Second Life and Virtual Worlds
Latif Kalifa added a comment to my ‘news’ post this morning that Materials released just after my posting. The version for the main viewer is now: 3.6.0-277516. See the official announcement here: Get the New Materials Viewer Today! Check out Torley’s new video about Materials.
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Torley’s bear is the wrong color… for Torley.
There is a brief tutorial on using normal and specular maps in the video. More tutorials are here:
Jo Yardley has written up her firs hands on experience with the Oculus Rift (Rift). This is an excellent article that puts the state of the art in perspective. The current Rift’s are low resolution, but still impressive. See: Oculus Rift and Second Life.
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The day she saw the Rift the company was releasing a high resolution version, still beta. There is an even higher resolution version coming for retail sales.
Jo portrays the possibilities for this technology very well. The article is worth the read.
Hamlet recently published: Oculus VR Gets $15M in VC Funding – Virtual Reality Much More Likely to Go Mass Market.
Every indication is this tech will create sweeping changes to computer games and virtual worlds. Jo is portraying ways VR headsets could change RL activities. It will certainly change how we experience and build in Second Life.
I am distracted by RL work events and running a bit behind. I’ve barely been in-world since last Thursday. We did get a rollout Tuesday to the main channel. The main channel got the Interest List update. This should be noticed as a little bit faster rezzing of regions you are visiting for the first time.
Rollouts started for today, Wednesday, on the release channels. All three are getting the same package. It includes the new LSL functions I’ve been writing about. If you have missed those articles take a look at the release notes. These include additions to Pathfinding and object returns.
Viewer changes are picking up speed. As the new multi-channel process moves forward we will see more viewer projects moving forward. Some of these things are things I’ve written about weeks and months ago. Now they are coming to a viewer near you.
Inara has written an update on the SSA (Server Side Appearance): SL projects update 24 (5). See it for details. The summary of that news is simple. We are likely to see SSA enabled over the next 2 to 6 weeks. I expect it to SLOWLY creep across the grid. The server side code has already been rolled out to the main channel. Now it is just a matter of enabling it on the regions. But, there are concerns about problems and whether the new servers can carry the load. So, this will be a very careful roll out.
I came across this tutorial in my YouTube subscriptions. It is done using Maya and Photoshop. But, the technique can be used in any 3D modeling and paint program. It runs 35 minutes. I like the ideas presented.
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If you notice, this is a CG Cookie related video. The CG Cookie version is here: Creating Polygon Hair for Game Characters. CG Cookie is a great site for 3D modeling tutorials.
Do you remember the Experience Tools? Officially they were called Advanced Experience Tools, I suppose they still are. We have been hearing a rumor or two here and there. We have gotten a clue or two from Lindens in the User Group meetings.
The video below is an old one…
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Don’t try to join the group mentioned in the video. We have no idea whether this group will come back to life or not.
Back in March 2012 the Lindens released the above video on the tools (see: #SL Video of Linden Realms Tools). We know that a server change for experience tools was rolled to the main grid some time ago (in RC May 2013 week 19).
Today Oz Linden updated the wiki with new information on viewer repositories. One of the beta viewer projects is an Experience Tools viewer. So, we are getting closer to seeing what the tools are. (See: Linden Lab Official: Viewer Source Repositories. Unfortunately the repository is still set to private. So, we cannot see the viewer code or get a running copy of the viewer. But, I take posting of the repository as a step toward public release.