Do You Want To Date My Avatar?

Video

Due to the nature of this blog and site, I just had to post this video, even though it is all over the place.

Virtual Worlds Video

Does a good job of summarizing the state of the technology, as well as give you an idea what all these worlds look like.

OMG! There Has HUGS!

I have mentioned before that a lot of the early beta members of There came from the now defunct The Sims Online. We found in There many of the things we wished we could do in The Sims Online but could not due to the 2.5D nature of TSO. There were a few things we missed from TSO though, the most common requested was a two person hug emote.

That was five years ago, today we finally have it!

So, how do you hug in There? Well first you and the person you want to hug have to install the updated client. Don’t try updating your old client to the new one, that is generally just asking for trouble in There.

Next you have to be in the same chat group, so talk to one another until you join the group. Then you have to look at each other. Then you both have to say ‘hug within five seconds of each other. I’m not sure why it is so short. If you plan on giving lots of hugs, you better make a macro.

The video below shows hugs are useable in all gender combinations, and they are even different depending on the gender.

Surreal Places in SL: Part 1

After doing a few blogs on real places in SL, why not do a few unreal places. To get you in a surreal state of mind, I included a bizarre Machinima video called Chameleon.

Now for a few surreal links. I find places that qualify as Surreal all the time, and don’t always bookmark them. So I’m going to start off with a few that I have bookmarked.

The place that inspired me to start this post is a place called Culturegion, a server filled with strange sights and sounds. I liked the Sound Art display the best, make sure you turn on the radio and video when prompted. This goes for the whole island as there are “hot spots” of sound and music.

One of my all time favorite surreal builds is on the Svarga Server build. This one is a must see if you never have been. I like to take new people here to show them the potential of Second Life, and this is as good as any to show off.

Before Svarga was opened, the cool build of choice was The Lost Gardens of Apollo. Still a fantastic and beautiful build. A few other beautiful builds along these lines:

Botanical Gardens at Straylight
Creative Fantasy at Serenity Falls
Dragon Moon Resort
T&C Designs and Gardens

Surreal does not necessarily mean artistic and strange. Surreal can also mean reality taken to an extreme or hyperreal. So here are a couple of examples of that.

Above is an example of an industrial wasteland called Hobo Island. Train cars, grafitti covered walls, broken overpasses, and a complex sewer system are here to explore.

On the opposite extreme would be a build I acidentally discovered called the Palace of Yaximixche (website) which probably ranks as one of the most pretentious builds I have ever come across. And why not, if you are going to build yourself a house, may as well make it a big one.

There are probably dozens, if not hundreds, of surreal builds out there. Watch for more of these from time to time. Next up are a few TV, Movie, and Video Game themed builds.

Simulating Virtual Worlds in Real Life

In 3D virtual worlds we try to simulate the real world virtually. Here’s a guy trying to simulate virtual worlds in real life. The second part of this video is an interview with the maker, whose attitude is very similar to my own. Very entertaining idea.

3D Virtual Times Squares

Above is a video demo of Times Square built in Multiverse which is now available as a demo of the Multiverse platform.

Its not the first time Times Square has been represented virtually. If you have Second life you can click here to go to times square, or if you have Google Earth you can click here.

There are also panoramic photo viewers of Times Square like this one or this one, or you can go to Google street view

SL Open Source Update!

It looks like an official Linden Labs release of the server software to Open Source may be a long wait, but in the mean time there is serious play on the OpenSim project as some new partners are coming aboard adding features that simply do not exist in the LL version of Second Life.

Wanna import standard 3D files to SL? Customize the skeleton structure of SL avatars for more variety? Radically improved rendering?

A company called RealXtend is working on exactly that via the OpenSim project.

Hmm, very interesting. We could soon see OpenSim result in a better platform than Second Life itself!

Consider what they are doing here:

• next gen game rendering engine
• 3D mesh importing into the game. There is built on nothing but mesh’s, meaning anything in There can be easily ported to this. Leave prims behind!
• Completely customizable avatars, even down to the mesh level. We could see Poser quality avatars replacing the current SL ones, but not only that we could have avatars with their own custom skeletons — in other words any kind of creature you can think of. Fully articulate hands are doable for example.
• They also have an avatar import method, meaning you can move from one open sim based platform world to another without starting from scratch.
• Add in the Windlight environmental effects, and the Second Life 2.0 is here!

Virtual Singapore in "Amazing Worlds"

A new 3D Virtual World Company called Amazing Worlds specializes in 3D Tourism. I’m not sure what they have in mind, as the last two entries in this blog demonstrate better ways to do tourism in 3D. They are testing a "Singapore" 3D environment, and here is a demonstration video:

Not that impressive so far. My visit to Virtual Kazakhstan was more immersive and more informative. This is obviously still in the alpha stage. Maybe they will get better with time?

360 degrees video

Click and drag your mouse while playing this video. There is also a zoom slider.

http://immersivemedia.com/

Shall we wager how long it will take for the first porn video filmed like this to emerge?

"Sculpted" Mesh Prims coming to SL!

Flexi Prims are coming to SL and I’m all over it! At first it will be limited to people with expensive 3D modeling software, but the math is simple enough that converters should be coming quickly for cheap and free 3D programs.

Here is the official announcement from Linden Labs

Here is a FAQ from the official Wiki

The People Responsible

Currently they only have a Maya exporter, which is damn expensive. I’d like to see a converter from OBJ mesh files for example to RPG prims. The way they describe it, it is the equivalent of a 32×32 polymesh, and you can make some really freaky stuff with that. The video and pictures is just scratching the surface.

Imagine the possibilities! Real form fitting prim clothing comes to mind for example.

I’m going to stay on top of this, I’m interested in the mathematics of this, as well as simple conversion from OBJ files.

Here’s a video