Drax Radio Show #17

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Drax Files Radio
Drax Files Radio

This show covers some VR news, which inspired my DIY article. They touch on Fantasy Fair, which is on going now – May 1 to 11. Then the remainder of the audio is interviews with more Lindens.

Drax and Jo have been talking about the first time user experience. There is no doubt these experiences are a significant contributor to player retention rates… or lack of them. People are adding their ideas to the comments about how the experience may be improved on the Radio Show blog: Drax Files Radio Hour.

Jo suggests that a RL model be used. In many countries people arrive by train, boat, or air. At the arrival points are information kiosks so people can find out how to get wherever they want to go next. Her idea is something like that would work for Second Life. 

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Home Made VR Headset – DIY

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This is for the techie peeps. It is a way to built a head set for US$25 to $50. And it appears to be no harder than building Revell model cars and plains.

This first video is the overview of how things work. Below the fold is the How-To video.

[youtube hC3-op5EnI4]

This head set uses a smart phone for a display screen, like a Samsung S3, 4, or 5. To avoid using your phone you can buy a screen. That adds $120 to $150 to the cost. It also adds to the complication of building this contraption and you have to be good with electronics.

Still, that is way less than the current cost of an Oculus DK1 or 2 and the estimated retail price of $350 for the planned retail version of the Oculus, which is now estimated to be released in 2015, not 2014 as many of us were thinking last year. 

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Kokua-3.7.6 Viewer Released

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Kokua/Imprudence Viewers
Kokua/Imprudence Viewers

The Kokua Viewer had been updated to use the SL Viewer 3.7.5 and 3.7.6 code. Plus there are a bunch of fixes and feature additions. See: Kokua-3.7.6 is released.

There are Kokua versions that have the code to use the Server Side Appearance and Inventory API version 3 (AISv3) updates running in the RC regions and Sunshine RC Viewer. Those versions do not have RLV support. So, for this release you either get RLV or AISv3.

I haven’t used Kokua for some time. If you are using it, let us know how it is working. Imprudence used to be my preferred viewer for cross grid use.

Oculus Rift – Funny Ouch

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There are great possibilities for the experience provided by the Oculus Rift (OR). But, the talk about using it with augmented reality tasks may be premature. Watch the funny video that has now started showing up everywhere.

This does look like a DK1 lash-up. I would expect the OR’s ability to improve with time and probably has in the newer DK2. But, somewhere there is a physical limit to how fast information can be moved, processed, and displayed.

In computers the CPU speed limit is about 8.429 GHz, the current Guinness World Record held by AMD. For consumers the limit is around 3 GHz. Parallel processing via multiple processors increases power demand and consumption to get things done faster. Battery technology is currently deficient for what we need in mobile devices. Thus the larger format phones somewhat from the need to accommodate larger batteries.

So, this is probably going to be a matter of figuring out how to do things smarter. The video shows the state of things now, which while exciting is not yet ready for prime time in AR applications. But, may be this year…

realMyst Master Piece Updated

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Myst was one of the games my family got in 1991. Its graphics were awesome for the time. It was the all time best selling computer game until the SIMS took that title. Parents thought it was great, mostly because there was no violence. Cyan Worlds, Inc. has just released an update of the game. They have re-rendered the world for our newer systems.

Warning: Bad Language

The video has visual artifacts not in the game. I suspect the compression used for YouTube created the artifacts and blur.

[youtube leo3Hujt_NI]

Get the new game for US$12 at Humble Bundle. It is on Steam for $17.

The video does show the new graphics and cover some of the history of the game.

OpenSim Physics 2014-18

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The OpenSim people are working to get a better physics engine for their worlds. Work is coming a long nicely. This video shows a prim torus,made physical, with a vehicle animation script. The track is made from cubes made to look like a steel framework and they are made  physical too.

[youtube W6HS15u-Fck]

This works amazingly well.