I made an unusual change to the Date Simulator, it has been on the online version for a while, thought I’d release the changes  to the offline version.

I added “On mouse over” and “On mouse out” text to every link on the pictures which displays either an action (in italics) or a quote (not in italics)  underneath what Ariane says.  The idea is to give it a more comic book feel, while also making things easier to read and navigate on small browser windows (i.e. mobile phones).   Some mobile browsers still don’t work, unfortunately, but it works well anyways.

You may notice that sometimes the text below and the text on the link does not match, this is intentional. In some places the text below is random which you can change by moving your mouse over the link, the text on the link remains generic.  If the text below does not make sense, look at the link text.

Except for a couple of minor bug fixes, there is no change to game play from version 6.0.

Media, Metaverse News Dating Simulator, updates

The video above is not Google Earth, or Microsoft Virtual Earth. It is a creation of five guys in Britain led by Michael Fotoohi of Micazook.com. They have an ambitious plan of creating the entire planet in 3D navigable by avatars as seen in the video.  They use freely available aerial photography and digital street maps to create their world.  They are hoping to make a combination of Google Earth, Second Life, and Wikipedia.

Sounds like a cool project. More info can be found here.

Media, Metaverse News avatars, googleearth, mirror worlds, virtual worlds

Its September and that means the new fall season of TV is coming. As usual the networks rearrange their schedules and schedule most of my favorite shows opposite one another.

I do not have cable or satellite, just an antenna to pick up local HD channels. My “DVR” consists of a tuner card on my computer running Windows Media Center — far and away the best DVR software despite the fact that the files it saves are proprietary. Between WMC, and websites like Hulu and streaming video on network sites (cbs.com, abc.com, etc.), and pay for TV like iTunes, Amazon, and Netflix, I do not miss anything I want to see, despite the lack of cable or Satellite.

The problem is, none of this can be seen on my TV, just my computer. All I can watch on my TV are live channels, DVDs, and my previously metioned Apple TV.

I decided that I would find a way to solve this once and for all. I researched many possible fixes: Wireless enabled television (too expensive), building a media PC (also too expensive), TiVo (another monthly fee to pay, high startup cost), a media server (none support the WMC proprietary files),  a converted xbox or linux box with XBMC loaded (same WMC proprietary issue), a Windows Media Extender (difficult to find, most no longer being supported) and a PC toTV device (poor screen resolution no HD support).  I mention these options because others may find them more suitable. 

For me, the easiest and most cost effective solution is to get an XBox360.

I don’t own any consoles, never had the need, as my computer is powerful enough to play anything. But if I want to watch all this internet based television on my actual television, the XBox360 is the best way to go. I got the “arcade” model, the extras you get in the “elite” are needed for console gaming enthusiasts, but not needed for my uses.

Setting all this up turned out to be a major chore as I ran into some undocumented issues that Microsoft apparently does not even know how to fix. My computer connects wirelessly to a router in the same room as my TV, so all I had to do on the xbox is plug in a cat 6 ethernet cable (the 54mb limit of the way over priced wireless G adapter Microsoft sells is too low to stream HD).  Once connected, my computer had no problem seeing my XBox, but the XBox could not see the computer. 

The official answer from Microsoft is to make sure your network is “private” and that and that both file and media sharing is enabled. It turns out you must also turn off Internet Connection Sharing as well (its a service under administrative tools, disable it from ever starting so it does not come on when you reboot your computer).  Microsoft either does not know about the issue, or they dont think it is common enough to publicize as a possible fix.  Took me a good 4 hours of troubleshooting to find this out though.

Anyways, once fixed, I can play all my media files through my TV, including my DVR recordings via the Windows Media Extender feature. The xbox also has netflix built in.

What I still could not do was access hulu and other streaming video.  Turns out there is an easy fix for that too called PlayOn ($40 one time after two week trial). It installs on your PC and plays online streaming video through your TV by pretending to be stored video. Works on PS3 and Wii as well.

