depending on how nice a quality you need your textures, placing several on one image can be a handy trick. it helps you keep your inventory under control (i am really bad at keeping textures organised both in-world and in the real world!) and can reduce the load for your users

in Second Life, placing multiple textures on one image is also a way to save a little money with uploads. here’s some trivia about how much those $10 Linden uploads actually affects Linden Lab’s bottom line. back when i was big into SL (well, my avatar is like 5′ 2″ with boots on), Linden Lab published all kings of user data – from user hours to revenues they earned. in early 2008, Linden Lab was bringing in $90,000 USD per month on all the $10 L upload fees! what was chump change to you and me was several people’s salaries at the Lab! o_O

anyway . . . this example is a 512 pixel square image saved as a PNG-8 with transparency and the filesize is 89 kb – that’s not too bad considering i am using it for 6 different graffiti tags in Hax Nuit

i made these tags as gray scale so that i could colour them differently for some variety and thus use each several times. it is hard to see but “is this real” and “i am rezzed therefore i am” have a linear gradient applied. the OpenSim people/hippo logo also has radial gradients. the ideal was to give them a bit more texture. i should have been more extreme in the gray scale gradients but what do expect from an Ener?

after importing the texture, i set it up on a phantom prim, set all the other sides to 100 transparent and then adjust the repeats and offset to show one of the textures. then i shift duplicate it and only need to adjust the offsets for similar sized parts of the texture (the top four were all the same repeats, the bottom two were different)

once i am happy with the repeats, i then duplicated them and coloured the front faces. then i name each and take a copy into inventory for archiving. i then shift duplicate the ones in-world and spend a few minutes randomly placing them and that’s all there is to it =)

Lumiya works very well (there was an update last night – after i had taken these pics!) but it is not the desktop experience. i still use Imprudence 1.3.2 which is what is shown below. newer browsers render more nicely than version 1 viewers but the screen shots below are simply to show the difference

i don’t know why my avatar doesn’t render out, i have seen other people’s screen shots where theirs do – must be an enersyncrasy or maybe i’m so bright you have to wear shades =p

would i use Lumiya for more than simply checking it out?

no, there isn’t a case where i would suggest Lumiya over a desktop to interact with anything i make. that said, if it was the only access someone had to something like our Enclave Harbour project, then i would be okay with it. i think our “3D illustrations” for science field trips will work in Lumiya

the second image shows the tower crane and nuclear power plant components and would be usable in conjunction with the workbook. the experience would still be immersive in that a student could walk around the builds but it wouldn’t be as rich as a desktop

i believe that as tablets become more powerful (or are inevitably morphed in favour of tablet-sized ultra PCs with detachable keyboards) then we will have rich OpenSim experiences – it’s just a matter of time =)

Haxor Lunar Lounge in Kitely – one of two kid-friendly clubs in Enclave Harbour

old school nuclear power plant in Enclave Harbour

lol, this seems like a lot of steps but it took me only a two minutes to set up the Twitter access =)

log in to both your Kitely and your Twitter accounts. then select the Kitely world you want this for and click Manage and then the Access tab. select Create Twitter List and follow the Kitely directions

select List in the left sidebar on Twitter and create a list. it must be Public. that only means others can view it, but they can’t add themselves to it – only you can add people to that list (or remove them)

your list will then show up and you can start adding people to it

find whoever you want to add and use the drop-down next to their name to add them to your list

all of your lists will show up and simply select the access one you just set up

you can edit this list anytime in Twitter, as your needs dictate

once done in Twitter, return to your Kitely page and you should see the access list you just created. you can set your billing for that list – Normal charges the visitor, Free charges you, and you can Select Price (you can charge people and make some KC or you can actually pay visitors – Kitely will take 1 KC or 10%, whichever is greater )

now you can give your Kitely world URL to list members and they will come to that world’s page and click the Login button

they will be prompted to login and you would tell them to do so with Twitter, in this example

if the visitor is not logged in to twitter, they will be prompted to do so. their account name and password are NOT sent to Kitely – this is highly protected by Twitter and there is absolutely no way for Kitely to obtain those credentials (unless you email them to Ilan or Oren! no need to do that!)

