Foldable HUD library: design notes

I am working on a new version of my Teleport Effects HUD. One of the things that I’d like to add is a completely customizable user interface. Thanks to the introduction of llDetectedTouchUV, making HUDs is easier. We can detect touches in texture coordinates. It simplified UIs a lot, we can now use a single prim for most of the user interface: we’ll need more only if we want to show state (e.g. a switch which can be turned on and off, with visual feedback) or text (llSetText or its primmy alternatives).

My updated HUD will sport an interface made up of just two prims, one for the HUD itself and another one for a folding tab:

A separate UI library will manage:

• the folding tab and the HUD position, supporting the four corner attachment points
• the user interaction, mapping touches in texture space to actions (implemented through messages between scripts)
• the appearance, supporting skinning by loading textures (UUIDs) and UI elements position from text notes (skin files).

Eventually, I’ll add support for multi-prims HUDs and sub-elements (eg. multi-state/multi-texture switches).

I will release the UI library as open source.

Virtual foreclosures

The estate owner of Isle of Phoenix, where I have my main shop and mall in Second Life, is closing down the sim:

Hi
The sim Isle Of Phoenix is almost empty now and LL will be converting it in the coming days. Since you are a landowner on the sim, we are proposing you to move to another sim. We will transfer your tier duedate to the new plot and on top of that, we will give you 1 week free tier to allow for transition time.
Pls check our land sales website at (…)
Let me know which plot you want and we’ll immediately set it to you at L$0 You can also go ahead and buy any plot and we would refund you the purchase price. We wont charge you any purchase price EVEN IF the plot you choose is slightly bigger than the one you currently own.
To avoid loss of objects from your land, please pickup your objects from the land within the next 5 days.
We are sorry for any inconvenience that this causes and thank you for your understanding and cooperation.

Thanks and Regards
(…)

It’s not completely unexpected. I gave the same advice – consolidate to reduce costs – to friends in the land business, but I am very upset at the short therm they gave me. The purpose of my mall is to host people who sell addons for the Teleport Effects HUD, my main product. I owe to these people its very high product longevity, the action of my landowner puts these symbiotic partnerships in jeopardy.

LindenLab bails out XStreet SL and OnRez?

LindenLab acquired XStreet SL and OnRez’s online shops. In the current economic climate, it might sound like they are bailing out the two online shop sites. I don’t really think that’s the case: LindenLab has a long history of copying ideas from the SL user community and make them their own, pushing the people who had the adopted idea out of business. That’s what happened with LindeX. For once, they are paying for it.

Prokofy thinks that it’s a sign for the coming Thereization of SL. That is a movement toward more centralized control.  A change whose ultimate result could be communism-style committes who approve what can be put on sale and what should not be put on sale. There won’t be any outright bans, products that foster LindenLab’s goals could be shown prominently on LindenLab’s homepage, those who don’t will be buried down in the last pages of search results. LindenLab’s goals are not necessarily in line with SL merchant ones.

I think there is one more interesting reason why LindenLab wants to control OnRez and XStreetSL. They were in a position that gave them a global view the SL economy. In a global climate of crisis, LindenLab may expect an SL economic downturn and may want to conceal it, they couldn’t do it without risk of getting caught if independent entities exist that could refute their statements.

Good aspects of the change:

• It will reduce or remove merchants fees. (If they don’t, SL residents and merchants should push hard for it).
• Due to a deeper integration in SL infrastructure, it could make online sales more reliable. (For LindenLab’s values of “reliable”).

Bad aspects:

• Without competition, there will be little innovation in the one and only online marketplace.
• They choosed XStreetSL, which was not the best one from the user experience point of view. OnRez had, in my opinion, a much better website and their search engine was much better than XStreetSL. (Due diligence: I sell only on XStreetSL, I have never used OnRez as a merchant).
• LindenLab may favour or push down a product or product category for non-economic reasons.
• LindenLab increases its grip on SL economy. They could released tweaked or ourightly faked economic statistics with little risk of being caught, since two of the independent entities who had widespread statistics on the SL economy disappeared. That’s not a point to underestimate in a climate of global, real world crisis.

Holidays and apologies

I owe an apology to all my friends in Second Life: many of you sent me cards and presents for the past holidays, but I didn’t answer yet. I am sorry.

I will eventually catch up, even if it means repackaging Christmas presents in Easter eggs and sending them out in February… for once, I will actually ship gifts before the holidays instead of after them.

Update on Second Life IM and N810

Rodney Lee asked if I had any luck porting Second Life to Nokia internet tablets. I had mixed results, initially things went smooth but later on I met problems that I could not avoid.

The project

I got a N810 last february. It is great for instant messaging and casual browsing when you can’t be bothered to wait for your real computer to boot. Ever since, I wanted a Second Life instant messenger cum inventory manager for it.

The strategy

My initial idea was to use libsecondlife to write a new backend for telepathy, the instant messaging framework that power N810’s default IM program.

The problems

Using libsecondlife meant using mono for maemo, which does run but it’s highly experimental. I hoped that it would catch up and get more stable over time. It is plagued with long startup times.

I tested libsecondlife writing some command line bots, but as soon as I hit the inventory things got very, very slow. The ARM processor that powers the N810 is no match for its desktop counterparts, missing or duplicate packets were hogging the processor badly or causing my inventory not to load properly. That is a big issue because I planned to use the messenger while I am on the road through a 3G connection, which often drops packets.

What’s next?

Second Life itself seems to be a little less bothered by missing or duplicate packets. If SLIM is just a few weeks away and is opensource, I will may consider ditching mono/libsecondlife and work on porting SLIM to ARM and maemo instead.

