Second Life and Virtual Worlds
The Oculus Rift Project Viewer has been upgraded 3.7.18-295296. Along with the upgrade comes a post in the blog: Oculus Rift DK2 Project Viewer Now Available.
They are still careful to point out that this is a somewhat incomplete viewer, but then Oculus Rift is incomplete. However, those with DK2 units can play with this viewer.
It is amazing, to me at least, that this was made in 3 weeks during spare time… 4.5 days to render…
This is an interesting tutorial on using the Blender outliner. See 5 Tricks for the original post.
Blender developers meet to discuss which directions to take Blender and which features to prioritize and schedule for release with the next version. For us we get a glimpse of what may be coming to make our modeling lives easier.
See the latest notes here: Developer Meeting Notes: October 12, 2014.
We do learn there may be a Blender 2.72a release this week to fix a couple of bugs that made it through all the testing.
In a couple of weeks we will learn what they have decided to include for release 2.73. One possibility is Stereo 3D… I wonder if that means Oculus type 3D… wouldn’t that be a rush?
There are side projects that apparently are not part of the main development thread. That lets them stay outside the scheduling, I suppose. They are added when they are done. One of those is refactoring Materials Nodes for better multi-threaded operation. That should speed up our bake times for complex items.
One of the features added to Second Life some time ago is projectors, lights that shine on things. Bryn Oh used a headlamp thing for use by those visiting his latest exhibit, which is a projector. But, we see little use of projectors as lights in SL. Or maybe we just don’t notice them.
There is the problem of many people probably not having Sun/Moon + Projectors enabled in their graphics preferences for performance reasons. That is a problem for those building places. They want the majority of visitors to see their creation as built. So, they often skip using Projectors for lighting. But, for photography performance is generally not a primary issue and what the camera sees is up to the photographer. Everyone will see the photograph as captured as in general everyone’s computer settings are similar. So, there is no reason not to use Sun/Moon + Projectors. We just want to light our scene to create the image we want.
In RL photography lighting is a big part of it. For portrait photography it is somewhere between a science and an art. Lighting is used in capturing most all commercial images too.
The first I’ve heard of people using lights in SL photography is in the article Bloody Gorgeous in the PrimDolls blog. Notice the link there to Deoridhe’s Flickr images: Bloody Gorgeous.
If you have not yet registered your purchase on the Machinimatrix.org web site, it is time to do so. You need to register to be able to keep a permanent download link and to get your updates. At some point the transfer from the old download to the new registration process will stop working. Gaia is telling that ‘end’ will be SOON.
Also, Gaia has announced a support section of the site where users can provide assistance. See: Just Ask. You need to be registered to use this feature.
Linden Lab has announced they are going to stop development of Patterns, their version of Minecraft, but prettier.
Those that purchased it can still play it. But, the server side functions will no longer work (sharing worlds).
So… was it just not providing the rate of return needed… or did the Lab want the Pattern’s developers for development work on SL2?
Jo Yardley saw Ebbe Altberg/Linden in 1920’s Berlin. He was testing out the Linden Lab Viewer for Second Life with Oculus Rift DK2 support. She also caught his Tweet about having the viewer out next week. I assume he means ‘out’ as in a new RC Viewer update.
If it is as an RC Viewer then I expect it will have the new CDN and HTTP Pipeline features included. But, that is just my guess. The CDN and Pipeline features are probably 2 or more weeks from making it out to the main SL Viewer. But, they would be a BIG plus for an Oculus RC Viewer.