Second Life and Virtual Worlds
Materials – Prim Perfect has an article up on the surprise they experienced when moving to a new viewer that was Materials capable. In their words: “The difference is stunning.”
If you aren’t running with the Advanced Lighting Model (ALM) enabled, you are missing out.
In the Firestorm viewers only the BETA version has Materials capability, for now. If you are a Firestorm user you may want to check out the Beta. If you are leery of Beta versions, you may want to try the main release SL Viewer.
I just got around to listening to the show. I am writing this as I listen. I love that it is a fast paced show. But, that makes it hard for me to get all the details in.
The main interview with Esteban Winsmore is annoying… well, it is Esteban that is annoying. Drax asks the pertinent questions, which a good interviewer does. It is obvious Esteban is just having fun with it.
There are some interesting discussions on Oculus Rift and augmented reality.
[youtube Bc_TCLoH2CA]
02:00 – Net Neutrality – Drax provides a link to an audio by Brooke Gladstone at On The Media, an NPR property. See: Net Neutrality and You. They are pointing out how Google controls our Internet experience now. I doubt many realize what Google is doing or how it limits information. Drax points out how Americans are not fighting for Net Neutrality, which is both a good and bad thing.
Monday was Martin Luther King Jr. day in America. It is a holiday for government and numerous businesses. The Lab considers it a holiday, so the Lab was running on holiday staffing levels. This usually means Tuesday and Wednesday server rolls are skipped or pushed back a day.
This week will be different. Maestro Linden told us last week that a rollout is planned for Tuesday and an RC rollout for Wednesday. We did not have one last week, so may there is a push or they are trying something differently. Whatever, we get rolls Tuesday and Wednesday.
Shug Maitland (post) suggested to Strawberry Singh that she should do a meme on how people view the Second Life world. Meaning mostly a screen capture of your viewer window. I actually had to think about that for a minute.
What my viewer looks like really depends on what I’m doing. If I’m exploring, I have all the panels pretty much closed. I’ll keep the mini map open. But, if I’m attending a user group meeting, I tend to have chat windows open, sometimes even covering most of the screen. Our I may have the word processor open covering most of the viewer. If I’m working on appearance, I often have the view covered with inventory windows and the outfit window.
I decided that my view ‘of the world’ is mostly my exploring mode. But, that really isn’t how my viewer looks most of the time.
Above is a screen capture of how my screen generally looks right after I login.
Meanwhile, Strawberry has a new meme up titled: Second Life Helpful Tools Meme. It’s a great meme. She’s using some tools I didn’t even know about. So, that’s the end of this article because I’m off to find some new tools.
Ciaran Laval has an article up talking about getting the Lab to make a section of the SL Forum for podcasts. See: Should The Second Life Website Have A Category For Podcasts And Inworld Media Shows? The article is more than a question. Ciaran goes into a bit of the history of Second Life™ podcasts.
If you think it is a good idea, post a feature request in the SL JIRA. Remember. There is no ‘Feature Request’ option in the JIRA. Just file a bug report and put the words ‘Feature Request’ in the title. The request is seen and moved to the Lab’s internal feature request list and quickly closed. It isn’t forgotten just because the JIRA item is closed. It lives on in the internal processing of the Lab.
I was having trouble with the JIRA this morning. So, if you have trouble, don’t be surprised and it probably is not you.
The podcast was out early this morning. I wasn’t. This morning I have been playing with my new blog theme, which breaks my Dreamweaver. So, the podcast is a nice break from sorting out database changes and the WordPress foibles of setting up a local copy of a live site.
[youtube FJwljGamIGw]
As always, what I write about the podcast is my take on things. So, listen to the podcast before flaming. You can listen to it or download it (nice addition to Drax’s blog) here: Drax Show #2 Osprey Therian. Drax links to a CNN article on Osprey. I think it would be nice if Osprey’s friends posted some comments on the December 2013 article.
I am not making any pretense of transcribing the audio. My comments are just that comments on what is said in the show. I’ll be clear when I make a quote.