secondlife

Queensland Island!

2007-06-27T03:26:00.000-07:00

Don't know Queensland? It's the Australian state in which I live, sunny, beachy and relaxed. Recently, I had the happy experience of creating (yes! terraforming! building! organising!) the Queensland Government's first experiment in Second Life: Queensland Island. With any luck, it'll be public soon, but for now it's private. You can see a little of the island by following the link above. Enjoy!

Who's who?

2007-05-26T02:24:00.000-07:00

Alter Ego (SLurl) is the in-world build to complement a book of photos; real people with their virtual counterparts. Worth a look.

YouTube - Machinima: Xerox Gets a Second Life

2007-04-30T06:59:00.000-07:00

Xerox Gets a Second Life. Thanks to Beta Technologies! (Yes, I work for Beta Tech. Yes, I did a teensy thing towards this project. No, it's not in the video.)

Second Life: Knowledge Base | How to make tiny prims - Video Tutorial

2007-04-15T06:13:00.000-07:00

Go Torley! Watch How to make tiny prims - Video Tutorial for some nice techniques and then examples of practical applications.

Second Life Friends Online updated to 2.3

2007-03-31T01:49:00.000-07:00

They've changed the website again, so here we go with Second Life Friends Online 2.3. Enjoy!

Whatever you want to sound like, on a Mac

2007-03-30T15:31:00.000-07:00

If you've got the Second Life Voice Beta, you'll have been freaked out like I have. It's all a bit weird. People used to stand around saying talking shit before, but now that they have voices, it's doubly weird. Triply weird. Check it out.

Anyway, voice disguise will be important if you want to even try to maintain some distance between you and your avatar. And you can do it for free with the software that came with your Mac, and the free software Soundflower. It's a bit tricky with the current beta, though, as SL gives you no choices of sound inputs -- it just uses the system defaults.

The process, if you want to test it, is to set Garageband to take your microphone as input, and to use SoundFlower (2ch) as output. In Garageband, make a new vocal track and turn monitoring on. Set up your voice the way you want with the vocal transformer. Male to Female, Female to Male, Monsters, Echo, Reverb, whatever.

You then go to System Preferences and set Soundflower (2ch) as the default input, and your headphones as output. Launch SL. It should get everything from the System defaults and should work well. You will hear yourself all the time, but you're only public when you're holding the push-to-talk key and the speaker symbol above your head is flashing. Enjoy!

Photoshop CS3 Extended 3D painting!?!

2007-03-27T04:30:00.000-07:00

(Cross-posted from my main blog.)

The new Adobe Creative Suite 3 is coming out very soon. The details get announced officially in NYC in about 12 hours, but the Adobe site has already been updated with all the new feature details. I'm not just excited because I'm demonstrating much of this at an upcoming evening for Infinite Systems, but the new Adobe Photoshop CS3 Extended could have some really nice implications for Second Life design.

Given that you will be able to place an image onto a live-rotatable 3D model, it just remains to be seen how complex that model can be. All we need is the ability to upload images onto an avatar and all kinds of texture-based design will be revolutionised. It looks like it will be possible; if it is, let a great big "yay" go up to the rafters. Tons of other cool stuff in there too across the whole suite, above and beyond the "runs at least half as fast again on your Intel Mac" feature.

Sony's New Second Life Clone

2007-03-07T13:16:00.000-08:00

Check out Home, from Sony. (The article calls it "Third Life" which is misleading at best.)

Briefly, it's like Second Life, without the user-made content, without creation tools, but with voice, great HD graphics, a free house, and doubling as a lobby to access multiplayer games. PS3 only.

It's not out yet, and while the video looks great, I have to wonder if people will actually choose to visit it as an end in itself. There's certainly not much scope for a thriving economy without third-party development. I'd like to think the graphics provide a sneak peek at Second Life v3, though.

macosxhints.com - Enable full screen anti-aliasing using OpenGL Profiler

2007-02-28T05:11:00.000-08:00

Banish the jaggies! Second Life looks fantastic if you follow the instructions here:
macosxhints.com - Enable full screen anti-aliasing using OpenGL Profiler
. Not *too* much of a speed hit on my MacBook Pro; probably not a great idea on a MacBook. Really, really good if you're taking pictures.

And voice is coming to SL too!

2007-02-07T04:09:00.001-08:00

Yay! Voice in SL! Soon! Having used Skype while SLing, it's soooo much faster than typing it changes the whole experience, for the better. Roll on!

