Oculus Rift Integration

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There is a good article on FastCoLabs: What’s The Big Problem With Developing Oculus Rift VR?

It seems it is not that hard to integrate into a game. Team Fortress 2 has an Oculus Rift interface now. Valve, the owners and operators of Steam, helped create the interface.

Joe Ludwig, one of the Valve programmers behind the Rift implementation, said, “Figuring out how to combine mouse and keyboard input with head tracking was not very well explored territory, so we had to break some new ground there.”

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SL Landing Point Orientation

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Is that an obscure enough title?  You may have noticed that the direction your avatar faces at Landing Point Hubs has changed behavior since Tueday. Until now an avatar always rezzed facing east. This was a bug. The server is supposed to pass along data to the viewer that specifies which way the avatar faces.

Server Beta Meeting 2013-19
Server Beta Meeting 2013-19

The point was that people could tp in and the land owner could set the Landing Point’s to face the avatar the right, or convenient, direction. See: About Land. I don’t see how direction can be set. But, I am not a land owner. I think it has to do with which way your avatar is facing when you set the landing point.

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SL Philosophy by Gwyneth Llewelyn

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I enjoy Gwyneth’s writing. She has a new article out that inspires thought and examination of one’s thinking about Second Life™ with some interesting comparisons between human behavior in Facebook and SL.

It supports many of my perceptions of life and human nature, so I found really interesting.

I like how she has described the fallacies in the thinking of the interviewees. I enjoy rational examination of philosophy and human behavior, which is why I have a Philosophy Section in my blog.

Gwyneth is responding to interviews of by Aria E Appleford with SL Residents that have left SL. I think it is good reading. See: Second Life Has No Humans.

While you are there, check out the poll that Gwyneth has on her blog: What do you think about Philip Rosedale’s upcoming virtual world, High Fidelity? I am surprised how many have not heard of it… well… there are only 17 respondents when I voted. So, it’s too small a sample to provide much insight.

End of Linden$ Exchanges

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The recent ToS change left some questions as to whether third parties could continue trading Lindens. A subsequent post on the SL Blog seems to equate “unauthorized” with Not Permitted.

The kicker is the emails being sent to the operators of Exchanges. One German operator (Milz Yue) posted on a forum:

As described on the Second Life blog, updated Second Life Terms of Service disallow trading of Linden dollars (L $) on exchanges other than the LindeX.

As operator of a third party to exchange, You Should cease Facilitating L$ trades on your exchange immediately to comply with the Terms of Service. Any virtual ‘ATMs’ or scripted objects in Second Life that are connected to your exchange should therefore be removed immediately. 

Please be sure to read the complete updated Second Life Terms of Service and take the steps Necessary to comply and keep your Second Life account (s) in good standing. 

Thank you in advance for your cooperation. 

That may not be a perfect translation. But, it seems to make it clear, Linden Lab will be the only currency exchange in Second Life. 

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Second Life Weighting Collision Bones

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While we wait for the Mesh Deformer people are looking for ways to make mesh clothes fit. There are some alternate methods for making clothes that change with the avatar shape. One of those is the use of Collision Bones. Some call it Collision Volumes. We have heard that method called liquid mesh in promotional stuff. It works to a point. But, how does one use Collision Volumes?

Collision Bones/Volumes
Collision Bones/Volumes

Using the Collision Bones in the default SL avatar one can achieve some measure of sizing tied to the avatar shape. The problem is getting that information from the modeling program to Second Life™.

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US Changing Wiretap Laws

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From the New York Times: The Obama administration, resolving years of internal debate, is on the verge of backing a Federal Bureau of Investigation plan for a sweeping overhaul of surveillance laws that would make it easier to wiretap people who communicate using the Internet rather than by traditional phone services, according to officials familiar with the deliberations.

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Albert Gidari Jr., who represents technology companies on law enforcement matters, criticized that proposed procedure. He argued that if the United States started imposing fines on foreign Internet firms, it would encourage other countries, some of which may be looking for political dissidents, to penalize American companies if they refused to turn over users’ information.

“We’ll look a lot more like China than America after this,” Mr. Gidari said.

See the NYT article: U.S. Is Weighing Wide Overhaul of Wiretap Laws