Who Do You Listen To?

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Looking through the comments on Metareality’s articles I noticed one that is typical of people in various online communities. It seems humans have a tendency to provide their opinions for solutions to problems they have little if any knowledge about. In my experience such behavior is pretty much a universal trait of human nature, online or not.

Jo Yardley recently wrote: Noob experience revisited. Jo clearly sees problems with the new user’s introduction to Second Life™ process and is frustrated by it. Jo has some great ideas for fixing them. But, never mentions his first experience with the SL experience, just his looking at the experience as it is now from a more experienced viewpoint.

I’ll give Jo credit for trying to look at it from a new users perspective. But, that is impossible for him because he has 4 years of experience with SL. He can only IMAGINE what it might be like. How many time have we found things not to be as we imagined?

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More on 123D

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I just found 123D Catch and wrote about it in: New 3D Modeling Tool – 123D Catch Review. 123D Catch is a program that runs on iPhones, iPads, and desktops. It allows you to turn photos of an object into 3D models that can then be ‘printed’ as real physical models. Of course Second Life™ users would use the result as 3D models with textures for import to SL.

However, 123D Catch is only part of a suite of 123D programs being created by AutoDesk to capture the consumer design market. We have new technology like Cubify 3D Systems that can turn 3D models into real life objects.

The suite of programs is free and consists of:

  • Catch – Uses photos of real objects to generate a 3D model.
  • Design – Create 3D models on your Mac, PC, or iPad
  • Sculpt – 3D sculpting
  • Make – unique projects using incredible slice or fold techniques.
  • Creature – Used to create… well… creatures.

 

The Catch Video:

[youtube 6aU2s85Zw3A]

Available for iPhone, iPad, and Desktops. 

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New 3D Modeling Tool – 123D Catch Review

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I came across an article on a new way of building 3D virtual worlds. (Thanks Hamlet NWN) Well, may be not so new, it came out in 2011 I think. But, the process, new to me, is being used to create the independent adventure game: Rustclad. The development team has a video out showing the process they are using and early scenes from their game.

[youtube pj-Gpe2oh_4]

You can see they are using a more organic style than we typically see in Second Life™. Sculpties were introduced to Second Life to enable the creation of this more organic style. I am not sure we have ever taken advantage of sculpties as intended by the creator of them: Karl Stiefvater (Qarl Fizz, formerly Qarl Linden). May be I’ll ask him some day.

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CHUI Moved to Beta

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It is all over the place now. The new Chat Hub User Interface (CHUI) is now part of Linden Lab’s® Beta Viewer. That happen more quickly than I expected. Just the other day it hit the Development Viewer. So, if there are not a lot of JIRA’s filed I expect it to arrive in the main viewer quickly too.

Torley has a video out, without the friendly greetings, and the Lindens have made a blog post.

The video:

[youtube t8IUxCMyElU]

Torley does nice videos. Thanks Torley. This one is very handy. But, check out the Linden post for more details and to discuss the changes.

Ciaran Laval has an article up that explains a bit about the CHUI. See: Chui Hits Beta, LL Equip Their Flak Jackets. He is expecting them to get some blow back on the new user interface. That is a pretty safe bet that has nothing to do with the CHUI. It is a change and that draw flak.

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Some Interesting Second Life Stats

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Daniel Voyager posted an article on mesh viewer adoption statistics. The stats were collected by Kadah Coba, one of the Firestorm developers, and put into a graph Daniel found posted on SLUniverse. I am assuming that Kadah used stats the FS Team collects from the splash page of their viewers or viewer stats that come from the Lab or… may be some combination of sources.

Chart by Kodah Coba Showing Adoption of Mesh Capable Viewers
Chart by Kadah Coba Showing Adoption of Mesh Capable Viewers

I stopped being interested in the mesh stats when adoption went over 90%. But, this chart does clearly show the influence that the Firestorm, and formerly Phoenix, viewers have on the community. Too bad they don’t have anyone that understands how to use that influence to improve the community. But, they do a good job improving the user experience with their viewers. 

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Kokua Viewer Gets CHUI

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Development on the Kokua Viewer, Imprudence’s replacement, doesn’t get much coverage from me. I do have hopes for great things from it. But, Aurora Sim and Kokua seem to have fallen out of favor.

However, they are still making news. Timothy Rogers has a good article on Hypergrid Business about 10 Reasons to NOT Give Up on Aurora-Sim. And Kokua Viewer has added in code for the new CHUI (Chat Hub User Interface).

Today the Kokua Team announced:

Merge of Communications Hub User Interface (CHUI) is complete and made available for testing. This is an experimental viewer so, please review our testing best practices here. Please give this viewer as much use as possible with attention to recently added client AO and windlight capabilities. Also, regression testing of media and sound streaming is needed. Likes and dislikes can be reported in the comments to this post. Bugs need to be reported in our redmine bug tracker. Downloads are on bitbucket.