Art… we all have our preferences. If you have ever looked at my Flickr Favorites you have an idea of the type of art I like. You’ll probably suspect Bryn Oh’s work isn’t something likely to appeal to me as it never looks like what I have as favorites on Flickr. But, I am fascinated by Bryn’s work. It always has an ability to pull me in. I always take time to look at it.
The video is a re-render of itself with some missing dialoged added. It seems Bryn’s cat deleted some of the dialog in the previous render. – – Hey… it’s his story and he is sticking to it. Cats are sneaky devious creatures.
I am sure it will be pretty awesome to use the Oculus Rift HMD in a world like this.
Improvements
Ciaran Laval has an article up on his site that gives a good summary of recent changes in Second Life and coming changes. See: Linden Lab Ask Us To Check Out Improvements To Second Life. I’ve mentioned some of these weeks ago but he goes into more detail and collects them into one place.
This is a big change. I’m not sure I like it. In fact I currently dislike it so much this may be a change that drives me to Firefox or CoolNovo.
Google’s New Bookmarks Manager
The change was only appearing in the Beta version of Chrome, which I run. But, it is feedback from beta users that will decide if this feature becomes mainstream, which is probably a near certainty anyway, based on Google’s past history of how they change Chrome and other Google products. Feedback may change it, but I doubt it will stop it.
It seems some Kokua users have had some problems with the 3.7.24 (previous) version of the viewer. Also, some on third party grids have seen the viewer crash. But, Kokua does make an OpenSim version that is more compatible with OpenSim grids.
Penny is pointing out there is a bit we can do to change our render cost with only a minimal change in appearance. Kay suspects few people are even aware of the Avatar Render Cost (ARC) feature in the viewer and have no clue they need to do anything. I agree with Kay. But, she goes on to recommend changes to Second Life, which is where I disagree.
Kay made field trips to various places in Second Life where she recorded the ARC values of avatars in the regions. Kay points out that only 81 of 190 (42.6%) avatars would render using a setting of 80,000 for Render Muting. That means 109 or 57.3% of the avatars would not render .
The horrible frame rates (FPS) I am getting have me looking at a new computer and a better video card. But, I actually have little hope that will help FPS in regions populated with 30+ avatars.
On an empirical basis Kay found that jewelry is a major culprit in high ARC.
Did you know it will be FREE? What!?! That is the word on the street. PC World published in January that Windows 10 would be a free upgrade for Windows 7 and 8 users. See: Windows 10 will be a free upgrade. There is some question about Vista, but it looks to excluded.
Windows 10 Logo
I am somewhat surprised that Windows XP users are not included. But, I know that transferring users from XP to 7 and 8 is a technical pain. It is so bad I only ever move data over now. Installing over XP as an upgrade while a limited possibility, is usually a disaster. A new install is the practical and much easier way to go. Even the Microsoft transfer program doesn’t really work for an XP to 7 or 8 transfer.
