SL10B Thoughts before it all kicks off!

June 16, 2013 in SLBirthday Festival

It’s almost opening time. For weeks or even months people from around the globe have been  preparing to share with the rest of the SL Grid what they love most about their SL Experience.

It’ll be the biggest statement from the Virtual World community on wether Second Life is still relevant and you can make your mind up for yourself by exploring and seeing the many different sides, curves and corners of the biggest virtual world on this planet. I had small look around during the last two Press devoted days which of course was not enough time to see it all so i’ll probably pack my virtual backpack and some virtual jam sandwiches and venture though it all during the next two weeks.

Of course this is an event where you will get to see the latests and brightest talent pushing SL’s tools to the limit. The platform will be strained to breaking point the first few hours as is tradition highlighting any improvements the Lab may have achieved over the last year. But as you walk around , remember that there is a person or people behind every exhibit how ever big or little the display.

This year more than any other year i feel there is a very large spectrum of technical craft. From exhibits that have just a few simple Prim based objects, to large exhibits of extremely detailed complex mesh. It can be easy to perhaps shun the smaller exhibits as amateur or lacking skill, but that would be missing the whole point of SL10B.

 

I’m reminded of one SL Anniversary where i along with my gang of misfit friends went on a bike ride through the exhibits eventually stopping to allow stragglers to catch up. The exhibit/plot we stopped at was a very small, simply constructed garden with a single table and a few flowers dwarfed by its neighbouring exhibits of funky light and abstract wonder.

Just as we were about to move on the creator of this little exhibit appeared and was shocked to find us all there. She was so happy to see people at her exhibit she said we had made her day and  immediately asked to take a snapshot of us all there. That moment changed the way i saw SLB, It’s not just about the awesome exhibits, its also about the people behind them.

So as you walk around SL10B take your time to appreciate all the effort put into this how ever big or small, simple or complex the exhibit is.

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The year i joined SL. Part of the History of Sl walk through, what year did you arrive?

SL10B opens at 12pm SLT Sunday 16th of June. The first few hours are traditionally laggy mayhem, but things get better as the week goes on with live DJ’s and  Music artists on the stages, Tutorials and talks at the Auditorium. Plus learn a step by step history of the trials, Tribbles and controversy of the past 10 years of Second Life.

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The curious case of when Apple copied Linden Lab

June 7, 2013 in SL future Ideas

Last year Apple released an update to their OSX that added a notifications system.

Basically notifications would pop up top right for a moment then disappear. These notifications could then be accessed by clicking a button that slid the desktop to the left to reveal a bar of your most recent notifications. I remember thinking, ‘Hang On, this is the same system that Linden Lab uses for notifications in SL, it even has the sliding effect the majority of established SL users cried about and had removed’.

I’ve been quiet about Second Lifes notifications system for a while. I wanted to see wether Linden Lab would do anything to improve the situation when implementing the Communications Hub User Interface (CHUI).

I kinda like the new way the chat UI works although I’m finding that I’m posting messages into the wrong chat window more these days due to… well I’m not quite sure why. Some sort of behavioural issue that isn’t accounted for by CHUI.

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Anyways, back to the notifications side of things Linden Lab did a slight tweak allowing you to specify how notifications appear and sound. Nice but does not fix the issue i hate about Second Life Notifications. I feel the way it heaps notifications together in a small box is dreadful and trying to read through notifications from multiple transactions, inventory offers, permissions requests and group notices is an awful experience. Sometimes they dont even seem to have any sort of order to how they are listed.

What makes it all the more irritating from a designers point of view is that it looks like just a few tweaks would vastly improve it. Tweaks like having the different types of notifications clearly defined, showing which have been read, which are active requests waiting for a response … well like what apple added in OSX Mountain Lion.

 

 

Extra note: With the Lab finally developing a Cocoa version of the SL viewer, the option maybe there for the lab to integrate SL with OSX’s own notifications system which would be pointless since i get all SL notifications via email already in OSX notifications…. what a mess notifications is.

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My Drax Files Post on my blog

June 3, 2013 in Uncategorized

Everyones blogging about the Drax Files, so im gonna to. If im lucky Drax will post a pic of my blog writing about the Drax Files on his SLfeed.

Blah blah blah blah, Video, about second Life with Rod Blah blah blah blah watch it its awesome Blah blah blah blah. WATCH IT NOW!

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A familier sight for any newb coming into SL

 

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We get to see Rod is a huge Doctor Who fan.

