Monthly Archives: October 2014

Bits of Second Life 2014-41 #2

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PS CC 2014 Color Panel

The new Photoshop has a new color picker. It isn’t different as much as how handy it can be has improved. See: The Improved And Enhanced Color Panel – Photoshop CC 2014.

Sightline: The Chair

Indigo Mertel has been pointing me to an article on Road to VR about a holographic VR interface. For whatever reason I was missing her subtle hints until she contacted me and sort of asked why I was ignoring it. Oops. I have no idea why I wasn’t picking up on it. I follow a lot of her links from Plurk.

There are a number of articles out about Tomáš “Frooxius” Mariančík creating:  SightLine: The Chair.

This is pretty impressive. I can see why people are excited. It is the best use of the LEAP Motion Controller that I have seen to date.

Experimenters can download his ‘Chair’ experience: Download The Chair. (300mb) The link jumps to Sightline’s home page. There you can link to places to support him, Facebook and Steam. He says a Kickstarter is coming.  Continue reading →

Myst Game to be a TV Series

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I came to Second Life from Myst Online: Uru Live (MO:UL), my first MMORPG. I still like the game but the community playing in the game remains so dysfunctional it keeps me out of the game except for rare occasions. There is almost no game master moderation within the current free online game, leads to complaints like we hear in SL.

The Great Zero Machine in Second Life - 2009

The Great Zero Machine from MO:UL in Second Life – 2009

Recently something happened to the MO:UL game’s data base. All player status was lost. Devoted fans have returned to replay the game to restore their game status and lock in their player names. Activity on the Myst forum has almost tripled.  Continue reading →

Bits of Second Life 2014-41

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NVIDIA and VR

I have seen a little about nVidia’s new graphics cards, the 970 and 980 cards. The Road to VR has a good article on the new video cards. For those thinking about Oculus Rift this is an informative article. See: Big News for VR: Nvidia’s New Graphics Cards.

NVIDIA 980 - 10/2014

NVIDIA 980 – 10/2014

For 3D to work, whatever type, the system needs to render the world from two camera positions. This literally doubles the work the card must do. Fortunately, the texture handling, loading and unloading, doesn’t double too.

The article points out how the new cards are optimized for duel image processing.

Top 10 Hunts

Fabulously Free has their list of the top ten hunts out. See: FabFree Hunts. Most have a Halloween theme.  Continue reading →

Blender 2.72 Released

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On Oct 4 a new Blender version was released. Get it here.

Blender 2.72 - 2014-10-06

Blender 2.72 – 2014-10-06

It is an 86mb download, assuming you get the Zip file for the stand-alone install. I highly advise using the Zip file over the install program. It is much easier to have and run muiltiple versions of Blender using this install method.

Ebbe Altberg Interview

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Designing Worlds in Second Life had an opportunity to interview with Ebbe Altberg, the Linden Lab CEO. It has been promoted for a day or two now.  Today the video of the interview was released. You can see the video on SLArtist.com.

Designing Worlds Planned Mesh Deformer Project Meeting

Designing Worlds

This is an interesting video interview. Ebbe’s excitement with SL1 and 2 comes through. He gives us information about SL1 and SL2 and where they are going. I’ll warn you that what he says can be interrupted several ways. His implications are not always clear. So, what you are reading here is what I heard and how I took his meaning. That doesn’t mean it is correct. I think it is, but…  Continue reading →

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Second Life Bits 2014-41

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AvaStar

AvaStar 1.2 is out and now Gaia has published an article on what they will be doing now. See: Remarks from the Creators. The interesting take away is that the tutorial videos will be getting updated now that the product has stabilized.

Remembering - Lost Eden - 2014

Remembering – Lost Eden – 2014

Images from Second Life

This week has seen some articles on creating great images using Second Life. New World notes has: Top Four Tips for Flawless, Photoshop-Free SL Snapshots, Family Portraits: This Second Life Photographer Has a Knack for Taking Snapshots of Domestic Bliss, and How to Turn SL-Based Images Into Visual Art. There are others that have commented on the aspects of what makes great images and art.

The Internet has a ton of image composition tutorials. Google Image Composition.  Continue reading →

Second Life for Oculus

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As builders plan for a world to be seen by Oculus Rift users we hear a bit more about building things to real life scale. It is a good idea and has many benefits.

Babe @ Lost Eden - 2014

Babe @ Lost Eden – 2014

What we aren’t hearing much about is how to avoid making visitors sick, simulator motion sickness. I suppose many think that the Oculus Rift people will take care of such problems. The Oculus people are certainly putting thought and engineering into building a system that will avoid giving people simulator sickness. But, they advise those building for Oculus headsets to make sure they can keep their frame rates above 60 FPS…

I suspect the majority of Second Life users seldom see 60 fps. I know with my Quad Core and GTX560 I seem to get 25 to 50 FPS most of the time. If I am in a crowd, it is more like 8 to 12.  Continue reading →

OSGrid Needs Help

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You may have heard that OSGrid had a hard disk crash. They use a RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) system to improve reliability and speed. But, the system crashed and could not be recovered as they thought would be possible.

They have been exploring recovery via professional data recovery services. It appears they will be able to recover all data. It is unclear to me exactly what the cost is, but US$2,600 is close. That uses up a little more than half the funds available to OSGrid.

If you use OSGrid, it is definitely time to kick in with a little extra support. Make donations here: OSGrid Donations. A thousand people need to contribute $26 to cover the drive failure. Continue reading →