesh head is for the Kalhene Erika mesh body, you can use it with any Bakes on Mesh (BoM) body; in the following pictures I am pairing it with the Altamura Juliet mesh body (a Valentine’s Day group gift from a couple of years ago; this body requires a L$99 Omega system kit for Altamura bodies, plus a BoM relay which you can pick up for free from the Altamura store, in order to wear BoM skin).

Here’s what the head looks like with the included eyebrow and body shapes, without any adjustments to the head and body sliders, using the Sunkissed Bakes on Mesh skin included, one of four BoM skin tones in the package (Porcelain, Pale, Sunkissed, and Toffee). The system eyes are included as well, in four different colours. The HUD allows you to select from five different types of eyelashes, and 24 different colours of lipstick. There’s also BoM/system eyeliner, eyeshadow, and matte lips in the folder.

After making a few tweaks to the head and body sliders on the included shape, here is what the Leah head looks like:

Now, I don’t know how long this free group gift will be available, so I would encourage you to hurry down to the Kalhene Erika shopping mall sim and snap up this free Leah Bento mesh head before it’s gone! Here’s your taxi.

And, of course, I will be adding this latest freebie to my list of free and inexpensive mesh heads and bodies for female avatars, which I keep as up-to-date as possible as I find new products in my travels across the grid!

Happy freebie shopping!

Ignite 2021: Microsoft Is Adding Avatars to Microsoft Teams

Have you joined the RyanSchultz.com Discord yet? You’re invited to be a part of the first ever cross-worlds discussion group, with over 600 people participating from every social VR platform and virtual world! We discuss, debate and argue about the ever-evolving metaverse, its avatars, and all the companies building it. Come join us! More details here.

Hard on the heels of Facebook (now Meta) and their Connect 2021 event comes today’s Microsoft Ignite 2021, where Microsoft shows off some of the technology they’re working on. And, of course, give their own spin on the metaverse!

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella presents the company’s metaverse solutions

Here’s a seven-minute clip from Ignite of Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella talking about his vision for the metaverse:

Tom Warren of tech news website The Verge reports:

Microsoft is entering the race to build a metaverse inside Teams, just days after Facebook rebranded to Meta in a push to build virtual spaces for both consumers and businesses. Microsoft is bringing Mesh, a collaborative platform for virtual experiences, directly into Microsoft Teams next year. It’s part of a big effort to combine the company’s mixed reality and HoloLens work with meetings and video calls that anyone can participate in thanks to animated avatars.

With today’s announcement, Microsoft and Meta seem to be on a collision course to compete heavily in the metaverse, particularly for the future of work.

An example of a 3D avatar within Microsoft Teams (image source: Microsoft, from TheVerge)

And—if you’re having a bad hair day—hey, no worries!

Microsoft Teams will get new 3D avatars in a push toward a metaverse environment, and you won’t need to put a VR headset on to use them. These avatars can literally represent you both in 2D and 3D meetings, so you can choose to have an animated version of yourself if you’re not feeling like turning your webcam on.

Bloomberg reports that this new feature will be released next year:

If you’re worried the metaverse will be all fun and games, fear not: Microsoft Corp. is taking its own stab at the idea, and it will have PowerPoint and Excel.

The company is adapting its signature software products to create a more corporate version of the metaverse — a concept promoted by Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg that promises to let users live, work and play within interconnected virtual worlds.

The first offering, a version of Microsoft’s Teams chat and conferencing program that features digital avatars, is in testing now and will be available in the first half of 2022. Customers will be able to share Office files and features, like PowerPoint decks, in the virtual world.

It would appear Microsoft’s avatars (like those in Meta’s Horizon Worlds and Horizon Workrooms) will lack legs (image source: Microsoft, via Bloomberg)

Of course, most people already know that Microsoft acquired the social VR platform AltspaceVR in 2017 (which, by the way, is still absolutely killing it with live events programming!). Altspace is being used for a variety of purposes, including higher education (for example, teaching a psychology course at Mount Royal University).

AltspaceVR (image source: VRFocus)

It looks like we will see more integration between established business software such as Microsoft Teams with concepts from the metaverse, including avatars, over the next twelve months. The era of avatarism appears to be in full swing!

Thanks to Rainwolf for the heads up!

The Brittle Epoch: Canadian Artist Bryn Oh Unveils a New Immersive, Interactive Art Installation in Second Life

Brittle Epoch

Bryn Oh is a Canadian artist and sculptor whom I often have written about before on the RyanSchultz.com blog (here is a link to all my blogposts which mention her). She has long been active in the virtual world of Second Life, and has also created art installations on other metaverse platforms such as Sansar and the former High Fidelity.

On November 1st, 2021, Bryn unveiled her latest immersive, interactive art installation, a continuation of her previous work, called Brittle Epoch. Second Life blogger Inara Pey writes:

Opening on November 1st at her arts region Immersiva, is Bryn Oh’s latest work, entitled The Brittle Epoch, an installation that has been several months in development.

Most of the work is set in a mysterious frozen landscape, with a howling winter wind blowing the snow around, under an oversize full moon. The art installation makes good use of hidden teleporters to whisk you from scene to scene, and you are encouraged to click on everything in order to learn more about what happened! A HUD that is automatically attached to your viewer when you enter helps guide you through the experience (be sure to read all the signs at the entrance!).

Here’s a two-minute promotional video for The Brittle Epoch, released today by Linden Lab (the makers of Second Life):

You can pay a visit to the experience here. Inara Pey also notes:

As noted, Bryn’s installations all take place within the same over-arching universe, and thus share degrees of connectedness. As such, for those possibly unfamiliar with her work, or who wish to re-acquaint themselves with her themes and idea, I recommend the following resources:

Thanks to Inara for compiling this list of links! You can read her full review of The Brittle Epoch here.