Beta Technologies Blogs

Here it is: the much-awaited Second Life 2.0 Beta viewer!

Click here to view the embedded video.

To the best of my knowledge, this viewer was the result of over a year and a half of coding and testing. The overall layout was designed by Big Spaceship, the company that Linden Lab has outsourced their Web redesign — and the in-world viewer too. It’s not surprising, therefore, that the new viewer looks slightly like a web browser

As with all changes released by Linden Lab, this will split users in the usual two groups: the ones that are immediately fascinated by the new look, and the ones that will hate it with bitterness to the point of despair. There is no accounting for taste; expect many old-timers to write long posts about all the things they hate about SL 2.0. And, of course, for many, the hype and expectation was so great that they will feel disappointed. They might expect much more and blame LL for falling short on expectations. Again, this kind of reaction is unavoidable.

There will be hordes loving the new viewer, and furiously attacking the nay-sayers and the old-timers publicly on forums, blogs, and in-world events. There will be Emerald die-hard fanatics that will simply refuse to even consider downloading the new viewer. Even though the 1.X generation of viewers will be discontinued when 2.1 comes out (due in the summer), a large proportion of residents will simply refuse to learn how to use the new viewer and continue to use the old ones. I’m quite sure that the next few months will introduce heavy flame wars all over the SLogosphere, and we ought to be ready for it.

Why? Just because the new SL 2.0 viewer is so different. All the features of 1.X are there, and a lot of new ones have been scattered around the new user interface, but it requires relearning. It’s like someone finally switching from Windows to Mac OS X: it works pretty much in the same way, and you can do everything on a Mac that you can do on Windows, but the interface is utterly different. Even the argument that “it is much more logical, rational, and user-friendly” has failed to move more people to Mac OS X, so it’s naive to think that these very same arguments will convince every die-hard SL 1.X lover to switch to 2.0.

Ultimately, however, they won’t have a choice (at least until the released open source code gets incorporated on the third-party viewers, something that will take some time). And here’s why.
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Read the rest of Second Life 2.0: The Revolution (3,514 words)

© Gwyneth Llewelyn for Business and Technology in Second Life, 2010. | Permalink | 23 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: second life viewer 2.0

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Warning: eventually very shocking images below!

The year was mid-2004. For anyone who had just registered and joined, it looked like a wonderful, pretty world. Avatars were less cartoonish than, say, on There.com, and with some tweaking they would even look minimally decent.

Well… honestly, that’s how I looked like back then:

All right, I know — you’re not impressed! But this picture shows my own shape, created on my very first day, and the standard, ugly, Linden-created rubber skin. We all were ugly back then, so although this picture gives me the creeps these days, we thought it was actually pretty good, compared to other virtual worlds!

Then in early 2004, people like Namssor Daguerre thought about this very seriously and wondered if there was no way to change the default skin. At that time, remember, all they had to work with was a 2D “clothes template”. If you have seen the ones that Linden Lab publishes, you will quickly see that it’s not obvious where exactly each pixel will ultimately appear. And even if you figure it out, it’s not easy to do a whole skin. Back in 2004, we all thought that it would be “easy” to get some RL pictures of someone and just “distort” them properly so tha they “fit” on the 2D template somehow. Believe me, I’ve tried that; it simply is impossible to do it correctly. In real life, 3D artists would probably project a 2D picture on top of a 3D mesh, and then extract the appropriate 2D map (also called an “UV map”). But, alas, in 2004, Linden Lab did not release the 3D avatar mesh, so this approach was out.

Instead, 3D skin designers would have to do all the work manually. Yes, that’s right: the whole skin had to be carefully painted, pixel by pixel, on top of the template, taking into account that the avatar mesh has a lot more polygons on the face than, say, on hands and feet — which would have “stretched” bits if this wasn’t correctly done. Hand-painting a realistic texture was not for the faint of heart!

This is the result, one month after that other picture, when I bought Namssor Daguerre’s first-generation skin:

Wow, what an improvement! Well, I know this is not an image good enough for 2010 (you can just look at the low quality of the top I’m wearing!) But you can see how the shape did not change. SL didn’t change either, it wasn’t some sudden feature improvement overnight (you can see that on the background). Notice, however, how the face doesn’t look like “rubber” any more. It looks like skin, as it should! There is some detail lacking (specially on the arms) but far, far better than the Linden skin… even for 2005!

Of course we all know that Second Life has improved fantastically (yes, really!) over the years. So the last picture, which is quite recent (from today!), shows Namssor Daguerre’s third and latest generation skin.

Well, of course this is five years later… so no wonder it looks much better It is, after all, a new renderer; a new lighting system; and, of course — far better accessories (like prim hair!!) which have been designed for realism…

Now the surprising revelation: I’m wearing the exact shape I had in early August 2004 on all these pictures! Oh yes! Well, there have been two tweaks — a very minor one on my nose, and, after tons of complains, I reduced my, mmh, bra size… lol. But the rest is pretty much the same! Specially when you compare with the first picture, you’ll see the amazing difference, which is almost unbelievable…

That’s the kind of magic that a skin makes in Second Life. And you’re welcome to look at Namssor Daguerre’s current offerings at his shop on the Beta Business Park, which launches today with a Grand Opening which will last several hours, with models showing off the many choices on the catwalk, nice music, and a friendly environment

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© Gwyneth Llewelyn for Business and Technology in Second Life, 2010. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: namssor daguerre, second skin labs, skins

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