General Computer Stuff – Page 34 – Nalates’ Things & Stuff

Scale for VR?

2014/05/29 by Nalates Urriah

In Second Life™ we talk about scale. Some of us are big on getting people and things to RL scales in our virtual world (VW). I’m a fan and I’ve written several articles about building to scale. Now people interested in Virtual Reality (VR) are thinking about scale at entirely new levels. The site Road to VR has an article up about how the fashion industry may use VR to allow people to model RL clothes in VR prior to purchase.

Imagine you could specify your avatar based on your RL shape… that could be a good or bad thing. :/ But, the fashion industry is thinking of using the idea to allow us to try on clothes in VR and decide if we like the fit. I suppose if it fits then we can order it and an Amazon drone will deliver it. Well, it is a dream at the moment. But, an Australian company has a proof of concept demo out for the Oculus Rift.

The idea is also to get away from sizes. Ladies know that sizes from various designers vary, often varying as a way to attempt to flatter the female ego. ‘Oh, I can wear a size 2…’ Personally the miss sizing for psychological advertizing just annoys me.

Second Life Bits 2014-19

2014/05/06 by Nalates Urriah

Servers

There are no roll outs this week.

Viewers

The main viewer remains: 3.7.6-289164

RC Viewers

No changes since the last report.

Bit of News

Jo Yardely posts about Ebbe’s saying new avatars are coming. Originally he said they would arrive in March. It looks like they will get released this month now. So, we will have more ‘Library Starter Avatars.’ This will make it easier for new users to not look so noobie.

That of course assumes they don’t walk around nude flashing everyone. (face palm)

[youtube BNsrK6P9QvI]

Oculus Rift – Funny Ouch

2016/05/112014/05/01 by Nalates Urriah

There are great possibilities for the experience provided by the Oculus Rift (OR). But, the talk about using it with augmented reality tasks may be premature. Watch the funny video that has now started showing up everywhere.

This does look like a DK1 lash-up. I would expect the OR’s ability to improve with time and probably has in the newer DK2. But, somewhere there is a physical limit to how fast information can be moved, processed, and displayed.

In computers the CPU speed limit is about 8.429 GHz, the current Guinness World Record held by AMD. For consumers the limit is around 3 GHz. Parallel processing via multiple processors increases power demand and consumption to get things done faster. Battery technology is currently deficient for what we need in mobile devices. Thus the larger format phones somewhat from the need to accommodate larger batteries.

So, this is probably going to be a matter of figuring out how to do things smarter. The video shows the state of things now, which while exciting is not yet ready for prime time in AR applications. But, may be this year…

Google+ Second Thoughts

2014/04/29 by Nalates Urriah

Indigo Mertel has supplied me with links that are a counterpoint to the Tech Crunch article on Google+ Walking Dead. So, I was asking myself if Tech Crunch had blown it or not and I by piling on. So, this morning I started looking at various articles written about Google+ (G+) in recent days.

Forbes has an article out on both the Tech Crunch claims and what Google is saying. See: Is Google+ Really Walking Dead? The article dose not really answer the question its title asks. But, they too point out that G+ is failing to compete with Facebook, which seems to be general knowledge uncontested by Google.

The article does point out the value G+ has for those doing SEO work (Search Engine Optimization). Everyone wants placement in the research results. Of course Google’s challenge is in keeping people interested in buying their advertising. To do that they must keep people searching via Google. That means providing good results for your searches. G+ has significant advantages for those wanting search placement and for those trying to find things.

Windows XP to 7 Updating

2014/04/302014/04/28 by Nalates Urriah

Update: 4/30/2014 – ICH/AHCI Information Added

As I move friends and clients off Windows XP I have run into some problems. Most are easy to solve, if you understand the problem. Others are impossible to solve because there is no workable solution. I decided to provide the information I’ve had to learn over the last few weeks So, if you are wondering if you can update your computer running Windows XP to Windows 7 or 8/8.1 this is something for you to read.

I doubt I know all there is to know about this upgrade path. But, I have successfully done a number of updates from Xp to 7. I probably haven’t found all the problems or the best software. But, I do have software that works. I’ve also run into some knotty problems that it took a lot of research to solve. So, hopefully this will save some of some time.

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Facebook’s Newswire

2014/04/25 by Nalates Urriah

When there isn’t much happening in SL on the development front, I tend to write about other things that affect our online lives. For me this is a slow news week. So, I bring you: FB Newswire…

While the goals of Facebook and Google are similar, ID’ing and profiling every person on the planet for targeted advertising, their approaches and execution are different. However, I think their successful implementation of products have simpler similarities.