Lucidscape -- learning from SL?

By now you may well have heard of Lucidscape, but just in case...Lucidscape is an attempt to create the metaverse that looks like it's trying to avoid  aspects of Second Life that keep it from scaling. To demonstrate scalability, they simulated ten million participants on an 800-server cluster. The "participants" are a mixture of movable but largely stationary emitters and constantly moving drones that the emitters control and communicate with and which are constantly communicating across server boundaries.

(One could very well argue that one of those aspects is user-created content--people can and do create things without concern for efficiency--but that's too important a feature to forbid; on the page they say "the [emitters and drones] were purposefully crafted to be inefficient [emphasis in original] in the same manner we average user-written code may be.")

I especially like this:

We are a team of developers who are passionate about creating a future where massively multi-user virtual reality is pervasive and everyone can participate in a Metaverse which is:

• Free and open source so everyone may add their own worlds to the Metaverse the same way anyone can run a web server today.
• Devoid of any form of centralized control, free of gatekeepers and censorship under the guise of curation. Because if anyone can tell you what you are allowed to do in it, then it is not the real Metaverse.

I hope to see more from them.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes...

A lot has been going on, and keeping me away from the grid. I hope that's over.

More layout changes as I can get them in--the way out-of-date Ubuntu version countdown is gone, as I can't find one for Utopic Unicorn. (Sigh.)

On to what might be more important (OK, it doesn't take much importance to do that): this JIRA entry, VWR-9203. Curiously, it has recently been marked as fixed. Does that mean we'll get flexible sculpties someday, or does "fixed" just mean that top men are working on it. You know, Top. Men. ...so that it won't ever happen?

Google+ changes its name policy

I'm happy to say that Google+ has announced that they will no longer place restrictions on the name you can use. Details on the Google+ Google+ page.

I hope this settles the matter once and for all. I've been on Google+ as Melissa Yeuxdoux for some time, but I've hesitated to link my blog to my Google+ presence (so that, for example, my Google+ feed includes links to blog posts) after reading about some Blogger blogs that went away over "real name" issues. I'm hoping the link will be safe now.

(N+1)th Life?

Here's part of a statement that Hamlet Au received from Linden Lab and posted an article about on NWN:

"Linden Lab is working on a next generation virtual world that will be in the spirit of Second Life, an open world where users have incredible power to create anything they can imagine and content creators are king....The next generation virtual world will go far beyond what is possible with Second Life, and we don't want to constrain our development by setting backward compatibility with Second Life as an absolute requirement from the start."

What comes to mind at that news?

• The Osborne Effect: how much effort/$ are you willing to invest in something when you've been told something far better is coming?
• Will they support both kinds o' computers--Windows and Mac? While it's still a sore point that Linden Lab has never provided a 64-bit Linux version, it has provided a 32-bit Linux version for a long time, for which I am extremely grateful. That said, it would be really nice if they'd come out and say "yes, we will support Linux for this new virtual world", especially given that it will at least initially be closed source. (For that matter, did you hear about the improvements to graphics in Android "L"? I hope you're targeting capable tablets and smartphones, LL.)
• Can we be anonymous in the new world as we can in Second Life? I hope that is the case; Ebbe Altberg tweeted "Yes, we clearly want to... let you bring you [sic] identity and friends across", which gives me hope.

What comes to my mind the most, though? Sheer delight!

How many times have I quoted Fred Brooks here? At least twice. Let's bump that number.

"Plan to throw one away. You will anyhow. The only question is whether you deliver the throwaway to your customers."

Of course, backwards compatibility would be nice... but Second Life looks crude compared with other 3D environments. Every so often you see a link to a video of avatar configuration in a game that makes Second Life look pathetic in comparison, both in simplicity and power of UI and quality of avatar. Creators shouldn't have to find obscure bugs that they can take advantage of to do things SL's creators didn't envision or even wanted to forbid.

Bless the creators of Second Life for their ingenuity and skill--but they deserve an environment they don't have to fight. I will cheerfully give up inventory if I can have better.

Textures not taking?

Gatherings has a lovely new (to me, at least!) blue suit, so I bought it. It comes with heels and cute glasses (now I have to go looking for a pencil-behind-ear attachment :)), and all was going well... until it came to the trousers.

They were gray.... or were they just not rezzing completely? Rebake textures... rebake textures... no change. Put on a different pair, and they rezzed. OK, take them off. Off they went. OK, put them back on. They sort of went back on. I could see what were intended to be cuffs... but they were textured like me. OK, sign off and back on... and they were gray.

I guess I'd better go back and look at the poster--but I can't believe the trousers are intended to be gray. Strange.

New graphics card

Things have been tight, and I'd not upgraded anything since adding a 120 GB SDD. Still running with a 2.8 GHz Athlon 64 x4 630 "Propus", an AM3 socket CPU that you can't even get now. It's sneaking up on its fifth birthday (though I ordered mine about a year after it came out), making it ancient in computer years.

