New World Notes

Can a Multiple Texture Upload Feature Improve Second Life Performance?

Here's a new feature request on the Second Life JIRA worth following, submitted by Firestorm developer Beq Janus, who explains her reasoning for it in a New World Notes comment:

As was raised in the past in this blog, one of the problems we face in Second Life is inefficient content design, and a move that encourages the creation of high resolution (1024) textures as part of a default workflow is going to lead to a worsening of this situation. To this end I have proposed an amendment to the viewer (and server) that would allow for the simplified creation of multiple resolutions in a single transaction. Ultimately I would like to see this generate a range of resolutions from a single (high resolution) source image, for a single upload fee. I think the feature has value without the single fee change, but the take up would be far lower. The hope is that with such a feature, artists and creators can work with high-resolution images and the viewer will produce multiple resolution uploads allowing the creators to test the appearance and make better decisions about when a 1024x1024 image is really needed.

The UI mock-up pictured here is part of Beq's proposal in the JIRA, a way to subtly encourage mesh creators to avoid uploading unnecessarily resource-heavy, poorly optimized textures which are now choking SL performance:

Top 5 Posts Last Week: Virtual World Gentrification, SL Tutorials & Much More

• Cassie's Clips: How To Add Natural Light, Color Burns & Overlays To Your Screenshots With Photoshop
• Nylon Pinkney Is Online: The Ghosts Of Second Life Breedables Past
• Watch: Modbox Sandbox Game Includes Mind-Bending "Mirror World" Mixed Reality Feature
• Firestorm QA: Yes, It's Possible To Use Debug Settings To Get Super-High Quality Second Life Images -- Here's How
• Has Second Life Been Fully Gentrified? Thoughts From My BBC Interview

Cassie's Clips: How to Add Natural Light, Color Burns & Overlays to Your Screenshots With Photoshop

After a brief but much missed absence, Cassie Middles (don't forget to subscribe) is back on New World Notes with a new Photoshop tutorial for enhancing your screenshots: Adding natural light, as well as color burns and overlays.

"A good tip is to check out Deviant Art for stock lighting and vectors you can use in your photos. Please always make sure to read their licensing to see if it's okay to use, or if you need to use credits as well! The one included in this video was free to use, with no credit needed or any rules." (Link below.)

 

"A lot of these techniques are trial and error, working on figuring out which blending would look best with the overlay you use. I decided to use color burn with a lowered opacity on mine! It's always fun to try new things and mess with lighting or editing tips! When in doubt though, ctrl+J! it always makes a new layer that you're working on, helping you be less stressed about messing up, and more inspired to take some chances and experiment! But the main new things I've been enjoying work with are:

• Selective color, making skin look a bit more realistic and less red or yellow.
• Color overlay or color burn. This is effective when messing with the blending layers, making it overlay neatly.
• I used color dodge for this one.
• I also have been having fun with more dramatic shadows and grays.

More tips and resources after the break:

Linden Lab Expanding Sansar Social Reach With New Hire, More Comedians

Linden Lab is hiring a new community manager for Sansar to be based in the San Francisco HQ, and it looks like a dream VR job if you're intimately familiar with promoting content on Facebook, and Twitter, and Instagram... and Pinterest, and Twitch, and Reddit, and Plurk, and etc.:

Linden Lab is the creator of the world’s largest, most successful, completely user-generated virtual worlds platform. Have you heard what we’re doing next? If uncharted territory excites you and you are ready to take on growing a global audience for Sansar, the world’s leading social VR platform, we are looking for you to help us build the future.

The job was posted in Linkedin two days ago but less than 25 applications have been submitted which is curious -- and a good opportunity to apply now,

Speaking of social promotion, Linden Lab is continuing to promote live comedy in Sansar featuring real world top comedians/comedy actors, with the next event this coming Sunday featuring Blackish star Owen Smith and others:

Cajsa’s Flickr Pick Of The Day: Akira Voorhees' Cyberpunk Tribute to Freedom

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

So, this is an individual photo that caught my eye, not just because I like it but because the title really speaks to the moment. 'Freedom is for sale if you give them control' by Akira Voorhees seems to leave the question of who they are open, but does it really? The little objects that surround the subject could be called bots. Bots have become an important influencer on people's behavior through advertising and social media. Stories of people talking about something and suddenly seeing ads for it on Facebook speak to an internet of things that seem to cater to our wishes, but is that catering a form of control? Is freedom for sale? 

