Second Life and Virtual Worlds
Things about SL
A new version of Kokua Viewer has released: 3.8.2.36975. This is a VMM (Viewer Managed Marketplace) compatible viewer. The release notes are here.
This version is not up to date on RLV.
The Linux version has several caveats.
Inara Pey has an article about a program named Reshade that can be used with Second Life™. The author calls it a post-processing injector for games… Post processing simply means processing an image after it is initially rendered or captured. The injection part is about setting the software up to capture images from your game software, in Second Life’s case: the viewer, by adding software to the viewer.
If you Photoshop images (post-process), I do, then this add-on allows you to do much of what you would do with PS but to machinima/video. I’ll call this software a baby sister to Adobe’s After Effects. It is limited compared to After Effects. But, is a great tool for almost free.
Ciaran Laval in his blog has an article on Neoliberalism And Cardboard In Virtual Worlds And Games. Despite the title it is about the direction virtual worlds are going. He quotes from Elliot Murphy’s essay on computer games and politics: Always a Lighthouse: Video Games and Radical Politics. This may give us another hint on Sansar’s economic model.
In America I suspect many will confuse the liberalism intended with the popular liberal/progressive ideology the mainstream media touts. In a 1984 style, radicals and socialists have taken over the word liberal for their use in describing socialism/collectivism, which are not liberal. But, in Ciaran’s quote we see neoliberalism is being used in its more classic meaning, i.e., the core tenets of neoliberalism: privatization, deregulation, commodification, and a celebration of personal profit. My kind of thinking.
Canary Beck has an interesting poll up: How much do you mix your real life with your Second Life? It originate from Hamlet’s site: Short Survey on Second Life vs. Real Life Identity. You can answer the poll at either site. It is the same poll regardless of where you access it from.
The results should be interesting.
Ciaran Laval has an article I saw this morning: The Project Sansar Media Train Is Still Going Full Steam Ahead. In it he talks about two articles about Project Sansar with some mention of Second Life™.
There is not much of anything new to learn, but a couple of points. Ciaran does a good job analyzing what the two articles may mean for Sansar and Second Life.
There is more and more news coming out about Windows 10 Security… what they actually should be saying is; Windows 10 the No Privacy Edition. No doubt there are some problems. But, it isn’t as bad as many make it sound.
To get some information on privacy settings see: What Windows 10’s “Privacy Nightmare” Settings Actually Do. You’ll learn your phone, tablet, notebook, and Windows 8 are pretty much all doing the same things that Win 10 does. So, it is mostly nothing new.
For gamers there is another Win 10 consideration for anyone with a NVIDIA card older than the 600 series. Eliz926 (7/30) in the Adobe forum points out:
Previously NVIDIA said that its Fermi (400 and 500 series), Kepler (600 and 700 series) and the new Maxwell (750 and 900 series) GPUs would all support DirectX 12. However, an updated support document confirms that the older Fermi series (<600) are still using the WDDM 1.3 drivers, rather than the new WDDM 2.0 drivers needed to support DirectX 12. The article said that support will be offered “at a later date” for Fermi GPUs.
We can assume everything before the 400 series is NEVER going to support DirectX 12. (Reference)