Recently Linden Labs bought a company called Windlight. Why? They can integrate a real atmosphere to Second Life’s sky.

You may have noticed that the sun in Second Life has recently changed from an orange dot to a more realistic looking glowing ball. What the new atmosphere does is add animated clouds and fog, and the color and density of the clouds and fog can be completely adjusted. Want a clear sky? you got it! Want a stormy sky? You got that too.

What is really cool is an added day cycle editor. You can change the light and weather at each time slot throughout the day. Do you want foggy skies in the morning, clear skies at noon, a small storm in the afternoon and a beautiful sunset at night? You can program the sky for each hour. The sun position is changeable too, so if you want an arctic circle daytime all day light you can do that.

Currently it is only available in the first look viewer, because it is not fully integrated yet. Note if you play with this that the cloud layer at 250 meters are gone, so is the moon, and local lighting effects don’t work. So, there are a few bugs to be worked out before it is ready for prime time, but it is amazingly close to full integration.

Virtual Society secondlife, sl clients

I’ve decided to call it quits for now on Lord of the Rings Online. Not that I don’t like the game, because there is lots to like. Its just not for me. I’m a casual onliner, and I enjoy teaming from time to time, but mostly I like soloing.

Here is the problem in a nutshell. The game is designed to level up primarily using missions instead of the famous WoW "grind". Thats a very good thing. But the bad thing is a very large percentage of the missions fall into one of four categories:

1. Bugged missions. They will be fixed eventually
2. Grind missions. The infamous "Kill 20 of x" missions.
3. Forced Fellowship missions. My strategy is to go to where the mission is and spam the LFF board until I get on a team. Not very fun.
4. Impossible to locate missions. Mission documentation consist of a vague description of where you are supposed to look for something, and you spend a lot of time trying to find it.

Then there is the time spent running and running and running some more because your contact is in Bree and your mission is in Brandywine. Sometimes you can spend money and rent a horse, but they are expensive, and you may as well spend your money on equipment repairs and crafting materials which is impossible to make money on.

As much as I love the graphics, scenery and attention to detail in Middle Earth, I think I’d rather hang out in Hobbiton and read a book under a tree or something.

Virtual Society LOTRO, mmorpg

Sculpted Prims Experiment #1: Poser to Second Life

Back when those Magic Eye things were all the rage, I was able to make custom magic eye pics using Carrara Studio and Corel Photo Paint. When Carrara renders to Photo Paint you can set it to save 3D data in seperate channels. I’m sure there is a way to do it with other 3D renderers and Photoshop Layers, but I’m going with what I know.

Step 1: So I took a 3D poser model of me and exported it to a OBJ file, which I imported into Carrara Studio.

Step 2: I then rendered a picture of my head in Photo Paint format, setting the renderer to save 3D data.

Step 3: I opened up Photo Paint, and separated the x, y and z channels into seperate pictures.

Step 4: Created a new picture pasting the y data from step 3 and pasting it into the red channel of the new picture, z data to the green and x data to the blue. Adjust the RGB data as needed so that it is spread out as much as possible.

Step 5: Set your background color to dark yellow (128,128,0), then shrink the image to 64×64, smooth out anti-alias pixels as needed

Step 6: Open up Second Life Beta and find a sand box, import the resulting picture and apply it to a sculpted prim. Make scale adjustments as needed.

Step 7: Convert the rendered picture from step 2 into a TGA file and import it to SL as a texture. Apply it to the prim, make adjustments to the texture as needed (I had to flip and rotate the texture to make it line up.

Step 8: Admire the freaky weird head sculpture.

Virtual Society building, sculpties, secondlife

Second Life will soon implement strict age verification for everybody.

Here is the official word on it

First of all, it sounds like if you are already credit card verified, you still have to be age verified? Apparently this is the case. They should use as a given CC on file = Age verified. But apparently Visa has a policy against that.

Second, there is no definition for “adult content” except “We trust that common sense will prevail. As a general rule, “Adult Content” is any content that is explicitly sexual or excessively violent in nature.”

Now I have a very liberal view of adult content. Remember here, we are dealing with 3 levels of content: PG servers, Mature Servers, and Adult Content:

• Nudity, especially fake avatar nudity, is Mature but NOT adult content.
• Language no matter how raw or foul, unless it is used in a threatening manner, is Mature but NOT adult content.
• The infamous “Flying Penises”, Again Mature but NOT adult content.
• Strip Clubs that do not have escort services, Mature but NOT adult content.

None of the above are explicitly sexual, even though some with more prudish minds may think so.

On the other hand:

• “Xcite!” Toys (aka talking vaginas) = adult content.
• Sexual Pose Balls, I’d say are a judgement call, but mostly adult content.
• BDSM sex toys = Adult content
• Posters or streaming video of real people engaging in sex = adult content
• If your business provides escort services of any kind = adult content

Now the real question is how will this affect Second Life as a whole, the changes could be radical.
Consider for a moment the following two facts:

1. 17 of the top 20 most popular places are listed as “Mature”, the majority of them become popular through the use of “Camping Chairs”
2. Most people who earn money via camping chairs are unlikely to be willing or able to verify their age.

That means the top places are either going to have to drop mature content or drop camping chairs.

Just as the number of premium player is a significant minority to the population as a whole — and because it costs money and may not be available to MANY foreign countries, I doubt the number of age verified players will ever reach a majority of the SL population. This means there are going to be significant disincentives to label your lot as “Adult Content”.

Now if you are a store owner with a tiny shop that has questionable content (like me), you can get away with not checking the adult content box. If you are a really popular place with lots of adult content like Bad Girls Dance and Fetish Club, you will NOT be able to get away with not checking the box, and therefore chasing away a big chunk of your clientelle.

Good or bad, that means the sexual content of SL is going to decline.

Virtual Society censorship, secondlife, virtual law, virtual sex