once your visitor is logged in (my green arrow), the Login button becomes the Enter World button. they click this and away they go! if they don’t have a viewer, the Kitely site is wicked smart and will prompt them to download it and it will start automatically (very smooth and sophisticated)

the page indicates the viewer is starting and will place your visitor in a transfer station if your world isn’t currently active (probably nice to tell them in case they are like me and don’t bother reading the transfer station signs and simply freak out and run in circles) =p

the Kitely website indicates that the visitor is connected

the viewer starts up like normal except that the visitor does not need to enter credentials – so far the user has only needed to be logged in to their Twitter and then click buttons on the Kitely site – that’s easy to take for granted but it is some serious design and development by Kitely (yah, i’m a fangrrrl) =p

ooh, pretty! =D

voila! success and the visit is recorded in your Kitely history

setting up Twitter access is faster than reading all of this and then all you do is tell your visitors:

check out my world at http://www.kitely.com/virtual-world/blah blah/blah and login with your Twitter account and prepare to be amazed!

well, maybe do it in your own way, i might be too subtle, modest, and humble! =p

but do have fun! =)

On 06/04/13 2:11 PM, GH wrote:
——————–
And yes, cannot have students using SL/Opensim browsers, I’m wondering if the “stick” is the way around this.

David’s response:

Sim-on-a-Stick has been popular with K-12 teachers and some University professors. Even the US Air Force Academy has used it!

Apart from the 20,000 downloads it has had over the last two years, a truly exemplary use of it in the classroom continues to be Kate Booth.

http://iliveisl.com/superstar-teacher-and-students-present-soas-at-university/

I have used it for corporate eLearning, mainly filming branched scenarios, and have spoken about this in the past at the eLearning Guild’s DevLearn. [Ener note: this was the Guild's first ever video podcast, how cool that David did it inSL!]

The key is to have a set package to deploy to your students which typically means that you would develop a master teaching version that you then copy. Many teachers add children’s avatars to the inventory and lay out some objects in-world that are starting points for activities.

You can go so far as to then have boy and girl versions of your sticks, including account names different from Simona Stick. Ms Booth has a basket for all of her students’ sticks as can be seen in this photo: [original link replaced with image inserted by Ener]

At some point, probably before customizing SoaS, a check needs to be done on the target machines to ensure that all is in order. I had one teacher that needed to have IT install all of the Windows Updates including .NET frameworks as these are vital to SoaS.

Good luck!

last year i did 576k prims on SoaS on a machine with 8 gig of RAM and Nebudon did over a million on his tricked out box

you no longer are as tied to that 15k limit and that means you can “splurge” a little. i guess i still am tied down a bit by my time inSL and for those reading this that never were inSL, then it’s not a big deal =)

don’t place it too close to the wall

i went back into Hax Nuit after being out of OpenSim for the last two or three months and decided to add some transparent cracks and splats to it. i still keep my number of textures down but thought that the addition of five different masked images would be nice. i grabbed some from CG Textures and selected masked images of plaster cracks and two drip marks. these have the backgrounds removed so that they are transparent. you can size them down to 512 and save them as alpha transparent PNG-8s and most are under 50 KB

then i loaded them onto one face of a prim where the other faces were set to 100% transparent and the prim set to phantom. the five textures can be flipped to make them look a little different. when placing them you don’t want them too close to the wall or you will have that flickering z-index fighting when viewing them from a distance

this “decal” approach isn’t right for everybody but for the prim-simplicity of Hax Nuit, this was an easy way to add ambiance without adding much overhead to the entire build

it also worth noting that Kitely, home of Hax Nuit, has done their own optimisation of OpenSim to allow even more prims than a “standard” deployment. Hax Nuit has over 35,000 prims on one 256 metre region and never skips a beat! =)

before

after

before

after

that’s still a lot of sims by most measures except when measured against Second Life itself - at its peak, there were 26,605 private sims in 2008

that’s about a 30% loss since the media frenzied days of SL . . .

Survey: How do you use OpenSim?