Second Life Friends Online widget updated to 2.2

2007-01-13T21:16:00.000-08:00

A recent web update broke the widget, so try this updated v2.2 of the widget and let me know if you have any problems.

SL textures live from a webcam, on a Mac

2006-11-28T04:38:00.000-08:00

There's a neat trick you can do with Mac OS X 10.4 and one of the free developer tools, Quartz Composer. You can create a movie that uses the built-in iSight camera to show a picture of you on a remote web page. You can even create something a little fancier. Of course, all data remains local, so there's no security risk.

But here's a variation.

1. Set the same webcam-enabled movie as the media texture for your land.

Now you can see a board with your face on it in SL. That's OK, nobody else can. The movie is client-side only.

2. Set some part of your avatar's skin, say, your head, to use the media texture.

Now you can see your own face on your avatar's head. Only you, so far.

3. Save the skin as a new item.

4. The picture won't update until you move the sliders, so keep jiggling them until you're happy.

5. When you're finally in the right position, hold really still, then press Save and Close.

The texture will now "bake". Other people can now see your picture on your avatar. You won't be able to save it; next time you edit appearance it'll be wiped.

So, if you have a Mac and want to check this out, head to my land in Caldbeck (218,26,40) and press play on the movie texture. The movie will play onto the Default Media Texture from the Library. Only one movie can show the iSight at one time, so close down the previous links if they're still open.

For everyone on PCs, and because nobody believes you unless it's on YouTube, here it is on YouTube. Music is original -- enjoy! The movie is CC-licensed.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 License.

New features... please?

2006-11-22T13:46:00.000-08:00

Since I have more ideas than the voting system is going to let me suggest, I'll suggest them quietly here.

It would be great if the texture tinting system could do something other than darken. Something like the symbol tinting functionality in Flash would be great, but something simpler would be fine. So... replace the current single color choice with color and texture strength. Default that to 100%, and at 100% it works as it does now: full strength colour change, white being no change to the texture. At the other end of the scale, the texture fades out, so that you can use a texture as a lighter tint.

What else? Scrubby sliders. They exist in the latest Photoshop and Motion, but not many people use them. Instead of using the little buttons or an existing slider, click on the label of a control (like opacity) and drag from side to side. Finer control without clutter. SL could really benefit from quick, accurate adjustment like this.

Second Life in Stereo!

2006-11-21T16:11:00.000-08:00

I'd love some goggles to be able to experience Second Life in 3D Stereo.

Freak out! CopyBot's about!

2006-11-15T14:25:00.000-08:00

SL just freaked out. More info: check the official Linden response: Use of CopyBot and Similar Tools a ToS Violation, or Tat's thoughts on the currency reaction, the word from the source and an extremely erudite post from Ordinal Malaprop (scroll down).

It's just copying, people. It's really hard to lock down stuff that needs to be unlocked *so you can see it*, that exists in clear form on your machines. The protocols are open, packets can be sniffed, etc. Textures have been potentially thievable for months now. This is the same for objects, but not contents nor scripts. Object copying is not even new; Jeffrey Gomez's Prim Mirror script did this many months ago.

If you've ever seen a picture on a website, you've been able to take your own copy for your own use or redistribution. This is the same thing; sometimes fair use, sometimes encouraged, often not, but it can't and shouldn't be forbidden. Any web design I make public can be stolen, yet that doesn't stop me from selling my designs.

Even if it's all locked down, someone can just sit around and recreate your work by hand. Fake handbags in the real world aren't going away. All the attempts in the world to stop piracy just screw over everyone, like the DVD region coding debacle that continues to decline (e.g. my new laptop DVD drive won't read out of region discs at all, not with VLC, not ripping, not flashable). Like the forthcoming nonsense with HDCP on both high-def disc formats. Like software activation tied to companies that no longer exist or Windows licenses that can't be transferred. You can't stop piracy technically without pissing off a lot of people. You *can* find pirates, shut down their accounts and delete their assets.

Finally, to all the people currently worried because "my stuff is able to be stolen": have you ever copied a music track you didn't own? Run some less-than-legal software? Now that you're on the other side of the fence, do you have sympathy for the RIAA? They don't deserve it. Just relax, recognise that some piracy (or imitation) is inevitable, and take it as a sign that you've made something people like enough to copy. Now make something better.

