Avatrian Blogs

LA Beyond Cars

Chenin Anabuki — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 13:56:34 +0000

A multimedia experience showcasing global perspectives on rail and public space. At the month-long event, Avatrian’s work is prominently featured along with other selected concepts and designs from around the world on the future of LA sans cars. The venue is held at the Jewel Box in downtown LA. The footage was from the August 27 event…well attended by industry movers and hip Angelinos (present company included). The machinima filmed and produced by Avatrian for RailLA can be seen playing in the large overhead screen.

More photographs from the LA Beyond Cars event can be viewed at Avatrian’s Flickr Set for LA Beyond Cars.

California’s High Speed Rail

Chenin Anabuki — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 04:26:39 +0000

In response to RailLA.org’s call for ideas, Avatrian has produced a machinima to showcase concept and design ideas for the High Speed Rail. The goal is to integrate the neighborhoods surrounding the LA Union Station on the arrival of the HSR. We combined concepts that already exist with new design ideas and proposed a high speed rail system with a detachable pod that takes passengers directly to several LA neighborhoods. This includes the Art District, Little Tokyo, Civic Center, Chinatown, and the Dodger Stadium. Most of the content used in the scenes were built specifically for the machinima. The whole production took approximately 3 days from start to finish.

The machinima can be viewed directly at RailLA.org’s website here.. Our work has also been reviewed positively by at DigitalUrban.org. You can read the full article by Dr Andrew Hudson-Smith here. In addition, the machinima was recently featured at New World notes by Hamlet Au.

Second Life upgrading to Havok 7

Bonji Barbosa — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 06:54:18 +0000

This week Second Life is upgrading from server 1.38 to 1.40. The most important component of this release is the integration of Havok 7, the most recent battle-tested version of Havok’s Physics Engine.
Key benefits of the Server 1.40/Havok 7 upgrade include:

* Reduction of crash rates
* Increase of physics frame rate
* More realistic interaction with inworld objects because Havok 7 more efficiently processe moving and colliding content

Linden Lab have been beta testing Server 1.40/Havok 7 on SL test grid (called Aditi) since January.

Here is a sample video of Havok 7 Physics testing.

Avatrian Opensim Upgraded

Bonji Barbosa — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 04:11:05 +0000

Avatrian Grid has been upgraded to the new code database based on the Opensimulator 0.6.9 which is the latest release. So far everything is running smoothly. Inventory access glitches have been minimized and all seems pretty stable. Here are some major list of changes from the core developers:

* Teleport offers implemented
* SQLite database adapter updated to work with Mono 2.6 and later (as well as Windows). Unfortunately, this will currently not work with Mac and Mono 2.6 due to missing symbols in the SQLite library bundled with Mac OS X. Mono 2.4 can still be used by switching to the legacy adaptor.
* Ability to populate the inventory library by placing IARs in bin/Library
* “Allowed Users” and “Allowed Groups” estate functionality added.
* Added implementations of llCollisionFilter, llPassCollision, llLoopSoundSlave, llLookSoundMaster, llTriggerSoundLimited, llPointAt, llStopPointAt, llGetCenterOfMass, llGroundRepel, llSetVehicleFlags, llRemoveVehicleFlags, llSetInventoryPermMask.
* Improvements to LSL functions including llDialog, llGetPrimitiveParams. llSetPrimitiveParams, llGetStatus, llSetStatus, llSetDamage, llDie, llLookAt, llParcelMediaCommandList.
* Scripts now receive a stream of touch events if the mouse button is held down on their containing prim.
* Terrain collision implemented.
* OpenSim.Tools.Configger.exe added to dump configuration as an .ini, .xml or .sql file.
* Avatar eyes and hair no longer remain white in standalone mode.
* Improvements to undo, redo, land undo.
* Improvements to attachments rezzing.
* Support for HTTP texture fetching.
* Fix console problem on startup of Grid.UserServer.exe with no existing config.
* Stop existing avatars appearing in the T-pose to those who have just logged in.
* Improvements to ground standing.
* Clothing in the inventory library should now have the correct icons
* Gestures saved to OARs/IARs
* OARs now save region settings
* Fixes for terrain editing problems in megaregions
* Ground sitting fixed
* Viewers now receive UUID of the broadcasting prim when chat originates from a script.
* Attempting to rez no-copy objects on no-rez parcels no longer cause the item to vanish from inventory.
* Prim to prim collisions improved.
* Resizing the console window in Mono no longer results in an exception flood.
* Various performance improvements
* Various stability improvements

Very satisfying upgrade indeed and will be looking forward to more improvements. Looks like Opensim development is doing pretty well and the plans of achieving Beta stage by 2011 is surely possible.

