General Computer Stuff

Oculus Rift Surprise

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I think most people that know about the Oculus Rift know that just a few months ago this was a small startup company trying to get crowd source funding. Now I see an article where one of the titans of the game world has come on board as the company’s Chief Technology Officer (CTO).

The video here is an older video. 1 hour. It is NOT related to the article about John as Oculus’s CTO. But, it has a load of information about the people involved with Oculus Rift and their accomplishments.

[youtube 8gaqQdyfAz8]

The titan is: John Carmack. Type “John Carmack” into Google and you’ll get about 1.9 million hits. That’s about two-hundred times more than me. John is considered a gaming pioneer, visionary, and somewhat a legend among gamers and game designers. He was the lead programmer on Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Quake, and others. 

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Bits & Pieces 2013-29

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The Kitey grid is adding a Market Place. Daniel Voyager had a bit about it. You can get the details here: Kitely Market Info.  It’s doors should open  in early September this year.

Second Life™ on an iPad is a bit of news. But, don’t get too excited. This is just a case of the iPad being used as a remote terminal to a desktop computer. There is a short discussion over on SLUniverse.

If you missed my article on the Microsoft Surface Pro running SL, check it out: Mobile Second Life.

VWBPE or Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education is starting up in Second Life July 24 to 27. The Lab is featuring the event in their blog. See: VWBPE Second Life. There is a parallel event by the same VWBPE group in Cloud Party, the same days.

Hair Fair 2013 runs to the 28th. It is popular. Just getting into a region can require patience. Also, I’ve had problems in regions I think need a restart. Regions seem to get horribly slow at rendering textures. Some regions just refuse to render staying gray.

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Mobile Second Life

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Everyone wants to use Second Life™ on a mobile device. I can see at times it would be handy. But, for an experience, we are staying on the desktop. I am pretty sure Oculus VR is not going to work well with a mobile device. On a mobile device it would walk you into walls… literally.

Pixysticks
Pixysticks

But, pixysticks has posted an interesting account and pictures of her experience with a Microsoft Surface Pro. See: Truly Mobile Second Life -> The Geekgasm. She is running SL on her unit with 25 FPS in a reasonably dense area of SL.

She says she is getting good results with Neverwinter, Guild Wars 2, and even the new SimCity. That is the advantage of a mobile device with an Intel processor.

Check out the post. Do note that she does not have Advanced Lighting enabled.

While this is not going to replace the desktop units for a quality immersive experience, it is the best mobile experience I’ve seen to date.

Thanks pixysticks, for posting.

Oculus Rift – VR Update

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There is an update on KickStarter.com about the status of the Oculus Rift, which is adopting the name Oculus VR. See the update here: Shipping Update, E3 2013 Recap and Oculus 0.2.3 SDK Release – Update #38 – July 4th, 2013.

This update is about the release of the 1080p developer’s headset.

Scroll down the page to the comments about EVE-VR. This is a tech demo of the EVE Online space adventure game. It blew people away and won awards. The reviewers are raving about the immersive quality of the experience.

Digg Reader Review & Update

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I got my invitation to join Digg Reader. This is a review of the Digg Reader from my perspective of a first time user. This is definitely a beta version of software. It works. But, I think the reader is incomplete. That is sort of the point with beta software.

The Digg Reader Welcome page. Elegant...
The Digg Reader Welcome page. Elegant…

I originally went to the site and put in an email address which lets Digg know I wanted to participate in the beta. The next day I got an email. It had my unique link to Digg Reader. Yay! Excitedly I click and got a page elegant in a simplistic design style. Basically the only information was: Digg Reader – Click to import Google Reader. See the image above. I did that and got an error. After that it got confusing.

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