Those that know about the game Myst probably know one of its sequels: Riven.
Riven is now available on Android at the Google Play store for for US$3.99.
VR: Minimal Latency
You probably know a serious problem with VR is latency, the delay between moving your head and your eyes seeing the visual response. It is considered the primary cause of Simulator Sickness, aka motion sickness, AKA sea sickness, etc. A part of that delay comes from how long it takes the display screen to refresh the image it displays.
I suspect many of us haven’t realized that for Augmented Reality the problem is even worse. In AR we are seeing the world in real time with perfect sight and head movement synchronization and an lagging AR image super imposed. While there is less chance of simulator/motion sickness the lag is visually obvious and annoying. See the video.
NVIDIA is experimenting with 16,000Hz (16KHz) screens. My Samsung screen provides a 120Hz refresh rate, more than 1,000 times slower.
See: NVIDIA Demonstrates Experimental 16,000Hz AR Display
We can get acceptable AR for most uses with way lower refresh rates. However, NVIDEA’s tech will provide crisp images even in combat games and athletic efforts where head motion is extreme.
AvaStar Videos 2017 w19
We are still on version avastar-2RC7_blender-2-77.
There is a new video out (5/8) showing how to handle Bind Poses wjen working with the Classic avatar and Fitted Mesh clothes.
There is a slightly older video showing how to use the new Bento capable AvaStar to create Tinys and Giants.
Second Life News 2017 w19
Servers
The Deploys information placed in the forum is less and less. As of now they are simply a link to the release notes.
The main channel did get a roll out this morning. Package: #17.04.26.325840 – This package changes server logging.
Blue Steel and Magnum get the new package: #17.05.05.326151 – The package consists of “internal” changes… probably meaning bugs that only affect backend operation, nothing we would notice.
Le Tigre gets the package: #17.05.05.326155 – This isn’t a simulator software change. The servers running this channel are being upgraded to a new Operating System version. Sort like you updating Windows and not your viewer. We aren’t likely to see any noticeable changes, provided all goes well.
The OS upgrade will spread through the entire set of simulators.
Google Chrome is unresponsive. Relaunch now? Ouch!
If you use Chrome you may be running into a new problem: Google Chrome is unresponsive. Relaunch now? Relaunching does not resolve the problem.
The problem popped up in 2015 and seems to be back. It bit me after the latest Win 10 upgrade(?). But, the fix in 2017 is different than in 2015.
Clicking a URL link in another app should open Chrome and subsequently the target web page. Instead you get the ‘unresponsive’ error message. There was a popular 2015 work-around for those using Outlook or Thunderbird:
Second Life: News Bits 2017 w18
I do bits when either there isn’t much to report or for whatever reasons I’ve missed UG meetings. This week RL work had me busy. So… its bits today.
Inventory Loss
Empirically, we seem to be seeing more inventory loss. Apparently Grumpity Linden was at the Thursday Beta Server UG meeting talking about the Lab responding to complaints. Inara made the meeting and covers the discussion (here).
I’ve seen more posts in the SL Forum about people losing inventory. The cause is generally thought to be a poor connection or a flat inventory – having everything in the root or first set of subdirectory folders.
The Lab is apparently thinking either users are accidentally self-deleting things or there is bug eating inventory. While they look for a bug they are changing the viewer’s user interface (UI) to reduce the possibility of accidental deletion.
So, at some point we will see the Empty Trash process changes and another ‘Are you sure…’ prompt when deleting things.
See: BUG-100541
Profile Pictures
People seem to be having problems getting images into their profiles. See: BUG-100516.