For the ‘web 2.0′ there are once in a while interesting projects that see the daylight, but not enough of it. Rather ‘clonelike’ projects create a lot of buzz, and long term, fascinating players, don’t get enough attention. I figure ‘We Feel Fine’ is one of those: We Feel Fine is an exploration by Jonathan Harris & Sepandar Kamvar of human emotion on a global scale.
‘Huh?’ Was my first reaction. How the hell can they - Jonathan Harris & Sepandar Kamvar - know how I feel. Let alone the whole of mankind? But seems that the global scale is the blogosphere: since August 2005, We Feel Fine has been harvesting human feelings from a large number of weblogs. Every few minutes, the system searches the world’s newly posted blog entries for occurrences of the phrases “I feel” and “I am feeling”. As blogpost often contain author name, date, geolocations, … and We Feel Fine even looks op the info in the profile of the blogger, they know - more or less - who you are, what’s your sex, how old you are, where you live, … . The result is a database of several million human feelings, increasing by 15,000 - 20,000 new feelings per day. The internet holds emotions after all! ;)
You can look up those feelings at We Feel Fine in quite a few different ways: Murmurs the most extreme for those who are fond of prying into someone else’s life and Metrics the most fitted for those who prefer general data over one person views.
Interesting because?
It gives us a ‘voyeuristic’ look on other people’s lives and more important, emotions: gossiping is out of fashion as one does not know one’s neighbours any more, and reality tv continuous to suck. People trust things to their weblogs - and thus the entire ‘web population’ that they often would not even trust their partners with.
Data! Compare the average amount of happiness in the USA vs happy people in the EU, see if it’s true that the only ones with either euphoric or highly depressed feelings are teenagers, and if the weather has something to do with it. Does astronomy make sense? Do all people born in 1984 feel more or less alike? Were there more ‘I feel disappointed’ people on the day George W Bush was elected president again? Etc.
Can you think of any more interesting uses?
My only ‘doubt’ about this, is that even if it would scramble all the blogs, it is still a bit a biased image the We Feel Fine API paints:
I tend to blog when I’m a) euphoric/made a new discovery/did something well/very positive feeling or b) sad/disappointed/very negative feeling. I assume this is the same for others, creating an universe of feelings where the extreme ones are represented far more, and the ‘neutral’ feelings are neglected. Now who would write: ‘I feel normal’? ;)
It will be a representation of the blogosphere’s feelings, thus people who have access to the internet. Which excludes how much of the world’s population? We’ll probably not get feelings from war zones and the poorer countries, which makes this ‘an universe of feelings from the wealthy nations’. If I would type ‘I feel hungry’ and ‘I feel unsafe’ a few times, would that pull things straight, you think? Far from.
What languages does the application speak? Does it read feelings in Japanese, Russian, Spanish, … and even Dutch? As I could not find any information about that, let us just assume it is ‘the universe of feelings from wealthy nations where one speaks English’.
None the less, gathering blog data from a variety of online sources, including LiveJournal, MSN Spaces, MySpace, Blogger, Flickr, Technorati, Feedster, Ice Rocket, and Google, We Feel Fine is an impressive project.
ShareCG - kimber89’s portfolio - Texture heaven! That I did not discover this earlier! Check out Kimber89’s cute vector insects! =)
Flickr: Linden Lab’s Photostream - Linden Lab now has a stream with ‘official’ stock photographs. ‘Email licensing@lindenlab.com for information about obtaining a commerical use copyright license.’
