Second Life and Virtual Worlds
It is not Second Life™, but it is interesting. US$100k is always interesting…
You can get additional information at: GeForce eSports | World of Tanks $100k Open.
You can watch the broadcast of the competition at: http://www.twitch.tv/worldoftanks September 1 at 7PM PDT.
Or on demand at: YouTube WoT.
Cloud Party™, the other virtual world, announced yesterday the development team has released a new feature: animated attachments, think avatar wings and tails. I suppose one could use the attachments for ears too.
The team warns against animating faces as they are working on facial customization.
Without digging into how they work I can’t say much. But, the new attachments apparently get passed emote information. They have a picture of wings drooping as the avatar slimps in response to the ‘sigh’ emote.
Cloud party is steadily moving ahead. Last week, or a couple, they released new ‘regions’. The land choices in Cloud Party now go beyond just sky-islands.
Slowly, or quickly – depending on your perspective, Cloud Party is getting all the features of Second Life™
There seems to be another ToS change. I have not looked to see what it is, but I did get a prompt to agree to the ToS today. I was in a hurry to be some place, so I didn’t read it.
All the planned changes covered Tuesday have rolled out. All seem to be working. So, there really isn’t any ‘news’ for that part of Second Life™.
The server change that allows a server to restart as soon as all avatars are out of the region is on the RC’s. For now this is a region owner or estate manager tool. But, the plan is to move it into the Server Update Roll Out process to speed up the process.
There has been some discussion of having the server trigger a shutdown-coming-event in scripting. This would allow viewers and scripts to respond to a shutdown. One could have a viewer TP you to another region rather than let you get logged out. Expect such a feature to be a third party viewer feature first.
For now this is just talk.
Some users are having a problem seeing the Mesh IP Rights Test. If you have uploaded mesh to the Preview grid you know that you have to take the test once for the main grid and again for the Preview/Beta Grid ADITI. Only after passing the test can you upload mesh objects.
Their browsers are showing a blank page. BUG-1640 – Mesh Upload Verification – IP Tutorial in Aditi Grid leads to blank page – unable to verify for meshuploads.
There is no ‘for certain’ fix or work around. Try using different browsers. Try logging out of the web site and closing your viewer. Then clear your browser’s cache. Then use this link: Second Life Preview Grid IP Tutorial.
If you cannot get to the tutorial, file a trouble ticket and refer to BUG-1640. If you choose to file a JIRA Bug Report, file in the WEB project and refer to BUG-1640.
Yesterday the Lab posted that Second Life™ is now available on Desura. If you remember Desura is a game distribution company pretty much like Valve’s Steam. Linden Lab announced the acquisition of Desura in early July of this year. (Announcement)
Jo Yardley has been talking with Björn-Christian Bönkost. Björn has a Rift SDK unit that he is using with David Rowe’s CtrlAltStudio Viewer. Björn visited Berlin in Second Life™ and Jo got him to write about it. You can read his account here: First Oculus Rift user visits Berlin.
[youtube zorXEWIbZYg]
I think for anyone thinking of trying out the Rift, Björn ‘s comments say it very well: “I was impressed, amazed and stunned. The city is bigger than anything you can find as a demo for the rift.”