And with that addition, I can watch anything  I want on my TV, sans cable or satellite.

Media appletv, internet tv, Media, Media Center, tv, xbox360, xboxlive

Two of the games I spend a lot of time on both recently announced major upgrades.

Second Life 2.0

The recent Second Life Community Convention (SLCC) had some presentations from Linden Labs with demonstrations of upcoming upgrades. Among them a much better organized viewer, much requested mesh imports (not till 2010), reflective surfaces (also not till 2010), and a bunch of other features.

More info on the new viewer can be found here. Here is a video.  We could see the new viewer later this fall.

Guild Wars 2

There are new MMORPG’s coming out that have tempted me to get back into online role play games. Aion, Champions Online, and Fallen Earth are three new ones for fantasy, comic book, and post apocalypse fans.

But now word comes that Guild Wars 2 is coming out maybe as early as the end of this year. Which is surprising, since I was hearing possibly 2011 before. This is the one I am most looking forward to. In Guild Wars 1 you always played as a human. In Guild Wars 2, there are five races to choose from, and I plan to have characters in all five.

More info on Guild Wars 2 can be found in an interview with the devs here.

Media, Metaverse News guildwars, mmorpg, secondlife, sl clients, updates

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

Media avatars, mmorpg, theguild, video

40 years ago this week, Apollo 11 blasted off from Cape Kennedy on its way to being the first manned space ship to land on the moon. In honor of this anniversary, I thought I’d find a way to recreate the mission in Second Life.

Well the first stop in our voyage is of course the International Space Museum at Spaceport Alpha. If you have never been to this awesome region (which I am sure I have mentioned before) well shame on you. It is one of the best educational regions in Second Life.  I have known people who joined Second Life, just to go see this place.

At ground level they have a display of all the famous rockets in space exploration history.  Above is a picture of me standing in front of my favorite rocket, the Ariane 01 used by the EU to launch satellites.

Apollo 11 was a Saturn V rocket, and I am sure there is one somewhere in the museum, but the only rideable rocket is a Gemini ship which predates the Saturn V. Close enough for this mission.

Before we take off though, we probably should get a spacesuit.  A quick check of Xstreet has a few available, but I managed to score a freebie helmet, gloves, and life support pack in the National Space Society region. Add your favorite leather body suit and boots, and you have a working space suit. Not authentic by any means, but good enough for virtual space travel.

So here we are aboard our ship waiting for launch. Actually launching will take us to the International Space Station display and the beginning of a tour of all the planets . A nice display, but not where we want to go.

We want to go to the Moon, so it is time to move on to the Daden Space region. This place requires that you be in a spacesuit. Pick up a HUD and stand on a teleport pad.  Yay! we made it to the moon!

Finally, it is worth mentioning that NASA has some 40th anniversary activities and events planned. You can find a schedule, along with a couple of detailed lunar lander lunar rover models in the Nasa CoLab region (right next door to the ISM).

Media, Virtual Society education, event, exploring, secondlife, space

If you have an Nvidia card designed for DirectX 10 (8800 or better Windows XP or Vista), and you update to the latest drivers released June 19,2009, you might find something new in the NVIDEA Command Center: Stereoscopic 3D glasses support.

I have not seen this feature mentioned anywhere, not even on Nvidea’s own site. Probably because it is in the experimental stage. Older drivers supported it, but you had to hack your registry to enable it. Now you can enable it with a couple of clicks.

There are two methods that are supported. The first requires a special 3D ready monitor with two video inputs, a set of glasses that opens and closes shutters on either eye and an IR device that triggers the glasses, at a cost of $600 or so. Eventually this will come down, but it costs to be on the cutting edge.

The other method is to use a pair of red/cyan glasses, (called anaglyph 3D, or Nvidea calls it 3D Discover) which if you don’t have a pair lying around, you can get four pairs packaged in the DVD of Spy Kids 3D which you could probably find on sale for $10 or less. I have a few different kinds lying around and the ones from Spy Kids work the best.

