New World Notes

Virtual Hair Looks Wet On Contact With Virtual Water

I love subtle innovations like this: Second Life hair that changes to look wet when it touches the water. Created by Natalia Zelmanov and scripted by her brother, it's basically virtual hair programmed to detect its relationship to virtual water. "It checks to see if it's under the sim water level every few secs," Ms. Zelmanov tells me. "Actually it's more complicated, because it only turns wet when you leave the water... it doesn't make sense to drip when underwater." The hair also comes with a spray can and a scripted block of prim-based water, which are also programming to be on speaking terms with each other. "The Water Bottle and Prim Water Script actually talks to the hair, telling the hair to turn wet." That only covers how Natalia's hair gets wet. "And then there's all the stuff that goes into making the hair dry! I drove my bro crazy...believe me." Read more about it here. A much more subtle tweak of avatar reality than bouncing breasts, to be sure, but a clever one all the same.

Want Your Virtual World Images Featured On Koinup's Homepage? Enter This Contest

If you're a member of the virtual world social network Koinup (an NWN partner) with a collection of great screenshots taken in Second Life and other worlds, here's a contest you'll want to enter: Submit images of cool activities and beautiful places for a chance to have them featured on the site's popular homepage. (Hence the contest's name, "The Face of Koinup".) The selections should emphasize Koinup's utility as a guide to content worth exploring in SL and beyond.

Here's the guidelines, and here's the submissions thus far. Featured at left are two of the currently top-rated SL screenshots, a tropical paradise called Maupiti taken by Marty86, and Illary's dramatic depiction of the mean streets of Primitive City.

Virtual VNC: Remotely Control Computers From *Within* Second Life!

Web page on a prim? That's so old school. How about whole computer on a prim? Specifically, access and control of remote computers from within Second Life via Virtual Network Computing and the new LLMedia API. That's what is promised by this application created by Aimee Trescothick, which uses the API to access several computers at once. As shown here, Aimee uses it to edit and dynamically share an OpenOffice document within SL, and then even cooler, remotely access a computer ... to log into Second Life within Second Life. "[T]hese will in future be accessible on the surface of a Second Life prim in the same way as a parcel media stream," Ms. Trescothick writes. The potential for practical applications and freeform coolness seem enormous. Last week I asked, What do you want to do with LLMedia API? Maybe this week's question should be, "What do you want to do with Aimee Trescothick's LLMedia VNC Plug-in?"

BuilderBot Update: Rezzable To Add Permissions Restrictions To Content Copying Program

Via CEO RightAsRain Rimbaud, Metaverse developer (and NWN partner) Rezzable recently posted an important update on plans for BuilderBot, the company's SL content copying/export tool which first garnered a controversial reception. Short version (emphasis Rimbaud's): "[W]e will release BuilderBot with perm checking and a person will only be able to copy their own stuff." Notwithstanding my bias, I think the long version is also worth reading, because it lays out a lot of the issues facing 3D/virtual world content creators that will continue long after the recent BuilderBot imbroglio, in Second Life and the many OpenSimulator grids too.

Got a South by Southwest Second Life-Related Panel To Promote? Post The Link Here!

The South by Southwest panel picker went live last week; it's a public voting system which helps SXSW staff select the panels that'll be featured next year at the legendary music/film/interactive conference in Austin, Texas. I know there's several panels related to Second Life, directly or indirectly, and I want to make sure everyone in the community gets a chance to promote them here. Post the link and description in Comments, and if they're sufficiently SL-related, I'll add the link in an updated post. (I'm also a member of the SXSW advisory board, so want to avoid any hint of favoritism for any one panel.)

Lindens on Flash Player Plug-in for Second Life: Yes Please!

Last week after Linden Lab announced the launch of its LLMedia API feature for playing rich media in Second Life, I wondered why Adobe Flash, the web's most popular file type, wasn't named among the desired plug-ins. However, the Lindens say, that wasn't an intentional omission.

“Flash wasn't explicitly listed," a Linden spokesperson tells me by email, "but would be a fine addition as a plug-in to Second Life. Linden Lab would welcome a standard Flash Player that could be provided by Adobe or any of their registered partners.” If I read that right, the plug-in would need to be an Adobe-sanctioned product. Then again, the software company already has a substantial presence and interest in Second Life, including an SL island called Adobe eLearning, so it's certainly conceivable an official version could be made. I'd definitely call it the most desirable format to bring into SL -- especially after seeing Flash-powered web pages running in the open source world Sirikata earlier this Summer.

Twitter Gets Second Life Group

Second Life Twibe is a relatively new group for Twitter users also in Second Life, running on the Twibes API. Founded by Ghosty Kips and counting more than two hundred members, it looks like a pretty good way to aggregate SL-related Tweets and Twitter accounts into something like an online asynchronous community. (You can send Tweets just to fellow members, and not your other Twitter followers.) Plurk still handles extended conversations better, I'd say, but this Twibe can definitely function as a good complement to the Second Life channel of Tweet My Gaming, which aggregates all Tweets which mention Second Life, and can thus overwhelm. In other words, check out Tweet My Gaming to get a good idea of what general Twitter users are saying about SL, then go into Second Life Twibe to check out what SL users in particular are Tweeting about.

Mixed Reality Portrait: Charles2 McCaw

New World Notes reader and dedicated sailor Charles2McCaw sends this appropriately mixed reality portrait, featuring his avatar and the man behind him on the high seas. The photo, he tells me, "was taken with digital camera on board Charles's real life sailboat off the coast of Tuckernuck, a small island which is bilocated in SLNE and a few miles off the shore of Nantucket. The avatar Charles2McCaw was photographed in world at the same location." Yes, there's also a Tuckernuck in SL: direct SLurl teleport at this link. "Both love to sail, cruising RL water during the day and the seas of SL at night using the onboard computer."

Here's the whole Mixed Reality Portrait series. Want to send me your own Mixed Reality Portrait? Here's guidelines and suggestions on doing just that.

Last Week's New World Notes Highlights

• All my posts on SLCC 2009 are here. Much of the buzz comes from this new SL viewer presentation, and this 3D mesh demo (video here) 
• SL fashion designers, we need you: Design styles inspired by RMB City in Second Life for prizes, glory.
• Unto us, a baby named Linden is born. 
• Geek literate readers talk and enthuse over the just announced LLMedia API. 
• If the Wall Street Journal notices it's useful, does that means Second Life is on Gartner's "slope of enlightenment" phase? 
• And yes, a large naked woman is among Second Life's go-to places right now.

Weekend Machinima: Demo of 3D Meshes in Second Life

Courtesy Runitai Linden, here's the full demo video of the 3D meshes responding to dynamic lighting in Second Life, an in-development feature unveiled to much geek ululations at last week's SLCC. (A tech demo, it's not machinima in the strictest sense, but definitely a sneak peek at what we can eventually do with SL machinima and other applications in the future.) When I first wrote about this, Lindens graphic developer Qarl offered some very interesting background. It uses deferred shading, for example, and in response to concerns that this technique causes lag, Qarl argues: "[I[t speeds up the rendering by computing lighting ONLY for pixels that are affected by a local light. With a naive renderer, a candle in a cave on the other side of the sim will slow you down. that's why we're able to jump from six local lights to hundreds, without much of a performance hit." The Q man promises to discuss that topic and more during his in-world office hours listed here.