Austin Tate's Blog

Kirstens Viewer for Second Life can render the view in Anaglyph 3D for Red/Cyan 3D Glasses… for more details and download links see this blog post. So its a good excuse to take the 3D model of Supercar for another spin.

Click on any of the images below to see the full resolution version, make it full screen and view with Red/Cyan 3D glasses…

https://www.acm.org/virtual-conferences

A community resource from the ACM Presidential Task Force on What Conferences Can Do to Replace Face-to-Face Meetings – Version 1.1(rc) of April 11, 2020

[Current version] [Local Copy]

Discussion Forum (free account registration required): https://virtualconf.acm.org/

Back in 2011, Kirstens Viewer for Second Life added an Anaglyph 3D view capability which could be seen with red/cyan 3D glasses. See this blog post. It was updated to the latest Second Life features in 2017. See this further blog post.

Kirstens Viewer has now been updated by Kirstenlee Cinquetti to include Second Life capabilities such as the enhanced “bento” mesh avatar skeleton and still includes the 3D anaglyph view capability.

She has now updated her Second Life viewer to use the very latest Linden Lab viewer code and includes experimental or =development features such as Legacy Profiles, Environmental Enhancements, etc.

• Kirstenlee Cinquetti Blog
• Twitter @kirstensviewer
• Kirstens Viewer on Sourceforge – Download Links
• Kirstens Viewer, Build 1290 Release – Blog Post 10-Apr-2020.

Toggle the 3D anaglyph viewer on or off via Preferences – S22 Features…

Issues

Is it possible that after 3D anaglyph mode is toggled on and you stop and restart the viewer it does not enter Second Life? I tried a few times and it would not enter Second Life each time. I toggled 3D anaglyph off in Preferences – S22 Features before logging in and that then worked. May be just me? It looks like this when it sticks…

Kitely Organizations are a way to create a virtual grid inside the OpenSimulator-based Kitely grid. It allows groups to create and manage their own users, with control over which regions they can visit and what they can do in-world. A Kitely Organization provides administrative capabilities that enable the management of groups of users and worlds under the organization’s control. Kitely’s Organizations are designed for companies, educators, roleplaying groups, etc.

See https://www.kitely.com/virtual-world-news/2019/01/11/introducing-organizations-virtual-grids/ for more details.

Organizations can have two types of users:

1. Managed Users – users that are created by the Organization. The Organization Admins have full control over these users. Managed Users can’t login to the main Kitely website.
2. Independent Users – regular Kitely users who have agreed to join the Organization. The Admins only control what Independent Users do when they’re visiting the Organization’s worlds. However, the Admins can’t control what Independent Users do outside the Organization.

When Managed users are invited to join in, they are given this link…
https://kitely.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/doc/pages/600965183/Setup+Kitely

This allows the Firestorm viewer to be installed, if it is not already present, an initial avatar to be selected, and the Organization’s grid details and avatar username to be added to make entry easier for new users.

The grid LoginURI is of the form grid.organizationname.kitely.net:8002

RGU Neosome Kitely Organization

Kitely Virtual Worlds on Demand™

Kitely uses a mechanism of loading virtual world’s “on demand” so they use less server resources when not in use… if the world or region is not online when the first user arrives, their avatar appears at a Kitely Transfer Station” for a minute or so until the region is loaded, at which time the avatar is automatically teleported into that world.

RGU Neosome Oil Rig Immersive Training Environment

In VR

Using Firestorm VR Mod and Oculus Rift…

A virtual world social space for AIAI use is available in the OpenSimulator-based OSGrid platform.

More later.

Get started with OpenSim (using OSGrid)

• I-Room – a Virtual Space for Intelligent Interaction
• OpenVCE – Open Virtual Collaboration Environment

The Virtual World Best Practice in Education 2020 conference took place in Second Life on 26th and 27th March 2020.

A recent check on the 3D models of Supercar and Black Rock Laboratory in OpenSim, on Black Rock region on OSGrid…

Technical Limits on mesh that can be uploaded to Second Life/OpenSimulator
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Mesh/Technical_Overview

Over 20 years ago Austin Tate worked with Shane Pickering in new Zealand to try to cerate the interior technical details for Supercar, consistent with the TV shows and annuals, etc. Shane had aerospace engineering knowledge and was a pilot…
http://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/~bat/GA/supercar-cutaway.html

The detailed internals are described in this PDF…
http://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/~bat/GA/CUTAWAYS/SC/sc-cw-21nov99.pdf

Austin Tate’s efforts to explain the Supercar “control plans” is here…
http://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/~bat/GA/supercar-control-plans.html

We also worked on a detailed dash texture using Mick Imrie’s Supercar model as a start and adding more controls as found in TV series and annuals…
http://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/~bat/GA/SC-MODEL/IMRIE/BP/bat-dash-bp4.jpg
http://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/~bat/GA/SC-MODEL/IMRIE/BP/bat-dash-bp3.jpg

After a few minor adjustments to the nose cone and vanes area, Supercar was out for another spin in Second Life on the Bellisseria Continent. Making use of the boat/vehicle rez zone near the lighthouse at Norse Auk and flying down the East coast to my Ai pas houseboat on the Damiano region.

