Second Life

Things about SL

Linden Lab Opens Oculus Rift Beta

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Wednesday about 11 AM the Lab made a blog post: Second Life’s Oculus Rift Integration is Ready for Beta Testers. They provide an email address for those that would like to participate in the beta testing.

Ciaran Laval posted talking about it. See: Linden Lab Oculus Rift.

To be part of the beta team you need to have an Oculus Rift. The only Rift hardware currently available is the Developer’s Kit, US$300±. Some Second Life residents have a Rift. They are the people the Lab is looking for.

No Rift? Don’t bother applying.

CtrlAltStudio makes a viewer that supports the Rift. It is a branch of the Firestorm Viewer. See: CtrlAltStudio. But, David Rowe, the developer, has not been big into the user interface. He has been waiting on the Lab to develop that.

Also, David has joined the Firestorm development team. May be join is too strong a word. Partnered… whatever they are working together. That suggests to me that the Firestorm viewer will probably release Rift support shortly after the Lab’s viewer makes it to the RC stage. Or… not. They may decide a better UI is possible and go to work on their idea of better one, which would delay their release…

At this stage I suspect this beta team for the Lab will have to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement. Everyone is trying to figure out how to do UI’s for the Rift. So, my guess is the Lab will want to make their release a surprise.

Slink Visage Heads Released-Review

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Slink released the new mesh heads as promised this past Saturday. I didn’t get to check them out until Monday night. They are interesting. But, they are not for me. I do think they are really nice. They show what our avatars could be.

Comparison
Comparison

There is some interesting slight-of-hand tech used in making animated mesh. Any animation or change of a mesh shape is done by making each mesh shape somewhat like drawing each frame of an animation. Then making the shape one wants to see now visible and all the other shapes invisible. When ready for another shape the currently visible one is made invisible and the newly desired shape made visible. This technique makes for really high polygon count items. I can’t tell if that is what is being done with Slink’s heads. But, it is the only way I know to change the shape of a mesh item.

The weights of the two heads are shown in image #1. Don’t pay much attention to the Land Impact or Physics. I did not bother to make a physics layer for my import of the SL Avatar head. So, those numbers are distorted. 

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Second life News 2014-11

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Servers

The main grid did get a roll out this morning.  The package was previously running on Blue Steel and Le Tigre. It is a maintenance upgrade with bug fixes.

Furniture Shopping
Furniture Shopping
  • Bug Fixes
    • Fixed a bug in which the server release notes link in “About Second Life” would sometimes fail to appear
    • Fixed a bug in which certain objects had incorrect status when crossing between regions
    • Fixed a crash mode

RC Channels

The RC code running on Magnum will now run on all three channels. This is the Sunshine RC with the AISv3 code that improves how inventory works adding reliability and stall prevention. It is considered additional work in the Bake Fail or Server Side Appearance project.

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Drax Radio #9

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Drax Files Radio
Drax Files Radio

This show is mostly about the new service SL Go provided by OnLive™. Drax has been trying out the SL Go service on a tablet and in another scenario using the LEAP Motion controller. Check his site for a video on LEAP.

Drax Show #9 download – right-click.

Twitch

Twitch is mentioned as going mobile (05:00+/-). It is another game streaming service, sort of. You can put or will be able to put your video captures of 3D game play on Twitch to show others. Provided game companies incorporate the features into their games as they are currently releasing a developers SDK.

They are thinking it will work by capturing the game play and optionally a  picture within a picture of you as you play from the front facing camera. For those that would like to promote Second Life™ or their Second Life products this seems an interesting possibility.

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Retry II SL News 2014-10-3

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Whatever, this morning I am reading the meeting transcript. We have good news on Group Ban. Also, there are some serious inventory loss problems afoot. See the heading WARNING.

Servers

We know the main channel got the ‘infrastructure’ update previously running on the Blue Steel and Le Tigre. Users are unlikely to see any change.

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