Windlight Magazine for October is Out

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Windlight Magazine October Cover
Windlight Magazine October Cover

I’m not an avid reader of the magazine. In fact this is the first time I’ve even looked at an issue. I see people posting about it in various places. But, I’ve never seen anything that intrigued me to look at it. But, I recently saw some architectural images on Flickr that were amazing. I thought they were Blender renderings. But, as best I can tell they were made in SL and possibly Photoshop’d, but even Blender images get Photoshop’d.

So, when I noticed this issue has a section on Architectural Art in SL and on Huckleberry Hax, a writer. Those two items were enough to get me to click and check it out.

The magazine covers art in Second Life™. It is more about art and where to see it than it is about displaying art in the pages of the magazine.

The images of the architectural art are less than I hoped for. I’ve seen better images in Flickr. However, this is likely just because of the image quality used in the magazine, which may be why it is more about where to find art than trying to show it to you. So, the article points to this work of art in Second Life named: Angel Manor by Kaya Angel.

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SL’s Quick Graphics Viewer Updated

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The Second Life Quick Graphics (QG) Viewer was just promoted to an RC status and updated to version 3.8.5.305528. My install caught it and updated.

The update process for Project Viewers works much better than previously. I haven’t been using project viewers all that much. So, I’m not sure when it changed. But, this project viewer has been updating whenever I log on and an update is available. Nice.

I was just using the previous version of QG to explore Angel Manor. I had found it slow loading textures. It still is. Places I visited earlier today are slow. It is like stuff is not cached. It is the same when I return home after being away for 20 or 30 minutes.

After the initial load in the Manor it was better. But, I still am not impressed with speed. I thought as a Project viewer it probably had more debugging code than the RC’s do. But, the change to RC doesn’t seem to have made much difference.

Notifications Viewer

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Busy Bunnies
Busy Bunnies

The Second Life Notifications Viewer version 3.8.5.305555 is now a release candidate (RC). This is the version that provides a new Notifications floater that separates incoming notifications into Categories. It provides, according to the Lab, a better way to view, interact with, prioritize and manage incoming notices for busy residents.

I haven’t tried this one yet. I am looking forward to it. Now that it is an RC version I may install it. I’ll wait a couple of days to see if it installs itself as I have use RC’s checked.

How did Second Life Change Materials?

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There are gotcha’s in this latest main SL Viewer 3.8.4, in the mesh upload. You can use more than 8 materials now. Gaia Clary has changed AvaStar to export more than 8 materials. But, the announcement of that change comes with a warning: don’t.

POTETO_BackStage Pass - surfash.bade SOME KIND OF BOUNCER MAN
POTETO_BackStage Pass – surfash.bade SOME KIND OF BOUNCER MAN

Also Drongle McMahon commented on the problem and what happens when we exceed the allowable polygon limit per material for mesh items. See: Second Life’s Limits. 

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Oculus Connect 2 Conference

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Miriam Pia writes about the recent Oculus conference on Hypergrid Business: Oculus confab features Gear VR, Minecraft, Netflix. The consumer version of the Oculus Rift was there.

Big news is Samsung is going to be cutting the cost of the Gear VR headset to US$99. The headset will work with all of Samsung’s 2015 flagship smartphones. They released the system requirements for computers driving the headsets. Click over to Hypergrid to see the video detailing the requirements.

There is also a video showing the Touch Controllers being developed.

Miriam writes about Medium calling it a virtual reality painting program. I would call it a sculpting program. Whatever, check out the article and videos.

Specs: Minimum i5 CPU, 8gb ram, NVIDIA 970… So, most users are being left behind. That doesn’t mean you can’t use VR on older rigs. It does mean you likely won’t be happy with it, if you do.

There are 4 or 5 generations of i5 CPU’s. I didn’t dig in to see which i5 will work or if all will. I expect 3rd or 4th gen CPU’s will be needed.