The Oculus Rift virtual reality headset and Second Life, part one - National Second Life. “You need to develop VR legs, like you need to develop sea legs on a boat.”
This was the comment of one person who has tried the new Oculus Rift VR headset, which Wagner James Au last week said in a column last week that Linden Lab hopes to incorporate into Second Life®. For this writer, the potential the Oculus Rift offers could be the most exciting development since the emergence ten years ago of Second Life and There.com (this writer was a There.com beta tester). Those of us who were around in the early 1990s, when I was a software engineer and graduate student, remember the early promise of Virtual Reality.
That promise quickly faded however. VR headsets were clunky, expensive, and limited in what they permitted us to do, so we gradually left our VR hopes behind as high speed internet, powerful computers, and high quality monitors made MMORPGs such as Second Life, There.com, and World of Warcraft far more compelling despite the limitation of viewing them on computer monitors. Build Up Your Real Vocabulary to Match Your Virtual Wardrobe With This Awesome New Fashionista Blog. Iris Ophelia's ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style If you've ever wanted to know the difference between a pleat and a pintuck, there's a new project by a group of experienced SL fashion bloggers that might be worth your time. The A to Z of Fashion Writing, a blog spearheaded by Cajsa Lilliehook among others, aims to inform fellow fashionistas and bloggers alike with illustrated lessons on crucial fashion vocabulary.
Why is a solid fashion vocab so vital even when all the items in question are virtual? Well... While I'll agree that while a great deal of hyper-technical fashion terminology may apply to virtual fashion in only a handful of cases (think stitching and fabric weight) there are few things that make a blogger seem more ignorant than when they use incorrect terminology...
Take the collar diagram above. The blog also offers a taste of history in some of its entries so far. Please share this post with people you like: Language Learning in Virtual Worlds: The Role o... Project Materials Beta Viewer Brings The Spectacular World of Specularity (and More) to Second Life. Iris Ophelia's ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style The long-awaited Project Materials Viewer for Second Life has finally arrived, and many builders and designers have been clambering to take it for a spin. This viewer adds a new range of options for those creating with mesh including support for specular maps. But what exactly does that mean for you and me? Mostly it means that a lot more realistic-looking (and just plain pretty) mesh items will be coming to your inventory very soon. Designer Damien Fate (the man behind Fatewear, Loco Pocos, and one of the team members of coldLogic) has been one of those tinkering with the new viewer, and he's made a video that definitely illuminates the difference: If you're pressed for time, he also shared an animated gif of the difference via Plurk.
These new features are a big deal when it comes to 3D modeling/rendering for some pretty obvious reasons. Of course there's a lot more to this new project beyond just specularity.
PICTURES SL. MACHINIMAS.