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.

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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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Second Life Bits 2014-14

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Facebook Photo Blocking – You may remember that Facebook blocked image posting from Second Life™. No real news on this. Oz Linden tells us the changes have been made to comply with what FB said needed to be fixed, but no word is available on when the feature will come back.

Bugs that are Cocao related are causing problems for a significant number of Apple/Mac people. The Firestorm Dev’s and Linden Dev’s have no one to put on these problems. So, on the Mac is side experiencing lots of pain and it looks like they will for some time. The newer operating systems have fewer problems.

Firestorm has an April 1 thing coming. Expect FS Support to abandon the in-world group for about a week as this spoof works it way through. They are implementing full on Duck & Cover. You have been warned. It will be interesting to see how many people bite.

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Myst-Uru 2014

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This is one of my infrequent articles about something Myst-Uru Live related. The first part of these articles is for those that have no idea what Uru Live is and explains, hopefully, enough for the rest of the story to make sense. If you know Uru, skip down to the heading What’s Happening

photo KIimage0577_zpsb940a043.jpg
A remodeled Watchers Pub

Image Note: Image by DoobesURU. If the image makes the game graphics look old, that is because they are basically era 2004. There was a time when Uru Live had far better rendering than Second Life. But, that era is past. Still the game is more immersive than the image would lead one to think.

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Second Life News 2014-13 #2

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Viewer

The current main release version is: 3.7.4-288138 as of noon Saturday 3/29.

RC Viewers

StatTest Viewer version 3.7.5.288371 – not to ever be a release viewer. This version was for Linden use in figuring out a problem in Google Breakpad. The changes in this version are already in the Google Breakpad version.

Google Breakpad Viewer version 3.7.5.288464 – this version has the newest debugging code being put into service.

Interesting Viewer version 3.7.5.288404 – This is the version also known as: Interest List – They have made some changes in how it handles multi-threaded processes.

MerchantOutbox Viewer version 3.7.5.288408 – This version has updates added from candidates that have been promoted to main release status.

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The Problem: Fitted Mesh an Alpha Tutorial

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I suspect anyone that has worn mesh clothes is very aware of skin-poke-through and ‘holes’ from the Alpha Layers making parts of the avatar invisible. I am particularly annoyed by both. But, is there anything we can do? That is the question asked at Fabulously Free in SL. Here I’ll provide the techy answer and information. I’ll also link to good tutorials.

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Fab’s three advisors answer the question. Their answers are straight forward and provide the advice most of us know. But, there is a more complete techy answer. First I’ll summarize their answers then get into the tech.

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OpenSim: Kitely’s Market Place Second Look

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My recent article OpenSim News: Hypergrid Market 2014-12 drew more comments than most of my posts. Maria Korolov, WhiteStar Magic, and Ilan Tochner commented making good points I feel worth further consideration in regard to Kitely’s new market place.

Kitely Market in Android S4
Kitely Market in Android S4

Maria believes the Kitely market will help with the DMCA problems. Her thinking, if I understood, is that having a single market for many OpenSim grids it reduces the work one needs to do to file a DMCA take down notice. Rather than keeping track of all the grids and filing with each, a merchant/creative can file with just Kitely. This is a good point and addresses the concern I raised about the added complexity of the Hypergrid spreading products across a number of virtual worlds.

If each grid has its own market, we have to deal with all those markets and defend content in all those markets. I see that as a big problem. Maria is likely right that a concentrated market would simplify the problem and not present the massive work load I foresaw.

Filing only with Kitely does not get things removed from all the grids. But, that may be a temporary thing. They hope to be able to implement that feature with cooperation from grid owners. For now once an item is in a grid’s asset database it is there until the grid manager removes it. A DCMA take-down will stop sales from Kitely and that may be all one really needs to worry about. More about this farther on.

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