Dana P. asked a scripting question to which i had no clue how to answer (if it isn’t an omega rotation or simple sit, then i am clueless!) =p

his question was how to open an HTML page in a browser from clicking an object in a Sim-on-a-Stick build. specifically, how to open a page on your machine, not one from the internet

he found out how to do it and posted how he did it and that’s another reason the VW community is awesome – people sharing what they learn =)

his solution started my little cogs to turning - this could be handy for projects where you may not want a user to get online but do want to present more detailed information, questions, activities, or whatever that may best be done in a browser

for example, our science project of Enclave Harbour could be deployed as a pre-loaded SoaS package that a student installs on their PC. then we could use Dana’s approach to launch additional info pages that were included with the Enclave-Harbour-on-a-Stick build

a specific example would be the reverse osmosis tubes in our desalination plant – there could be a “more info” icon on them that would allow a student to click and be sent to a custom HTML page or even a PDF that we create and distribute only with the stick (and thus keep fully self-contained for students)

here’s what i did:

default
{
touch_start(integer total_number)
{
llLoadURL(llDetectedKey(0), "Learn More", "http://127.0.0.1:9100/wifi/mypages/mytest.html");
}
}

the wifi folder is already defined in SoaS so i simply added a content folder for my test page. now a user could click an in-world object and launch a browser to access stick-specific files without needing an internet connection

thanks Dana! this is something to think about and certainly can add value =)

click for full size

could be anything that a browser can open

two summers back Tranq helped me get my PC squared away so that it would properly run Imprudence 1.4 – he went way above and beyond and spent hours walking me through configurations. it’s the kind of knowledge that i can always use going forward and a sign of how good a teacher Tranq is (apart from his crazy mad tech skillz) =)

well, Tranq does it again – he amazes me with his utter passion for all things virtual world. he placed some of my builds in a new fangled HTML5/canvas dealio that lets you look at those objects online. my day job has firewalls that prevent me from hitting virtual worlds (thus my use of SoaS) but these i can hit

what a cool way to show your work via an everyday browser!

you can spin and zoom in on objects and even the textures are visible. one thing i need to check is if the skid steer model i sent him included its tire treads, which aren’t a texture but a viewer bumpiness thing

i’m not sure if these links will be perpetual so i also did a YouTube of how they work

http://dreamshare.inworldz.com/?package=d616fb8f-9e57-416d-b299-64704ef6eac6
http://dreamshare.inworldz.com/?package=f1dff296-a482-4a21-a718-f1453d0bde8e
http://dreamshare.inworldz.com/?package=159ce01b-ef53-4415-ac6c-2f8b915533a2
http://dreamshare.inworldz.com/?package=00c12d5f-fabe-407a-a0e6-c840f7a9259c

this is a cool tool and certainly an awesome way to show off your work (i’d love to put this on my portfolio as resume items and how cool would that be for merchants and websites!)

thanks Tranq! you are def the man! learn more at InWorldz =)

direct YouTube link

that’s not a lot by Second Life standards but it is still an average of 13 minutes per day that someone is spending in a Kitely world. considering that there is nothing scripted, i think that’s a decent amount of time. my great hope of awesome scripted NPRs were dashed with the abrupt loss of the talented Ohn Lang – no one knows where she went and that’s a downside to virtual worlds, you often never learn why someone isn’t around anymore – but that could be an entire separate post and it is something most of us have personal experience with

Hax Nuit has been one of the most satisfying things i have ever built – it was done quickly over a relatively short period of time. the “modular” concept started november 19th and the final build went up on december 13th. so that’s about 24 days and probably about 60 active building hours (includes making textures)

since that time, there have been a handful of people who have spent more than 20 minutes at one time in it, meaning they either explored it extensively or logged in and went and ate lunch in the real world! =p

a few have spent over an hour in it! but . . . no one has ever let me know if they found all of the hidden treasure items and i’m wondering if those items should actually be shown on maps?

in today’s world of a zillion free games and apps, an old-fashioned concept of solving mazes and searching for hidden loot is pretty antiquated and boring. heck, i play goofy tablet games at night while watching TV that don’t involve much thinking or patience on my part, so i understand that few people would take the time to look for “hidden” items. i think i have answered my own question of mapping the actual items out – people inclined to use a map can and those not wanting too won’t

i’ll set aside some time to create a definitive set of maps and put them in one place (the building mazes can be seen here and the underground labyrinth is here)

meanwhile, the images below provide the clues to find the Golden Cat Statue – “the” big treasure” item  )

street level clue

building floor clue

ah ha! but how to walk there?

the tablet market is something we recognize as an important one and it is also the market that mainstream is driving towards

i read two articles and was blown away by the numbers and how quickly the computer market is shifting

By the end of this year, Android will be in more devices than the next four competitors combined (Windows, iOS, Mac OS, and BlackBerry). Before the end of this decade, Android will be in nearly as many devices as all other operating systems combined. David Nagel (link to his article)

that quote is a bit speculative when it mentions where we will be at the end of this decade but the forecast for the end of this year, a mere 8 months away, is probably spot on

adding to Android becoming the most prolific operating system is the decline in the PC market. the graph below shows that better than i could explain and another article by David Nagel talks about it in detail

so what can you and I do about helping OpenSim become a reality on tablets?

