Second Life and Virtual Worlds
MetaReality has this week’s podcast out. Salome Strangelove and Karl Stiefvater (Qarl Fizz, formerly Qarl Linden) are guests in this week’s edition.
I’ll remind you this is not a transcript of the podcast. This my take on what I heard said and relationship between what I heard to what was meant by the speakers is purely coincidental… well… may be not. I try to convey the meaning of what is said. If you find anything offensive or upsetting, listen to the audio before raving.
I’ve gotten to use the new Firestorm viewer for a bit. I like the Firestorm default mode and have only been using that mode. It is nice. It is close enough to the Linden V3 interface I can find most things easily.
It has the debug settings for CameraOffsetRearView and FocusOffsetRearView, which I change on all my viewers to give a better camera position. See Camera Position Tips for more on that.
The performance of the viewer is faster than Linden viewers. I turned off Sun/Moon Shadows to get the skin color adjusted in my new N-Core Eloise ‘One Voice’ shoes. My FPS was hitting 40 in my apartment. Nice. My Core2 Quad and nVidia 560Ti are not as fast as I had hoped. But, this version of Firestorm is faster than the last.
I got home late tonight, Wednesday. I see there is a new release of Firestorm Viewer out, version: 4.1.1 (28744). This viewer has been a work in progress for about four months. So, lots of new stuff.
Get the download here: Firestorm-Phoenix Viewer Download.
You can read the official announcement on the FS/PH Blog: Major Firestorm Viewer Update! It has a list of the more interesting updates and new features. A full list of changes, fixes, and features is in the Firestorm 4.1.1 Release notes.
Inara Pey has a more detailed review on her site: Firestorm 4.1.1.28744. Her review hits some of what she sees as the import changes. One being this viewer is more stable than the previous version, which is good.
The second meeting of the new Content Improvement Group (CIG) was this week. The group has not yet been added to the SL User Groups list. You’ll find it in the SL Wiki as: Content Improvement.
Geenz Spad is known in viewer development circles. Geenz facilitates the CIG meeting. With a viewer development background it is probably not surprising that the first topic of discussion was outstanding JIRA items. It isn’t THAT boring…
Using the Linden Lab™ viewers, both main release and development, I kept crashing. I finally switched to the Exodus Development version and managed to stay connected (Exodus is fast). What a pain having to relog 3 times.
The highlights from the meeting follow. There is more on the Deformer debates.
Inara Pey has a couple of interesting articles up on her blog Living in the Modem World.
Inara found a new Torley Linden video tutorial. I think it is exciting that Torley is making tutorials again.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QA0s1AtF5Fs]
Hopefully you have been following the Mesh Deformer and developments around it. Today in the Content Improvement group meeting I brought up the subject of Consensus on Mesh Deformation Tools.
Some people have the same concern I do. What’s best and how do we know? There is speculation on what is the best way to deform mesh so clothes fit. Discussion extended into the work flow of making clothes too. Maxwell Graf is keen on the idea that any solution has to provide a reasonably simple work flow. I agree. Making mesh clothes is already complicated.
Karl’s Mesh Deformer is reasonably simple. It certainly avoids adding complication to the clothes making process. In general it will simplify what needs to be done to get clothes to fit. Simplicity is a large factor.