Oculus Rift and Cloud Party

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Inara and Hamlet have just written about Cloud Party and Oculus. I am happy to see that Cloud Party is thinking Oculus Rift. But… really!?! In a web browser?

If you saw my previous post you know that browser-makers are dropping plugins. Right now they can’t drop all of them because the replacement, HTML5, is not advanced enough to be able to provide the same functionality and performance. So, adding Oculus Rift support doesn’t seem practical to me. After all the system has to render twice as many frames to create 3D display for Oculus. Browser based 3D rendering is just barely performing at acceptable 2D display levels now. And that is with many rendering features dropped to keep performance acceptable.

If you try to use shutter glasses you soon learn that you must have a monitor and video card capable of generating 120 FPS. Sixty frames for the left eye and sixty for the right. The same sort of thing is true for Oculus.

But, there is a huge push to get Oculus to mobile devices. The movers and shakers in the game field think it is possible and that the large money is in mobile. I have my doubts, but lots of money is being thrown at the problem. So, we are likely to see some type of solution emerge. A big question is: ‘When?”

See: Cloud Party Becomes First Virtual World to Officially Support the Oculus Rift; Ex-Linden Cyn Skyberg: “We Are Getting Very Close to the Original Concept of VR”

See: Cloud Party: Oculus Rift support and more.

And with Oculus, I hear performance is everything. Poor performance often results in simulator sickness. May be I could market sim-sickness bag attachments for the Oculus… Money Mouth

Ha Ha

Google/Firefox Dropping Plugins

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The plugins we use in our browsers are a holdover from an earlier time. They provide handy features not built into the browsers. But, plugins also provide a varied collection of problems. The problems are enough of a pain that Firefox, Google, and other browser publishers are going to remove support for them.

Apps Aging Out
Apps Aging Out

Firefox has a list of the plugins that cause problems for their browser. See: Firefox Blocked Plugins. But, it is not just certain plugins that are going to be blocked. We are talking support for all plugins. Firefox will start by blocking all plugins as their default behavior.

Google will be blocking all but a few plugins. Flash, Silverlight, and Unity plugins have Google’s blessing. But, by the end of 2014 even those will be blocked and eventually support removed. By May Google will be refusing to allow new apps or updates to apps in their App Store. See: Google Will Start Blocking Most Netscape Plug-In API Plug-Ins In January 2014.

What Are Some Plugins?

Flash is a ubiquitous plugin that nearly every person has installed. It is mandatory to play Facebook games. But, Flash is going away. My web design tools have lots of new tools to use for creating web apps that are not plugins. 

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Second Life Mesh Eye Lashes

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I like lashes. I have a bunch. But, prim lashes can be a pain to get adjusted. Mesh lashes can solve some of that problem. They can be more easily shaped to the avatar eye and nicely curved.

The beautiful Juicybomb has an article on lashes. Check it out: Know your Mesh Lashes.

The current main SL Viewer 3.6.7 (281793) Sep 30 2013 has the transparency problems Juicy mentions. That really sucks.

The fun part of these lashes is the tintable set and the ability to make them glow.

 Update: Strawberry likes these too. See: My Favorite Mesh Eyelashes.

Second Life News 2013-41

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This week there was no roll to the main server channel. That means none of the RC’s passed testing.

The RC’s

All three RC channels are going to run the same package as last week. There are, of course, fixes that were applied to the package. We will see those rollout Wednesday to the RC channels.

The package contains: a fix for the group notice delivery issue, introduces a missing JSON operation to LSL, and includes preparatory work for an upcoming viewer with scene loading (interest list) improvements.

The only change from last week’s version is addressing an issue with the llGetCameraRot() LSL function.

I doubt that llGetCameraRot() is the reason that the package was not advanced to the main channel. But, that is all I’ve heard.

UPDATE: May be the camera thing is enough to have held things up. See: Possible camera position problem, Magnum vs Release.

Another Second Life ToS Victum

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Ziki Questi just blogged about another artist stopping work in Second Life™. This artist is Johnas Merlin. In the middle of an LEA project (Linden Endowment for the Arts) Johnas has stopped work. The reason given is the textures Johnas was planning on using can no longer be used in Second Life. So, this piece of art is going to remain unfinished.

You can see Ziki’s article here: Quantum Reflections, Victim of the ToS.

More ToS Information

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Hamlet Au ran a poll on New World Notes asking if creative types had stopped creating and uploading to second life. Of the 266 poll participants 121 answered they have. There were 32 others that selected the other option. That gives us a total of 153 or about 57% that stopped uploading content to Second Life™.

You can see the poll result here: Linden Lab ToS Survey Results: Majority of Respondents Have Stopped Created/Selling Second Life Content.

As family points out, this TOS change has gone far beyond just drama. We are seeing a change in resident behavior. I have to wonder if this is starting to show up in the stats Linden Lab tracks. This would be a good question for people to be asking of the user group meetings.