March 2015 – Page 3 – Ciaran Laval

March 24, 2015

Fantasy Faire 2015 – Region Names And Details Announced

Fantasy Faire 2015

Fantasy Faire 2015 is still a month away but I’m about to embark on three Fantasy Faire 2015 related posts. The first is with relation to the sims for Fantasy Faire 2015, which have this week been announced : Ten Shopping Sims Of Magic.

The sims are intended to be unique, but still part of the Fairelands as a whole. Some of the names of those who are involved with creating these sims are familiar to me and those who have attended previous Fantasy Faires.

Some of the names are of the wandering chief Elf variety, whom evil Drow Wizards may still be seeking.

Some of the names may be Dwarfin related superstars who paint a stunning landscape.

Together they make up the whole. The links take you to further details of each sim, including designers who will be displaying their wares on said sim and are subject to change as more designers are allocated their spots on sims for this year’s event. The list itself can also be found here : https://fantasyfairesl.wordpress.com/designers-2/

So let’s get to those details of the sims for this year’s event, with thanks to Sonya Marmurek for posting this information on the Fantasy Faire website.

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March 23, 2015

VWBPE 2015 Was An Important Event For Virtual Worlds

The importance of a conference such as Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education should not be underestimated when it comes to putting virtual worlds on the map. Most of the chatter I’ve seen has, unsurprisingly, been about Ebbe Altberg’s keynote speech. Nalates Urriah has taken a very interesting and in depth look at Linden Lab’s nextgen virtual world based on this speech.

Avataric looks at VWBPE from other perspectives, including how even in a virtual world being shy has its challenges as she braved being a host, as well as a participant, at the conference. There’s even an inworld/real world crossover with a husband hitting a wrong button. This wasn’t as painful as it may initially sound!

Beyond that the conference touches other parts of the virtual world sphere with links to OpenSim and Unity 3D demonstrating that education and virtual worlds are willing to tackle new technology when opportunity arises.

The conference also involved communities such as Chilbo and Seanchai making their mark in the education space. Interactive storytelling as a teaching tool is a development I’m eager to see progress, but Seanchai play an important role in bringing storytelling to new audiences full stop.

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March 23, 2015

Firestorm Viewer Gets The Nod From SL Go For Mobile Client

OnLive

SL Go from OnLive have today given the Firestorm Viewer team a major voted of confidence by announcing : Firestorm Mobile on SL Go! At first glance you may not think this is much of a vote of confidence, I mean after all Firestorm is already a choice for SL Go users when it comes to the desktop version of the app. However when it comes to mobile, there’s one glaring difference, choice is not an option :

OnLive is thrilled to announce today that due to overwhelming demand from our community of SL Go users, we are making the Firestorm Viewer available for mobile devices including Android and iOS. Due to current technical limitations, we are only able to offer one viewer for mobile devices. Our studies have shown that the SL Go community prefers the Firestorm Viewer, and now they can enjoy the same rich experience on their mobile devices.

Please note that desktop users will still be able to have a choice of whether they use Firestorm or the official Second Life client, but when it comes to the mobile version, all roads lead to Firestorm.

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March 21, 2015

Fashion For Life Now Open

Regular readers of this blog will know that I’m not a fashionista, nor am I a fashionista’s son and I’m only blogging fashion until the fashionistas come. However the next week or so sees a large fashion event in Second Life, Fashion For Life.

Fashion For Life is one of many events held within Second Life as part of the Relay For Life fundraising effort. This year’s event features some of the fashion hotspots outside of the virtual world, with sims based on Berlin, London, Los Angeles, Milan, New York, Paris and Tokyo.

On top of this there are two sims dedicated to events and fashion shows. Central Park North is the entertainment venue and Central Park South is the fashion show venue.

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March 21, 2015

Rigged Mesh Bug In Second Life With AMD Catalyst Drivers Should Soon Be Rectified

These days I use SL Go from OnLive a lot when engaging with Second Life. However some days I like to just fire up a local client, there are things SL Go can’t do. Unfortunately I had decided to install the latest AMD Catalyst drivers quite some time ago and this does not play nicely with rigged mesh in Second Life.

This is explained in Jira Bug-7653 : AMD Catalyst 14.12 Release ( plus 14.9.2, 14.11.1, 14.11.2 Beta) drivers will not render rigged mesh unless hardware skinning is disabled.

Well usually it doesn’t matter too much, others can see me ok if they aren’t using these drivers and it’s amusing to watch my beard conquer the Second Life world. However today, Inara Pey brought news of a fix in the works from AMD : AMD’s Catalyst™ 15.3 beta driver offers SL mesh fix.

Inara’s post points to the release notes for these beta drivers, which includes the following in the Resolved Issues section :

[413076] Second Life : Rigged mesh objects are not rendered correctly when hardware skinning is enabled in the in game settings.

Second Life isn’t the only platform mentioned, there are fixes for Star Trek Online, Total War : Attilla and The Elder Scrolls V – Skyrim as well.

However, buoyed by this news regarding Second Life, I decided to give it a whirl and delve into the murky world of installing beta drivers.

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