It’s my 9th Rez Day in Second Life

Happy Halloween! 🙂 Celebrating my 9th Rez Day!

Today marks my 9th Rez Day in Second Life so I guess that makes me old and ancient. For me it’s been a great journey over the past 9 years full of excitement, drama, adventures and much more.

OMG 9 years!

I have met amazing people over the years and I have really enjoyed attending events. I have enjoyed blogging about Second Life and I will continue writing for years to come.

My avatar’s evolution (2006-2015)

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

Thanks to all of you who have been part of my Second Life for the past 9 years. Here’s to many more years in Second Life. Woooot! 😀

Let’s celebrate! 🙂

The 2015 Second Life Creepy Crawl, 10am-3pm SLT, Friday 30th October 2015

On Wednesday 28th October Linden Lab announced further details about this year’s Second Life Creepy Crawl event on the official Second Life blog. For those that don’t know yet this is a inworld event where residents and Lindens get dressed up in their Halloween costumes and enjoy the Halloween celebrations. There will be live music and dancing all day!

The scary Halloween inworld event will take place from 10am SLT until 3pm SLT at various Halloween destinations in Second Life on Friday 30th October 2015.

Halloween Destinations & Times (SLT/PDT)

• Bay City Hallowe’en Hay Maze – 10am SLT to 10.30am SLT
• Dance Island – 10.30am SLT to 11am SLT
• Vampyr Empire – 11am SLT to 11.30am SLT
• The Truth About Bats & Avies – 11.30am SLT to 12pm SLT
• Pumpkin Town 2015 – 12pm SLT to 12.30pm SLT
• Club End of Days – 12.30pm SLT to 1pm SLT
• American Cancer Society – 1pm SLT to 1.30pm SLT
• AEG Haunted Beach – 1.30pm SLT to 2pm SLT
• Haunted Halloween Tour – 2pm to 3pm SLT

The event announcement… 

This Friday, October 30th from 10:00am SLT until 3:00pm SLT – you are most cordially invited to join us inworld for the 2015 Second Life Creepy Crawl! “What is the Creepy Crawl?” you may ask. It’s a scary-good inworld event where Lindens and Residents get dressed up in their best Halloween costumes and roam from spooky spot to spooky spot for music, dancing, and celebrating! It’s going to be a bit like a ‘pub crawl’ without the need for taxi fare.

Costumes are strongly encouraged for this event – some come out and show off your best. I am still deciding between 4 different costume choices I’ve put together and may have to wear all 4 at some point during the crawl. It’s a good thing we’ll have 5 hours to run amok and have fantastical fun. Just keep in mind that this event is for General and Moderate audiences when perfecting your look.

Below is the schedule and Destination Guide entries – so if you’re unable to join us for the entire duration – pop into the spot on the schedule when you can log in.

The 2015 Second Life Creepy Crawl is getting closer – don’t blink or it could be upon with you little to no warning!

See you there!

Spread the word! 🙂

BURN2 2015: The Man & The Temple

The Man will be burning today at 6am SLT, 12pm SLT and 6pm SLT at the annual BURN2 2015 event in Second Life. It’s going to be very exciting and the best one yet. Don’t miss this! 😀

SLURL – arrive early because there will be hundreds of avatars watching from nearby regions!

The Temple will be burning on Sunday 25th October 2015 at 6am SLT, 12pm SLT and 6pm SLT.

Spread the word and enjoy the burns 🙂

Linden Lab announces upcoming improvements for Second Life

On Tuesday 20th October Linden Lab published a blog post about Second Life Improvements – What’s New & What’s Coming Soon!. Here are the improvements announced in the blog post with updates on other projects going on…

Project Valhalla

The Project Valhalla viewer now comes with the new Chromium Embedded Framework (CEF) that supports modern web technologies like HTML5, CSS3 and WebGL. This new framework replaces the outdated QTWebkit framework and makes sure for a better experience.

The lab points out that standard HTML5 is now the way forward and I think this is a good step forward. Flash content and Quicktime may still work however the lab have said they can’t promise support.

• Check out the Second Life Project Valhalla viewer here

Rendering Complexity

The lab have announced a new Avatar Maximum Complexity control which lets you prevent expensive to render avatars from lagging you. There is a default limit which is based on the rending performance of the user’s system. There will be a notice when rending complexity changes apparently that will give you an indication when you are over the limit of too many avatars around you.

