Scenes From The Burn

On Saturday October 18, the grounds of the Burn2 art and music festival opened to the public in Second Life. After weeks of work, the Burners were officially starting the show, and promised quite a bit to see.

Arriving in Burning Man- Deep Hole, the greeter gave me a friendly hello, "Welcome home." He asked me to contact him, or any of the staff, if I had any questions.

 

Almost right away, I saw examples of their vehicles made for artistic expression as much as a way to get around a little faster (flight is disabled here for most), made by their DMV - Department of Mutant Vehicles.

There was some information available for those curious about joining the Burners.

 I also got a package of goodies from one of the staff near the entrance.

There was also a guest book to sign.

Further away from the entrance was a balloon ride.

The balloons seat up to four, and offer a way to casually look around the exhibits from above. That's Tigerlily Windstorm next to me.

 Panning around, we could see exhibits closer up, such as this "duck pond" with inflatable ducky tubes.

 Some exhibits were meant to be better seen at Midnight view.

 A couple of the sims had events were crowded due to events, and once the balloon entered there, objects became slower to rezz.

And eventually a glitch caused the balloon to momentarily vanish.

 When we recovered, we found we'd fallen off the balloon. I saw it overhead and hopped back on.

 Flying machines that sorry to say will never take flight here.

 This mutant vehicle must be a favorite for pirates.

 Tigerlily was eventually able to catch up to the balloon and resume to tour as well.

 That rock in the corner got our attention. Panning to get a closeup of a sign, apparently there's a maze inside where one can make their way to the "Hidden Temple of Ra."

 A music performance, thankfully for me on the other side of a sim boundary.

The Burn2 Temple, of which it's burning is the last official event of the festival.

And here's "The Man," the symbol of both Burn2 and the real-life Burning Man festival. It's burned the day before the Temple.

 Eventually another glitch knocked us off the balloon, and by the time we recovered it was gone. I was soon joined by a pony friend, and encountered another one of the Burners, Timothy S. McTaggart (tsmt01).

Another balloon with riders flew overhead as we chatted.

We ran into a couple of particuarly colorful Rangers, Discord (Temba), and Zalkameriu Ichtama.

 Another picture with Zalkameriu, showing more of what she was wearing.

 No end to the unusual varieties of mutant vehicles.

 "Don't pull the rope!" "BUUUUUUUURRRRRRRRRPP!!!"

 

 The Bedouin, a tent with a number of artwork of Arabian horses.

Happened to run into Avariel Falcon, the black unicorn from the Relay, while there.

 Of the mutant vehicles, this has *got* to be the oddest ... or is it?

 There was no end to the funny toilets around. In virtual reality, they're good only for chuckles.

I stuck around the Burn2 grounds for a while. But it would soon be time to go.

Stay tuned for more about the Burn2 festival, including the Temple Burn and the Burning of the Man.

Bixyl Shuftan

A Look Back at the VWPBE 2014

VWBPE Brings Out the Whos-Who in Virtual Education and Linden Lab

By Celene Highwater

The 2014 Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education conference, better known as VWBPE, kicked off on April 9 to a packed house. The four-day conference is in its seventh year and is an annual gathering of virtual educators.

On opening day, which fell on April 9 2014, people started pouring into the VWBPE Central Auditorium two hours early to ensure they had a seat in time to hear this year’s opening keynote speaker who was none other than Philip Rosedale, the founder of Second Life.

Philip Rosedale, also known as Philip Linden stands behind the podium wearing his Second Life T-Shirt.

 "As a kid, I played with electronics. I tinkered, programmed computers, used power tools. I tried to build things from things I found around the house. I cut into my ceiling because I wanted my door to go into the ceiling like Star Trek. It was hard work.  Much harder to do than to imagine," He said when describing his childhood during his speech.

As the internet emerged, Rosedale explained that he had a desire to build a space "where we could all build what we dreamed."

 In 1995, he created Freevue, an innovative Internet video conferencing tool which was quickly sold to a company called RealNetworks. For a short time, he served as Vice President and CTO of the company. Then, in 1999, Rosedale left RealNetworks to launch his own company: Linden Lab. And as they say, the rest is history. Rosedale built a virtual civilization called Second Life, thus fulfilling his lifelong dream of creating an open-ended, online virtual world.