The stereoscopic effect can be enabled or disabled with a simple key press (ctrl-t is default but you can set it to whatever you want) and works with any Direct 3D game with mixed results.

It does not work with OpenGL — Sorry Second Life and Google Earth fans!

I tried it in Guild Wars, and the stereoscopic 3D looked fine, but the text labels on the screen were not in 3D and looked wrong. Also much of the text is in bright primary colors that changes with the red/cyan glasses. I am sure there are other games in the same boat, so the system is not perfect.

I tried stereoscopic mode in other direct 3D games. Tomb Raider Underworld looks fantastic, race games are amazing fun in anaglyph 3D, even The Sims 2 and 3 work fine. Because all of this is handled at the driver level, no game has to be rewritten to work, it just has to use Direct 3D. Older games work wonderfully well without having to be rewritten.

There is a certain fatigue factor after long use, so you can’t play this way for hours, but it is a fun way to rediscover many of your older games, and enjoy them again. It also adds a new feature to PC gaming you can’t get on consoles.

Apparently once they get the bugs worked out, NVidea will be promoting it more and will be selling special anaglyph glasses anywhere video cards are sold.

Media, Metaverse News 3d anaglyph, 3D navigation, nvidea, reviews, stereoscopic 3D, videogame

I’ve been tinkering around with the dating simulator again, making some improvements to the backyard activities, especially the swimming activity, which has not been changed much since version 1.0.

Part of the reason is that the “pool” comes from The Sims 2, which does not really provide full camera freedom. Until recently all the pool shots were above the pool angles, because that is what The Sims 2 allows, which also is somewhat contradictory to the dating sim format of “first person” viewing.

I’ve had the idea for some time of doing some underwater stuff, and experimented a little with that while making version 5.5. In that instance I created a corner of the pool in Second Life, taking advantage of SL’s full camera control and water effects.

For 5.7 I decided to expand the idea, and just build a duplicate pool in Open Grid (at about double scale) giving me every above and below angle I could want. Above is the picture of the pool model in Open Grid.

So, I thought I’d tell you some of the secrets to making some of the pictures. The primary new feature of swimming is a one lap underwater swimming race. One picture I needed was Ariane tagging the pool wall. Above is a break down of the steps involved: 1.) Take a screen capture of the Open Sim at the location Ariane would be tagging the wall. 2.) Create the tagging pose (I actually used a “spider-man” pose from my pose library and adjusted it as needed) and build a set of white walls to stand in for the pool. 3.) Render a “shadow” from available lighting. Backyard pools commonly have underwater lights on the pool walls. She is too close to the right wall to get light from there, so the lighting is coming from light on the left wall. 4.) Render Ariane without the walls or shadows.

Combine the three pictures to produce a great underwater picture:

Another special effect is the above water pictures. These are simply too difficult to render realistically without some fancy expensive program. So when I started the dating sim project, I came up with a way to create these pictures that while not realistic, they get the point across, and in a way they are cleverly artistic.

Here’s my water technique:

This is the beginning of the race: 1.) Same as above. Take a screen shot of the position Ariane would be at the beginning of the race. 2.) Create a matching pose. I did not bother with a shadow this time as the lighting would be coming from multiple above water and below water angles, wiping out most of the shadows anyways. (Yes there is a shadow in this pic, but since it does not correspond to the background it will be erased.) This picture will be Ariane below the water.  3.) Position a black square to match exactly where the water should be. Also add a “wet” effect to Ariane’s skin to represent above the water line. 4.) Starting with the below water picture number 2, adjust the color to make it brighter and bluer before combining with background picture 1. Then use either a ripple effect, or just simply a smudge tool to simulate the distortion of wavy water. Get rid of the black water in pic 3 using a color mask tool, and then merge it with pic 2, then blend them together.

Not very realistic, but it looks cool.