If it’s not, I’ll try to solve the networking issues by trading some functionality (i.e. inventory access) for stability. In that case, I may drop libsecondlife and mono altogether if HTTP-based capabilities system are enough to login, send and receive messages (I haven’t studied them in detail yet).

Selling my SL island: Marche

I decided to sell my Second Life’s island. Its name is Marche. It’s a class 5, standard region (65535 sqm, 15000 prims).

I am using Ebay. Here’s the auction.

Screen Space Ambient Occlusion in Second Life

Did you know that someone is working on Screen Space Ambient Occlusion (SSAO) for Second Life? SSAO is what makes Crytek’s Crysis look so good.

Screen-space ambient occlusion (SSAO) is an approximation of ambient occlusion, the idea that parts of an object which are crowded by other objects are occluded from the sky, and therefore are lit less from diffuse sky lighting. Thus, these areas should be darker than those which are more open to the sky. Traditional implementation involves raytracing and is too slow for real-time graphics. Instead, SSAO uses only surfaces which are present in screen space, and approximately calculates the concavity of a point compared to the other surfaces which have been drawn.
This application proposes that SSAO should be implemented for Second Life.

(from an application to Google’s Summer of Code)

UPDATE: this blog post has tons of resources on hardware accelerated ambient occlusion, including SSAO variants.

UPDATE 2: Not Possible in RL blogged about it some days ago. Linking to an exchange between Dave Parks and Argent Stonecutter, Dave even links to some test screenshots from an internal research prototype.

Some of the oldbies like me will remember that we actually had shadows in Second Life circa 1.16, but they were extremely slow.

Marche: the covenant

I have written the covenent for my sim. I’d like to know your comments about it. It is designed to reduce lag while allowing a loosely themed community to grow.

The monthly tier is 7500 L$/month for each 4096 sqm block. Re-parceling the land is allowed, but it can only be sold or transferred in 4096 sqm blocks.

The tier is to be paid at the start of each month within the 10th day. If you don’t pay your tier within this limit, your land will be reclaimed and your objects will be returned; the land purchase cost will NOT be refunded.

1. Marche is a mixed purpose sim: residential and low-lag commercial.
   We’ll have an hangout (with shared facilities that every resident or visitor can use) on the central parcel.
   You can mix commercial and residential. I prefer if you follow these guidelines:
   • terrain level — use for residential or low-lag hangout
   • 300m-500m — use for commercial
   • 500m and up — anything else (private sky-boxes, etc.)

   At the 300-500m, I’d like to build a coordinated flying commercial complex. People who teleport to the central parcel will arrive at this level, on a landing point with TP links to the hangouts and shops of the sim.

2. Keep lag to a minimum. If sim performance (time dilation) is constantly affected (< 0.9) by your objects, they will be disabled or returned and a warning will be issued.
3. Camping chairs are prohibited. Promotional tools that require active interaction from avatars (such as lucky chairs) are allowed if they don’t violate rule #2.
4. I value good, beautiful builds. The guiding theme (on the terrain) is fantasy or medieval or natural or caribbean, but it’s not actively enforced.
5. Please try to keep a high quality standard. You’re welcome to ask for help, which I will happily provide for free if my personal schedule allows.
6. This is not a combat sim. I will not allow damage-enabled parcels. RP combat is allowed, but slightly discouraged. If your visitors harass people on other parcel, you’re responsible for their behaviour and you’ll receive a warning.
7. This is an adult sim. Public display of nudity is allowed, public sex is allowed. I expect people to behave in such a way not to interfere with other residents or visitors: outdoor sex is best limited to secluded areas not visible from other parcels.
   All the usual limitations apply: no age-play, no rape (unless explicitly agreed OOC), no harassment.
8. You’re welcome to have sky-boxes, but please keep them above 500m. The range between 300m and 400m is reserved for use on the central parcel. I may agree to exceptions to this rule, for coordinated builds (see rule #1).
9. Changes to these rules will be announced on my blog (www.kittenlulu.com) and using group notices (Kitten Lulu land group).
10. If you receive more than three warnings in a month, your land will be reclaimed and a refund of the *remaining* monthly tier will be issued. The land purchase cost will NOT be refunded.
11. I may decide that a person or business doesn’t belong on this sim, but they are not in violation of these rules. In that case, I will provide a 15 days advance notice and refund the full purchase cost (18.000 L$ per 4096 sqm block); after the 15 days term is over, the land will be reclaimed.

For all other doubts, clarification or details, contact me (Kitten Lulu) or write to (email omitted to avoid spam).

Re: PixelDolls Wholesale Group

PixelDolls has created a group for wholesale resellers. People will receive their products for the next 6 months full perms for 75.000 L$.

I often wonder why there is no shop that runs subscriptions. Give me all your products no-transfer for 6 months at a generous-but-smaller price and I’d be happy.

My alt and I are shopping slaves in a few selected shops in SL: I just can’t let a week pass without getting something new from them.

[From PixelDolls… » Blog Archive » PixelDolls Wholesale Group]

Marche: Bar Akuda is coming back

Back in 2006, I ran a place called “Bar Akuda”. It was nice but not very popular club with japanese hotsprings and the compulsory bdsm dungon.

The new Bar Akuda is a gathering place for very different folks. It stands where our world’s veil is most thin. There, with a bit of ancient magic, I teared the veil apart to mold a bubble from the very same matter that dreams are made from. An ancient, victorian lighthouse overlooks a glowing atoll where mermaids and pirates can once again be together.

If you want a sneak preview of my work in progress, just teleport to Marche. If you’re interested in living there, send me an IM. Marche is WindLight-optimized, you need the WL firstlook client to fully enjoy it.