And a shot with the 360 degree Snapshot viewer…

Supercar puppet scale model made by Andrew Grimshaw of Wigan and displayed in Dimension X Sci-Fi collectables shop in Hoylake in the Wirral near Liverpool, UK around 2016-2017 (shop opened in April 2016, now closed). Model whereabouts unknown (unless you know otherwise?).

Information and images thanks to @JIMBO_SOLAR. @JamesSkellyBandM tweeted about the store opening in April 2016.

SpeedLight is a Web-based Viewer for Second Life providing core features to stay in touch when not able to access a full viewer. SpeedLight does not require any downloads. It can be used both in desktop and mobile browsers, allowing switching between devices without logging out. SpeedLight supports multiple avatars (with a possibility to switch between them). It is tested to work in Windows, Linux, Apple Mac, Apple iOS and Google Android.

Third Third Party Viewer Directory – SpeedLight

• Referral Link: https://speedlight.io/?ref=851
• Documentation – https://docs.speedlight.io/
• Discord: https://discord.gg/gmvr3Ys
• Video: https://youtu.be/Z42Bk3E8x1A
• SpeedLight for Android – via Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/speedlight
• Account page: https://speedlight.io/my

A GitHub copy has been created of resources for the AI planners developed by Prof. Austin Tate and his Planning and Activity research group at the University of Edinburgh in the Artificial Intelligence and its Applications Institute (AIAI) – previously the Artificial Intelligence Applications Institute (1984-2019).

https://github.com/aiaustin/planners
http://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/project/plan/

• Traverser: (1971-72)
• Interplan: (1972-74)
• Nonlin: (1974-82)
• O-Plan: (1983-99)
• I-X: (2000-2012)

The planners have been released under the flexible open source Lesser GPL (library) licence to encourage widespread use. Up to now they have been available from University of Edinburgh servers. The core assets have now been made available on GitHub.

GitHub Arctic Code Vault

The GitHub Arctic Code VaultGitHub Arctic Code VaultGitHub Arctic Code Vault is a data repository preserved in the Arctic World Archive (AWA), a very-long-term archival facility 250 meters deep in the permafrost of an Arctic mountain. The archive is located in a decommissioned coal mine in the Svalbard archipelago, closer to the North Pole than the Arctic Circle. GitHub will capture a snapshot of every active public repository on 02/02/2020 and preserve that data in the Arctic Code Vault.

The 02/02/2020 snapshot archived in the GitHub Arctic Code Vault will sweep up every active public GitHub repository, in addition to significant dormant repos as determined by stars, dependencies, and an advisory panel. The snapshot will consist of the HEAD of the default branch of each repository, minus any binaries larger than 100KB in size. Each repository will be packaged as a single TAR file. For greater data density and integrity, most of the data will be stored QR-encoded. A human-readable index and guide will itemize the location of each repository and explain how to recover the data.

This post is simply a record of some helpful advice given by Fred Beckhusen for RuthAndRoth Git “Organization” Members developing the Ruth 2.0 and Roth 2.0 open source avatar meshes.

I’ll try to explain a bit more about git and how to use it with Ruth and Roth.

First, read the very basics at https://rogerdudler.github.io/git-guide/

In our case, Github.com is a publicly available web site running git, along with a lot of custom web-facing stuff. We use it as a master “repo” or repository for all our public changes. You also run git, which mean you have all the same data as in the github. Anyone with a “git clone” has Everything We Have Ever Done. Unlike other source code control systems, all the data in git is distributed to every machine. Git is simple to use, but DEEP, as it was designed by Linus Torvalds, the genius behind Linux.

I am going to use the command line syntax here, as it is universal in terminology. Almost all these commands and workflow is found in the various Gui’s.

Ways to work in git:

‘git init‘ makes a hidden .git folder in any blank folder, which makes that folder into a ‘git’. You can also do a ‘git clone’ to get a premade git put into that folder, like in Ruth and Roth. All gits have a .git folder, which is typically hidden. You now add stuff to your original folder, delete stuff, rename stuff, (Eg. work on it), and then git add ( git -a) those changes to a temporary work area, and git commit (git -m) the work area to you LOCAL .git. This change is tracked in the .git by a hash. A Hash is a long series of alpha-numeric data that is like a check sum of all the digits, or a CRC, that uniquely identifies all those changes.

You can see any changes in Git with ‘gitk’. gitk can also drill down to the changes in any file.

In the git command line, you can see what is happening with ‘git status’. GUI tools do this for you when you refresh the GUI.