Another update is that you can now create different saved presets for your graphics settings and quickly switch them using a new top bar pull down menu. This sounds like fun and I’m sure it will be very useful indeed.

• Try out the Release Candidate Viewer

Notifications

Incoming notifications are now sorted into categories providing a better way to view, prioritize and manage notices. Each notification in the list can be now be expanded or collapsed too.

• Try out the RC Viewer

Second Life Website

The lab have said in the blog post that Flash has now been removed from the Second Life website due to recent security problems.

Mesh Importer

The lab have said that they have recently shipped the Mesh Importer Viewer which performs name based LOD association and handles models with a variety of materials.

Inventory Loss

The lab are still working on the complicated problem and improvements are in the pipeline. The lab mentioned this too..”A recent simulator change now prevents loss of no-copy items due to a failed rez”.

HTTP Project

In the new RC Viewer the lab have upgraded all the rest of the HTTP uses in the viewer. Features will now perform better and more reliably in the new RC viewer.

Summary

Back in February 2015 the lab did publish some huge improvements for Second Life including Hover Height, Notifications, Mesh Import, Viewer Managed Marketplace and updates to the graphics settings.

It’s really good to know that Second Life is still being worked on and that exciting improvements are coming soon. Yay! 🙂

Second Life & OpenSim Stats Update – October 2015

My last stats blog post for Second Life and OpenSim was published back in July 2015. I reported that Second Life regions were still declining and that OpenSim regions were increasing.

Not much has changed since then however it’s worth pointing out that Private Estates dropped under the 18, 000 mark since July 2015. If trends continue then the total number of Main Grid regions will drop under the 25, 000 mark within the next three months. Something needs to be done to stop the decline going into the red and for a recovery to start happening sooner than later.

OpenSim seems to be doing rather well this year with new records being regularly in terms of region counts and active users. The Hypergrid is still gaining interest it seems and I would imagine more records will be set before the end of the year. My next report will be the end of December 2015.

Here are the latest numbers for October 2015

Second Life

As of 20th October 2015

• Total Number of Main Grid regions: 25, 103
• Private Estates: 17, 966 
• Linden Owned: 7, 137
• Year to date for private estate net loss: 634 regions = 3.4% down

Via SLUniverse Forums

Second Life Signups

• 43, 634, 454 total signups for Second Life so far
• Average of 10, 000 – 12, 000 new signups everyday for Second Life

Maximum Daily Concurrency dropped during the course of 2015 and is slowly going up again as we near the end of the year. 

OpenSim

As of 15th October 2015

• Now the equivalent of 68, 941 standard regions on 302 active public grids on OpenSim
• 487, 243 registered users
• 33, 454 active users
• InWorldz top for active users: 6, 696
• Virtual Worlds Grid top for region counts: 19, 749

Via Hypergrid Business

Hypergrid Business Data

Hypergrid

“This month, hypergrid-enabled grids gained a net of 1,820 active users this month, while the closed grids gained 60. Currently, 74 percent of all public grids are on the hypergrid, accounting for 93 percent of OpenSim’s total land area and 65 percent of its active users”.

Hypergrid Business Data

BURN2 2015 interesting landmarks to check out

BURN2 2015 is open in Second Life and here are some interesting landmarks to check out this week on the playa. Click the SLURL links below to teleport and have fun exploring. 🙂

Walk in Camp – SLURL

The SideShow – SLURL

Skycat – SLURL

The Blur Angle – SLURL

Unity – SLURL

Thomtrance – SLURL

Maze of Faces – SLURL

Beyond The Mask – SLURL

Learn more about BURN2 2015 here.

Historical snapshots of Burning Life & BURN2 in Second Life

Here are some of my historical snapshots of Burning Life and BURN2 in Second Life. More historical snapshots can be found here of BURN2 and here for Burning Life.

Burning Life 2009 regions

BURN2 Festival 2010

BURN2 2010 – Welcome Gate!

BURN2 2010 – The Man burn

BURN2 2010 – The Temple burn

BURN2 2011 – Press Day

BURN2 2012 – The Man burns

BURN2 2012 – Live Music Event

BURN2 2013 – Lamplighter Procession

BURN2 2013 – Greeters!