If you did not notice yet, those virtual roaches - and human’s real reactions to those virtual bugs - keep me puzzled. That puzzled during I shared my thoughts on it with the real life friends. You know, those friends that ‘don’t like virtual worlds’, ‘prefer real life’, still ‘wonder what the hell it is that you are doing’, but that you love none the less as you forgive them their ignorance! ;) And also exact the kind of friends that - because of their ignorance - come up with great ideas regarding virtual stuff. They are able to look beyond those eye shells that grow on you when spending to much time in - any - world. And one of those friends told me about ‘augmented reality’. Using the words: ‘Having a virtual Christina Ricci projected in my bedroom would get me off, yeah, so I assume that stuff can be real. But preferably in my bedroom, yes.’*
Augmented reality is where one ads a layer of ‘virtual goodness’ on top of the real world, and do it that well that they blend in almost perfectly. But what do the roaches have to do with this all? In 2007 the clinical psychology department at Universitat Jaume I in Castelló, Spain did exact that experiment with virtual roaches: A team of computer-imaging specialists filmed the creatures, digitised images of their scurrying and teeming, and displayed the images—not on a computer monitor, but on see-through goggles. To the wearer, the virtual roaches then look as though they are really in the room. Next, university psychologists set about therapeutically frightening patients who have a fear of insects. “They put a foot on the ground and the cockroaches start climbing over it,” says Cristina Botella, who led the researchers. “The computer just pumps them out.” In November Ms Botella presented her team’s findings at the Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Therapies conference in Philadelphia. The treatment worked very well. I would love to see them test this with virtual roaches in our brave new virtual world**. Reality, only better from the Economist states: For some things, it turns out, computer graphics can be much more effective when viewed not on screens, but superimposed on the real world. The technique is known as “augmented reality” (AR) or, less frequently, as “augmented vision”, because the real world is augmented with virtual text or graphics. Ah, yeah well… as stated before, if you spend enough time in our virtual world, it kinda grows on you, and becomes as real - or almost as real - as that other one.
Still, I guess we just can’t do without ‘real life’ - ;) - and here are some interesting applications for augmented reality:
Scan for veins under skin, processes that data and then projects the veins on your skin in real time, making sure the nurse knows where to stick that needle. Would be handy because: it sucks to go to school in a long sleeve when it’s 30 degrees Celsius because else they’ll all think you’re a junk.
Tourist information, in stead of long brochures of boring text and dates, give the visitors a pair of goggles and show them battle scenes, how the ruins looked when they were still ‘castle’, or what exactly happened in the master’s bedroom. Would be handy because: they can charge extra for the viewer that includes pr0n scenes.
Virtual safaris in France the Parc du Futuroscope. Would be handy because: Reality TV sucks nowadays and it does no harm if you feed a virtual animal. They can sell an endless amount of virtual food.
In the military: Soldiers with head-mounted displays might read street names superimposed on the ground, follow colour-coded arrows for patrols or retreats, and see symbols indicating known or potential sniper nests, weapons caches and hiding places for booby-traps. The displays could also show the locations of friendly forces and levels of ammunition and other supplies, as in a video game. Would be handy because: Flight simulator fell in enemy hands.
All sound rather kewl, no? So what use for augmented reality could you think off? I think my friend was dead on target with his ‘virtual pr0n, live in your bedroom’ idea, but I’m sure you can think of some other great innovations making use of augmented reality?
* I do not exclude the possibility that for his birthday his bedroom will be rebuild in the virtual world and a Christina Ricci skin & shape will be shopped for! ;)
** Brave New Virtual World, a world previously known as Second Life, now Second Life™.
Beware the virtual roaches! They can be real. - Rezzable - Really flabbergasted me. How virtual roaches can trigger a real life phobia. Guess we should redefine ‘real’ and ‘virtual’. Maybe make that ‘real life real’ and ‘virtual life real’? ;)
Emvee Cuba Storyboard Contest - Koinup - ‘The contest is restricted to Second Life residents, the focal medium being still-frame storyboards; artistic media other than storyboard will not be accepted.’ I want a 3D Navigator Mouse! My wacom one is near death by exhaustion.
Who’s a Flickr Group whore escort? Now, c’mon, don’t be afraid, and raise your hands. You’re not a Flickr Group Whore you say? Right. Check your Flickr photographs. How many groups are they in? Above the 5 groups / photograph on average? Yep, no point denying, you’re cheap all right! ;) But no damage done. Really. Even, the whoring part just has become a whole lot more easy, thanks to a nice discovery made by The Boss: a neat little Greasemonkey Flickr Multi Group Sender script to add to your FireFox extensions. Yeey, it’s an incredible handy time saver!
Greasemonkey?
