Second Life and Virtual Worlds
This is a big deal. I’ll get into what it means and what some of the possibilities are.
For years Second Life™ users have been asking for more bones. That would let users make avatars with tails that are easily animated. Or with more than 4 arm-leg appendages. We will be able to have a centaur with 4 legs, two arms, and a tail, something that is way complicated now and pretty lame. Or a spider with 8 legs.
Today we have a post from the Lab about changes to the SL Avatar. See: Introducing Project Bento – New Bones Added to Second Life Avatar Skeleton.
What are the changes?
Ever wish you could incorporate a tail, wings, or second set of arms into your avatar? How about having animations for facial expressions and finger movements? Yes, we know that there are some incredibly creative workarounds that give you some of these, but they can’t leverage skeletal animation, so they have been very complex, often fragile, and very expensive in performance and resources both in your Viewer and the Simulator.
Canary Beck is now the ‘marketing manager’ for the Firestorm team. The team has taken on the mandate to improve a Second Life™ user’s experience. The marketing manager’s job is to persuade people to try Second Life. So… how can you help?
The easiest thing to do today is click over to Canary’s site and answer two questions: New survey: Would you refer a friend to Second Life?
It appears this information is part of an effort to figure out how to shape the Firestorm Gateway experience.
Hamlet posted an odd one… Mid-Week Open Forum: Say Anything About VR, AR or SL. The post is obviously to encourage input from readers and see what’s on people minds, which isn’t odd. At least that’s what I infer from it. The odd part is in the comments. But what are people thinking and saying? And are these people exemplary of who is reading Hamlet?
First the comments then I have some push back.
Linda Evans thinks the decline in SL regions is due to Ebbe Altberg… really!?!
Tuesday, 11/10, the Lab posted Introducing Lab Chat – A New Q&A Show in Second Life.
It seems on November 19 @ 10:30 AM in the Linden Endowment for the Arts Theatre Ebbe Altberg/Linden, the Lab’s CEO, will meet with residents for a Q&A session. The Lab is proposing that this be a regular event. I suppose like the Linden Monthly Meet Up.
For many this is exciting. Ebbe can speak without inhibition. He is the one that decides what is confidential and what is ready for public consumption. So, we often get new information from him. He will be answering resident questions at this first Lab Chat. There is no word on whether or not he will be a regular participant, we can hope.
Did you know Linden Lab has new avatars for the noobies? I had not realized it. But, Cerise @ SLUniverse posted about the new avatars and I noticed that post. Want to see some of the new avatars and mesh clothes?
This image shows the first page one lands on after clicking JOIN. By default they now have ‘Classic’ avatars selected. It is still possible to select Vampires and People. Those are mesh body avatars. But, the Classic Avatars look to be all new. The older avatars are still in the Library. I just don’t see them on sign-up process.