Events in Second Life

Events in Second Life for furry users and residents range from the average weekly dance party at a club-designated area to the occasional "virtual convention" or "virtual furmeet" that can bring up to over 100 users into one area.

Virtual dance parties
Dance parties are usually organized within a day or two in advance by owners of a particular building or area, with a DJ (in SL terms, usually someone who sets up an Internet radio stream of compiled MP3s rather than an actual disc jockey) being recruited to liven up the party. Dances, like most other unattended avatar actions, are usually scripted either through the user's own modifications to the avatar or through strategically-placed pose balls in the dance area.

Virtual movie night
Alternately, a virtual movie night may be held at a given location, with a similar setting as to a real-life movie area (namely, a virtual "big screen" that is merely the target area for a QuickTime video stream).

Virtual sports and gaming events
SL, being a virtual world that uses a game engine for its rendering, is also used at times for user-user and group-group mock competition, with periodic events being organized for such competition between avatars. However, there are no known instances of in-world video gaming in which the avatar plays another avatar with a virtual controller.

Virtual conventions and furmeets
Such conventions are usually organized as parallel, virtual substitute events for users who are unable to attend their real-life counterpart events in a certain geographic location. The hotel buildings which are used to house the real-life conventions are usually replicated through scripting and rezzing in SL in order to give a remote feel for the surroundings of the real life convention in a virtual format. However, other than the addition of a dedicated virtual building, the virtual convention differs very little from the virtual dance party, virtual movie night or virtual game night in terms of goings-on.

So far, only one virtual furry convention, the TSL Fur Fest, has been organized autonomously of any real-life parallel convention.

Challenges for events
Such an alternative route may be furthered in coming years due to the drop in attendance and financial sustainability for real-life conventions. However, SL and its properties continue to be challenged by "lag" in both animated graphics coherence and networking, rendering virtual events in Second Life a challenging experience when a large number of users are active in a certain area at a given time.