Archive for December, 2007

The Birth Of Onder Skall

Working Late Again
Click for biggie version

As we come down to the end of the year I find myself once again in a strange moment of transition. A few months ago I said goodbye to my little Games Park and settled on Metaversed Island. Now we’re renaming the island and moving it… I’ll fill you in on that some other time. Nick Wilson officially added another member to our team too, although I wouldn’t dream of stealing his thunder by announcing who that was here. We’re launching two gigantic, v-world changing projects next year… which means lots of late nights coming up on my part.

On a professional level, I went through a number of transitions this year. I made a go of it as a full-time v-world journalist, but I discovered something along the way. While I could rock the job, I’d rather make things move.

I started off the year creating Second Life Games. It was fun, and had the edge of being unique: I couldn’t even find someone interested in doing games reporting. Based on that I ended up with a weekly at New World Notes and settled into some freelance work for the Second Life Herald.

It kept me in Linden Dollars, and I was skilling up my writing as I went, but it wasn’t doing much else. I needed to get serious about the business of virtual worlds. So I started looking, and discovered Metaversed.com.

Continue reading ‘The Birth Of Onder Skall’

Head Tracking for Desktop VR Displays using the WiiRemote

Johnny Lee of Carnegie Mellon University demonstrates a simple method to have a truly immersive 3D experience. The first person to take advantage of this technology in a game is going to make a mint. Now, if only someone could release software adapting this to Second Life…

Here, even more Johnny Lee coolness:

Thanks for the link JoiKoi!

NooB – Episode 1

WHOA! Where did this come from?

It’s a perfectly polished little bit of machinima about a noob discovering SL for the first time. Funny, well-paced, and even sponsored! Nice find Moo!

Intimacy In Virtual Worlds

JenzZa Misfit’s RDV tool recently got an upgrade to make it Havok 4 compatible. (I have it on good authority that a lot of vehicle makers are about to be completely blindsided by how much less backwards-compatible Havok 4 is than Linden Lab says.)

JenzZa just came out with a new version that’s for “just friends”, rather than “couples”. Neither involves any sexual content at all, but there’s definitely a difference. To illustrate:

How do you feel about this?

not holding hands

Compare your gut feeling on that picture to this one:

holding hands

Continue reading ‘Intimacy In Virtual Worlds’

DiVAS – Episode 2 Totally Rocks It

Phaylen Fairchild just rocked this one. My sincere congrats, and I hope to see LOTS more of these!