Second Life and Virtual Worlds
Google is releasing a $79 headset named Daydream. Road to VR has an article on the headset.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLLAA4ENIP4
The headset uses a phone, not included. But, the phone has to be Daydream Certified. I’m not sure exactly what that means and I didn’t dee anyone explaining it. The most they say in the way of an explanation is: the Daydream headset works exclusively with Android’s integrated VR support.
There is an interesting tutorial out for Blender 2.78 showing how to make a 360 VR image.
Facelights were a basic part of a well-dressed avatar, back in 2008. Especially for a dark skinned girl that wanted her eyes to show in her pictures. But, when Linden Lab added the Advanced Lighting Model (ALM) feature facelights often produced a good imitation of a solar flare. (Earth has been dealing with a solar flare since Friday, 9/30 – Phone giving you problems?)
The video shows one of my new facelights. The first part shows it attached to my ‘Center’ attachment point. The later part of the video shows it attached to my ‘Spine’ attachment point.
Facelights are now BAD and we see few people wearing them. A few merchants still supply facelights with their skin or clothes products. Photographers mostly use ALM and Windlight to handle their lighting needs. Some high-end photographers use PROJECTOR lights. But, old style facelights are pretty much a thing of the past. We seldom need facelights these days. But, there are still occasions when we need to add extra light.
There is a roll to the main channel this morning. The package running on the RC channels advances to the main software for all servers this week.
This is the package with ‘minor fixes’ and BUG-40565 “Significant script performance degradation observed in server version 16.09.14.319788” fixed.
There is no new package rolling to the RC channels. So, all regions will be running the same package.
A new Blender release is out: 2.78. You can download it here: Blender 2.78 download.
There are new features that will help Second Life users. The full list of features is here: Blender 2.78 Release Logs. Interesting ones for SL users are:
There are more changes. For instance, Animation & Rigging improvements that may or may not help us. It is hard to say clearly because we are limited in what aspects SL actually supports. But, a number of improvements will provide better work flow and make some tasks easier. So, depending on how you work these may help you, probably.
I have not yet tried AvaStar 2 with Blender 2.78. No one in the Blender-AvaStar group spoke up when I asked. So, I’ll just have to try it.
Microsoft is pushing updates. Windows 10 automatically obeys Microsoft and installs updates. Numerous people are finding their computers have been crippled after an auto-update. The problem is not just with Second Life™ viewers. But, SL users are NOTICING the problem as it has a massive effect on viewer performance.
The Firestorm Team has written a bit about fixing the problem in their wiki. See: Windows 10 Issues.
The problem with the FS fix is they recommend uninstalling updates; KB3176938, KB3189866, and KB3193494. Some of these are security updates. Removing them leaves your computer open to known exploits.