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I cant control how you see my world.

May 23, 2013 in SL future Ideas, SL Thoughts

Every now and then Second Life seems to get into this ‘THINGS ARE HAPPENING’ atmosphere, and thats whats currently happening now.

Those who know and in the know will know that we are approaching the 10th anniversary celebrations, Oculus Rift is just around the corner as is the now called ‘Experience keys’ system and the Materials System and Shining project fixes… Of course corners in SL arn’t exactly right angles and can be quite curvy making the time taken to travel past said corner last sometimes years.

But even with all these exciting new things arriving i’m still not happy yet Mr Humble, so here are two things im still gonna be waiting for in order to make really good interactive immersive experiences in SL.

 

1. Animated Objects

Pathfinding, Great feature, awesome Ai. But i cant get my animated creatures to appear . Im getting increasingly fed up of making multiple posed objects and having to script the transparency of faces to simulate animation. I currently import rigged objects that copy the animations of the avatar, why cant we animate the objects without them having to be attached to an avatar? i would have backed Karl to create code for that rather than the stupid Fashionista Deformer. People are already building these assets, we just need the dots connected.

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Simplify the animating process by using other assets we already use for rigging mesh clothing and avatars and we’ll have Hobyahs that animate 1000 times better and more efficiently.

2. Materials and Windlight

In the right lighting environment custom Normal and specula maps can make for a really detailed immersive atmosphere to rival AAA games. But thats the thing, i cant control how you have your atmosphere (wind light) settings. I could create a wonderful dark cave with specualr mapping optimised perfectly for being seen by torch light at midnight or a custom windlight setting. Then you come along with your settings set to midday with a stupid face lamp ruining EVERY bit of atmosphere i crafted GAAHHHH!. Perhaps now is the time to give me perms to control your viewer side windlight settings, i already have perms to animate you, control your camera view, teleport you. Give me perms to change your windlight settings and i can give you the best atmosphere i can at any given time, wether it be when entering a dark cave, or transporting into space.

 

I know what i want to be able to do In SL, i know what sort of experiences i want to give my friends in SL, we’ll get there eventually :)

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Content Creation Conundrum

May 16, 2013 in Making a mesh, SL Thoughts

Freedom is a major part of the second life experience. Freedom to be who you want, do what you want and build what you want. Did it ever occur to some of us that being able to build what ever we wanted could be a major factor in why the grid struggles sometimes.

In the past i’ve spouted a lot of stuff about how mesh is amazing and will bring a better more efficient grid, and while i still believe mesh import is amazing I’m beginning to realise that efficiency is not guaranteed.

Like most user is Second Life my 3D modelling experience started with the Primitive building Blocks system. I became pretty experienced with what was possible with those restrictive blocks. In fact many of us pushed the primitive blocks system to its limits and beyond.

Truth might be that Prims are not all that efficient to start with. When you link a primitive cube to a mesh apparently it switches from an old prim calculation to a newer more accurate mesh calculation. If you link prims that are cut, have holes or just plain wonky to a mesh you suddenly get a confusing rise in land impact calculation. And don’t get me started on Sculpties again.

A 3Dmodeller from the games industry background could easily come into SL now and totally understand the finer points of efficient building from the amount of polys to the size of the textures to UV repeat mapping and Specular Mapping – Sheesh.

And while its awesome that the grid is now able to accommodate  proper 3D models it is silly to think that creaters who spent the first 8 years of Second Life using prims are going to suddenly move to making efficient mesh. Firstly many including myself had never even used a 3D modelling programme and secondly most of us including myself have no experience in 3d game modelling efficiency.

So while its nice to be able to import any mesh model, wether the grid is better or worst depends on wether that mesh model is constructed by thousands of polys and has over a hundred 1024x size textures on it. But how are we to know and learn? we’ve never had to consider such things before with the Primative blocks system?

Which brings me to the final thought. If anyone new comes into second life and sees a beautifully detailed mesh object, how quick will they learn that creating something similar is just not possible with the primitive blocks system? Where once we had a system that everyone built as equals now we have a split. Either learn to build with inefficient cubes or find a 3D modelling course. I don’t believe Primatives are pointless now that mesh has arrived. I still use Prims a lot. But for new users i don’t believe the Prim as a building system is ever going to have that importance it once had to content creation. Yet mesh for all it’s potentially efficiency and stability is no where as accessible as the Prims system for content creation.

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