Category Archives: VR

Nord Storm Steampunk

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Nord Storm is a vast steampunk role playing experience featuring an abandoned laboratory, a sacred cathedral, retro gadgets, and more in a wintery mountain town.
 

For those unfamiliar, steampunk is a retro futuristic sub genre of science fiction, and it has a sizable devotion in Second Life with many steampunk regions to explore. Nord Storm is a huge region with architecture and technology bearing the distinct aesthetic of what would be considered futuristic through a 19th-century lens. 

Upon arrival, you are greeted with the message: “Here you can fight monsters, solve puzzles, upgrade avatar skills, craft, cook your own food, earn experience coins, play team games, fish, compete with other residents in skills, and much more… The game is available to all users.” Sounds like enough activity to fill up what’s left of 2020!

You first enter Nord Storm at an open air train station. In order to participate in the game component of the experience, you can receive a HUD from a machine nearby. The HUD has a built-in collision-based combat system. To hunt ghosts, you don’t have to wear a combat system, but if you want your avatar to be able to deal damage to them, the combat system will allow you to do so.

You are free to explore on foot, but who wouldn’t want to use the time machine? All you have to do is launch the portal by reclining in the car seat. Click on the monitor to select one of the many locations in this world.

Be sure to keep an eye out for places marked with gold coins. When you sit at the designated earning spot, coins will be credited once a minute and can be used to purchase different items that enhance gameplay in the shop. You can also redeem prizes in the factory once you accrue enough experience points.

More details, pictures, and maps can be found at the official Nord Storm website.

For those more interested in admiring the architecture and environment than the gaming aspect, there is no pressure to conform to any specific gameplay rules. Everybody is welcome to visit the church, peruse the library, enjoy a quiet moment in the garden, or take a ride in the steampunk train.

If you’d like to adorn your avatar in steampunk attire, the marketplace has outfits and accessories for all levels of commitment. This region takes winter wonderland to the next level with the highly detailed levels of interactivity, gorgeous terrain, and hidden treats. Let Nord Storm whisk you away today.

Have a Great Week from all of us at Zoha Islands Fruit Islands/Eden

Thanksgiving Bakefail

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Thanksgiving Bakefail

Update – We have received several reports that some avatars are still appearing as a cloud. If you have logged out and logged back in after this fix was applied and still appear as a cloud, please take the following steps:

– Open your Lost and Found folder and delete any extra Current Look or Current Outfit folders you see there.
– Open your Trash folder and permanently delete the Current Look or Current Outfit folders you just moved there.
– Run a character test via Develop > Avatar > Character Tests > Test Male or Test Female. Alternatively you may choose an outfit in your My Outfits folder, right click it, and select Replace Current Outfit.

If you continue to appear as a cloud after taking these steps, or have any other issues with your avatar’s appearance, please contact support for further assistance!
Dec 11, 09:01 PST

Monitoring – We have deployed a tool which Support can use to clear this problem from your account.
If you have already reported to Support that your avatar is a cloud, we have set up the fix
for your account. The next time you log in (log out if you’re logged in now) the fix will be applied.
You may need to select a new Outfit or otherwise change your avatar to fully rez the first time
after the fix.
If you have not filed a ticket with Support yet, you may do so – we are running a scan of active
accounts and will apply the fix to any we find that need it.
Dec 10, 14:41 PST

The 10th Annual SL Christmas Expo Is Open

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The 10th Annual SL Christmas Expo Is Open

Posted on by Daniel Voyager

 


The 10th annual Second Life Christmas Expo opened to the public on Friday 4th December and will remain open until Sunday 13th December 2020. Linden Lab revealed the next edition of Linden Homes featuring Chalets. Visit the preview region here.

Theme 7 – Chalet Linden Homes
Christmas Expo Region

Linden Lab have posted details about the 10th annual Second Life Christmas Expo on the official Second Life blog this weekend which is worth checking out. The 10th annual SL Christmas Expo features over 225 merchants and nearly 100 live performers.

Christmas Stockings Region

You can expect Christmas holiday activities to take place from raffles, auctions, Christmas tree lots, the annual snowman contest along with much more. See the special events page here.

Christmas Mornings Region

The 10th annual SL Christmas Expo is in support of The American Cancer Society and Relay For Life of Second Life. This year there are 14 regions (+1 American Cancer Society region) to explore offering entertainment, shopping opportunities and Christmas related activities.

