Second Life Drama About Pictures

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Seems I missed most of it… I’m not disappointed. Seems Iris Ophelia (RL: Janine Hawkins) wrote an article for Paste Magazine titled 10 Best MMO’s. Second Life was listed as 6th, not bad. My Myst-Uru MMO didn’t make it at all, but it never went massive… But, it wasn’t the writing or 6th place that bothered people. It was a bad picture of what SL looks like.

Lost Eden Love Shack - 2014
Lost Eden Love Shack – 2014

People took it to Twitter and soon the Lab had posted 30± new images to their Flickr account, bringing it to a collection of 99 images of SL, Blocksworld, Patterns, and other Linden Lab products. You can see them here: Linden Lab @ Flickr. Iris/Janine sent a nice image to Paste Mag and got the bad one removed. By the time I saw the article it had been replaced. So, my first thought was, “Huh! Nice image for a change.” 

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Second Life’s Shipwreck Island

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This looks Interesting… I’ll be checking it out.

Oceania is proud to present Shipwreck Island, August 18th – 24th! Join the adventure for one week of a Special Edition Preview of Oceania Fishing, Custom Prizes, and so much more! Explore the incredible sim-wide build, hunt for hidden treasure, and stumble upon a Pirate secret or two! All games and prizes are absolutely free!! Join the SL community in celebrating the end of Summer and sneak a peak at what Oceania has been up to!

Cash Prizes to top fishers at the end of the week!

  • 1st Place – 10k!
  • 2nd Place – 5k!
  • 3rd Place – 2.5k!

Teleport to Shipwreck Island

I suspect those cash prizes are L$. I’m not that into fishing… except at a club or two… and a different type of fish. So, I won’t be winning.

Creative Commons & Open Source Music Review

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Anyone doing machinima is likely going to want music they can add to their work. Times being tough most are looking for free stuff. So, legitimate free music sites are must for a machinamist’s tool collection.

Dance by: Nuno Duarte - Flickr
Dance by: Nuno Duarte – Flickr

Having just made a video for which I needed music I was interested when I saw a post on SLUniverse. The site WebDistortion was pointed to on SLUniverse by Free Xue (reference) with its 2009 collection of legally free music sites: 14 awesome open source music sites for digital creatives. I took a look at those and updated URL’s and decided to give a quick synopsis of what I found.

I would not call the majority of the sites listed in the article ‘awesome’. So, I did some more searching and found more sites. In the process I found Nancy Messieh’s 2013 list of 14 CC Music sites. There are more sites I would rate awesome in that list. (see the last link in my lists).

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Second Life News 2014-34 #2

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Servers

The main channel did not change this week. We will likely see it get an update next week (35).

RC Servers

The three RC channels did get an update. This is a package that has a crash mode fix in it. Maestro thinks he can discuss this fix AFTER it rolls to the main grid.

Nal2014-34_001
My New Snake – 2014-34

Next week the RC channels, or some of them, will get a new package that has some visible changes.

SVC-2262 – Incorrect height value in postcard which sent from above 256m. A fix is in the coming package. Maestro describes the bug, “The bug was that the postcard-sending script did a modulo 256 on all three region coordinate components to clamp them. But, while that’s fine for X and Y coordinates, you can be >256m elevation :)” 

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CtrlAltStudio Releases DK2 Second Life Support

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David Rowe, lead developer for CtrlAltStudio’s Oculus Viewer and Firestorm contributor, has released preliminary support for the Oculus Rift DK2, developer’s kit 2. This is the improved Oculus with better head tracking and higher resolution screen.

Read more here: Preliminary Rift DK2 Support: 1.2.2.41183 Alpha.

In motion tracking the big change in the Oculus which requires changes to programs supporting it, is from adding tracking of head leaning/position. Head rotation is what was previously tracked. To understand the difference think of locking your shoulders against your seat back and moving your head by only flexing your neck. That is head rotation. If you bend at the waist and lean forward, you don’t use many neck muscles but you head moves a lot. It is this latter motion that has been added to the Oculus’ abilities.

Think of leaning out a car window to look at the ground. You will use a combination of head turning and body motion to see around the car door. It is supposed to be this sort of motion the Oculus has gotten better at.

Telling Second Life Viewers how to move the camera to simulate this type of motion is being added.

David does not have all of the new stuff working in the viewer. It is, as he writes, “…very preliminary”. But, it is a start for those with DK2’s.