Second Life Bits 2017 w18: Shopping

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30 Linden Saturdays

Obviously this is for the shoppers, L$30 Saturdays is a Discount Sales Event. Seraphim puts the event on. The event is a set of merchants that place a product on sale for L$30 every Saturday. Prices are dropped for 24 hours then return to normal. You can visit Seraphim’s web site each week to get a SLURL to the first shop in the day’s participants. Plus, Seraphim has a load of hunts and sales listed.

GTS Weapons

This week the sale starts at GTS Weapons… they are offering 3 melee and 3 ranged weapons you can pick up for free. GTS features bows: cross, compound, and medieval, when you walk in the door.  They offer some spears and swords. As you wonder the store you find most weapons types, chainsaw, lasers, old west guns, present day military, steampunk, black powder, explosive, futuristic, a tank, cannons, poison plants… pretty much everything a combat RP’er could want. Generally, in the L$600+ range. These are mesh objects. The scripts use Raycast tech in appropriate weapons, the newer tech for SL weapons.

The region is GTS Weapons. GTS has other stores there and offers other products from clothes to tools needed to run an RP game.

The L$30 Sale Item is over at WHATZ (Fashion and Props), across from the landing point. There are 4 sale items, one of which I couldn’t resist. A cute camisole but, it fit so poorly I tossed it. 🙁 

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Second Life: New Things

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I missed the Content Creators UG meeting this week, lunch and drinks with friends. So, of course this is the week we got word from the Lindens that we are getting new shiny stuff, a new project: Animation Extensions.

Zizi
Zizi

The new extensions will extend how and what we can animate in s couple directions. First is what is being called Supplementary Animations. These are for the new Bento skeleton.

If you don’t animate in SL or haven’t been around forever, you probably don’t know there used to be just the avatar default animations (think duck walk) and the animations we played via script. Our Animation Overriders (AO’s) worked by the viewer continuously asking the server what out avatar was doing (walking, sitting, flying, etc.) and then telling the server which animation to play. 

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VR: Minimal Latency

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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

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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.