Second Life and broadcast tiering

I’ve been watching closely the different methods used to tier…to broadcast events that happen inside of the online virtual world Second Life. One of the biggest problems with holding SL events is that there is a restriction on how many people can attend. Too many and the sim will go down. There are a few techniques that SL developers use to get around this: hold events on land that is located on the cornor of four sims — so you take advantage of allowance of four sims rather than only using one. Another technique is to tier the broadcast of the event. People at other locations within Second Life can listen to the audio feed at a nearby by and so on…just like watching a sports broadcast at the local pub. But another tier is to deliver the experience to people outside of Second Life. This allows people who are residents of SL but who cannot go inworld for some reason, or cannot get to the event location, still particpate in some manner in real time. The Electric Sheep Company created Destroy TV to fit such a purpose. With Destroy TV, the events are streamed and you could even enter text, to participate in the discussion inside the world from outside. But a colleague of mine is part of a new service called the Second Life Cable Network. They just ran a pilot live event a few days ago and I was impressed. Here are the details of “the four hour presentation of six great Australian bands and musicians at The Hoe-Down Under – Texas’ Aussie Music Party produced in association with Austrade, from the production company Cattle Puppy Productions: 

Hovering above Salmon Island, swooping past the interview stage, following hosts Starr Sonic and Gonzo Timtam and standing amongst the dancing audience in the mosh pit, Wiz Nordberg and an assistant videographer filmed the whole 3 hour event for SLCN. Video making or as it is called in Second Life, Machinima, is well established in-world. What makes SLCN so innovative is the ability to take several live video feeds from in-world, mix in high quality audio and pump the resulting finished show to thousands of screens throughout Second Life and to millions of web browsers through www.slcn.tv. And all of this live – yes, as it happened.

I enjoyed listening to some great Aussie bands, seeing mates dance inworld, listening to the interviews and just being a part of the fun, without being inworld. This was a great implementation of broadcasting as we know it. Now, all they need to do is integrate ways that event and people inside SL can interact in some way with the people out of SL and it will be appropriate to SL.

Check out: http://www.slcn.tv/