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?

We are moving our King Tut Virtual special preview completely over to our Heritage Key grid today. We want to sincerely thank all the people that made it to the SL grid to see area and give us feedback. While the King Tut SL area is now closed, you can see even a more advanced preview on our OpenSim-based grid here. Come check it out and try to break it! (gently..that is).

If you go to the site and register an account, you will also notice that we are using the Imprudence viewer as the standard Heritage Key viewer.

Would the government in Australia really block access to Second LIfe??? New enforcement on non-approved content is reported in the Sydney Herald: "Mark Newton, an ISP engineer and internet filtering critic, said the move to extend the filtering to computer games would place a cloud over online-only games such as World of Warcraft and Second Life, which aren't classified in Australia due to their online nature."

Paid Content reports today that Stratim Capital has "bought almost the entire position of an existing shareholder" of Linden Lab, maker of Second Life (tm).  Further they advise that it is not a VC, but an individual investor. So what is interesting here would be the value of the sale and the rationale for the valuation. Of course none of the private parties want to share that information. And Linden hardly ever shares anything, so no expectation that they will divulge this.

But, in general, now would not be an ideal time to sell shares in anything unless 1) you had to for personal financial kinda reasons or 2) believe that even a depressed value is better than what might get worse. Certainly you wouldn't sell if you believed that Linden Lab would go public soon for a massive valuation.

Iggy is leading the charge of "Team Tut" to help us understand how to make this virtual experience most relevant for educators. He has kindly posted some notes and suggestions here on his blog. Thanks!  Indeed, learning can be more fun and dynamic and these environments. In fact, check out this really cool graphic novel style that Viv Trafalgar made:

There are of course a lot of issues to make learning engaging. The opportunities for visual, multi-media enriched content are very exciting. Immersive, online, learning also has massive potential for interaction between people from around the world in real-time. We also are experimenting now with interactive queries to our database, er, things people can click and ask for info or drill-down.

OOOOOOO, /me wants this baby in my computer http://www.fusionio.com/ioxtreme/specs.php .  Windows loading in 1 sec... ?! Take that photoshop! Wonder if it will let me think faster/better also...hmmmm, nah stuff will still be all laggy prolly, but other stuff faster. You have to register to be on the pre-order list--nice marketing ploy.

Big cheers for the team over at RezLibris for their superb effort in the machinima below (and very kind artilce about our amazing, unmissable preview sim for King Tut Virtual. Haven't been there yet? Care at all about the virtual world? Vist King Tut Virtual Preview now!) Thanks Dulcie!

From the Second Life perspective Digtial Rights Management (DRM) is clear enuff. You can +mod/+copy/-trans stuff and that works well enough. But actually the people that buy stuff never really accept/agree a licence on how they will use your content. In fact, the seller also does not expressly state that the content that was sold was theirs to sell in the first place. So while there is quasi-enforcement, is there really a DRM licence?

So the first major question is, can you take stuff off the SL grid? In practice the answer is of course yes. You could rip it and reload it to another grid without too much effort. But let's assume that we are not griefers/theives and want to pay for licences and use them properely. But right now since their is no licence agreement between seller and buyer what is a reasonable practice? Can you +copy something across a grid to your avatar? Is +copy to yourself across another grid not really +trans? If you can't move something to your alt, is your avatar on another grid a legit +copy or is it breaking -trans?

And what about freebies? SInce it was given away for free, is there any harm in moving it to another grid?