Austin Tate's Blog

This blog post is to provide resources and access links for Active Worlds – https://www.activeworlds.com/, an online virtual world launched in 1995 and predating Second Life which launched in 2003 [Wikpedia].

Video by Straszfilms “Active Worlds: The 27-Year-Old Virtual World You Haven’t Heard Of”

More Information: https://strasz.tv/active-worlds-the-27-year-old-virtual-world-you-havent-heard-of/

Create Free Public Account: https://www.activeworlds.com/ssl/forms/view.php?id=17831

A browser-based viewer to look at Non-Fungible Token (NFT) owned artworks in the Metaverse created by @museedezentral. A Ready Player Me avatar can be used for your own appearance, though on a visit I could not seem my own avatar in the viewer.

Visit via https://musee-dezentral.com

Fashion designer Jonathan Simkhai (@JonathanSimkhai) partnered with @Everyrealm & @BlueberryMeta to produce avatar clothing and the Metaverse Fashion Week runway fashion show event inside Second Life. The event was covered in various fashion magazines and on fashion web sites.

• Learn more: https://second.life/mvfw2022
• Date and Time: A runway show on February 17th or 18th, 2022 from 1pm,to 4pm PT.
• Location: https://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/MVFW%201/184/133/24/

Promotional images from Jonathan Simkhai, Blueberry and Everyrealm social media

• Blueberry Store: https://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Lenox%20and%20Blueberry/129/163/29
• EveryRealm MV|FW NFT Collection
• OpenSea NFT – Jonathan Simkhai MVFW-2022 Collection
• How the metaverse influenced New York Fashion Week – Vogue Business Blog – 15-Feb-2022
• How the metaverse is putting its stamp on the runway at Fashion Week – Glamour Magazine Blog – 15-Feb-2022
• Jonathan Simkhai stages FW22 fashion show in virtual world Second Life – Deezen.com – 17-Feb-2022

Discord “Ask Me Anything” (AMA) Session – 17-Feb-2022

Second Life Metaverse Fashion Show (9pm GMT, 17-Feb-2022)

360° Snapshot using Second Life Viewer 6.5.2 and Firestorm 6.5.3 Beta

VR View on Oculus Rift using Firestorm VR Mod 6.4.21 and 6.5.3 Beta

https://omigroup.org – Bridging virtual worlds by designing and promoting shared protocols.

This blog post is to provide details of one of several virtual world and metaverse platform meeting spaces for the OMI Group. This one is the “OMI” region on the OSGrid for the OpenSim community.

Quickstart:

1. Get an OpenSim avatar at http://osgrid.org if you don’t already have one.
2. Download and install the OpenSim compatible version of the Firestorm Viewer.
3. Login and look round, you usually arrive at an OSGrid “Plaza”. Follow the arrows on the floor to get an orientation and pick up starter avatars.
4. Open the Map (Ctrl+M), find the “OMI” region and teleport there.

A virtual world social space for OMI group use is available on the OpenSimulator-based OSGrid platform. This is to help OMI Group participants to maintain contacts and have meeting spaces to share ideas. OMI group participants without an existing OpenSim grid avatar should obtain a free one on OSGrid (the OpenSim community grid) via http://osgrid.org.

The OSGrid OMI region is open to look around since it is accessible from any Hypergrid enabled OpenSimulator grid using a map tool search for this “http://hg.osgrid.org:80 OMI” or this “hop” in viewers which support that (e.g. Firestorm):

The facility uses the OpenVCE OAR, a ready to load open source virtual collaboration environment with a range of formal and informal meeting spaces, instrumented meeting rooms, exposition facilities, etc.

An “OMIgroup” has also been established on OSGrid and can, if necessary, be used to restrict availability of some of the facilities or be used for group voice chat. Join by looking for “OMIgroup” or by pasting the link below in chat within the viewer and clicking it.

The 1972 Film “Silent Running” has a central plot of a future where scientists have sought to protect the environmental diversity of Earth’s natural resources by creating a protected “island” in space – on converted commercial space freighters. The featured spaceship, the “Valley Forge”, has biodomes with service drones – Dewey, Huey and Louie – looking after the spaceship and the plant life on board. SciFi and futurist novels and films give us a way to explore our own joint future and to consider the consequences of our actions.

Dewey, Huey and Louie

This post will have some details of the Valley Forge service drones.

Sketchfab 3DWarehouse Models by Sketchfab 3DWarehouse Models by Martin T. Drone 1 (Dewey), Drone 2 (Huey), Drone 3 (Louie)

Destiny Models Resin Model Kits of Drones – https://www.destinymodels.co.uk

Bronson Canyon Resin Model Kits of Drones and Cheryl Sparks (who at age 17 portrayed “Huey”) Articles – http://www.bronsoncanyon.com/

[IN PREPARATION – BLOG POST IS A STUB JUST NOW]

Firestorm 6.5.3 + P373R VR Mod: This build includes P373R’s VR Mod 6.3.3 changes merged into Firestorm 6.5.3.xxxxx release branch (forthcoming).