In the past week or so, though, I have upgraded my graphics card. I was using a PNY card with 1 GB of RAM and an nVidia 560Ti GPU; PCI Express 2. It's a HUGE card, 8.25 inches long. While the cute little Micro ATX case that I use claims to be able to fit a 10.5" card, I'd not even try, and I'm amazed I managed to fit this one in. It's power-hungry; it has two 12V power connectors in addition to pulling 12VDC from the PCI Express socket, and the size and additional cables impede air flow, which a Micro ATX case seriously needs. It's the most expensive computer component I've bought for many years, at $250.

Its replacement is an EVGA card with 2 GB of RAM and an nVidia 750 Ti GPU. Fortunately PCI Express 3 will work with a PCI Express 2 slot, but I'm losing throughput because of it. It is only 6.7" long and doesn't need the extra power connectors, so the air flow is much better. It cost 40% less than the 560 Ti card--$150.

The new card made for a bit of fun installing, because it has the new "Maxwell" chips, and one either has to directly install the proprietary driver that knows about Maxwell or add a repository with that driver packaged. I chose the latter (if by some strange chance you're reading this and are the person who set up the PPA, bless you!). If, like me, you decide to do a new Ubuntu install at the same time (don't ask...), do not tell it you want it to pull in proprietary drivers at install time; it won't get the right one, and towards the end of the install, the screen image will be stretched vertically and you won't be able to see what you're doing!

It's in and running, and running quite nicely. I have to put my ear within five inches of my computer to hear fan noise. Maxwell isn't the highest performance GPU out there, but it's excellent for performance per watt consumed.

More travails for 64-bit Linux users

I should have realized it earlier.

Ubuntu, back in 13.10, got rid of ia32-libs. I had my nose rubbed in that this morning after a somewhat rocky transition to 14.04 (the rockiness was my fault). The claim is that ia32-libs was a "huge hack" and you should instead pull in the individual ia32 packages you need. How do you find out which ones? Run ldd on the executable.

After being silly and trying to run it on the shell script that you invoke to run Second Life (not much point to that!), I peeked down into the bin directory and...

melissa@storge:~/SecondLife/SecondLife-i686-3.6.8.282367$ ldd bin/do-not-directly-run-secondlife-bin 

linux-gate.so.1 =>  (0xf775b000)

libopenal.so.1 => not found

libalut.so => not found

libpthread.so.0 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libpthread.so.0 (0xf771f000)

libcollada14dom.so => not found

libfreetype.so.6 => /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libfreetype.so.6 (0xf7680000)

librt.so.1 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/librt.so.1 (0xf7677000)

libhunspell-1.3.so.0 => not found

libboost_program_options-mt.so.1.52.0 => not found

libboost_regex-mt.so.1.52.0 => not found

libboost_context-mt.so.1.52.0 => not found

libgobject-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libgobject-2.0.so.0 (0xf7624000)

libglib-2.0.so.0 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libglib-2.0.so.0 (0xf7518000)

libGLU.so.1 => not found

libGL.so.1 => /usr/lib32/nvidia-337/libGL.so.1 (0xf740d000)

libX11.so.6 => /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libX11.so.6 (0xf72d9000)

libfmodex.so => not found

libGLOD.so => not found

libSDL-1.2.so.0 => not found

libgdk-x11-2.0.so.0 => not found

libgthread-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libgthread-2.0.so.0 (0xf72d5000)

libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0 => not found

libexpat.so.1 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libexpat.so.1 (0xf72ac000)

libssl.so.1.0.0 => not found

libcrypto.so.1.0.0 => not found

libboost_thread-mt.so.1.52.0 => not found

libfontconfig.so.1 => /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libfontconfig.so.1 (0xf7270000)

libboost_filesystem-mt.so.1.52.0 => not found

libaprutil-1.so.0 => not found

libapr-1.so.0 => not found

libstdc++.so.6 => /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libstdc++.so.6 (0xf7186000)

libm.so.6 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libm.so.6 (0xf7140000)

libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libgcc_s.so.1 (0xf7123000)

libc.so.6 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libc.so.6 (0xf6f73000)

/lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0xf775c000)

libz.so.1 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libz.so.1 (0xf6f59000)

libpng12.so.0 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libpng12.so.0 (0xf6f31000)

libffi.so.6 => /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libffi.so.6 (0xf6f2a000)

libpcre.so.3 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libpcre.so.3 (0xf6eec000)

libnvidia-tls.so.337.12 => /usr/lib32/nvidia-337/tls/libnvidia-tls.so.337.12 (0xf6ee6000)

libnvidia-glcore.so.337.12 => /usr/lib32/nvidia-337/libnvidia-glcore.so.337.12 (0xf49cf000)

libXext.so.6 => /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libXext.so.6 (0xf49bc000)

libdl.so.2 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libdl.so.2 (0xf49b7000)

libxcb.so.1 => /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libxcb.so.1 (0xf4995000)

libXau.so.6 => /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libXau.so.6 (0xf4990000)

libXdmcp.so.6 => /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libXdmcp.so.6 (0xf4989000)

