Virtual Worlds – Page 120

September 17, 2014September 17, 2014

A Clockwork Spiral Fundraiser Hits Second Life

A post on the Second Life Blog caught my eye : A Clockwork Spiral – Steampunk Event to Benefit National Kidney Foundation. Intrigued I decided to pop along and take a look around and it’s quite a busy place with people arriving on a regular basis.

An Image Should Be Here — Advert For Event

This is also a place with some impressive scenery. There are stairs in the train station that lead to lower levels, tunnels, strange and mysterious objects in the middle of the streets and much more.

So what exactly is A Clockwork Spiral? Well for more information it’s best to head to the website. There we one can find the press release :

A Clockwork Spiral is a shopping and music event featuring steampunk, steamgoth, dieselpunk, dieselgoth and dark Victoriana in Second Life to help raise money for the National Kidney Foundation.

It will be held September 15th – October 1st, 2014 on Cursed. (It should be noted that Cursed is an Adult rated sim.) The Spiral opens at NOON on September 15th and closes at MIDNIGHT October 1st. Both times are Pacific Time (SLT).

The Spiral hosts 40 merchants bringing in their interpretations of the theme for the visitors to shop while enjoying the atmosphere and the music of the event. As always, Club Gothika’s Mobile Unit will be present in the event area and will be the heart of the music events.

More information at: https://aclockworkspiral.wordpress.com/

So a noble cause indeed. The event itself is advertised as a music/shopping event. I like music, shopping … anyway!

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September 16, 2014

High Fidelity Alpha Users Talk Of Their Projects

The word on the street is that some of the High Fidelity team will be heading to Hollywood in a few days for the Oculus Connect event. I would imagine that some of the Linden Lab team may be heading there too. However before that happens, the High Fidelity blog has been been having A Look at Alpha Projects in Hifi. The picture in the blog post is particularly impressive, especially when enlarged.

Dan Hope, who I believe is a new member of the High Fidelity team, highlights the work of three Alpha testers, Judas, AI Austin and Ctrlaltdavid. This is virtual space, so people have virtual space names.

Judas has been working on models created in Blender. High Fidelity currently supports the FBX format, rather than the Dae format that Second Life supports. However as both have their roots in Blender, the basic workflows are going to be somewhat similar. High Fidelity is in the Alpha stage and this is highlighted in the blog post as Judas explains how a recent update has allowed him to import avatars from High Fidelity into Blender without destroying the rig to animate them. However Judas also hits the mark about the nature of virtual worlds in terms of being social platforms. I’ve said many times that Second Life is where it’s at in terms of virtual worlds because Second Life has the people. Any new virtual world has to have that social aspect and Judas acknowledges this in a quote on the blog post :

High Fidelity is about people. A grin, a smile, a hand gesture, a wave — not some pre-recorded gesture — breathe personality into lifeless avatars. [We’re creating] an environment that normal people want to gather in, not because of polycount, latency, or server technology, but because their friends are there. Every game has amazing graphics; HiFi should have amazing people.

Meanwhile in another part of the vast virtual space that High Fidelity engulfs, AI Austin is building I-Rooms: A Virtual Space For Intellectual Collaboration. Again we have a social usage exemplified here as well as the all important collaboration angle that virtual worlds offer so very well. I-Rooms are defined as :

We have developed the I-Room virtual environment—the “I” stands variously for intelligent, information, in- teractive, integrated, and instrumented—a shared persistent space, founded on process methodologies and offering intelligent sys- tems support for interaction and collabo- ration between users, systems, and agents.

AI Austin is also testing the boundaries of what is possible with mesh models in High Fidelity. This includes a Supercar with 575,000 vertices and 200,000. I can see people in parts of the virtual world sphere frowning furiously at this right now. AI Austin also has an International space station mesh that was provided by NASA. As it stands, space is a concept that High Fidelity captures very well. There are a lot of stars in High Fidelity.

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September 13, 2014

RIP Joe Miller Linden Lab’s VP of Platform and Technology Development From 2006 To 2010

Joe Miller (AKA Joe Linden) passed away on July 27th after a battle with cancer. Joe was Linden Lab’s VP of Platform and Technology Development between 2006 and 2010. The sad news was reported yesterday by Linden Lab in a blog post : Remembering Joe Miller and a further blog post by Hamlet Au over at New World Notes : RIP Joe Miller, Linden Lab’s Beloved Former Platform VP. Hamlet’s post contains a link to a memorial page about Joe.