First you will need the Greasemonkey FireFox addon, download it here. Greasemonkey is a Firefox extension that allows you to write scripts that alter the web pages you visit. After you install it, you won’t notice any change at all… until you start installing what are called “user scripts”. A user script is just a chunk of Javascript code, with some additional information that tells Greasemonkey where and when it should be run. Each user script can target a specific page, a specific site, or a group of sites. A user script can do anything you can do in Javascript. In fact, it can do even more than that, because Greasemonkey provides special functions that are only available to user scripts.
Greasemonkey Flickr Multi Group Sender
How do we use this user friendly goodness that allows us to send a photograph to multiple Flickr groups at the same time?
Make sure you are using FireFox. (Learn: Neat things are NEVER made for Internet Explorer! Never thought I’d refer to MS (crappy) support pages, but here you go.)
Download and install the Flickr Multi Group Sender script. (one click)
Go to one the page of the photograph - your photograph, of course - you want to submit to multiple Flickr groups at the same time.
Click the ’send to group’ icon above your Flickr photograph: your new and improved submission window opens. Notice it does not load group icons and all the fancy stuff, so it’s way quicker.
Use CTRL + left mouseclick to select all the groups you want to submit your photo to. (a few clicks, depending on how ‘whoring’ you feel like doing today)
Press ‘add photograph’. Your photograph is added to those Flickr Group Pools, and you even get a neat report for which groups this worked and for which this failed.
Some more ‘neatyness’ about the Flickr Multi Group Sender:
1.) If you check ‘Save this group selection’ and then press ‘add photograph’, next time you want to submit a photograph to the same pools, you just need to select the setting for the selection of groups from the drop down menu. Ideal for making ‘fashion groups’, ‘art groups’, ‘get your silly on’, … group collections presets. This is going to save you tons of precious time!
2.) To long a Flickr group list? Not sure which letter that group starts with? Not good at doing that abcdeeurr… alphabet thing? Don’t worry, group search is here! In the upper box, type a part of the group’s name you’re searching for - SL does not really help, still to much results! ;) - and press ’search’. The results - with amongst them probably the group you’re looking for - will show up. To go back to the overview, simple press ‘reset’.
I’ll send an SOS to the world, I’ll send a… message in a bottle. For their SL5B build, Lillie Yifu and Dizzy Banjo are creating ‘A Message to Second Life’ and want to hear what you have to say. What does Second Life mean to you? How did it affect you? And what are your hopes for our brave new virtual world’s future? And who know, perhaps the messages perhaps it will be found again at SL10B?
We feel sometimes we shut people out of important happenings like SL5B, because they don’t speak the right Linden language - English in this case. So here is the call out in a few languages. Feel free to translate and spread the message for messages yourself! (And can we get a copy then? ;))
Spanish Version (in the comments) (by a user form the Spanish SL forum)
English version
SECOND LIFE IS 5 YEARS OLD !
As part of the SL5B celebrations, Dizzy Banjo and Lillie Yifu are creating “A Message to Second Life”.
We have created a giant bottle, which we want to fill with all your messages to Second Life. What would you like to say to the entire SL community on its 5th birthday ?
What does Second Life mean to you ?
How has your Second Life affected you ?
What hopes do you have for the future of Second Life ?
You can submit your message in two forms :
- An uploaded audio recording of you speaking your message ( PREFERRED OPTION ! ! )
- A text based message in a notecard
Once we have recieved your messages they will all go into the bottle and spill out intermittently as part of a fun interactive sound and music installation celebrating the Second Life spirit !
At the end of the 2 weeks of birthday events the bottle will be sealed and cast off into the SL ocean, perhaps it will be found again at SL10B …
HOW TO SUBMIT YOUR MESSAGE :
Audio Messages :
Watch this easy video tutorial which will explain how you can record your voice and upload your message and give it to us. Maximum 10 seconds!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xLt-vyKQoc
Text Messages :
1. Please write your message within 140 characters in a notecard.
2. Make the notecard FULL PERMISSIONS by right clicking on it in your inventory and checking the “copy” and “modify” boxes
3. Goto SEARCH ( open the all tab ) and type in DIZZY BANJO and click my resident profle ( the top link )
4. Drag the notecard onto my profile.
Note : All messages need to adhere to the Second Life Terms of Service, and be PG in nature.
DEADLINE !!
ALL RECORDINGS AND MESSAGES MUST BE RECIEVED BY :
WEDNESDAY THE 18th OF JUNE 2008 !
Thanks for your interest and we look forward to hearing your submissions soon and putting them into the bottle !
German version
SECOND LIFE WIRD 5 JAHRE ALT !
Als Teil der SL5B Feierlichkeiten inszenieren Dizzy Banjo und Liilie Yifu
“A Message to Second Life” (”Eine Nachricht an SL”)
Wir haben eine riesige Flasche gemacht, die ihr mit euren Nachrichten an
Second Life füllen könnt. Was würdest Du gerne mal der gesamten
SL-Gemeinde an ihrem fünften Geburtstag sagen?
Was bedeutet Dir Second Life?
Wie hat Second Life Deinen Alltag verändert?
Was wünscht Du Dir für die Zukunft in Second Life?
Du hast zwei Möglichkeiten Deine Nachricht zu übermitteln:
- eine Audio-Aufnahme Deiner gesprochenen Nachricht hochladen (bevorzugte
Option!!!)
- eine Text-Mitteilung als Notecard
Wenn wir Eure Nachrichten haben, kommen sie in die Flasche aus der sie
dann- gemixt mit einer fröhlichen interaktiven Sound und Musik
Installation- zur Feier des Second Life Esprits heraussprudeln werden.
Nach den beiden Veranstaltungswochen wird die Flasche zugestöpselt und in
die Brandung des SL-Ozeans geworfen werden,vielleicht taucht sie ja zum
10. SL-Birthday wieder auf?
…
So sendest Du Deine Nachricht:
Audio Nachricht:
Sieh Dir diesen kurzen Film an, er erklärt wie Du Deine Stimme aufnimmst
und wie Du sie zu uns hochladen kannst. (in englisch) Make sure your message is maximum 10 seconds!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xLt-vyKQoc
Text Nachricht:
1. Schreibe Deine Nachricht mit max. 140 Buchstaben in eine Notecard.
2. Erteile der Notecard ALLE RECHTE indem Du sie in Deinem Inventar
rechts anklickst und die “copy” und “modify” Kästchen aktivierst.
3. Gehe zur SUCHE (öffne den “Alles” Tabulator), tippe “DIZZY BANJO” und
öffne sein Profil ( der oberste Link)
4. Ziehe Deine Notecard auf das Profil (drag and drop)
Wichtig: Alle Nachrichten dürfen nicht gegen die Second Life Terms of
Service verstossen und müssen PG (jugendfrei) sein!
Abgabe bis spätestens:
Mittwoch, dem 18. Juni 2008
Danke für Dein Interesse, wir freuen uns darauf bald Deine Übertragung zu
hören und sie mit in die Flasche stecken zu können!
French Version
Dites nous ce que vous pensez de SL pour son 5eme anniversaire!
SECOND LIFE A 5 ANS !
A l’occasion des célébrations du cinquième anniversaire de SL, Dizzy Banjo et Lillie Yifu écrivent “un message à Second Life”.
Nous avons créé une bouteille géante que nous voulons remplir avec tous vos messages pour Second Life. Que voudriez- vous dire à toute la communauté de SL sur son 5ieme anniversaire?
Que signifie Second Life pour vous ?
Quelle fut l’influence de SL sur vous ?
Qu’attendez-vous de SL dans l’avenir ?
Deux solutions s’offrent à vous pour transmettre votre message :
-un enregistrement audio de votre message que vous aurez téléchargé dans SL (OPTION PREFEREE !!)
-un texte écrit dans une “notecard”
Après avoir récupéré vos messages, nous les mettrons tous dans la bouteille et ils se répandront de façon intermittante comme une animation audio et musicale interactive pour fêter l’esprit de Second Life.
A la fin des deux semaines d’événement la bouteille sera fermée et jetée dans la mer virtuelle, peut-être sera-t-elle retrouvée pour le dizième anniversaire de SL….
COMMENT ENVOYER VOTRE MESSAGE :
Message audio :
le lien ci-dessous permet de voir une vidéo qui montre comment enregistrer votre voix et comment télécharger votre message pour nous le faire parvenir :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xLt-vyKQoc (make sure your message is max. 10 seconds!)
Message écrit :
1. Ecrire un message de 140 caractères maximum dans une “notecard”.
2. La “notecard” doit être “FULL PERMISSIONS”. Pour celà, afficher ses propriétés à l’aide du clic droit de la souris, puis cocher les cases “Modify”, “Copy”, “Resell/Give away” en bas.
3. Rechercher “Dizzy Banjo” dans le moteur de recherche de SL puis afficher le profil.
4. Faire glisser à l’aide de la souris la “notecard” depuis l’inventaire sur le profil de Dizzy Banjo.
Note : tous les messages doivent adhérer au “Second Life Terms of Service” et être de nature “PG”.
TOUS LES MESSAGES AUDIOS OU ECRITS DOIVENT NOUS PARVENIR AVANT LE
MERCREDI 18 JUIN 2008 !
Merci pour l’ interret que vous portez à cette démarche, c’est avec impatience que nous attendons vos messages afin de les mettre en bouteille.
Dutch Version
Second Life wordt 5 jaar!!
Voor de SL5B feesten - Second Life 5th Birthday - werken Dizzy Banjo en Lillie Yife aan een ‘Bericht voor Second Life’. ‘Bericht aan Second Life’ is een gigantische fles, die ze willen vullen met jullie berichten voor Second Life. Wat zou jij willen zeggen aan de volledige SL community nu we 5 jaar worden?
Wat betekent Second Life voor jou?
Hoe heeft Second Life je leven beinvloed?
En hoe hoop je dat Second Life’s toekomst eruit gaat zien?
Er zijn twee manieren waarop je je bericht kan achterlaten:
- Een geluidsbericht, waarop jij je boodschap inspreekt. (Voorkeur!)
- Een tekstberichtje in een notecard.
Zodra de berichten ontvangen worden, gaan ze allemaal de fles in. Ze zullen te horen & te lezen zijn als deel van een leuke en interactive geluids- en muziekinstallatie om de ’spirtit’ van Second Life te vieren. Op het einde van de twee weken dat SL5B duurt, zal de fles verzegeld worden en in de virtuele oceaan geworpen worden. Wie weet, misschien komt ze op SL10B terug boven water?
HOE JE BERICHT INSTUREN:
Geluidsopnames:
Er is een simpele tutorial - in het Engels weliswaar - over hoe je bericht, maximum 10 seconden, kan opnemen, uploaden en aan Lilly overhandigen:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xLt-vyKQoc
Tekstberichten :
1. Maximum 140 lettertekens op een notecard.
2. Zorg ervoor dat de notecard ‘full perm’ is! Rechtermuisknop klikken op de notecard in je inventory, en zorgen dat de boxjes ‘copy’, ‘modify’ en ‘transfer’ zijn aangeduid.
3. Ga naar ‘Search’ en typ Dizzy Banjo and open zijn profiel.
4. Sleep de notecard naar Dizzy’s profiel.
Belangrijk: De berichten moeten ‘PG’ zijn (niets sexueels of extreem grof) en mogen de Second Life Terms of Service niet schenden.
DEADLINE:
Alle geluidsopnames en tekstberichten moeten ontvangen worden voor:
WOENSDAG 18 JUNI 2008!
Alvast bedankt voor de interesse! Hopelijk kunnen we snel je inzending in de gigantische fles stoppen! ;)
Certainly once, you have felt surrounded with reality in SL… a true moment of emotion, a real expression on a friendly face…. is the tagline for Koinup’s ‘One Second of Reality’ photography. The aim? Right, you can guess it already: To capture an instant of reality, and have viewers believe the photo was taken in RL. The challenge here is to share with the community what for a second seemed real to you. We hope you will go beyond still-life shots and try to show us emotions that are real, no matter where - Second Life - or what is happening. ‘One second of reality’ aims to find out where reality begins for you. Try to mesmerize the jury and make us believe the photo was taken in RL.
The prizes
The winner of the “Jury Prize” will receive his/her work printed and framed in high quality format and the winner of the “Community Prize”, the coolest work in Koinup, will receive a complete package from Never 30 including a N30 studio, poses kit, lights… and more. Both winners will have the chance to participate to an exhibition in a RL gallery: LaCantina, located in the center of Paris. Winning photos will also be displayed on Orange Island (Orange 1, 195/134/30) for a minimum of three weeks.
The Jurors
Winners of the “Jury Prize” will be picked by a contest jury composed by Margharita Balzerani (curator at “Le Palais de Tokyo”, Paris, contemporary art museum), Marco Manray (photographer SL and author of the book “IO, REPORTER IN SECOND LIFE”) and ‘moi’.
The ruleset
In order to take part in this contest, you must have an account on Koinup. Registration is free.
The theme of the contest is “One second of reality”. The aim of the contest is to capture an instant of reality, and have viewers believe the photo was taken in RL. (As far as I care, this means you can have a Neko in there, as long as it looks real.)
The challenge here is to share with the community what for a second seemed real to you. We hope you will go beyond still-life shots and try to show us emotions are real, no matter where they happen.
Photos can be taken in-world using any available means (such as Second Life photo studios) except RL photographic backgrounds.
Photos can also be post-processed using programs such as Photoshop.
You are allowed to use tricks, and encouraged to share your technique. SLURL are welcome.
Photos should be submitted to the contest by posting them on Koinup. To submit a photo to the contest, please insert the tag ‘orangephotocontest’
Photos already posted on Koinup before June 9th cannot be submitted to the contest. Please submit new works.
The contest is restricted to Second Life residents and is a photography contest; artistic media other than photography are not allowed.
No brand logos or hidden advertisement. No sex, violence or offending contents. Black and white accepted.
Each participant can submit up to three photos.
Photos will remain on Koinup after the end of the contest.
My definition of ‘Real’
Of course, the ‘reality’ of a SL photograph lies in the eye of the beholder, and this beholder spends way to much time inworld, so I’m having problems with the real / not-real border. ;) BUT there are a few things that help me convince things are real:
Convincing shadows. Even when shooting with a softbox IRL, there _are_ shadows, they just are subtle. Regardless if they are subtle or over-present (film noir), make those shadows match! Second Life gives you total control about where the sun comes from (the height your avie finds itself, the time of the day, location of the sun and the height of the sun.) Use that! You even want to consider testing if the ‘Shadow’ branch client runs on your system.
Second Life tends to oversaturate things, giving them their comic/3D animation look. Try to start of with a hazy, foggy setting, and lessen the fog/haze until it’s just perfect. Better not enough gamma brightness than to much gamma brightness! It happens IRL photographs too, bleached out areas, but it’s not something that looks good most of the time.
If you are shooting indoors, you definitely want to put your ’sun’ strength to almost zero and the ‘ambient’ light up to compensate. Harsh shadows almost exist inside. Except if you have only one hard lightsource (extreme spotlight, or one sunny window.) If you have multiple light sources, you might want multiple (soft) shadows.
COLOUR TEMPERATURE! Back in those old real life photography days, you used to have separate sets of film & lens filters, depending on the colour temperature. This is - although or brain filters it out IRL - each type of light source emits a different coloured light. A good example is: shadow areas are blue, sunsets are yellowish. A good article about this can be found here. You can give a slight hunch of the colour temperature, but SL pushes it. Also, when doing for instance ’sunset’, it forces that colour temperature in extremis on the complete photograph although that does not necessary need to be the case, were it shot IRL. If you have two different light sources, you’ll need two different colour temperatures.
Reflections! Almost every object reflects in real life. Wearing a bright green sweater? Not a good idea! It will probably make your face look green. Your eyes? Right… they reflect light. If you have a metallic, shiny object, it is bound to reflect parts of the environment around it, and it’s colour on the environment.
Sense of depth. Depth Map + Lens Blur. Or manual blurring. Does not need to be exaggerated, though. This happens IRL when you shoot either a) Macro stuff or b) in Dark areas.
Motion blur. Definitely something that needs to be postprocessed. Only if you’re up to it! ;)
Step off the standard viewer wide-angle lens. Standard RL photography lens is 50mm. Press ctrl+0 twice. At least. (ctrl+9 to reset)
And there are more: round shapes should be round, shadow on clothing textures should match the atmosphere of your photograph, … . Guess you can’t include them all in one photograph, but I’m damn curious what people will come up with! Here are already some of the entries. Oh, and one final thing, obviously fake photoshop sun reflections in your photograph, are NOT the way to go! ;) To participate, go to the Koinup contest page.