Download the release from https://github.com/humbletim/firestorm-gha/releases/tag/v6.4.21-vr-alpha-0
[NOTE 6.4.21 IS CURRENTLY THE LAST RELEASE]

Firestorm VR Mod 6.5.3 is created using “GitHub Actions” (GHA) thanks to @humbletim. Minor manual changes are made for the merge of the VR Mod code. The App name has been changed to “FirestormVR” so installation can exist side-by-side with stock Firestorm. Settings are stored in the user folder AppData/Roaming/FirestormVR_x64. Some of the code for performance metrics wants to be just ahead of rendering, which is where the VR Mod inject points also wanted to be. Since they are independent it’s just a matter of explaining to git they are unrelated and can exist in any order. The cmake/scripts are also amended to auto-include openvr.dll.

The user instructions are identical to Firestorm VR Mod 6.4.12 which is described at
https://blog.inf.ed.ac.uk/atate/2020/12/11/firestorm-vr-mod-6-4-12/

A Second Life build by Hera (zee9) depicting the city scene from the 1982 film Blade Runner. Visit via the arrival portal on the Cloud Lake region via https://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Cloud%20Lake/98/100/395
and then click on the board to Blade Runner… http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Cloud%20Lake/124/148/46

See also Inara Pey’s Blog Post on Hera’s Blade Runner build in Second Life (6-Feb-2022).

Hera also created wonderful atmospheric Second Life builds of Gotham (see this blog post – 17-Nov-2021), Whitby (see this blog post – 17-Oct-2021) and Whitechapel (see this blog post – 17-Nov-2021).

HG Safari Visit on 2nd February 2022 at 12 noon SLT (20:00 hrs UT)

• Topic: Travelling in the Metaverse – Defining Your Travel Outfit and Suitcase
• Host: Ai Austin
• Date and Time: 2-Feb-2022, 12 noon SLT (20:00 hrs UT)
• Gathering Point: OSGrid – HG safari region (Clubhouse)
  hop://hg.osgrid.org:80/HG Safari/121/136/22
• Primary Location: OSGrid – Space City region (Campfire & Media Centre) hop://hg.osgrid.org:80/Space%20City/200/200/22
• Modalities: Text chat and in-world slides presentation. Voice from host.
• Resources: https://blog.inf.ed.ac.uk/atate/hypergrid-safari/

Slides are at http://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/~ai/resources/2022-02-02-HG-Safari/

360° Snapshots

Click image to view 360° snapshots on Flickr… taken with Firestorm 6.5.3 OpenSim…

Resources:

Next Generation Virtual Worlds – Social Web + Virtual Worlds + Content + People

I have written about this before… in a nutshell… I would like to see a grid of grids approach, a single instance world where travel is possible with a common identity and a suitable “travel outfit” and “travel pack” or “suitcase” (intelligently filtered and adapted) and where radically different newer technologies and user interactivity modalities can be introduced alongside legacy facilities and which can gradually build a community and content.

We have had the capability to create 360° Snapshots in Second Life since 2016 and the full release of the capability in the default viewer from 2021. Now Firestorm 6.5.3 is incorporating the same capability, allowing 360° Snapshots in both Second Life and OpenSim.

Here are some snapshots of the Black Rock region on OSGrid showing Supercar and the Black Rock Laboratory from Gerry Anderson’s TV shows from the early 1960s. Click on image below to view 360° image on Flickr…

I first looked at VRChat on desktop and the Oculus Rift in 2014 (see this blog post). Things have moved on a lot since then. This blog post brings together some links and resources related to VRChat.

Note also that VRChat now uses the web site vrchat.com rather than the earlier no longer available vrchat.net.

• https://vrchat.com/
• VRChat Documentation

Avatars

Avatars can be created in a range of tools and made available in VRChat.

• Ready Player Me. See my blog post.
• Also MakeAvatar and Taffi.

Worlds

As well as a wide range of environments or “worlds” created by others, you can create and upload your own environment.

• Creating your First World for VRChat

The discussion is to be in several platforms…

• https://twitter.com/i/spaces/1BRJjnjOkgRJw
• https://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Oathkeeper/165/80/1197
• and also on Clubhouse and Callin

This blog post is to provide resources and access links for Make Avatar (MakeAvatar™) by Haptic Monkey – a tool to create an avatar and its clothing which can be exported as a JSON (.json) file or to .glb (binary glTF) format and from there imported into a range of virtual worlds or platforms such as Vircadia, Unity, etc.

http://makeavatar.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/

Vircadia is the continuation of the previous work by High Fidelity (see my previous blog posts). This blog post is to provide resources and access links for Vircadia – https://vircadia.com

• Download: https://vircadia.com/download-vircadia/
• User Dashboard: https://dashboard.vircadia.com/login
• Documents: https://docs.vircadia.com/

Vircadia Interface

Vircadia Server

TBA

Avatar Makers

ReadPlayerMe: https://readyplayer.me
Make Avatar: http://makeavatar.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/

This blog post is to assist new users to get started quickly with the creation of a new “avatar” in Second Life, a virtual world in which an avatar represents the user as they experience locations in 3D. To make the initial avatar creation experience helpful and to install a “virtual world viewer” that will also work with the open source “OpenSimulator” (aka “OpenSim”) platform, it is suggested that the “Firestorm” viewer is used.

