Nalates' Things & Stuff

High Fidelity Authentication

2014/05/04 by Nalates Urriah

High Fidelity, Philip Rosedale’s new virtual world project, released more details on how they plan to do things. This is information about their authentication process.

For the general users the diagram probably doesn’t say much. I’ll describe what I think the basic idea is using Second Life. This is just a ‘sort-of-how’ to get you and idea of what they are talking about.

In SL we login. That is done on the SL “LOGIN SERVERS.” They verify that I am me. Then provide my viewer a token so it can show me in world as my avatar or as the Lindens call my avatar an agent. The agent is known in the system by its UUID.

Is Blocking XP SP2 Bizarre?

2014/05/03 by Nalates Urriah

You know that Linden Lab announced they are changing the system requirements to run SL. Ciaran Laval has an article up titled: Linden Lab’s Bizarre System Requirements Move. Now why does he think it is a bizarre move?

It is a sort article, so finding Ciaran’s reasoning is easy. The key point I dispute and that changes how I see the move is contained in this paragraph:

This is a very bizarre move considering the client will happily run on Windows XP SP2. There are numerous reasons why clients crash on systems, people running Windows XP are likely to be running older hardware and have less RAM than modern systems, for example, but upgrading to a new OS or Service Pack is not likely to improve their performance to any great degree in terms of Second Life.

Drax Radio Show #17

2014/05/03 by Nalates Urriah

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.

Home Made VR Headset – DIY

2014/05/02 by Nalates Urriah

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.

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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.

Kokua-3.7.6 Viewer Released

2014/05/01 by Nalates Urriah

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

2016/05/112014/05/01 by Nalates Urriah

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…