well, if you have an Android tablet now, spend $2.95 at the Google Play store and buy Lumiya (updates are free and it does mesh!). the more it succeeds, the higher the chance it continues to improve and maybe even spark competitors. Lumiya is being worked on continually by Alina Lyvette and the latest update has added the ability to create objects and take them into your inventory

any loss, or negative growth, is a bad thing for most companies, especially in the US where even Apple gets tons of gloom and doom media coverage if their earnings fall short!

last year i looked at those private sim numbers as a measure of Second Life’s health and an indicator of the mainstream’s view of virtual worlds. there will always be a market for high-end stuff even as cheaper stuff becomes available (there is always someone who will buy a Bentley, despite their being zillions of far cheaper cars available)

certainly we have seen a shift making some of the SL private sim loss a wash with some people migrating over to OpenSim options such as InWorldz, Kitely, New World Studio, and even Sim-on-a-Stick (18k downloads in two years)

with every post last year about the SL loss, there were people stating that some of that was from expiring non-profit/ed discounts and that the rate of loss should level out a bit

it looks as if that leveling out is happening in 2013

there is still a net loss but it looks to be under six sims per day as an average for this year. a loss is still bad, but the difference between eight a day and six is 25% in the right direction

personally, i don’t think SL will ever see positive growth again and LL doesn’t seem to care much about that (not in any discernible external ways), but maybe SL will get to an equilibrium at some point where the grid stays a certain size

data from Tyche Shepherd’s GridSurvey.com

i placed him on top of my work PC so that my back is covered (next to a Lego Ninjago samurai) and figured he (or she) would serve as an emergency USB drive. i thought it was probably a novelty item with a tiny capacity but i plugged it in today and it’s 16 gig!

dang, that means it’s perfect for many instances of Sim-on-a-Stick (like i really need another stick with several SoaSs!) =p

it’s not a USB3.0 or any “serious” brand name (or maybe it is since being a ninja means keeping a low profile) but what a perfect one to test SoaS on to see how a run-of-the-mill USB drive might work

ideally, improvements in OpenSim mean that it should require less overhead to run and be more efficient overall – so i loaded the latest SoaS (0.7.5 – 9 region version) and gave it a whirl – and it ran as well as my schmancy 32 gig 3.0 Corsair 32 gig Survivor! =)

go, ninja, go!

SoaSoaB – Sim-on-a-Stick-on-a-Banana Coffs Harbour edition

recently, she lectured at Southern Cross University about her virtual world technology platform of Sim-on-a-Stick and, as a true superstar educator, she had four students present their experiences with SoaS. nothing speaks louder about how effective a technology is than to have students express their experience

their lecture was also broadcast to two other campuses – this is phenomenal way to share the educational benefits of OpenSim when it is placed first in the hands of a passionate teacher and then into the hands of students

read her post about it: CHPS students speak at Southern Cross University

hats off to Ms Booth and Teira, Sharlah, Wakjira, and Luke for sharing their positive experiences and helping others see what a great tool OpenSim can be  =)

anyway . . . the title of this blog post states that Kitely is a replacement for Second Life, which is quite a statement!

for many people, like me and subQuark, Kitely has been an outstanding replacement for Second Life and better in many ways (like letting kids in-world, backing up your work, megaregions, sustainable cloud architecture, social media access control, plus incredible value)

sheesh, it seems that i write a lot about Kitely (well i actually do) and i can assure you that they don’t pay me or even give me any discount on their services (already uber affordable as it is!). i just ramble on and on about them because they are such a great fit for our endeavors

i was really glad to see someone with lots of authority also say they see Kitely as a good replacement for Second Life

check it out: Virtual Worlds – Kitely is a Keen Replacement For Second Life

Instructors Needed for Kitely Plaza Volunteer Initiative

making a commitment to teach others is a great way to become an expert in a specific area. when i was in Second Life, i truly enjoyed spending a few hours a week being an SL Mentor. Linden Lab did not give you anything for it except the formal Mentor tag. you had to attend a few meetings, agree to a code of ethics, and shadow a mentor and voila, you were a Mentor. at that time i was paying LL almost $3000 a month in tiers plus spending who knows how much on piddly stuff and being a Mentor was its own reward (it did stroke the ego too)

if you like meeting people, like to share your skills, and like Kitely, maybe their instructor programme is right for you?