 "I was super motivated to build virtual worlds, not because they would be better games or social spaces. . .  I just wanted to build crazy stuff,” He explained.

In 2010, Rosedale left Second Life and worked on several projects including Coffee and Power, and Worklist.net before co-founding High Fidelity Inc. in 2013, to explore the future of a next-generation virtual reality system. In his speech he discussed the amount of time and devotion it takes to learn Second Life and the amount of mouse useage that is required. With the new virtual world he is building, Rosedale wants to eliminate the need for the mouse, opting for a more realistic-looking world where he says users will be able to more naturally interact with one another through facial and body movement.

This exhibit shows off posters from the Freedom Project, an art exhibition featuring work by disabled artists in Second Life.

Science Circle Discussion Panel.

Other events at the VWBPE included sim demonstrations,panel discussions, networking events, lectures, and a host of speakers including Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg, David Gibson who is an Associate Professor at Curtin University in Perth, Australia, and Dr. Larysa Nadolny, Assistant Professor at Iowa State University.

Celene Highwater

Editor's Note: This article intended for publishing at the Metaverse Tribune. But the publication ceased updating before it could go up. Now working for the Newser, Celene sent this over as a look back at this major event (Bixyl Shuftan's VWPBE pictures, Ebbe Linden's VWBPE Speech).

Space Week in Second Life

It's World Space Week, and there were some events this week on the Grid that made note of the occasion. The National Space Society's Second Life chapter in particular has held a number of events in it's honor. Among them was a music and dance party high above the sim of the group's name, music courtesy of DJ MeowMeow.

Party time redux!  Space-suitable attire suggested but not required (freebies available!) "Electro/wave, space house and intergalactic disco from the offworld colonies, mixed by neko replicant MeowMeow Ghost, and streaming live from Tranquility Base."

DJ MeowMeow played a number of tunes. One song was in tribute to the Sputnik launch, of which the anniversary was October 4, the start of Space Week.

Remember the fifties, those fat complacent days
when the future seemed a century away.
Then up went Sputnik, gave the world a butt-kick
and made it clear tomorrow starts today.

Beep beep beep beep "Hello there!" 
Sputnik sails giggling through the skies
Red flags, red faces, jump in the race
as the space age begins with a surprise.

There were a number of people there, many in space suits of some kind. Among them was Pathfinder Lester, the former Pathfinder Linden (2005-2010). Pathfinder described himself as, "still working with virtual world stuff. Doing a lot of work with Unity, exploring Opensim, and starting to work on some artificial life (plus) augmented reality stuff with a company called 'Wiggle Planet'." Of Wiggle Planet, "(The) founder of Wiggle Planet is Jeffrey Ventrella, who also used to work at Linden Lab back in the day. He's the guy who brought flexy prims to SL, among many other avatar improvements."

Pathfinder was exploring other virtual worlds, "I visit Kitely a lot, too. I run my own Opensim grid at home for fun, and then hypergrid-jump to other grids like Kitely to explore." But he was still on the Grid he knew for good, "I still hang out and explore Second Life too. Never going to leave here."

There would be a Lunar Eclipse that night, and there were viewings in both the Scilands as well as in the Steelhead community. Also that night was the Sunweaver club The Vinyl Museum's tribute to Space Week, with it's "Spaced Out" party.

The National Space Society has declared it Space Week. So tonight at the Vinyl, we're having our "Spaced Out" event. Get dressed up as an astronaut, a scientist, a Mission Control tech, or anyone else involved with the space program. Or you can just go as a little green man, or any other kimd of alien. So suit up for some high orbit fun. Hard vacuum may suck, but the party sure won't. 

DJ Perri played various tunes, from sci-fi show theme music to amusing songs such as "Star Trekkin," and many more. The crowd showed up in space suits, sci-fi battlesuits, and one hippie outfit, saying with a chuckle this was another way of getting "spaced out."

It was a fun tribute to the space program.

Bixyl Shuftan.