Voorhees' image credits on her blog.

See all of Cajsa's Choices here. Follow Cajsa on Flickr, on Twitter or on her blog.

Nylon Pinkney is Online: The Ghosts of Second Life Breedables Past

Watch: Modbox Sandbox Game Includes Mind-Bending "Mirror World" Mixed Reality Feature

This demo video makes my brain slightly melt:

This was created in the latest update to Modbox, a multiplayer sandbox game from Toronto developer Lee Vermeulen. This particular demo uses a ZedMini camera with an HTC-Vive set-up, and while it may seem like a massive leap to incorporate a mirror's reflection into an augmented reality experience, so that real objects seem to move back and forth into a "mirror world", Lee tells me it's available as a default feature for Modbox: "Literally no special programming /setup at all. I am hoping within the next 2 months the update will be out."

And yes, this is the same platform that makes The Abyss/Terminator 2-style fluid physics possible in VR. More about Modbox on the homepage and on its Steam page. The feature list is insanely robust and exciting:

Cajsa’s Flickr Pick Of The Day: Chinese Artist Hsu Tung Han Carves "Pixelating" Sculptures from Wood

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

Hsu Tung Han is a Chinese sculptor who carves statues out of Coastal Cypress. This may seem like a far cry from game screenshots, but there is a digital element to his woodcarving – pixelation.

His more recent work seems to catch people in the process of being digitized. Is he saying, "I am an analog man in a digital world"?  Or is he seeing our coming evolution to something transhuman? In "Magician" (above, all titles featured here translated from the Chinese) most of his body is still resolved, and the pixelation is concentrated around his upper body, that part of the anatomy that interacts most with the digital. 

In "Slip and Slide" (below) the pixelation seems more ominous, as though it in the process of transitioning the subject into a prison, behind the window looking out at the world:

Firestorm QA: Yes, It's Possible to Use Debug Settings to Get Super-High Quality Second Life Images -- Here's How

Last week's post on improving SL image quality via a workaround from SLer Frenchbloke Vanmoer caused a lot of skepticism, mostly due to some poor technical wording on my part. (My bad and mea culpa!) However, Firestorm support and QA volunteer Whirly Fizzle came by Comments, and confirmed that this does, indeed, apparently work:

When I first read this blog post I thought it was a load of cobblers. But Frenchbloke is actually correct! The blog post just explains it badly. [Sorry! - ed]

This will also work just as well on the Linden Lab viewer & probably every other viewer. Those debug settings are from the Linden Lab viewer, they are not Firestorm specific.

It's easy enough to test for yourself. Get hold of a super high quality 8192 image with lots of fine detail & make sure it's saved in a lossless format - I used PNG in my test.

Set the debugs max_texture_dimension_X and max_texture_dimension_Y to 8192.
Upload your 8192x8192 image.
This image will upload and the uploader will resize the image to the maximum allowed size of 1024x1024 - this limit is enforced server side, there is no way around it.

Now open your 8192 PNG in Photoshop & reduce the image size to 12.5% using the Bicubic Sharpen (best for reduction) & save this image.
Set the debugs max_texture_dimension_X and max_texture_dimension_Y back to default & upload your image.

More from Mr. Fizzle, including a sample comparison images they took:

How to Host a High Fidelity Social VR Server for $300/Year on Google Cloud

Here's a detailed tutorial for setting up your own High Fidelity server on Google Cloud, which is now offering a free 12 month $300 credit. (I.E., roughly 1/12th what it usually costs to host a server in Second Life.) The step-by-step guide comes courtesy of Game Loop's Alberto Fonseca, who describes it as a good way of getting started, though not necessarily for hosting a massively packed Thomas Dolby-type live event: 

"I believe you can have around 5 people capacity with that base server but haven’t tried the limit yet," as he puts it. "It’s easy to scale up to more as needed. The $300 is the free credit you get for 1 year. How much of that you spend depends on usage so testing is needed. Base is about $15/mo. [to run] the cloud instance. That would come out of the $300 credit you get for the year so no out of pocket cost until you use up the free credit. It’s free to try for a year to figure those things out and you get a cool sandbox to play with."

Here's the whole tutorial, which is definitely not for beginners, but if you have questions, Alberto has been providing follow-up support in his blog's Comments.

Hat tip -- High Fidelity's Philip Rosedale: