Hair Fair 2015 Coming

This is one of my favorite events in Second Life™. With mesh hair it is possible to have a much lower Avatar Render Cost (ARC) or Draw Weight, which it is called depends on which viewer you are using. Whatever it is labeled in your viewer it costs you performance. So, I am replacing my high ARC sculpty do’s with new mesh do’s for that reason.

Luna Jubilee
Luna Jubilee by Kaelyn Alecto, on Flickr

The fair opens July 11 and runs to July 18. This is the 10th university of this event, or so I am told.

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Second Life: Fitted Misconceptions

Second Life™ is technically complicated. Fortunately, most users generally don’t have to deal with the technical issues. We can just cruse around enjoying SL. However, if we make clothes, we are going to suffer from what we don’t know.

Foxes - Fleece Jacket - Grey
Foxes – Fleece Jacket – Grey by claudagger, on Flickr

DE Design has a new post up that appeared in Fab Free. See: Fitted Mesh. There is some good stuff and some tings I take exception to. 

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Second Life’s Free Dove

Free Dove (SLURL) was one of the first freebie places I discovered. I got my first real hairdo from an offer presented there, GuRL 6 (MP Link – No In-World any more). Lots of my first clothes came from Free Dove. I still visit once in awhile. I send new people there.

Endless Love
Endless Love by Sombra Monroe, on Flickr

Fab Free has a story up by Pru Rexroth about hunt going on at Free Dove during the month of May. See: Free Dove Hunt – Part 1.

Update: 2015-05-14 – Today I see Part 2 is out: Free Dove Hunt – Part 2.

Tutorial: Second Life Masking

Lildaria Resident started to do a tutorial on Masking in Second Life™. But, she found a good tutorial already exists. She reprinted that tutorial. See: Tutorial: Understanding Mask Mode.

(Image and user poofed…) Blackspot by dolletjes, on Flickr

In the tutorial it is talking about masking meaning alpha layers, hiding parts of the avatar or things in Second Life. If you aren’t clear on how this invisible, transparent, and translucent thing works, check it out. I think it will help.

If you are trying to understand how to implement ‘masking’… I think this tutorial falls a bit short. But, that may just be me not getting the ‘how to’ part of it.

Second Life & Virtual Reality

We are getting closer to hands on. The Oculus Rift is to release in the first quarter of 2016. At this point I think the first round of pre-release technical challenges has been met. So, any possible delay would be from manufacturing and supply problems.

Now that the Samsung Galaxy S6 is in production the supply of display screens for the Oculus should be adequate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5XVq4NLnwk

Unity and Unreal, game engine platforms, are both announcing support of HTC RE Vive. This means game developers can move away from having to develop support for the various VR headsets and use the support provided by Unity and Unreal. This saves developer’s time and means new games will move through the development pipeline faster. 

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