heck, it’s a real people skill and something worthy of being placed on a resume too! it’s easy to dismiss virtual worlds as real skillz because it is a form of recreation for many of us, but it’s no different than many other computer-related endeavors

the other nifty thing at Kitely was the implementation of Transfer Stations two weeks back (some additional changes were also sneaked in at that time). transfer stations let a group hangout together while waiting for their world to start. for example, say a couple of students separated by geography were going to Enclave Harbour (like a home schooling group), rather than wait the 90 seconds or so for Enclave Harbour’s 16 regions to load up, they’d be at a transfer station where they could say hello to each other and plan their outing

Kitely continues to improve their already great offering and their personal passion for making OpenSim better is something i value (i also love the environmental aspect of cloud-based services)

i wish Sim-on-a-Stick worked for the Mac but it doesn’t – well not directly. powers users like Dot Macchi and DreamWalker run it on Macs without any issue but they are technical whizzes (imo)

many educators use Macs, so native use SoaS would be nice. maybe i’ll get it working, i just got a schmancy iMac at work today (lol, what’s up with that magic mouse?!? you can  pinch zoom on it, scroll, and swipe and it doesn’t even have separate buttons or a scroll wheel!) =p

and then there are all the iPads in use – a browser-based viewer would be awesome for that (since browser access has been a hot OpenSim topic lately)

but here’s what lead to the title, a bunch of recent statistics (all from 2013). like most statistics, you can twist them around. the following are about playing games and my simpleton theory is that the more that people play games, the less creative they are. in other words, if you are playing games, you are not creating new things (yah, i never denied being a snob) =)

• iOS users play gaming apps an average of 743 minutes/month, compared to 484 for Android
• iOS users play gaming apps an average of 151 times/month, compared to 95 for Android
• 86% of iOS users play gaming apps, compared to 76% for Android
• the average iOS owner uses 29 apps, compared to 18 for Android
• 44% of iOS users have purchased apps, compared to 23% for Android
• iOS account for 51% of US app spending, compared to 36% for Android
• iPhones account for 48.1% of US smartphone sales, compared to 46.7% for Android
• Android account for 69.7% of worldwide smartphones, compared to 20.9% for iOS

i am biased since i have a Google Nexus 7 =p

and on to some other numbers that are just fun from Mark Morford’s latest column

• 6% of Americans believe in unicorns
• 36% believe in UFOs
• 24% believe dinosaurs and man hung out together
• 18% still believe the sun revolves around the Earth
• nearly 30% believe cloud computing involves… actual clouds
• 45%t of Americans believe in angels

have a great thursday and don’t let this ruffle your apples! =)

i learned about it from Maria at Hypergrid Business

PixieViewer puts OpenSim in browser

i checked it out (using Chrome) and it worked quickly and smoothly (seems smoother than the Kataspace viewer was and possibly more robust)

creating an account was fast and there are some items you can explore in the demo world

comment on the developer’s blog and show your support! =)

no pink hair? that’s okay because this is via a browser! =)

i get my numbers from Tyche Shepherd’s awesome Grid Survey and her posts on SLUniverse

in the last year i have mainly looked at the average daily loss of private sims which is around 7.4 per day for 2013 (it was 8 per day for 2012). a year is a decent time frame for looking at the growth of a corporation, but how have private sims done since the media frenzy days of Second Life?

at its peak there were 26,605 private sims in 2008 and, as of yesterday, there are 20,505 private sims. a net loss of 6,100

if we assume a constant ratio of 54% full to 45% homesteads (this has changed over time though) that would mean that in november of 2008, LL was making $5.4 million a month versus today’s $4.1 million. a drop of $1.3 million a month (that’s like 6000 poutines a day!) o_O

however, from a virtual world perspective, i love the design for their new office campus! it totally looks like something you’d easily build in OpenSim. it’s inspired by the iPod wheel and has a neat looking courtyard space (that looks huge!)

i’m not sure how practical of a design it is as far as humans moving through the space (seems like a long way to make a full circle inside – but great exercise!). maybe they have pneumatic tubes underground to shuttle people back and forth, or a zillion Segways, but i really like the look of it and their vision of a lot of grass and trees  =)

read more here and here (includes floor plans)