BURN2 2014 – The Casbah Stage

BURN2 2014 – The Man

BURN2 2014 – The Temple

BURN2 2015 starts today!

BURN2 Press Day 2015: some teaser snapshots

Here are some teaser snapshots from BURN2 Press Day 2015 in Second Life (16th October). I think the regions look incredible and the event organizers have done a great job this year in preparing for this huge annual event. First preview of the BURN2 2015 regions, see below! 🙂

• Event Calendar – check this out! 

I will be posting more snapshots during the weekend on my blog and on my Flickr stream. Stay tuned! 🙂

Main Stage

The Man

The Temple

The Lamplighters

Burning Man- Black Rock

Inner Child Camp

That’s all folks for now. More soon! 🙂

VWBPE 2016 details announced

Great news to hear that VWBPE 2016 has been confirmed for next year. The 9th annual conference will be happening from 9th-12th March 2016 in Second Life. The 2016 theme is Horizons and again the conference will be free to attend.

• The call for proposals opens on 26th October 2015
• Registration opens 26th October 2015. 

“The VWBPE Conference is a completely virtual conference that is conducted using simulated environments. Participants experience the conference through a virtual reality type setting including conference rooms, theatres, exposition halls, meeting spaces, and other types of venues similar to a brick and mortar type conference”.

I really enjoyed VWBPE 2015 and my favourite moment was when Ebbe Linden did his live opening keynotes speech on education, Second Life and the next generation platform. There was a huge attendance this year and alot of useful information came out of the conference I thought.

I hope that Ebbe Linden and more Lindens will be able to take part in either one or more keynote talks during VWBPE 2016. I guess we will have to wait and see what happens.

• My summary on Ebbe Linden opening keynotes speech
• My VWBPE 2015 review

Stay updated on VWBPE 2016 at vwbpe.org. 

BURN2 Press Day 2015, opens today at 10am – 8pm SLT

BURN2 2015 opens to the press today!

Today marks BURN2 Press Day 2015 in Second Life and this year there will six regions to explore. At 10am SLT through until 8pm SLT members of the Second Life press will be able to get a sneak preview of everything.

BURN2 Regions List (SLURLS)

• Burning Man- Black Rock
• Burning Man- Deep Hole
• Burning Man- Frog Pond
• Burning Man- Jade
• Burning Man- Limbo
• Burning Man- Looking Glass

BURN2 2015 the Carnival of Mirrors will be opening at 12pm SLT on Saturday 17th October 2015 through until Sunday 25th October 2015 and it’s going to be incredible from start to end I think. I am most looking forward to exploring, seeing the man and the temple burns. I will be uploading snapshots and reporting my experiences on my blog. Stay tuned for that. 🙂

I do think there needs to be more coverage of BURN2 from Second Life bloggers and from members of the press. It would be great to see more coverage of this event!

BURN2 Events and Times

BURN2 2015: Carnival of Mirrors will open on Saturday the 17th of October at noon SLT with a procession by the Lamplighters, beginning at their Village which is not far from the Welcome Gate where you arrive. You are all invited to explore, experience and express the joy of the Burn and revel in the music, art and colourful constructions born out of the imaginations of creative Burners. And, of course there will be fire!

The event opens with a Lamplighters procession at 12:00pm SLT on the 17th, with another at 7:00pm SLT. Additional processions will take place at noon and 7pm SLT daily through the 23rd. On the 24th there will be no processions, but the Man Burns will be at 6am, 12pm and 6pm SLT on the 24th. On the last day the Lamplighters will perform their last processions at 5am, 11am and 5pm SLT – one hour before each Temple Burn. Also on Temple Burn day, Lamplighter processions will pause along their route at Center Camp for a short Fire Dance performance before continuing the procession toward the Temple.

More information about the event can be seen via the menu at the left side of the home page here on www.burn2.org.

We invite members of the press to come and visit on Friday, the 16th of October, before the opening of this festival of fire that is an echo of Burning Man in a virtual setting, so they may pass along a teaser of what has been prepared for the celebration of the Burn. With a Press Pass you will be able to visit from 10:00am to 8:00pm SLT. BURN2 Staff and creatives will be on hand to answer questions and share information. Apply for your Press Pass! We look forward to seeing you and saying, “Welcome Home!”

Spread the word that BURN2 2015 in Second Life and let’s make this year the best yet. 🙂