0. System Requirements

Second Life can be used on Windows, MacOS and Linux. It needs a desktop or laptop machine and is not (yet) suitable for use on a tablet or mobile phone (though simplified access interfaces do exist for such mobile platforms). A decent graphics card makes the experience and frame rate that can be achieved much better, but even low end graphics cards do work and the system will try to set your graphics levels appropriate to your system (in terms of view distance and graphics quality).

1. Create an Avatar

https://www.firestormviewer.org/join-secondlife/

The Firestorm Viewer Second Life join up link makes for a simpler and easier to understand initial avatar creation process. The Second Life join up process delays initial avatar creation until after first login and may not suit everyone. (see this blog post).

Choose an avatar appearance you are happy with for the first login. Don’t worry too much about your initial appearance, the avatar itself and its clothing can be changed inside Second Life after login.

2. Download and Install the Firestorm Viewer

Download the OpenSim (also supports Second Life) version https://www.firestormviewer.org/os-operating-system/

Firestorm is a properly authorised “third party viewer” and is the most popular viewer used to access Second Life. There are two versions, one that only works for Second Life and another that works for BOTH OpenSim and Second Life. The web site encourages you to use the Second Life only version if you are not accessing OpenSim, but that is only because a commercial physics library (Havok) is included with the Second Life version, and cannot be included in the version that works with the open source OpenSim. This is only relevant if you wish to upload “mesh” content and rigged mesh avatars, in which case the Havok Second Life only version is recommended for Second Life. However, if this arises later for you, the “official” Linden Lab Second Life viewer can also be installed and works fine even installed alongside the Firestorm viewer.

3. Initial Virtual World Login and Avatar Appearance

Now log in to Second Life with your avatar and follow the initial new user start up trail to get used to the controls.

4. Visit a Virtual World Region

When you feel ready you can go to other locations. Look at the map (accessible by one of the viewer buttons, hover over them to get tool tips) and type in a name of a region if you know where you wish to visit from information on the web. Or you can also type the destination region name in the top address bar in the viewer.

SLurls are used to give map locations in a web browser which can be clicked on, or cut and pasted into text chat or the viewer top address bar… e.g. a beach and surfing location via:

https://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Treeowatoor/227/59/22

https://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Treeowatoor/227/59/22″>

More ideas for an initial sightseeing trip at:
https://blog.inf.ed.ac.uk/atate/2021/09/14/interesting-locations-on-bellisseria/

5. Going Further

There are many facilities in Second Life, but find your feet and make sure you can do basic movement, use the camera separate to movement of the avatar, sit down, text chat to others, add a friend, and try to connect a headset for voice before you go further.

Cross-game Avatar Platform for the Metaverse – https://readyplayer.me/

1. Based on a selfie or start out from scratch.
2. Customize your avatar
3. Export your avatar in .glb- Use your avatar in many supported apps and games.

Resources

Introductory YouTube video by Dinesh Punni, Import to Unity details at 5:30.

Ready Player Me Unity SDK: https://docs.readyplayer.me/integration-guides/unity

Crypto Wallet for NFT Items: Metamask https://metamask.io/

The live feed of NASA TV coverage of parts of the deployment James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) were relayed into OpenSimulator on the OSGrid Space City region at the campfire and media centre zone.

Resources

NASA Spacecraft Status: https://www.jwst.nasa.gov/
Live Feed: https://www.youtube.com/embed/21X5lGlDOfg?autoplay=1

This blog post is to provide resources and access links for activities in China related to Metaverse platforms.

Baidu is developing Xi Rang, an app for virtual meetings that will be in use from early 2022 for its own developer conferences. Images below from Baidu.

See also… “Chinese tech giant Baidu says it could be 6 years before it can fully deliver its metaverse”, CNBC, 23-Dec-2021 blog post by Evelyn Cheng @CHENGEVELYN.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/24/baidu-says-it-could-be-6-years-before-it-can-fully-deliver-its-metaverse.html

I was pointed yet again by a blog post from Inara Pey to the wonderful detailed North Pole region in Second Life. If people use high/ultra graphics settings and the region environmental settings in an up to date browser and a reasonably powerful PC it makes you wonder why people still thing Second Life graphics are poor by modern standards.

Click on images to go to Flickr and see the 360° Panoramas…