SL Christmas Expo Regions 2020

There is something for everyone at the expo this year. Visit the 2020 SL Christmas Expo today and have a great Christmas. Spread the word! 🙂

 

Residents can:

* Vote (by donation to a special ACS Christmas Expo Kiosk) for your favorite decorated Linden Home at the 3rd Annual Lights of Hope Home Decorating Contest.

* Bid for an exclusive Linden Home Package, including a 6 Month Premium Membership; a Private Bellisseria lot with their choice of a Linden Home.

* Bid to Create a New Linden Last Name to be added to the list of choices for new members.

* Bid to Name a Future Bellisseria Region (3 Available).

* Purchase a Limited Edition Linden Christmas Ornament, specially designed for the 2020 Expo and only available at the Expo.

* Pose with Santa Patch and his elves! A very special opportunity to pose for a picture with our VP of Product Operations, Patch Linden, and his team – on Wednesday, December 9th from 1pm to 3pm PT, in the main SL Christmas Expo region. 

Stay updated on the latest news and events visit the SL Christmas Expo 2020 website.

Happy Holidays From All Of Us At Zoha Islands Fruit Islands/Eden

Virtual World Simulation of COVID Infection

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Virtual World Simulation of COVID Infection Significantly Improves Student Awareness of Social Distancing

COVID game simulation SORBET OpenSim

Among the many problems the COVID pandemic has created is the challenge of opening up elementary schools while also teaching kids the importance of maintaining social distance.  But how do you teach social distancing to kids who are learning remotely? 

Enter the SORBET project (for Socially Responsible Behaviors through Embodied Thinking), created in OpenSim, the open source virtual world platform, launched while Singapore was under quarantine. Lead developed by Kenneth YT Lim, a researcher with Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, the SORBET simulation gives kids treasure hunts and other mini-games to play — with the likelihood of infection, if students allow their avatars to stray too close to each other. (See above.)

COVID game education Singapore

“In real life, we all have to develop the new habit of keeping a certain distance apart,” as Lim explains some of the theory backing SORBET, “but there is no RL reinforcement to our behavior, and also no RL personal augment which makes us continually aware of that safe circle.” (And kids are likely to forget about social distancing during sudden bursts of rambunctious kid-ness.)

Before running the simulation, kids are surveyed on their attitudes about the pandemic and social distancing — then after playing in SORBET, given the same survey, to see if their perspectives have changed.  

In a test on 114 students, the results were promising:

“In terms of the quantitative data,” Lim tells me, “there was a statistically significant positive increase in the respondents to the statement, ‘I can make a difference to how Singapore responds to the COVID-19 pandemic’. In addition, from a sample of 32 academically less strong students… there were statistically significant positive differences in how students responded to questions such as ‘I think about how my actions affect other people’, ‘I believe that problems should be solved by people working together to find a solution’, and ‘as young children, we are able to contribute to the community.” So the quantitative data tells us the approach is having its intended outcomes, especially among less academically strong students.”

Testing a group of Korean graduate students, Lim noticed that after a half hour in SORBET, “[they] had subconsciously positioned their avatars a respectful distance apart from each other.” This is consistent with a phenomena first reported by Nick Yee during his PhD work at Stanford over a decade ago, that people using virtual worlds tend to move their avatars away from other players, to maintain our unwritten rules of personal space. Now, that virtual world phenomena could be leveraged to help fight a real world pandemic. 

Read more about SORBET here. What’s most interesting to me is that similar simulations can easily be created for popular virtual worlds for kids like ROBLOX and Minecraft, and might achieve similar positive results.

“SORBET is actually a pedagogical approach (embodied first half plus dialogic second half) supported by a technical back end (outbound data from (any) world) written to an external database,” as Ken puts it. “Both Roblox and Minecraft support out-bound calls of in-world data. as long as these calls can write data to an external database, the SORBET approach can be adopted [to them].”

Image and photo via Dr. Lim. 

Have a Great week from all of us at Zoha Islands Fruit Islands/Eden

Introducing the Second Life Public Calendar!