Signpost Marvin compiled an experimental branch of the Second Life Viewer - the so called shadow-draft branch and lookie, behold, a comparison between the normal and the experimental client:
Neat, no? Of course, as Gwyneth Llewelyn points out in Shadowy Details, this is bound to raise discussion:
Can my computer handle this?
No, probably not. Mine won’t. But they are still working on it, and computers are evolving. Wait for your turn? Until then, let’s make work of decently shaded textures. And if you are a builder or designer and think ahead, you may to give people the option to turn those shadow textures off and replace them by normal ones?
Rendered ft. baked shadows
Yep. But this is the glimpse in the future we’re getting here. Don’t worry yet, and consider the option in the paragraph above. Also, if you are used to build whole sims, what about the override time on sims? You can either set sun position and stop it from moving, or make that your estate follows the sun position as it is on the ‘mainland’ and create your textures accordingly. If you have your sun moving, then why don’t make a few different textures, and let them cycle, according to the mainland time and the position of the sun that follows from that?
Virtual shadows: Good thing? Bad thing?
Do I personally think if this is a good thing? Oh yes! Anything that allows us to compete with those top notch game engines is ‘total awesomeness’. But what confuses me, is that all those top notch games only render shadows for some items - most of the time the moving stuff (avatar, enemies, vehicles, …). As you find yourself in a certain ‘game scene’ with fixed time & environment settings, lots of the shadows may be static and thus baked textures. An example: Play ‘Iron Man the Game’, in the first level - yeah, yeah, did not get further than that - you will see that the grass is shaded to the ground. Stand on that shaded part of the ground. The shading will not reflect on your game character, thus the shading is baked to the ground texture. But move your character, and that character will have a moving, rendered, shadow. Why do they do this? That’s simple, to safe resources.
Shadow wish-list
So if Lindens would give us - together with nice shadings - a ‘do not render shading for this object’ button which does not only stop your client from showing them, but also from ‘doing the math’ for shadows on those objects, we’re all set for the future and nobody needs to be scared? ;)
We know you were all looking forwardediddly to the awesome performance from the Virtual Family Von Trapp at the Second Life 5th Birthday Event. Due to yet unknown technical issues there are some slight changes in the program. Normally, this should pass unnoticed to you, beloved residents. The children Von Trapp will perform on a different sim as Maria Von Trapp and Georg von Trapp. We kindly thank you for your understanding and believe this show at SL5B will still be full of awesomeness. Here are the new promo textures you may use. Please respect the ® in your Second Life®.
Vint Linden*
* Disclaimer: if anybody wonders, this is NOT an official Linden Blogpost and I am NOT an official Linden.
When Lindens announced that all avatars would be welcome to build at the Second Life 5th Birthday Event - that includes child avatars, Goreans and the BDSM scene - and buildings would be reviewed fairly, without prejudices, I was relieved: as long as they were PG*** - blah, PG! - and made with decent virtual mortar and stone, it would be fine. Our virtual world, their trade demo. So be it, if it is to the benefit of our virtual world: new capital, better servers, somebody working on a new mesh, whatever. Not ‘woot!’ happy of course, we all KNOW if people take PG to the extent where all nipples are 3v1l and of limits it gets rather boring quickly, but still, at least all members of the Second Life community were again allowed to display their work at SL5B. Or aren’t they?
Latest concerning news about SL5B is that Lindens abandoned all family values, and are willing to tear child avies away from there worried parents. *evil Linden God’s voice* No longer shall thou picture your virtual families! No longer shall thou be allowed to take family snapshots when on an outing to the Hawaii Zoo! Thou shall in no way and under no circumstances picture an adult and child avatar in the same virtual photograph! *end Linden-god-tone* Sounds a little bit crazy if child avatars are allowed to walk on the same sims as adults do? And nothing wrong can be depicted as it all must PG anyway? Nope, this is exactly what Mr Stephen Venkman got to hear from ‘dze Lindens’. They forbid him to show snapshots of his virtual family at SL5B! Comments quote Dusty Linden as saying: ‘If you can agree:not to show kid AVs with Adult AVs (unless specifically OK’d by LL)and that LL reserves the right to adjust images, themes, etc. to address this concern…’ about another application.