Media, Metaverse News 3D art, Dating Simulator, poser

One of the first posts on this blog was about the future of the internet, and the likely decline of the “Golden Age of the Internet” to quote John Dvorak. My older post was about government and lawsuits causing a decline in online freedoms.  The freedom of the Internet seems to be on the decline once again, but this time the driving force to change is economic.

Some notes from around the Internet:

1.) This past week Rupert Murdock has stated that the internet is over. Advertising revenues are down and the business model for online news cannot be sustained without going to a subscription model.

I think the guy is off his rocker, and his plans to charge to access newspaper sites is quite dumb. Subscriptions for news online work for specialized newspapers like the Wall Street Journal or Variety because these papers are the paper of record for specific industries.  General news sites are a dime a dozen, and the only way a general newspaper could make money on a subscription plan is if every paper did so.

2.) You Tube is changing its business model, in light of half a billion dollar losses expected this year.   Check out this video, or at least the first couple of minutes. The guy starts blathering at around the 3 minute mark. To me, the video has an opposite effect on me than he intended.

When you are losing money as bad as You Tube is, you have to reorganize and go back to what works. Hosting users videos for free is a major component of the site, but it is also the least profitable. Hosting video from commercial distributors and advertisers that are good enough to get advertiser support is profitable, and that is exactly where You Tube is going to go.

I’ll even go as far as to predict that You Tube will  start charging a fee to host user videos. This will no doubt reduce the number of videos out there, but the overall quality will improve.

3.) Two of the largest and fastest growing websites, Twitter and Facebook, are both operating in the red as well.

Facebook is probably close to profitability right now. The last reliable numbers I saw were in 2007 when the site was spending twice what they were bringing in. Since then the employment has doubled, and I assume the expenses have as well, but also since then the user base has quadrupled, and hopefully the revenue has too. If so, they are close to being in the black now.

Twitter is a popular tool in need of a way to make money soon before they run out. There is minimum advertising there, and selling ads for tweets is likely to be a hard sell, especially since most tweets are sent and recieved via feeds that dont pass advertising messages.  Rumors have been flying that Twitter is ripe for take over. Who knows what will happen there.

We are not approaching the end of the internet (sorry Rupert), but we are at the end of the “Golden Age” of the internet.

The age of getting a site up and running with VC money and waiting 5 years for profitability are over.  The new model forward is going to be “Make Money quickly or Die”

As sad as I am to see a lot of the FREE benefits we have been enjoying online start to disappear, a leaner and meaner internet may prove to be a good thing in the long run.

Media, Metaverse News future, internet, web 2.0

Generally speaking I do not do movie or TV reviews on this blog, but Caprica is a sci-fi story that hits many themes I tend to hit on this blog.

For Battlestar Galactica fans, it is the story about the creation of the first Cylons. For Virtual World fans there is a deep plot involving virtual reality, its nature and practical uses. The opening scene is what a lot of SL players probably wish SL was really like. (this scene will likely be heavily toned down when the movie finally airs)

I like science fiction, especially the speculative fiction with real world ties, like Philip K. Dick, or the “cyberpunk” writers like William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, and early Neil Stephenson. This kind of stuff does not translate well to TV or Movies, and even when it is done successfully there is not a big enough audience to sustain it.

Battlestar Galactica often managed to get beyond its space adventure genre and start telling stories with real world parallels, like the “New Caprica” episodes and their table turning parallels to the war in Iraq.

Caprica loses the whole space adventure genre completely. It is more of the dystopia genre. Caprica is a parallel Earth slightly more technological advanced than ours. The fact that it is also slightly more advanced than BSG as well says that Ronald D. Moore and crew understand how tech can slide backwards in the time of war (which hasn’t happened yet in Caprica’s timeline).

Bottom line is that Caprica is a good sci-fi story set in the BSG universe. If you are a fan of either, you should really check this out. I will definitely be looking forward to the series this fall.

Media Battlestar Galactica, Caprica, reviews, tv