The lines of interest have "not found" at the end...

libopenal.so.1 => not found

libalut.so => not found

libcollada14dom.so => not found

libhunspell-1.3.so.0 => not found

libboost_program_options-mt.so.1.52.0 => not found

libboost_regex-mt.so.1.52.0 => not found

libboost_context-mt.so.1.52.0 => not found

libGLU.so.1 => not found

libfmodex.so => not found

libGLOD.so => not found

libSDL-1.2.so.0 => not found

libgdk-x11-2.0.so.0 => not found

libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0 => not found

libssl.so.1.0.0 => not found

libcrypto.so.1.0.0 => not found

libboost_thread-mt.so.1.52.0 => not found

libboost_filesystem-mt.so.1.52.0 => not found

libaprutil-1.so.0 => not found

libapr-1.so.0 => not found

This has its good points--had we had to do this, or known to do this, or (ahem!) someone at Linden Lab who gives a darn done this from the start, we'd have known from the start what we were missing, installed it, and not have sat in the limbo of "why does everything but streaming audio work?" for years. Or rather, we would if we did something like

cd [wherever you keep SL]/bin; find -type f -exec ldd {} \; | grep "not found"

so we get them all; like Pokemon, you gotta.

On the other hand, we now get to potentially do this for each 32-bit program we want to run, and have the additional issue of working back from individual libraries to the packages to install.

Or you just say the heck with it and install all the 32-bit libraries.

Or...people could make actual 64-bit versions of the viewer. Some do, and to them all I say thank you; I'd hug you if I could. Now, if only Linden Lab would...

Someone send this link to Linden Lab...

From the nVidia blog: "NVIDIA, AMD, Intel Explain How OpenGL Can Unlock 15X Performance Gains". An enticing quote: "the techniques presented apply to all major vendors and are suitable for use across multiple platforms."

The blog post has a slide show; check it out.

"Howls of derisive laughter, Bruce!"

I just deleted some spam email... I saw the first line, and it said something about loving my photo on Facebook.

Facebook?! In the immortal words of the Philosophy Department of the University of Wollamalloo, "Howls of derisive laughter, Bruce!" With Facebook's policies, it's the last place I'd ever sign on. *plonk*

Wise beyond her years...

Marianne McCann posts an insightful open letter to SL's new CEO: "Dear Ebbe". (And it took me until now to get the reference...)

RL inspiration

From the January 29, 2014 New York Post, "Meet the gal with the longest legs in NYC", about Brooke Banker, a 26-year-old model who is 5'11" tall with 47" legs (measuring from heel to hip):

Apparently Russia crowned Anastasia Strashevskaya "Miss Longest Legs" earlier this month; she has 42" legs. (Alas, I have not been able to find her total height.) That was followed by Alexandra Robertson in England, 6'1" with 47-inch legs, and now Ms. Banker.

I would think that legginess involves proportion as well as length, so that Ms. Banker (0.662 leg length/height ratio) outdoes Ms. Robertson (0.644). My goodness--being two-thirds leg by height! Could Ms. Banker create a similarly-proportioned Second Life avatar?

Actually, I think she could. I will have to make a point of figuring out my avatar's leg length/height ratio. I do like to twist the knob to 11, and the avatar stretching animations do most of their stretching on the legs. How far can one go?

UPDATE: Svetlana Pankratova still holds the record, 6'5" tall with 4'4" legs, and thus a leg length/height ratio of 0.675.

What next?

Things are happening. One is depressing; the other just makes me wonder.

Cloud Party has been bought by Yahoo, which is going to shut it down.

Sigh. I'm reminded of the days of Ziff-Davis buying computer magazines in order to shut them down. Cloud Party had great promise, and I'm very sad to see it go.

Now for the one I'm not sure of: Rod Humble is stepping down as CEO of Linden Lab. Who will replace him? That's a very good question.

Passing the Torch

The January 2014 Busted magazine marks the passing of the torch. The lovely and talented Maggie Bluxome has stepped down as senior editor, and Rachel Swallows has taken on the job. The new issue, I assure you, shows that the magazine is in good hands.

I look forward to what is to come from Busted, and I wish Maggie all the best with whatever she takes on. You're an amazing lady, Maggie.

