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Face and head tracking for Second Life avatars
For those of you who are keen on hands-free avatar expressiveness in the virtual environment of Second Life comes a surprise third-party viewer from vr-wear.com. This beta viewer for Windows or Mac OSX uses a camera to track your head and expressions, and convey that to your avatar. At present, it is all a little rudimentary, and there isn't any back-end support for sending much in the way of ad-hoc avatar motion through the Second Life servers, so the system is limited to what can be supported. At present, that appears to be lip-sync, nodding and head-shaking, surprise and smiling, and head-tilting to the left or right.
Linden Lab responds to void simulator furor
Jack Linden, head of Linden Lab's Land Team, has proferred an update on the policy changes to void simulators that sparked a revolt in Second Life earlier this week. According to Jack, all of the feedback has been read. That must have been an absolutely Herculean task right there, considering that the responses number in the thousands, and Jack is apparently out of town. Jack implies that the type of usage is a more important factor in the pricing changes than the actual cost of usage, though to be fair, it's an ambiguous pair of sentences, 'We are saying that the use has changed, and continues to do so as people find more creative ways to use them. So the revised pricing is about recognising that change of use and the additional costs and value associated with it.' Linden Lab themselves, appear to have a slew of apparently overloaded void simulators on the new Nautilus continent.
Linden Lab wants to buy new default avatars from you
Well, maybe not you, exactly, but an undetermined number of content creators have received a message from Jesse Linden, stating that Linden Lab is interested in updating their current line of default avatars ' ... to better reflect the rich and diverse content available inside Second Life.' While this is a great idea, it appears that the receivers of this message are to compete for the contract, which will be paid in American dollars, rather than L$.One wonders how inclusive LL is willing to be, given exactly how diverse content tends to be in SL. Will new users be able to choose Gorean avatars? Robots? Children? [Via Vint Falken's blog]
SL2MV copies stuff from SL to Multiverse
Notable Second Life blogger and photographer Vint Falken has highlighted Mike Sutton's tutorial videos on moving Second Life content from Second Life to the Multiverse platform. There is quite a bit of work involved and the workflow pipeline isn't for the faint of heart. Only those with a solid technical aptitude are going to be able to follow the process at this stage. However, it is still in Alpha, and who knows? It could well solidify into a more integrated system over time. Obviously this only deals with meshes and textures - not with scripts or directly with component prims. No object permissions apply to the system, since it only operates on what the viewer is generating for display on your PC, however, would-be content exporters should respect the rights of content creators and only perform this with allowable content.
SLART name in trademark dispute
Richard Minsky, founder of The Center for Book Arts in New York City and owner of SLART Magazine is asserting ownership of his trademark in the broader wilds of Second Life, and potentially the surrounding media-sphere. Minsky started SLART magazine in December 2006 "as a critical review and journal of the arts in Second Life". The trademark itself was applied for in March 2007, approved in December 2007, and now Minsky seeks to assert the rights and obligations associated with the SLART trademark.
