Mobile Second Life

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Everyone wants to use Second Life™ on a mobile device. I can see at times it would be handy. But, for an experience, we are staying on the desktop. I am pretty sure Oculus VR is not going to work well with a mobile device. On a mobile device it would walk you into walls… literally.

Pixysticks
Pixysticks

But, pixysticks has posted an interesting account and pictures of her experience with a Microsoft Surface Pro. See: Truly Mobile Second Life -> The Geekgasm. She is running SL on her unit with 25 FPS in a reasonably dense area of SL.

She says she is getting good results with Neverwinter, Guild Wars 2, and even the new SimCity. That is the advantage of a mobile device with an Intel processor.

Check out the post. Do note that she does not have Advanced Lighting enabled.

While this is not going to replace the desktop units for a quality immersive experience, it is the best mobile experience I’ve seen to date.

Thanks pixysticks, for posting.

Who Do You Believe?

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We are about to enter another summer of ‘record breaking heat.’ Or are we? Last year all sorts of records for the hottest temperature on record were broken. Or were they? There is a huge amount of misinformation being shoveled out. It is difficult to find out who is providing the information and find the actual data to check who is spinning what. Who is lying, who is telling the truth?

Politicians are hoping people are too lazy and ignorant to catch-on to what is being done. To survive people will supposedly pay any tax.

In 2012 there were 356+ new highest-temperature-on-record claims. By the measure they used, that is true. But, by the same standard of measure there were 10,000+ lowest temperature records set in 2012. Which did you hear about? Were those numbers for the year or for a month or a week? Did you know those records are all on weather stations that have only been in existance since 1947 and later? Did you know that most of the worlds highest temperature records were set in the 1930’s? …and remain unbroken to today?

Either side of the debate can spin the numbers without lying to mislead. For more information on what the facts are and what you will likely be seeing this summer check out IceCap’s Blog article: Just the facts ma’am.

How hot has Death Valley been this year? And in the past? Can we accurately compare today’s temperatures with the 100 year old high of 134°F? The answers, well really questions, are here: Anniversary of Death Valley Highest Temperature. You will start to see some of the problems climatologists deal with. You decide if today’s measurements are accurate or misleading.

Second Life Materials Experiments

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Toysoldier Thor has a blog post that went up a couple of weeks ago. I missed his email telling me about it, an overactive spam filter, until today. For those that are new to 3D modeling and texturing of models, Toy’s article is a good starting place. Check out the 8+ minute video for a quick overview.

[youtube ClqgiySYbyQ]

Toy’s blog has more information in a post: My Experiments with New SecondLife® Materials System. If you are new to this, it is worth your time to read the article and watch the video. The video is somewhat a quick summary of the blog post.

 

SSA Follow Up 2013-28

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We now have SSA enabled on the Le Tigre Release Candidate channels. For a list of regions running SSA see my article: Le Tigre Regions List. So, what is it like? Well, my opinion is it really depends somewhat on the viewer you are using, but generally better.

Non-SSA Region
Non-SSA Region

So, far my best experience has been with the Production release of the SL Viewer version 3.6.1-278007. I’ve had some crashing as I tp from SSA to non-SSA regions. But, otherwise, it is the best I’ve seen.

The Beta version of the SL viewer is another story. It is the worst of those I tried. I expect that to change. It is called beta for a reason.

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Blender Measurements for Second Life

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There is a good thread in the SL Forum for those that are interested in making to-scale objects with Blender. See: Getting a good measurement for SL within Blender.

Blender Units - by Aquila Kytori
Blender Units – by Aquila Kytori

Codewarrior Congrejo makes a suggestion in the thread that I use in my modeling. Put an avatar in the scene. I strongly urge furniture makers to go to the trouble to do that. I literally do not have ANY furniture that fits my avatar. Couches are ridiculous. The distance from the face of the back rest cushion to the front edge of the seat can be a couple of meters. WTH?

There are bits in the forum thread that may surprise even experienced Blender users.

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