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We’ve heard your requests and we’re introducing a new public Google calendar that will have all Linden Lab official events listed. This new calendar offers a convenient way to get an at-a-glance look at upcoming User Group meetings and other Linden Lab-sponsored events (such as the Second Life Book Club and upcoming Winter Wonderland snow fight).

To access the web version of this calendar, go to second.life/calendar, no login is required. 

You can additionally use this ICAL feed link to add it to your own personal calendar. You can also click the +GoogleCalendar icon on the bottom right of the web calendar to add it to your Google Calendar. Or, copy over individual events that you are interested in by clicking on the event and click “copy to my calendar.”

SL Public Calendar.jpg

 

We hope you find this calendar helpful. It will be frequently updated, but if you see any errors or discrepancies, reach out to Strawberry Linden at strawberry@lindenlab.com.

We are looking forward to seeing you at some upcoming events, especially the Linden & Resident Snowball Fight on December 18th. Look out for detailed blog posts about that and the Winter Shop & Hop, coming soon!

For Resident-run events, view our Events page. Seraphim also has a very handy Google calendar for Resident-run shopping events. 

Happy Holidays!
 Have a great week from all of us at Zoha Islands and Fruit Islands/Eden

An Interview With Amforte

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Make Sure you catch Amforte at Brick Shiphouse

Zoha Islands and fruit Islands Community hangout and Venue

AMFORTEPROMOSL (1).png

Image provided by Amforte

This week’s featured artist is Amforte, whose dedication to music started when she was a child, growing more potent with time as she became familiar with various styles. This singer songwriter is not afraid to bare her soul, and her music is an energetic and comforting reminder that there is always someone who can relate to what you’re feeling.
 

Please check out her official website to listen to her music and see what’s she’s been up to! Below are some links to follow her inworld.

AMFORTE (AMFORTE Clarity):: 
secondlife:///app/agent/16f3fc26-7d2b-4e89-9de2-0cd96303df2d/about

SL Music Group
secondlife:///app/group/6e7b8cdc-46a2-6ccd-dd97-f15423689378/about

 

Q: When/how did you hear about Second Life?
A: I heard about Second Life from a friend who was already performing online. It wasn’t long before I signed up and started performing. This was all back in December of 2008.

Q: How did you start playing music?
A: I was eight years old when I begged my father to let me take piano lessons. Years later, I picked up a guitar and started to learn how to play and write music. I have never turned my back on music ever since. I started performing in SL as a guitar player and vocalist and never actually played the piano for 12 years until recently. I introduced piano to my concerts and haven’t stopped.

Q: Who are some of your favorite musicians?
A: There are so many bands/musicians that are my favorite, but these are some of them: Radio head, Billie Eilish, Cold play, U2, The Verve, Garbage, Alanis, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Cranberries, and many more! I don’t just like one genre of music. I listen, love and sing to country, rhythm & blues, pop, rock, edm, jazz, blues, and I don’t stop there. Music is my life. It moves me and it’s my therapy.

Q: Tell us about one of your best songwriting moments.
A: To me, emotion has a lot to do with songwriting. I have to feel something. I remember a few years ago, I experienced such heartbreak, and ended up writing a song in a matter of minutes. My emotions took over and I ended up writing one of my best songs.

Q: Do you have a favorite SL venue for performing?
A: All of the venues that I have performed in within SL have been amazing. Although I’ve had to cut my schedule down a lot, I will still be writing music and performing in SL. I have been working on my second album that should be released in December 2020, or early January 2021. I am also working on a couple of film projects: one is a web series called GHOST SLAPPED that will be out sometime early in 2021, and the other will be a short film (and perhaps my first feature film) later in 2021. Anyone interested can follow these projects or my music in the links shared here.

Q: What is the most meaningful aspect of the SL music community to you?
A: The most meaningful aspect of SL to me is reaching out to the community and sharing my music with the world, virtually. There is a community here that relates to my music, and some find comfort in it.

 

Thank you, Amforte! Here are some more links to her projects.

AMFORTE MUSIC RL LINKS:
Subscribe: www.REVERBNATION.com/AMFORTE
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AMFORTEMUSIC
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amforte/?hl=en
AMFORTE FILM PROJECTS:
www.GHOSTSLAPPED.com
 Have a great week From all of us at Zoha Islands and Fruit Islands/Eden

Make sure you check out Brick Shiphouse stream

And everyone is Welcome at Brick Shiphouse