Second Life and Virtual Worlds
Everyone is looking forward to a browser being able to support 3D games and worlds like Second Life™. Mozilla and Unreal have worked together to get Unreal games running in a Mozilla browser. The demo that is out can be found on the Mozilla Developer Network site: BannaBread.
To see the demo you will need Firefox. Or a browser with:
I think we tend to forget that the problems we experience in Second Life™ are not unique to just Second Life. The growing pains in SL are common to all human endeavors. A current good example of that is the recently release MMOG SimCity™ by EA, Electronic Arts™. Try SimCity Problems on Google, 33+ million hits.
Also, it is interesting to see people’s takes on what is happening with SimCity. Erik Kain, contributing to Forbes, writes:
Alan Green, a Software Engineer at Google, has posted an announcement that Google Reader is to cease operation July 1, 2013. (Reference) OUCH!!!
Google Reader is a primary tool I use to track events and happenings in Second Life, technology, and world politics. It reduces my reading time and provides a means of quickly finding important news. I love several fashion blogs and bounce through pictures of the latest fashion just for fun.
We have all heard about people putting text only viewers for SL and OpenSim in web browsers. The idea of using a browser to visit virtual worlds is to avoid having to download and install a viewer, thus making it much easier to get people into virtual worlds. Well, it seems there is a full … Read more
I just found 123D Catch and wrote about it in: New 3D Modeling Tool – 123D Catch Review. 123D Catch is a program that runs on iPhones, iPads, and desktops. It allows you to turn photos of an object into 3D models that can then be ‘printed’ as real physical models. Of course Second Life™ users would use the result as 3D models with textures for import to SL.
However, 123D Catch is only part of a suite of 123D programs being created by AutoDesk to capture the consumer design market. We have new technology like Cubify 3D Systems that can turn 3D models into real life objects.
The suite of programs is free and consists of:
[youtube 6aU2s85Zw3A]
Available for iPhone, iPad, and Desktops.
I came across an article on a new way of building 3D virtual worlds. (Thanks Hamlet NWN) Well, may be not so new, it came out in 2011 I think. But, the process, new to me, is being used to create the independent adventure game: Rustclad. The development team has a video out showing the process they are using and early scenes from their game.
[youtube pj-Gpe2oh_4]
You can see they are using a more organic style than we typically see in Second Life™. Sculpties were introduced to Second Life to enable the creation of this more organic style. I am not sure we have ever taken advantage of sculpties as intended by the creator of them: Karl Stiefvater (Qarl Fizz, formerly Qarl Linden). May be I’ll ask him some day.