For those who haven’t upgraded there grids yet, you can download the binaries here http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Download

Blue Mars: Martian Boneyards Game

Bonji Barbosa — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 15:52:11 +0000

This is a cool and educational game that can be played inside Blue Mars. You play as an archeologist and solve the mysteries in the Blue Mars city named Arcadia.

This game is sponsored by the National Science Foundation.

3D Meshes via COLLADA in Second Life

Rodion Resistance — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 08:18:04 +0000

Picked up from New World Notes: 3D Meshes via COLLADA (COLLAborative Design Activity), in Second Life might just be around the corner. What does this mean? From a builder’s perspective…a LOT!

Collada allows rigging which means: Wearable clothing, entire avatar replacements that bend with animations!
Five submeshes for each object
Four different Levels Of Detail
One for collisions for Havok

Watch this video that shows a dancing alien that reportedly had been created using a 3D mesh imported into SL via COLLADA:

More details here.

The Cipher Prime Duo

Fabskee Heartsdale — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 05:05:27 +0000

I came across this Indiepub interview about two guys starting out a gaming business.This two named their company Cipher Prime. They struggled their way to the top and risk so much in the process. Eventually,they got their break by winning in a competition and possibly going to get sponsorship from a big time gaming company like EA. To my amazement, the new game they created called Fractals is visually puzzling and audibly fantastic. It is mind boggling and blowing in a way that it hooks you up like drugs. The background music is very good, it is as if an orchestra is playing behind you. Truly Amazing, the game’s demo feature a full screen preview every time you play and the function is adoptable in Second Life. So I made this very short machinima to show how good this game is for everybody. Check the movie out, play the game and see the interviews, and let me know what you think about fractals and the Cipher Prime Duo.

FRACTALS OVER 3D

THE CIPHER PRIME DUO: Will and Dane

PLAY | FUTURESTATE | ITVS

Chenin Anabuki — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 16:12:34 +0000

This is an amazing rendition of a future wherein virtual worlds have evolved to the point of becoming indistinguishable from the real world. This video is a bit of a cautionary tale on society’s addiction to games and virtual reality. But, it also showcases technology that could very well be commercially available in the near future.

I like the part at 9:30 wherein one of the characters asks the question “What do we do with all these points? What do we win?”.

Thanks to Debbie Reese for the link.

“Philip Rosedale, Visionary” – Fortune

Rodion Resistance — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 11:39:26 +0000

Here’s a recent interview of Philip Rosedale (the creator of Second Life and founder of Linden Lab) done by Fortune Magazine, who hails him a visionary for his radical concept of a virtual world, as manifested by Second Life.

Although he says nothing radically new in the video, he does mention the potentials of motion capture and user input via cameras (i.e. Natal/Kinect) for virtual worlds such as Second Life in his talk.

View the video here.

Closing of Greenies Home Rezzable

Bonji Barbosa — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 07:45:43 +0000

Very sad news this week that Greenies Home Rezzable in Second Life will be closing June 23rd 2010. I received an object message from Second Life confirming this.

“The object ‘Greenies Home’ has sent you a message from Second Life:

Today is a really sad day for SL. I have to announce the closing of Greenies Home Rezzable. June 23 will be the last day of the sim. I gonna celebrate a big Goodbye Party during weekend and wanna invite all fans, artists, DJs to participate and have fun with the cute green aliens. I am working on a schedule atm so everyone who wanna perform at the sim .. here is your last chance. The Greenies fly finally back to their home planet so lets wish them a bon voyage. Please IM Angelina Rhode for more information. The schedule for the events is open. Give me a wink when you wanna sing, DJ / perform on the big table, in Club G or any other place in the sim!”

Greenies Home Rezzable was an awesome location to visit and the cute little Greenies will be missed when it goes for good.
Grennies SLurl: Greenies Home Rezzable