December 2013 – Page 2

December 21, 2013

So You Want To Login To High Fidelity?

High Fidelity is Philip Rosedale’s new virtual world project. This is currently in the very early stages of Alpha but you can signup to that Alpha from the main webpage. However you won’t be able to login to High Fidelity or see any of its features.

However it does seem as if it is possible to login to High Fidelity. There are clues on how to do this, starting from the jobs page. There a challenge is laid down to people who may want to do paid work for High Fidelity:

“We are seeing lots of great applicants! If you’d like to get our attention and also have more fun than sitting in an interview, do the following:

Checkout our code on GitHub, build the Interface client, and see if you can login to Hifi. Then, take a look at Worklist and see if there’s a job you can do to show us your work skills.”

Obviously this isn’t going to be for the faint hearted, or at this moment in time, Windows users. The GitHub link provides further information on the ingredients for building an interface for you to login to High Fidelity. The ingredients include CMake, building in XCode, QT5.1 and OSX or Ubuntu. High Fidelity has so far been successfully built to run on OSX 10.8, Ubuntu and some other modern Linux distributions

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December 20, 2013

Are Philip And Andrew Going Back To Their Roots?

The reasons for Andrew Linden’s move from Linden Lab to High Fidelity (which is now accepting Alpha signups) are unknown. Some speculate that Andrew had had enough of standing in the rain, drenched and soaked with pain, tired of short time benefits and being exposed to the elements.

Others have suggested that Andrew’s departure was due to feeling his spirit’s getting old, It’s time to recharge his soul, whereas others suggest it’s simply a matter of Andrew being homeward bound, Got his head turned around.

Whatever the reason, the move reunites Andrew with Philip Rosedale, with whom it all began back in 1999 when they were both at Linden Lab. The Second Life wiki tells us that Linden Lab originally started life as a hardware company involved in the research and development of haptics. Haptics are related to touch and are still very much in development, one of the latest examples being The Steam Controller. The controller is currently in beta but PC Gamer have been taking an early look at it, it’s not yet the finished article.

However Linden Lab abandoned the idea of being a hardware company after the software they created to bring their hardware to life turned out to be more fun. That software morphed into Second Life. The Hardware? Well that was something known as The Rig, and rumour has it that it sits in a box at Linden Lab HQ and makes the odd appearance, a bit like Magellan Linden but with less drunken debauchery and grumpiness. Whether Andrew has taken The Rig with him to High Fidelity is unknown.

Where am I going with all this? I mean High Fidelity isn’t a hardware company. This is true but on November 27th on The High Fidelity Blog, Grayson Stebbins blogged:

“How to create virtual touch? Without haptic feedback rigs or direct stimulation to the brain, how can we get closer to that special, sometimes intimate, sometimes intricate, sometimes magical feeling that is touch?”

The example they produced involved Ryan The Stylist and Emily The Client and the results look rather impressive.

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December 19, 2013

The Trouble With Search

Linden Lab have issued a call to arms with a recent blog post about plans to improve SL Marketplace search. There’s a survey link in the blog post.

Search has been done and redone and done again in Second Life. There’s only so much you can do with search relevancy because people are gits when it comes to trying to manipulate search results. In Second Life we’ve seen the use of bots to increase traffic and therefore relevancy. We’ve seen the age old classic of using search terms that have no bearing on what the parcel or marketplace listing offers.

I can recall in the 0ld days, possibly whilst it was still XStreetSL, people using white text on a white background to hide keywords that were not remotely related to the listing. People abusing the system, unsettles any search engine and unfortunately, people will abuse the system.

Then there are issues that are pretty unique to the SL Marketplace which are caused by the system itself. The free listing forever policy means search results are cluttered with lots of old content that has been created by people who are no longer active in Second Life. There’s an argument for keeping content around, old content doesn’t mean bad content but content should ideally be tied to an active avatar.

Then there are issues such as demos and colours. Demos are an important tool for customers. Different colours offer different options for customers. However they should not be individual listings. Different colours and the demo should be available via one item display. This would make browsing stores on the SL Marketplace easier for a start.

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December 18, 2013

Andrew Linden (AKA Employee Number 2) Leaving Linden Lab To Join Hi Fidelity

Daniel Voyager, Inara Pey and Nalates Urriah have all broken the news that Andrew Linden is leaving Linden Lab. They all provide good coverage, if you want my coverage read on! My coverage owes a lot to Hamlet Au Of New World Notes. In particular I’ve taken material from the following post by Hamlet (which is certainly worth a read) :

Meet Andrew Linden, Last of the Very First Lindens (UPDATED: Richard Linden Still Thrives Too)

Andrew, AKA Employee number 2, has announced he is leaving Linden Lab, tomorrow, December 19th and will be joining his former college pal Philip Rosedale at Hi Fidelity. The word on the street is that Andrew will not be revealing the true identity of Governor Linden or the current location of Magellan Linden as he makes the short journey from Linden Lab to Hi Fidelity. However it is widely assumed that Andrew will become the artist formerly known as Andrew Linden and be transformed into Andrew Meadows in his new role.

Andrew Linden is important, very important. Andrew’s Second Life profile states that he was born 11 years six months ago, however he was at Linden Lab longer than that, he was there in 1999 when Linden Lab hadn’t even decided to develop a virtual world. Andrew was there when, according to the Second Life Wiki, Linden Lab were a hardware company involved with research and development in the field of haptics. However Linden Lab decided they needed a virtual world to test their hardware and haptics became consigned to the dustbin of Linden Lab’s history.

Andrew was the person responsible for giving avatars the ability to fly, which was apparently because Linden Lab wanted to save time creating walking animations.

Andrew was largely a C++ developer for Second Life, but took time out to look at holes in the world, literally. In the snapshot above he’s looking for missing prims. Andrew regularly talked to users at office hour/user group meetings, providing the link between developers and users that many appreciate and which is unfortunately largely lost in the new Linden Lab.

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December 18, 2013

Gor Film Shocker!

So there I am browsing late night television, you know that period when you’re thinking about going to bed but channel surfing to see if something might keep you awake a little longer as it’s not quite time yet. You’re not in the mood to watch anything meaty.

So I flip to TCM Movies and there’s a film called “Outlaw Of Gor” on. Hmm, sounds like a horror film. Within a few seconds I realise it’s not horror, I mean the acting and outfits are horrific but it’s not a horror film. Then I think “No it can’t be”, then I realise “Yes it is”. Yes I’m watching a film based on bloody Goreans! They made films of this stuff and I say films because when I check the information of this movie I discover it’s a sequel!

The film, also known as Gor II, doesn’t hold my attention for long. I’m not alone here as it comes in with a score of 1.8 out of 10 on IMDB. This isn’t like a Gor sim in Second Life, which from my brief visits were more Medieval/Fantasy in their productions. This film is more science fiction, which rings a bell as I’ve read that these gor books are science fiction.

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