Second Life, Linden Lab & OpenSim News
Check out my Enchanted Fantasy Sunday adventures in Second Life. It’s definitely worth visiting if you have not been before. There are deers to spot around the region, tons of pumpkins and all things Autumn.
Teleport to Enchanted Fantasy
Come and check it out 🙂
Cristiano the owner of the well popular SLUniverse has announced it will be closing down in the next few weeks after recent issues. The SLUniverse Forums will become archived (read-only) and could be unavailable for some time after the closure.
SLU has a been a great source for the latest news in recent years for me. It’s sad to see it go but at least it’s still going on a different way. I joined SLU back in 2010 and I have enjoyed being part of this community.
SLUniverse Posts Milestones
Cristiano mentions the following about the closure and the new site going forward…
So a lot has happened in the past 24 hours. I nearly lost 2.4 million posts and obliterated SLU, got them back, perhaps may have cried a little, then made some decisions about what to do about SLU.
I detailed what I was going through my mind in this post, so I won’t repeat it. However, since writing that, I made some rapid decisions that are already in motion.
First of all, I am launching a new site – VirtualVerse, which expands the scope of SLU to all things related to virtual worlds, whether it is Second Life, Sansar, other VR worlds that are gaining in popularity, or game related worlds like MMOs and open world games. I’ve wanted to become less SL centric, but it has been hard to do that with SL as part of the name.
The SLU forums will be closing within the next few weeks, depending on how long the transition takes. These forums will be archived – they may be unavailable for little while but will come back as a read only forum.
The new site domain is VirtualVerse.one – http://www.virtualverse.one
The good news is that SLUniverse is still going to live on but just in a different format on a new site called VirtualVerse which still includes all things Second Life, Sansar, Virtual Worlds and VR etc.
The new forums will be using Xenforo forum software and not the existing vBulletin forum software. It fully supports mobiles which is great. The forums have a light and dark theme to pick from at the moment.
What do you think about this transition from SLUniverse to VirtualVerse ?
It looks like Linden Lab have revamped the Second Life Join Page today and it looks very good at first glimpse. I really do think this revamp will now improve the new resident experience going forward along with the new themed learning islands which include many cool genres like sci-fi etc.
Part 1: The classic and fantasy avatars are now shown under a drop down menu on the left hand side with the sign up details on the right hand side of the page.
Part 2: Once you click the Create My Account button you will be taken to the next page where you can select your membership level either Basic or Premium with the experiences you can expect for each.
Part 3: The final page says “Your account is activated” and “Your avatar is waiting for you!”. You can now download and install the Second Life viewer and start the great adventure.
What do you think of the new Second Life Join page ? Please share your views in the comments section below.
I would love to know what you found most interesting during the town hall event ?.
Feel free to comment below.
Here is the full video of Ebbe Altberg Town Hall event that took place on Thursday 13th September 2018.
Please spread the word 🙂
After some brainstorming sessions and discussions it’s been officially decided by the Relay For Life of Second Life organisers that Relay Weekend will be moved a month earlier going forward.
The 2019 season will last for 16 weeks and it will be very different compared with previous years. The Relay For Life of Second Life 2019 season will now kick off at 10am SLT on Saturday 16th February 2019 and the annual Relay Weekend will be on Saturday 8th and Sunday 9th June 2019.
This is the first time in Relay For Life of Second Life history that the event will be held in June instead of July. The economic metrics say that having the relay season earlier means more residents will be active and will be logged in.
Both Relay Weekend and the Second Life birthday will now take place in June which means it’s going to be a rather busy month.
On Friday 7th September High Fidelity reached a new record of 356 avatars during a load test yesterday afternoon. The previous record was 256 avatars which was set just recently. These load tests are done on a monthly basis apparently to reach the long-term goal of seeing One Billion in VR.
Here is the official confirmation via the High Fidelity Twitter page.
THANK YOU to everyone who joined our Load Test this afternoon. 356 avatars! A new record. FYI: We’re moving the next load test to a Saturday so more users can join! Learn more and register here 👉 https://t.co/3G16mqpShu #VR
— High Fidelity (@highfidelityinc) September 8, 2018
Reward Breakdown
The next load test will be on Saturday 6th October 2018 from 11am to 12pm PDT. The more avatars that attend these regular load tests the greater the rewards. For more information see here.
Congratulations to High Fidelity on reaching this new milestone.
The new SSP continent in Second Life has expanded from 80 regions to 384 regions in just a few weeks. So far there have been no announcements about this new continent from Linden Lab. We all have to be patient for now and wait to see what the Lindens are up to.
A lot of terraforming work has happened in the past few weeks and it looks very good on the map so far. I love the smiley face with hi on SSP124.
I guess we can call it a Super Secret Project at the moment.
Before – 20th August 2018
Now – 2nd September 2018
What do you think these regions will be used for ?
More updates soon!
Galen who is a very talented programmer over at Metaverse Machines (MM) has a really interesting webpage for live Sansar statistics including charts for daily, weekly and monthly peak/average numbers. There is also a chart for the number of Sansar experiences built over time.
I think that this webpage provides a more accurate picture on the usage stats for Sansar at the moment. Check it all out below 🙂
As of 1.56pm SLT today these are for listed experiences only.
The following charts come from data collected using a publicly available API. We take a snapshot of all currently listed experiences and how many people are in them approximately every 10 minutes. The “peak” lines represent the highest concurrent head-count across all experiences measured in those snapshots across the whole day (or week). The averages are computed by adding up the total head-count measures for each day (or week) and dividing by the number of snapshots. The gaps between each snapshot make this data imperfect but very solid. To avoid visual confusion, today’s data is excluded.
Daniel Voyager 