Life imitates Second Life

Christmas brings ads for many stores--including jewelers. I saw an ad the other day, and I wish I remembered the store and the product--it was a ring or a bracelet, and I swear it sparkled like the most obnoxious bling-laden SL product you could ever imagine. I had to laugh; I guess in RL people wouldn't berate one quite as much for wearing it.

Dem bones, dem bones, dem avatar bones...

So after many people contributed real money to pay Qarl Fizz to implement the mesh deformer, and after years of, well, something, LL has decided not to support it. instead, they will support something like the "Liquid Mesh" (which was controversial because it took advantage of SL's actual behavior as opposed to its specified behavior). "Bones" will be added for body parts that in RL don't have bones so that those body parts can influence the position and motion of mesh clothing.

I am not a builder or virtual tailor, so I cannot have an informed opinion about which method is better. If I understand rightly, though, the mesh deformer would "just work": you make a piece of clothing to fit the stock avatar at whatever is considered the default slider settings, and the deformer would take care of making the clothing fit its user at whatever slider setting he or she has in effect. The mesh deformer, therefore, would at least seem to be easier from the clothes-maker's point of view.

One thing I think we can say: what sane person will now do anything to try to improve Second Life, in view of what has happened with the mesh deforrmer? IMHO this shows that the "shared experience" clause is every bit as destructive as we thought it would be.

P.S. In this regard, two must-read blog posts:

• Strawberry Singh, "Fitted Mesh Announcement from Linden Lab"
• Will Burns, "Stockholm Syndrome"

Disney heroines with beards

Imagine my surprise to see this image...

Not just surprise that Ariel's hair isn't soaked and plastered to her, but that she has a beard! It's from a blog post by Adam Ellis, "Disney Princesses with Beards". (They're not all princesses; he includes, for example, Mulan, Alice, and of course Ariel. I personally wish he'd done Rapunzel from Tangled.)

She wears it very well indeed, and it makes me want to go bearded again... but I want a curly beard like Ariel's! The fluffy Victorian-meets-ZZ-Top beard was nice, but I will have to go looking for curls. I wonder if there are mesh beards now?

UPDATE: O me of little faith! Google immediately turned up a truly impressive example, the Rustica mesh Norse beard, too long for my use, but complete with braiding. You'll definitely intimidate your foes with it!

Bewbstock

I've been to Bewbstock. Lovely clothing--though if you don't use Tangos or Lush, or one of the breast attachments that can use Tango appliers, your choices there are limited.

I bought one of the Gatherings Designs Boho outfits, even though they don't include an applier I can use, because the skirt is just so darned beautiful! Thank you, Stacia Zabaleta.

Hope to see you soon in a better virtual place, Qarl...

A must-read from Qarl Fizz né Linden: "goodbye, second life".

I am amazed and grateful that he hung on as long as he did in the face of Linden Lab's unconscionable foot-dragging on the mesh deformer.

Someone on NWN in comments on a video of an in-world presentation by IP lawyers on TOS and IP has already done a "So long and thanks for all the sculpties" HHGttG reference, so I'll skip that. Besides, I hope it's not so long, at least not forever.

Read the whole post, but I have to quote its end:

fellow citizens of the virtual world: next time we do this, we absolutely must be more careful. no matter how cute and earnest our rulers appear in the beginning, we cannot accept their promise "trust us". we need DEMOCRACY. we need it at the foundation, and we need it in writing. 

see you on the other side.

Graphics improvements with Linux 3.12 kernel

The folks at the Phoronix web site found that AMD Radeon graphics run much (where much ranges from 10% to 90%) faster on the Linux 3.12 kernel, and now they've found out why.

They have a neat setup to automate testing to find the answer to this type of question--it does a binary search on the kernel source commits to find the one where the change takes place. It turns out to be a change that affects how CPU frequency is adjusted based on load.

So, that should be good news for at least some SL residents using the 3.12 kernel. The 2^16-dollar question: what about other graphics card users? The change doesn't sound like it should be specific to AMD graphics, but until you try it out, you can't say for sure, and that testing is now in Phoronix's queue. (Darn it, it looks like Ubuntu 13.10 will have the 3.11 kernel.)

Anyone out there using 3.12? Have you noticed a speedup in SL? I'd love to hear about your experiences.

UPDATE: OhHeyItsLou reports that Nouveau (the open source nVidia driver) works nicely on 3.12, but he doesn't do any gaming sorts of things in the video, so the question is still open.

Survey at Whimsy's Closet blog

Of course, surveys in blogs have self-selected respondents, which pretty well guarantees a non-representative sample. But hey, unless we're willing to pay someone to do a serious survey, this is as good as it gets.

So... I hope you'll head over to "Which Prim Breasts Do You Wear Most?" on the Whimsy's Closet blog and give your response. I look forward to seeing where the results settle down. Thanks to Cindy Melgund for setting up the survey, and to Maggie Bluxome for posting about it on her blog.