Joe joined Linden Lab in 2006 and in a press release from Linden Lab he said :

I’m thrilled to join the team responsible for Second Life, the most interesting interactive platform in existence today. By drawing upon my background in product design and user experience, I look forward to helping make Second Life even more accessible to residents worldwide.

Joe was interviewed by Catherine Smith (AKA Catherine Linden) back in January 2008 regarding the work Linden Lab were doing in Second Life. The interview was part of a podcast series called Inside The Lab and can be listened to here. In the podcast Joe talks about how the Lab were moving away from their downtime procedure. Older residents will remember that the grid used to be taken down for several hours whilst updates were rolled out to the grid. Joe also talked about :

Sim stability – with the launch of Havok 4.6
Sim performance – with the introduction of Mono for script compiling
Viewer stability – by introducing a new crash reporter and graphics card drivers
Viewer performance – via Windlight and the new Dazzle UI

Whereas this podcast is more than six years old and many improvements have been made during that time, it still makes for interesting listening because it talks of the challenges of a user generated content virtual world and those challenges are still very relevant today.

Joe also worked on one of the large changes to Second Life, the introduction of voice :

For me, Second Life has always been more about human communication, collaboration, and spirit than about technology. When I talk to Residents about their experiences, one of the recurring themes is improving our communication methods. For so many, Second Life is a place to make and meet new friends and collaborate with others, whether that’s in a business, educational or purely social context.

That’s why today I’m pleased to announce our intention to bring integrated voice capabilities to the Grid. This will enable all Residents to speak with each other if they wish, in addition to the existing Instant Messaging and group chat functions.

Many of you know that voice has always been part of the long-term plan for the Grid, and we truly believe voice can be a transformative technology that will lend more immediacy and dynamism to the way Residents communicate.

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September 12, 2014

Nara Malone On OpenSim, NPC’s, Exhibitions And OpenSimulator Conference

Nara Malone isn’t happy; “It’s like being caught in your curlers” she purrs as I whip out my camera, but there’s a glint in her eye as she stands amidst the scene of an in progress exhibit from Fuscia Nightfire.

Nara is showing me around the build which is an interactive exhibit featuring machinima, which is playing on the floor and surrounding walls. The finished exhibit will feature the use of Non Player Characters (NPC’s) and Nara has been demonstrating to me just how easy they are to create in OpenSim.

Nara rezes a poseball and then explains the process to me : “I click the ball once it records my appearance, it runs the animation I put in the poseball. I can change those out or run a string. This is our simplest character maker.”

With that said Nara clicks the ball and few second later another Nara is in my view, this one sitting down tying her lace, which is the animation inside the pose ball. However how resource hungry are they? Nara explains that they are not that resource hungry at all : “Its just an animation running…very easy resource. We can have 20 or so at a time with 10 users online. We have more complex versions but this is the starter one. We can make them talk, Program them to interact so they are very helpful with storytelling and with the immersion. The characters draw readers in.”

Nara is a storyteller and of course her stories must be told. However she’s not alone and the exhibit she’s giving me a sneak preview of is part of her group’s work for the OpenSimulator Conference in November. Whereas the big names are keynote speakers such as High Fidelity’s Philip Rosedale and Oculus Rift’s Steve LaValle, many from the general OpenSim community will be there too and exhibiting their wares.

Nara explains to me that her group will have a total of eight examples of their work running at the conference. Whereas there’s a lot of storytelling, there’s also a lot of scripting involved and Nara tells me that scripting guru Fred Beckhusen is on their team.

So just what are Nara and her team working on? Nara passes me a note with some preliminary but rather ambitious details.

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September 9, 2014

The 24 Squared Fashion Event Appears To Be Well Designed

This is all a bit outside of my comfort zone, it involves fashion and shopping in Second Life. These are two activities I’m not that enamoured with. Now if there were Orcs, Elves, Dwarves, fashion and shopping, then I’d be more interested in events such as The 24 Squared.

However for some reason this event, which has been running since September 5th and runs until September 13th, caught my eye. According to a blog post from Siren Productions the event features :

1 Week…
98 Designers…
Menswear!
Womenswear!
Accessories!
Skins!
Hair!
Make-up!
Oh My…

Unfortunately there don’t appear to be lions or tigers or bears. However there are models around.

Now even if this really isn’t your sort of event it’s worth a visit because this seems to be a well designed location, low lag, plenty of wide spaces, but also making good use of scenery to prevent your graphics card trying to eat every texture on the sim too quickly.

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