Day: March 17, 2015

Reminder – Login2life: screening and discussion, March 17th

Posted on by Inara Pey

Update: As per iSkye Silverweb’s comment below, it appears that plans have changed since I was originally informed of the event, and the film will now not be screened at the Sojourner Auditorium as stated. However, the panel discussion, commencing at approximately 20:00 SLT will be. If you wish to watch the film, Drax will be streaming it.

Login2Life is one of the most engaging and inspirational documentaries made about virtual worlds. Almost four years in the making, and originally released in 2011, Daniel Moshel’s film follows people from around the world who spend their time engaged in the virtual worlds of Second Life and World of Warcraft.

While it has had numerous broadcasts in Europe (notably in Germany), and a number of You Tube encores, it has never “officially” been premiered in the United States. However, as I recently reported, all this will change on St. Patrick’s Day, March 17th 2015, when Login2Life is screened at the JCC Manhattan as a part of the 2015 Reel Abilities Film Festival.

The open-air Sojourner Auditorium, Virtual Ability Island, will host the in-world showing of Login2Life on Tuesday, March 17th, 2015, and will be the venue for the SL side of the SL / RL post-presentation discussion
The open-air Sojourner Auditorium, Virtual Ability Island, will host the in-world showing of Login2Life on Tuesday, March 17th, 2015, at 17:30 SLT and will be the venue for the SL side of the SL / RL post-presentation discussion

To mark this event there will be a simultaneous showing of the film at Virtual Ability’s Sojourner Auditorium, set to commence at approximately 17:30 SLT.

Both screenings will be followed by a special cross-over Q&A session, which will seen Login2Life director Daniel Moshel,  film participant and founder of Virtual Ability, Gentle Heron and the film’s soundtrack composer, Draxtor Despres, all in-world at the Sojourner Auditorium, where they will address questions from the audience at the JCC Manhattan, under the moderation of anthropologist and film-maker Faye Ginsburg, assisted by our own Avajean Westland.

If you haven’t seen Login2Life before, this is a most excellent opportunity for you to see one of the most engaging films on the subject of virtual worlds and the people who participate in them yet to have been produced.; a film I cannot commend strongly enough, and which I originally reviewed in 2011. Not to be missed.

VWBPE 2015: meeting at the Crossroads

Posted on by Inara Pey
VWBPE 2015: the main auditorium stands ready
VWBPE 2015: the main auditorium stands ready

Wednesday, March 18th marks the start of the 8th annual Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education (VWBPE) conference, which will be taking place in both Second Life and the OpenSimulator based AvaCon Grid.

The theme for this year’s event is Crossroads, and will include a presentations by keynote and featured speakers, panel discussions, workshops, social events and more, running through until the conference closes on Saturday, March 21st.

Full details on conference events can be found on the VWBPE conference calendar. However, for ease-of-reference, here’s a quick run-down of the keynote and featured speakers, and the main discussion panels. together with other pertinent information. As always, all times are SLT.

The conference includes exhibition and workshop areas
The conference includes exhibition and workshop areas

Wednesday, March 18th, 2015

Thursday, March 19th, 2015

The VWBPE main plaza in SL
The VWBPE main plaza in SL

Friday, March 20th, 2015

  • 07:00: featured speaker, Jeroen Frans: Creating Dinosaurs & Earning Badges, at the VWBPE SL main auditorium
  • 09:00: Virtual Ability panel discussion moderated by Zola Zsun/Linda Lindsey, at the VWBPE SL main auditorium
  • 13:00: Featured speaker, Sensuous Maximus: Bootcamp for Virtual Teachers, at the VWBPE SL main auditorium
  • 14:05: Quadrivium Networking Topic: Educators and the Second Life Viewer facilitated by Oz Linden, at the VWBPE SL main auditorium

Saturday, March 21st, 2015

Notes on Attending

The VWBPE conference is free to attend, although there are donation options available for those wishing to support the conference.  Those wishing to attend all of the conference activities across the four days of the conference will need accounts for both Second Life and AvaCon grid – please refer to Accessing the Conference for further details.

Additional Links

Firestorm seek feedback on “restore to last position”

Posted on by Inara Pey

Restore To Last Position (RTLP) was a joint server / viewer capability that presented uses with the ability to right-click on an object in inventory and return it to its last recorded in-world position, relative to the region in which the user is standing. However, due to an exploit used be griefers to rez objects on regions where they otherwise had no rezzing rights, the Lab made changes to the simulator code, which also impacted how this capability worked. As a result, the viewer-side code was removed from the official viewer.

Restore to Last Position as found in Firestorm's inventory context menu
Restore to Last Position as found in Firestorm’s inventory context menu

Nevertheless, TPVs have continued to provide RTLP to users. Unfortunately, the the capability has been long been known to cause a range of genuine inventory issues, and since the changes made to the simulator code to prevent griefing, the shortfalls with RTLP have been somewhat exacerbated (such as with No Copy items, which is why some TPVs have blocked the capability from being used with No Copy objects).

However, as I reported In my last SL projects update, as a result of the recent survey the issued in respect of inventory loss issues, the Lab is considering deprecating the last of the server-side messaging which allows RTLP to work.

This has understandably given rise to concern among some TPV teams, simply because they are aware many users do find the capability useful, despite its limitations, and communicated this to Oz Linden at the TPV Developer meeting on Friday, March 13th.

As no final decision on the future of simulator-side messaging for RTLP has been made, Oz suggested to TPVs that they provide reasoned arguments as to how and why it, or a function like it, should continue to be supported by the Lab, which can then be considered when the time comes to determined the future of the current capability.

To this end, the Firestorm team have issued a blog post asking users to offer their own clear, concise explanations as to how they use RTLP and why they find it beneficial. The aim is to take  the submitted examples and build them into a reasoned argument that can be presented to the Lab and hopefully encourage them to either reconsider deprecating the RTLP messaging or to provide functionality that might help meet some of the more common use cases supplied to the Lab.

So, if you do have a clear use case for wanting to see RTLP, or some similar type of functionality to continue to be offered, and regardless of whether you are a Firestorm user or not, you should consider helping to build a reasoned argument for retaining RTLP by adding your use case to the comments following the Firestorm post (please do not add them to this post, as I am not directly involved in compiling the information).

This doesn’t men RTLP will be saved, but at least the opportunity to present user feedback to the Lab has been provided; if that feedback is sufficiently constructive and consistent, it may influence future thinking on and around RTLP.