Jo Yardley About Oculus

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Jo got her Oculus Rift DK1 working and tried out the CtrlAltStudio Viewer and the SL Oculus Beta Viewer. She relates her experience of being IN, as INSIDE, Second Life™ as opposed to seeing it on a computer screen. Her story is well worth the time to read. I suspect we will hear more in this week’s Drax Files Radio Show.

Her article is here: My first Oculus Rift experience in Second Life.

Image by Mathew, Flickr
Image by Mathew, Flickr

From what she says things were pretty awesome. But, there are a number of problems, which she gets into. The big problem as I see it is the complexity of Second Life. New Oculus users coming in are likely to be overwhelmed by the massive number of viewer controls and the complexity of basic tasks. Jo’s solution is to create viewer-user-levels, beginner, moderate, and advanced that can easily be switched between. She remembers when the Lab tried the basic viewer. But, she still believes the approach would help player retention.

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Gwyneth Llewelyn’s April Fool’s Joke?

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Well, it isn’t that funny. Actually, it is pretty damn scary. She has written a short, for Gwyneth, 2,700+ words that tie far too many things together to make the story sound real.

See: Facebook ‘likes’ Second Life, High Fidelity and buys both.

If you are easily given nightmares, avoid reading the article. She has far too many reasons why her April 1st headline could be real.

Second Life News 2014-14

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Servers Main Channel

Today the package from Magnum was rolled to the main channel. This package has a couple of bug fixes.

  • Bug fixes
    • Fixed a rare case in which certain users were unable to log in (BUG-5130)
    • Fix for a case in which multiple scripts in the same prim calling llTakeControls() with heterogeneous ‘accept’ and ‘pass_on’ parameters would not receive acontrol() event correctly in some cases (BUG-5281)
    • Updated LSL syntax file to use a new schema (fixes STORM-2000)
      • This change is for a viewer in testing; see STORM-1831 for more information
  • Fixed a crash mode

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AvaStar 1.1-1039 Released

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We still do not have a final version release. This is another test version. But, each version gets us closer to a finished AvaStar. Version 1039 fixes a bug found in version 1038.

The Deal

If you have created an account on the Machinimatrix Blog, you now get two benefits:

  • You can register your purchases once and then always download your purchased products (including updates) right from your Machinimatrix account.
  • Purchases made between 29-mar-2014 and 4-apr-2014, also get you the chance to win a 3-month Blender Gooseberry Account*.

or

You can enter your personal Avastar success story as a short note  and get the chance to win a 3-month Blender Gooseberry  Account*.

cheers, Gaia

*A gooseberry account allows you to download 11 blender training videos and all production material of the previous blender foundation short films (Elephants Dream, Big Buck Bunny, Sintel, Tears of Steel) for free plus all production material from the upcoming Gooseberry Project while in progress.

The big deal in this offer the is the Gooseberry Project, With the deal comes an 11-DVD Blender training set. The set if purchased is expensive. 

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VR Forecast

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We have an ongoing debate… or maybe it is just a voicing of opinions… in Second Life™ about VR and the Oculus Rift. Will it be a game changer or a minor fad? Perhaps like the Space Navigator. A few people use it, but the majority have ignored it. And when will it arrive? We have no guaranteed answers, but we have some good predictions coming out of the game industry.

In January 2014 at Steam Developer Days Michael Abrash gave a talk about the state of VR and what he expects to happen over the next two years. The video runs about 28 minutes. I cover some of the points from it below as well as some other information.

[youtube G-2dQoeqVVo]

We are starting to hear of industries that will support VR headsets ramping up. Companies have leaks and there are some dandies. See: Massive leak regarding Sony VR headset? The competition is heating up.

Of course the thing with leaks is they usually cannot be verified and are often from anonymous sources. If there is anything politicians have taught us, it is anyone quoting an anonymous source is not to be trusted. So, we do need to salt such information pretty heavily. But, we are starting to get more rumors and hear more little leaks. This we call smoke and smoke usually leads or at least alerts us to the fire, the reality.

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