Second Life and Virtual Worlds
Nalates Urriah Indigo Mertel is active in Second Life™ and SL social media. She also owns and pays for East River Community land, which you’ll find as Strange Sands Beach – East River Community (SLURL), Helvellyn (URL), Hardknott (residential).
She recently contacted me writing,
Various blogs are commenting on Linden Lab’s® response to Pres. Trumps Executive Order requiring additional vetting of all people coming from 7 countries identified be Pres. Obama as not having governments capable of providing background checks of their citizens.
Most are supporting the Lab’s statement;
I am not seeing any thought or facts presented, just emotional ‘oh yeah, this is good.’ So, here are some facts and questions.
First, if you haven’t heard, Linden Lab issued a statement on a controversial subject in the USA and world. The title points to which one of the many.
There is a page in the Second Life™ Wiki listing the official user groups. Currently there are four weekly meetings;
The Bento Development group has changed to the Content Creation group. There was another Content Creation/Mesh Import group that stopped meeting in 2014. The meeting transcripts for that old group are still available. They are not the same groups but, similar.
This week and next there are no Content Creation group meetings. The next meeting is February 17.
Currently the Content Creation group meeting in Hippotropolis is the most interesting. They are dealing with the challenges of creating Bento Content. As problems come up the Lindens look at ways to make fixes or changes and users work to figure out work-arounds and better methods for creation. Various Lindens attend the meetings.
Medhue Simoni is one of the better know modelers and animators in SL. He has a post in the SL Forum containing videos that show how to make your own LoD (Level of Detail) models.
See: How to make LODs / Levels of Detail
Massively Overpowered has an article about information a company named Superdata provided on the gaming market and VR: Virtual Reality Helps Push Mobile Gaming To New Heights.
I find it interesting that mobile VR games netted as much money as the movie industry netted from box offices. Mobile VR accounted for half the global market in digital games. I think that is rather impressive and shifts my thinking on where gaming and VR are going.
I suppose it is not that surprising. I plan to buy my next phone based on its VR abilities. I have to have a phone. My existing telecom contracts have expired. I can change carriers, renew or not a contract… I’m sort of a telecom free agent. But, buying a dedicated VR headset, like an Oculus, would be a total splurge and unlikely. An upgrade for the desktop I built in 2016 is more likely. i5 to i7 or 1060 to 1080 or even a 2080 (NVIDIA will likely have the 20 series out in early 2017).
With information coming out about how VR is going mobile way more than I ever expected, I am almost certain to consider Samsung’s coming (end of March, may be April) S8 for my VR. Especially since it is Samsung that is out selling other VR mobile makers. (4.5 million out of 6.4 million sold in 2016 – 69.2% market share.)
We are seeing articles in various places lamenting how slowly VR is being adopted. It remains expensive and requires a powerful computer. That problem is being worked on.
Intel is developing what they call Project Alloy. It is written about in the article: How Silicon Valley Is Trying to Solve Virtual Reality’s Biggest Problems.