The making of Virtu-real goes Tokyo

Studio unreal have posted a video of the making of their installation at the Embassy of Tokyo. You can watch it here.

Season’s greetings from us

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Report: Lucia celebrations at SHoS

Except for some lag and crash problems the Lucia celebrations of 2008 turned out to be a great success.

Or let me rephrase that: Because the Lucia celebrations turned out to be a great success, we had to deal with lag and crashes. Having events in SL can sometimes be a dual-natured experience, since the popularity of the event (read “too many people”) will cause instability problems for the sim and its visitors. This time, not even the blue dragon Linden who showed up could do something about the lag issues (he was jokingly begged for help by some of the visitors). However, it was nice to see that the event was so popular that we could barely fit everyone.

This year’s Lucia, PetgirlBergman, fainting before the big performance. She was back on her feet in time for her grand entrance though.

We would like to thank Petgirl Bergman (who also wore the Lucia crown for the evening) and the Swedish People in Second Life for all their work and congratulate them on such a successful execution. Myself (Nex Canning) and my colleague Ylva Yedmore were able to focus on enjoying the performances and the celebrations, with no griefers or other mischief to take care of. Thank you also to all of you who showed up to enjoy the celebrations into the early morning of the 13th. (Also, thank you Tina for the pics as my computer didn’t properly render the Lucia outfits, or much else for that matter.)

Virtu-real goes Tokyo in action

Here’s how you can interact with Virtu-real goes Tokyo from anywhere in the world, not just in SL or the Swedish Embassy in Tokyo:

Send a short email to tokyo@virtu-real.net. Leave the subject line empty. In the body, write a message of up to 30 characters.

Within seconds of sending it, the message starts raining out of the sky at the Virtu-real installation at the Second House of Sweden, like so:

Who gets to see your message? Anyone visiting the installation in Second Life at that time, but also visitors to the Swedish Embassy in Tokyo, where two screens on either ends of a real-life installation look into the virtual space in real time.

In the Second Life part of the installation, there is also a screen that lets you see into the real-life embassy in Tokyo. As I was writing this article, some schoolgirls in Tokyo had discovered that if they danced in front of one side of the installation and then dashed to the other side, they could see themselves dancing on the screen inside Second Life, due to the 10-second lag for buffering. They were having a grand time, doing this over and over again.

Virtu-Real goes Tokyo preview shots

It’s down to the final hours before “Virtu-Real goes Tokyo” goes live, both in Second Life and at the Swedish embassy in Tokyo — on Monday, December 8, at 2:30am Second Life time (10.30am Stockholm time, 6:30pm Tokyo time.

In the meantime, here are some screenshots to whet your appetite: