Second Life Bright Canopy Update

Inara has a good summary of what has happened and what is going on with Bright Canopy, the SL Go replacement. The TL:DR is simple. User behavior was not what the Bright Canopy peeps expected. The change from expected behavior drove up backend costs of the service. They were losing money and things had to change. Thus the service shut down.

See: Bright Canopy update

rho
rho

Basically, no one other than Amazon is making money from this project. If they cannot figure out how to turn that around, expect the doors to close.

There is a future in being able to stream high end games. With VR coming there will likely be more demand for the service. The challenges and/or symbiosis come from Intel, who is working to add more graphics power to their CPU, Apple and others wanting to challenge the NetFlix style streaming services and add gaming, those battling to take over cable and satellite delivery services, and others that want to add gaming as a facet of their entertainment services.

My point is there is industry interest in what Bright Canopy is doing. There may eventually be some way to deliver a SL/Sansar experience to lesser powered hardware.  But, as fast as hardware is developing/advancing the need deceases each year. That makes it hard to predict whether Bright Canopy will find an economic model that fits enough people’s needs for their service to remain viable. It is life and death for them, so the motivation is there. At some point the hardware and tech they need will be cheap enough, it is just a matter of timing.

Second Life: How Old is Bare Rose?

If you have never been shopping at Bare Rose, you have missed out on a classic shopping experience of Second Life™. I think everyone should go at least once.

Bare Rose Oct 2014 - Something for Everyone
Bare Rose Oct 2014 – Something for Everyone

Ciaran Laval has an article up on Bare Rose turning 10. That is old  in SL years. (6 SL Days = 1 RL day – 4 hour days in SL) Something like 60 years… well… that is one way to look at it.

See: Bare Rose Celebrates Its 10th Birthday With Story Based Hunt. This is more adventure than simple hunt.

Second Life Bits Week 36

Loki Eliot has an article up on why we aren’t hearing much about Experience Tools or seeing much in the way of ‘Experiences’. See: Where are the Seamless Experiences?

SL Streaming

In an earlier post I wrote of YouTube Gaming. Below is a recording of someone using it and streaming motion-capture into Second Life™. Hamlet has a mention of it too: Motion Capture Dancing Streamed Live Into SL! The video is an hour and 42 minutes… I have video starting the stream where you can see the avatar following Jessyka Richard  as she does her thing.

All the details you need to connect up a system and do this are pointed to by Hamlet in another article: How to Connect Kinect Motion Capture to Your SL Avatar. It leads you to: Kinect, Rinions, and Second Life

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Zombie Eye in Second Life

It isn’t contagious. This problem passed quickly, I think. I didn’t run into it, so it is hard for me to know. But, it revealed another part of how the Second Life™ system works.

Knowledge is not everything...
Knowledge is not everything…

Backend Serve updates – there are a number of backend services needed to support Second Life. When the Lab is changing/updating them they generally provide no public notice, unless users need to change behavior, like refrain from transactions or rezzing no-copy items (which hopefully is changing). 

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Second Life CEF Update Week 35

We don’t hear much about this Second Life™  change. But, Chromium Embedded Framework (CEF) is coming and will affect our use of Second Life in many ways.

TV
TV

The viewer currently uses Webkit, an old unsupported tech, to display a number of viewer panels (like Search). It is also the tech used in Media On A Prim (MOAP). It is a part of SL Televisions. 

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