Nalates Urriah

The Second Life News-Scape

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Viewer news has been decreasing, at least in my opinion. Most of 2014 I’ve been writing about Firestorm catching up with the SL Viewer and we still aren’t there. Firestorm is basically on a quarterly release plan. So, there is only infrequent news to report in the Firestorm regard.

Peeping Tom
Another Mr. S photo…

Cool VL Viewer and Singularity serve what I perceive to be an increasing smaller audience of the Version 1 interface users. I’m not saying their user count is decreasing. As users on older computers move away from Firestorm and the SL Viewer their user numbers may  increase for a time. But, I think that will change as time passes. And SL2 is likely to be a final nail…

The fans of third party viewers generally follow the viewer developers’ blogs. So, I think the need for news on these viewers is decreasing. Mostly I am less interested in the viewer changes happening now and that makes it hard for me work up the energy to cover them. 

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Second Life 2014 in Review

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Writing the annual review is a lot of work and takes time I will be using for RL projects. Ciaran and others have written their reviews of 2014. I’m going to skip mine this year. But, I do have some thoughts on 2014 and the coming 2015.

I have been tracking concurrent user numbers for the past 3 years.

Concurrent Users 2011 to 2014
Concurrent Users 2011 to 2014

There has often been a discussion about whether or not there is a seasonal aspect to the use of Second Life. I think the chart answers that question. It shows most clearly in the peak concurrent users line and a bit less in the minimum line, but it is still there.

Notice that about July-August of each year there is a low point in the numbers. From then to February-March the numbers increase to a peak then start to fall to the February-March low point. It seems pretty consistent from year to year for the last 3 years. 

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AvaStar

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Gaia says: You have to update your AvaStar to AvaStar-1.3-18 when you want to work with Blender 2.73 (RC).

There are some problems with 2.73. The Blender people are holding back its release while they make fixes. But, there is an RC version out.

AvaStar 1.3-18 is the recommended version for Blender 2.73. Any earlier AvaStar version is likely to produce problems with 2.73.

The Buzz

We may find preset shapes in AvaStar someday. It was been discussed with Gaia this week. So, we may eventually see child, tiny, giant, and other shapes.

I don’t expect Gaia to add the ‘Standard Sizes’ as presets into AvaStar. But third parties may make add-in shapes for Blender and/or AvaStar. 

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Oculus Rift and Marketing in Second Life

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This was planned for release on Monday… but, the blog would not cooperate… I see that Ciaran found the article and reported on it.

Once upon a time manufacturers were thinking that Second Life would be a great way to market their products. A big obstacle to marketing online is letting the potential customer see the product and decide they have to have it. A 3D world moves one closer to the being there.

The immersive nature of 3D with Oculus and other HMD devices is re-awakening those hopes and thoughts. There is potential. The site AdWeek has an article by Christopher Heine titled: How Oculus Rift Is About to Reshape Marketing Creativity.

Second Life has prominent mention in the article. What Christopher does not mention is why 3D marketing in SL failed in the first years of SL’s life. 

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Blog Moved

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THIS HAS BEEN A FRUSTRATING FEW DAYS. But finally (1/9) it looks like the blog and my other sites have successfully moved to the new server.

Loss

Articles from 12/16 to today have been lost (about 4 posts and a couple of comments). the 15th was my last backup… I probably have drafts of some of them in Word files on my computer. But as most are news and the news is old, I won’t bother to restore those.

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Mandelblub 3D and Second Life

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I’m busy with holidays and work, so not much blogging. But, work-wise I came across an interesting program I needed to for making some unique original textures: MandelBlub 3D, a free 3D fractal generator. It is mentioned in the Advanced Photoshop magazine too.

Mandelblub 3D Generated Image
Mandelblub 3D Generated Image

The art I first came across shown on Deviant Art looked like the type of art I needed for a work project. So, off I went to find the software and generate those textures. It occurred to me that some of these could be awesome for use in Second Life, especially since it appears the Lab is never going to change the TOS to something acceptable to CG Textures and similar suppliers of stock textures. 

Getting the program is the easy part. It is pretty much a stand-alone program that does not need to be installed, just unzipped and run. 

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