Today's post is dedicated to the fabulous creations of Digit Darkes. Many of you got to know her brand by now as she been around quite a while. She also took part on several Rezzable Events like Digital Alchemy and the first edition of Black Swan. I never made it a secret that I am a huge fan of her since the 1st hour, so is Lokum and asked me to give it a go on a blog about my favorite dresses of Digit Darkes. Totally fell in love with this idea as I'm quite impressed how she keeps getting better with each release and on top of that, what is possible nowadays in SL, in terms of designing and building.

The gang over at  realXtend (Rex) recently posted a pre-alpha version of their new mesh viewer under project Corus. They have been hammering away on this for 6 months or so, so it will be interesting to see what it does. They seem to have started from scratch after having tried to rework mesh into a SL-viewer version.

We think mesh is a critical next step for virtual, onilne environments. Why? Widespread adoption requires more realistic virtual enivironments. Prims and rigid avatars are too limited. Sculpty prims are too difficult to make. So mesh and prims seems like a logical next step for enhancing the user experience and making it more enticing for mainstream online users.

I have not had a chance to mess around with this Glasshouse software yet, but the idea of it is great. To be able to create content outside of a virtual world platform and then deliver it on-the-fly. They have kindly posted the scripts and code here as well as the info on how the Content Injection Control Protocols(CICP) all works.   Glasshouse is focused on data visualization, but once you can control prims I assume you can make anything.

One great use of this type of system would be to create builds from architectural plans. Probably it would need to be simplified in order to be useful. For more industrial uses there is of course already Collada, but so far not a import Collada to OpenSim/SL (as far as I know....) Wouldn['t it be useful to  be able to actually put your house on Googlemap and then walk inside it in a virtual environment. Or likewise with a visit to Stonehenge?

Our previous episodes  described a new player the table, Onlive. 

• Future of SL is beyond e-tech. Now on to s-tech
• Future of SL Beyond e-tech (continued)

Onlive offers the prospect of a major change in the infrastructure used to deliver online games and the virtual reality that they live in.    In this episode, we examine the prospects for this change and some of the futures it may offer.

Recon Report

According to the Onlive website here is how you will use virtual reality (VR) environments in the future:   

As a newer Rezzable blogger, I've heard lots of excited talk about the upcoming Swansong fashion event, but I didn't actually know much about it. It was just a place that had clothes for sale, right? I was told that I had to go see what all the fuss was about for myself, with a foot planted firmly on my butt by Lokum and Winter. So I dressed myself in my favourite dress from the previous Black Swan show "Winter Magic" - the Florencia by Ghanima Uriza of ++Blue Blood++ and the Wrapped Hair which Helena Stringer made, and I went on an odyssey of the avian kind.

SL is much like playing digital barbies in a lot of ways.  We can buy tons of outfits, shapes, and hair.  We can setup dream houses and fly around in jets.  My inventory is chock full of accessories.  So many shoes, jewels, and outfits that would make a seven year old green with envy.  Even with all that loot, I was fighting the weekend blah.  My friends were uber busy, I had conquered the hair fair lag, been to SL6B, the RL weather was lousy, and there was nothing on the TV.  So in an effort to shake things up, it was time for another experiment: a significant and drastic change.  Enter December Immortal Barbie...I mean avatar. 

Growing Company - Great Opportunities

Two years ago, Jon and I were the only ones in our small office on Grey's Inn Road. We have been adding new faces and talents to our team but we still got room to expand and grow.

Challenging environment and fun team

Vint Falken or Ann moved to London back in February , moved offices to Shoreditch and  Prad has moved err like a week ago. Some of you already know this from plurk =) and our bikini thursdays. More about Prad's move in another blog but I am just delighted to announce another job openning at Rezzable.

Can you make a difference in VX

Can you design amazing 3D, online virtual areas? Can you make great experiences for visitors? This could be an ideal job for someone with energy, passion, creativity and the desire to make amazing things.

Last week Vint's parking skills was part of the captions. Our winners are as follows :

Petrachaa Doobie for first place with "Vint was shocked that her car looked worse after coming back from Linden Motors"

The second place goes to Serafina Devin "Vint had found the fabled Magical Car Tree, but she couldn't decide.. should she pick its fruit now or wait until it grew a roof and ripened to a nice shade of red?"

The third place goes to Kasumi Reiko " Vint:  "So when they say "Cruise Control", they don't mean the car drives it's self... Gotcha..."

Welcome to the first of what I hope will be many tutorials to come. Seeing as how this is the question I get asked the most, I thought it only fitting to begin this weekly blogging with a green screen removal tutorial.You will need three things for this lesson:

1. A snapshot taken on a greenscreen (you may download the one I will be working on, or you may set up your own green screen - instructions below - and take one for yourself to work on).

2. Photoshop or GIMP.

3. Patience.

Ready? Great! Let's get started. First, let's learn how to create our own in-world green screen. For those of you who would like to skip ahead, I have provided two seperate tutorials in this post - one will teach you how to remove the green screen in Photoshop, the other will explain the process in GIMP. Please select which you'd like to read: Photoshop | GIMP.

Setting up your own, one prim green screen in world; step-by-step:

With thanks to Uma Ceawlin for styling and modeling

Today's metaverse style takes a turn away from Lolita and into something called "FRUiTs", a brand of fashion named after the magazine that documented its rise. Shoichi Aoki, the photographer who founded the magazine, said that FRUiTs style is inspired by everyday streetwear in Japan. He started the magazine after he noticed that Japanese fashion began to turn away from clothing that was strictly inspired by the West. FRUiTs fashion mixed Japanese geta and other clothing elements into Western-wear, especially in the shopping district Harajuku (made known to Westerners several years ago by Gwen Stefani's Harajuku Lovers line).