1000000

2006-10-18T15:56:00.000-07:00

So Second Life has hit a million residents. It's a milestone on the way to SL becoming the 3D social WWW. Places like The Register can mock and scorn as much as they like, but they're missing the point. Did they see the WWW in 1994 and dismiss it all as being a pointless waste of time? Sure, Bianca's Smut Shack served no higher purpose, but that didn't make the web pointless. And sure, you can walk around in SL as a furry penis if you want to, but that doesn't make SL pointless.

Of course you can find some spectacularly pointless stuff in SL. But that's true of the web, and true of any medium. Enjoy the weeding process.

Adventures in RL

2006-10-17T07:13:00.000-07:00

As Tateru says, Sunday night saw a Brisbane SL RL get together, featuring the RL people behind Tateru, Sladen, Lucy and me. (Sorry the circumstances weren't more festive for Tat.)

Yes, we all had a good time. Yes, it was distinctly odd to make an RL connection to the people behind the avatars. I've known Tateru since I rezzed, just over a year ago, and it's great to be able to extend a friendship (and make new ones) beyond the screen. To talk at normal human speed instead of finger speed. To be able to simply have a chat to a person sitting just *there*, because they're not drowning in Live Help IMs.

Sure, we can't teleport, fly or ride hoverbikes in RL, but... hell. It's REAL life. Much as I love my second life, the sound of clinking drinks is always better in real life. Cheers, everyone. See you on the other side.

Wow.

2006-09-19T15:53:00.000-07:00

The music used in this Second Life "home movie" is not used for ironic effect.

Ginny

2006-09-14T18:40:00.000-07:00

Sorry to be the bearer of sad news; Tat says it better. One of the first people who I saw regularly in SL, a touchstone and a mentor, has passed away. RIP Ginny Gremlin and the real person behind the avatar. You were appreciated. You made a difference.

Burning Life, the blog

2006-09-07T00:58:00.000-07:00

Burning Life, the event in SL, has spawned a blog about it, also called Burning Life. My blocks are on there, though the author didn't think there were enough letters to spell out anything worthwhile. There are about 100 blocks, each with random letters on six sides. The letters change when you click the blocks!

So, a hearty thank you for noticing, accompanied by a quiet pffft.

2006-09-01T06:18:00.000-07:00

Finally done with my plot in Burning Life. I think. The blocks randomly change letters when you click them and they're all moveable, so I'm expecting rude words aplenty. Before the letter blocks there were different coloured wooden blocks, and the first thing to happen was a total mess (as intended!). But most recently, someone spent a bit of time making neat coloured piles. I'm glad people are getting into the spirit, no matter how they play with it.

Mac OpenGL performance boost next year?

2006-08-21T21:08:00.000-07:00

To get all technical, John Siracusa's Journal talks about LLVM, an optimising compiler that's used in Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) to improve OpenGL performance. Twice the framerate in WoW better. That can only be a good thing for SL, yes?

Get thee to Tat's blog! And get into SL!

2006-08-05T04:25:00.000-07:00

Tat's blog, Dwell On It, really has some interesting stuff these days -- chat, stats, more. And SL has ever more interesting stuff in it, too.

For the older among you: remember when people started telling you about "the web"? Or even Compuserve? Would you have thought that in just a few years it would revolutionise the way a lot of us access, share, publish information?

Here we go again: Second Life is the 3D web. It's going to be huge. Get in now and tell your friends.

News - Lady gamers get voice changer // PC /// Eurogamer

2006-07-09T00:04:00.000-07:00

Hey! Synchronicity! Just talking about voice changing software, and it gets released. Story at Eurogamer. Changes gender, age, etc., seems to do an OK job. Hmmmmm.

SL Forums - Disguised voice chat

2006-07-03T18:04:00.000-07:00

Since I'm bleathering on the forums, thought I'd spread the bleather here:

SL Forums - Disguised voice chat: "Love SL. The one thing which really gets to me is the time it can take to 'talk' through a keyboard. Simply speaking is much faster; I could type for an hour or speak the same content in ten minutes. Skype-like functionality could revolutionise SL.

Obviously, anonymity has to be part of the SL experience, but that's possible. If you have a Mac, try Garageband -- it allows live voice changing effects to be applied, including gender changing and other modfications.

It probably wouldn't be feasible everywhere, at least at first, but it would make a big difference in the long run. It could also bring a great many new residents -- why just call someone when you can meet them in SL for a virtual drink instead?

Thoughts?"