In lieu of a real original post (taking a short break), here are some other blog posts and form topics worth a look see.

Second Life Killer Apps and Weak Ties by Grace McDunnough

A good analysis of why Second Life has failed to reach “Killer App” status as “promised” by Linden Labs CEO M Linden (Mark Kingdon). M Linden responds to this post himself (see comment #10)

Second Life vs. Open Sim by Zonja Capalini

Thoroughly notated long post about the experience of moving from Second Life to Open Sim, including the reasons why and the advantages and pitfalls. This post is a first hand account of a move I believe a lot of people and companies will be making soon.

Symbolism and Second Life Forum thread at SL Universe.

A thoughtful philosophical discussion about how we experience Second Life. In the real world, we run into symbolism on a daily basis that partly defines our reality. The symbols themselves are immaterial just as cyberspace is immaterial. The “real” experience of Second Life is in the symbolic representations of the people, places, and things. Good discussion.

Metaverse News blogging, opensim, philosophy, secondlife

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

This past week NCSoft celebrated the 5th anniversary of City of Heroes/Villains, Lineage II, and the 4th anniversary of Guild Wars by holding some events and allowing old players to come back for a free week of play.  I have played all three at one time or another, I decided to focus the free time on City of Heroes.

From May 2004-May 2005 I spent something like 900 hours moving my Assault rifle/Tactics hero (ArianeB) from level 1 to 50.  It was my first MMORPG and I really had a lot a fun and made a lot of friends.

After level 50, there was not much to do, I had a few other characters, but never got any past level 25.  Eventually, I got distracted by Guild Wars, and did not play CoH enough to justify the $15 a month fee and dropped it, reactivating from time to time when urges came back, but mostly I have not played much at all in over two years.

I thought I’d try it again during this free week. Paragon City brought back a lot of memories. Despite the lack of play in two years, I still know my way around the freeway system in Skyway  – like going back to a city you used to live in years ago.

But is it still as good as I remember it? Unfortunately no.

It is still a game about mashing keys in a certain order over and over again.  Team play is still a lot of fun, but individual play is no where near as fun as Guid Wars. Both CoH and GW have constantly added content, but the game play in CoH has not changed significantly in 5 years. The new content plays more or less like the old content.

The new content on Guild Wars has changed the game making it a lot more fun. Nightfall added Heroes, Eye of the North added global powers. There is a lot of variety in the missions and many of the best missions are replayable. There is also a lot of strategy built into succeeding in the game, not just repetitive key mashing.

Bottom line: Guild Wars has aged better than City of Heroes.

I think it is time to make a clean break and hang up the tights. CoH and CoV were fun adventures, but its time to retire and move on. Cryptic Studios, those responsible for the content of CoH, is working on Star Trek Online, while Arenanet is working on Guild Wars 2.  Both are a year or two away from release. I’m looking forward to both!

Metaverse News anniversary, cityofheroes, guildwars, mmorpg