Month: July 2016

Enchanting Second Life Video

by

Ben Ya Movie is a YouTube name. Ben Ya posted the video Second Life Beauties (6/2016). The images have been Photoshop’d… or he has a magic video card. But, I find it an interesting and well done video concept. A nice way to show off awesome photos.

Second Life Beauties
Second Life Beauties

Note: Embedding is disabled on this video. So the image is a link to YouTube.

The music is fitting titled: “Empire of Angels” by Thomas Bergersen. While there are sites claiming to provide free download of the mp3 version of the music, I didn’t find any that were not advertising injection scams. So, be careful if you attempt to download it for free. The music is on Amazon.

The YouTube name pairs to the Second Life name Benito Yalin. (March 05, 2007, which is almost exactly a year older than me.) Like most of us he separates RL and SL.

Second Life VR Door Closed?

by
No Oculus Rift
No Oculus Rift

Oz Linden has spoken. See Oculus Rift – CV1 Support.

 ‎2016-07-07 12:14 PM

Thank you for experimenting with our Oculus Rift Project Viewer and offering your feedback. Unfortunately, the Project Viewer that we recently made available didn’t meet our standards for quality, and so we’ve now removed it from the Alternate Viewers page.

By definition, Project Viewers aren’t ready for primetime. The purpose of these experimental Viewers is to share with you the earliest possible version of what we’re working on, so that you can see what we’re up to, help discover problems, and provide feedback. In this case, though, we’re not ready for that, as those of you who tried it have seen.

We can’t say at this point when or even if we may release another Project Viewer for experimenting with the Oculus Rift in SL.

We want to prioritize our development efforts around initiatives that we know will improve the virtual world and bring more value to SL Residents, and due to some inherent limitations with SL, it may well not be possible to achieve the performance needed for a good VR experience. (In fact, this is one reason why we’re creating Project Sansar a new, separate platform optimized for VR).

We greatly appreciate the interest in trying SL with the Oculus Rift and are grateful that several of you took the time to try the Project Viewer. We regret that the quality was not up to our standards, and we will of course keep the community posted if we release a new Project Viewer for VR in the future.

Jo Yardley caught the post and published it on her site. Many of us are disappointed. But… 

Read more

Pages: 1 2 3

Oculus Rift Update 2016 w27

by

For some time people have debated the accuracy of the hype around the Oculus Rift. Now as competitors enter the market there is; hype, spin, rumors, and lies about the various Virtual Reality (VR) Head Mounted Displays (HMD).

LinusTechTips provides a video to give people a sense of what the facts are.

It appears HTC Vive is taking a lead. But, there may be more Google Cardboard mashups in use than all the other HMD’s combines. Vive ≈ 100k, Oculus ≈ hidden, Samsung Gear ≈ hidden. When companies hide their sales figures it usually means they are not meeting expectations.

Projections are Samsung will be the top seller, Oculus the second best, and Vive the third best.

Google Cardboard is reported to have 57% of all VR headset sales. (Reference) Samsung has 31%, Playstation 9%, and all others combined 3%. Oculus doesn’t even show.

So, do you think it is a good idea that the Lab is focused on supporting Oculus? Or… are they supporting the one device that is least likely to be used with Second Life™?

I’ve already said I’m waiting. I’m spending my money on a new computer. Then my first HMD is likely to be Cardboard or Samsung Gear… if we don’t count my trying VR with my S5, which was limited to one app a demo.

AvaStar Update: 2.0 Alpha-4 & Project Bento

by

Gaia Clary announced another update of AvaStar 2 is out. This is not the production version. This is the Alpha version with Bento support. In the announcement Gaia explains the current problem people are debating. The video by Medhue shows and explains what is being talked about.

Gaia says this alpha version of AvaStar complies with the current proposed Bento model that includes rotation and translation. But, there are concerns about the Bento plan to allow rotation and translation. See the release announcement for a longer story or below the fold for the shorter version. This is an extensive document. If you are animating in SL, read the thing to understand what is coming. 

Read more

Project Sansar: What’s Different? Has Linden Lab Learned Anything from Second Life?

by

Stephanie Condon wrote Second Life™ Lessons: What Linden Lab is doing differently with its new VR platform for ZDNet’s Between the Lines, a sort of technology meets society section of the site.

Let's party
Let’s party

Stephanie points out that Second Life (SL) was thought to be the tech revolution to take over the web, way back in 2006-2007 when an Internet in 3D was imagined. But… it didn’t happen. SL has remained profitable. It just didn’t catch on as people expected. 

Read more

Pages: 1 2