SL5B Evolutionary Time Line
SL4B: Resident run. You get to pick if you are on a mature or PG sim. A bit laggy, but all fine and in good spirit.
SL5B: All sims are Mature, but ‘KIDs’* is advised.
SL5B: Buildings from the child avatar community, goreans and BDSM are rejected.
SL5B: Lindens take SL5B away from the community. Linden has the last and official call.
SL5B: All avatars are allowed, but everything needs to be PG.
SL5B: Photographs of fully dressed child avatars doing normal childlike things with their family are FORBIDDEN.
Now WTVF**?! Looks likes we’re in a fast pace evolving back to 19th century. Oh no wait, even then it was perfectly OK to picture a child and adult on the seaside, as long as they were dressed in those really long vintage bathing suits. Family photographs being evil, is this a 21th century invention then? Something that comes with the digital age?
JIRA ISSUE MISC-1231
Sean Heying beat me to it, but I hereby declare the JIRA ISSUE MISC-1231 Missing Cultures and Communities from SL5B as ‘reopened’. If we did not get your vote yet, please go there and vote! It’s easy.
Oh, and normally this should not be necessary, and Lindens should notice there’s something wrong as their event volunteers & organisers are redrawing from their positions one by one.
Call for your RL family photographs
From Shoshana Epsilons’s blog: Now they are saying “you can’t have a picture of a child and an adult in the same picture.” That’s STUPID. Their statement should be “we’ll evaluate each picture on a case-by-case basis” and then decide each picture on its REAL MERITS. They also said “no pictures of children around beds”. So, kids, don’t jump on the beds and don’t crawl into your cribs!
Sho is one of the lead organisers of SL5B - the SLart department - and does another call out: I want to donate my display to a protest. If you have any clean and wholesome family-type RL pictures that YOU OWN ALL RIGHTS TO, please send them to me in-world. I will heavily moderate the pictures, so not all pictures will be allowed. I expect good quality art pictures that are wholesome. Credits will be given to the photographer. So I’ve decided to pitch in. It’s not a real artsy photograph, but it’s a family photograph from the small Vint - estimated 3 or 4 years old - that I hold dearly. I guess in the end, they almost thought me that art is not about ‘prettiness’, but about having something to say about the society you live in. Art is always an analysis of that. Combined with my feelings, the fact that I am actually willing to show off the 4y old me, says enough about how I feel about our virtual society at the moment. I hope Sho will include it. I even asked permission from the parents - the real ones, obviously - to publish it.
Now, if you did not do so already, get your ass over to that Jira Issue and VOTE!
* KIDs = Keep it Decent, stupid!
** WTVF = What the Virtual Fuck
*** PG = Parental Guidance or Puritan Guided. Depends on whom you ask.
Flickr Group
Stephen Venkman has a large fanbase and friend circle on flickr. Please submit his photgraphs and creative works to the group if you would like to show support:
Yep. But this is the glimpse in the future we’re getting here. Don’t worry yet, and consider the option in the paragraph above. Also, if you are used to build whole sims, what about the override time on sims? You can either set sun position and stop it from moving, or make that your estate follows the sun position as it is on the ‘mainland’ and create your textures accordingly. If you have your sun moving, then why don’t make a few different textures, and let them cycle, according to the mainland time and the position of the sun that follows from that?
Sho is one of the lead organisers of SL5B - the SLart department - and does another call out: I want to donate my display to a protest. If you have any clean and wholesome family-type RL pictures that YOU OWN ALL RIGHTS TO, please send them to me in-world. I will heavily moderate the pictures, so not all pictures will be allowed. I expect good quality art pictures that are wholesome. Credits will be given to the photographer. So I’ve decided to pitch in. It’s not a real artsy photograph, but it’s a family photograph from the small Vint - estimated 3 or 4 years old - that I hold dearly. I guess in the end, they almost thought me that art is not about ‘prettiness’, but about having something to say about the society you live in. Art is always an analysis of that. Combined with my feelings, the fact that I am actually willing to show off the 4y old me, says enough about how I feel about our virtual society at the moment. I hope Sho will include it. I even asked permission from the parents - the real ones, obviously - to publish it.