Your Ruth copy started with ‘git clone‘, which brings in the entire .git from Github to your local harddrive. There is the data, and also there is the ‘metadata’ in a hidden folder named .git, which is not human readable without tools. There are many git tools – the command line, git desktop, the git gui, gitk, which shows the history of a git, and so on.

I use the git found by right-clicking any empty area in the ruth repo and selecting Git Gui Here

I pretty much only use git on the command line to do a *git pull*.

A ‘git fetch‘ goes to github and fetches the latest changes to your local .git folder. It does not check out those changes to your working area. Useful if you want to see what’s going on without changing anything in your working folder.

A ‘git pull‘ will fetch the changes to the .git, and also check them out into your working folder.

Good habits: If using the command line, do a ‘git status‘ often. I leave my git gui open at all times, and click refresh often, which is the same thing.

Make commits often. As in Very Often. If you save a Blender file, that is a good time to also commit it so you can get back to that specific blender file if need be. Its a good idea to keep several copies of a blender file as it is easy to go back a step. But this is entirely optional in git workflow. You never need more than one copy of a file. Git does not enforce any rules about what you do to your data. If you want to make a Ruth Rev 1,2,3,4,5 and so on, git does not care. It will track them all. If you make a blend, and commit Rev 1, commit Rev 2, commit rev 3, then git will track every one of those too. Even better, it can track any commits you made while making Rev 3, so long as you saved the blender file, and made commit for it.

My advice is make each commit about one thing. As one example, in Dreamgrid, I have one text file that has a list of all changes. I edit the the document and commit it every time I change something major. I also use ‘gitk’ to see what all I have done everywhere, and update the document for any missing things, typos, and such. This final draft gets committed too, and this text file gets published in the code, as well as on social media. I used to try to maintain a web site to match copies of my code. But they were never in sync. Help is always behind the latest code, the code someone is running is always older than what I am working on, and the web site then rarely matches what they are getting. So I now publish the help in my git, and update it constantly, so any rev closely matches the documents. If I need to clean up some comments in my code, I will ONLY clean up comments, then commit that as “cleaned up comments’. Let’s assume I don’t like the names of two functions. I change those names and commit that one change. The nice thing about the git GUI if I forget to make a commit, I can stage just one or more files with the small change I want to commit, then repeat for another change. Granted, none of this applies to Ruth and Roth mesh bodies, but they do have many steps in their creation, so once you get used to git, you can simply name a file “Ruth.blend” and never have to use another file name for her. Any commit is available to you at any time.

The ‘git checkout‘ command will change the entire repository to whatever it was the moment that particular Hash was committed. It branches off my local copy of the data from the .git onto a new path that it will track, a path that I can just drop after examining the old code/blender, or continue on with, and eventually merge back in with the main trunk. This will probably be rare in Ruth and Roth, though.

Useful Commands:

‘git stash‘ – save all my changes away on a stack. Useful when I have ‘touched’ a file that I do not want to save back to the git, and that local change is preventing me from going a git pull. git stash will save it away. I can get back the change, if I want, or just ignore that stack after doing a git pull. git stash clear will empty the stash.

‘git reset –hard‘ – A command that throws away everything I have done and forces my working copy to be an exact match of the .git. I use this much less often now. Handy for those times you get frustrated with git not accepting changes, and when you do not understand how to untangle it. I just save my blender or code somewhere else. Then do a hard reset, and copy the file back, commit it, and then it will take a git push. Tread with caution here, as there be dragons!

Hyacinth Jewell, a content creator in OpenSimulator, has provided a revised higher definition version of the open source Ruth 2.0 avatar mesh. This post provides some resources and links for this.

hop://grid.hgluv.com:8302/Luv Plaza/78/138/28

The OpenSimulator Community Conference (OSCC19) ran again this year on December 14th to 15th, 2019 and was once again organised and run by Avacon.

OpenSimulator Core Dev Panel

My Houseboat on the Belliserria continent in Second Life now has its Winter decorations in place…

This blog post is to provide resources and access links for Blender – a widely used open source 3D modelling and animation tool.

• Blender Web Site and Downloads
• Tutorial Videos: YouTube – Blender Tutorial Channel
• Manual: https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/

Addons provide many extra facilities…

• Avastar – Second Life/OpenSim Avatar and Clothing Creation

Each year, the Blender Community engages in a significant 3D modelling, animation and production project, making all the resources available to act as a tutorial and basis for other work. These are called “Blender open Movies”. E.g.,

• 2010 – Sintel
• 2019 – Spring

Singularity Viewer is an open-source virtual world viewer for Second Life and OpenSim. It uses the “V1-Style” User Interface Viewer combined with the latest Second Life changes and features. The latest (Beta) versions support Bakes on Mesh.

• http://www.singularityviewer.org/
• http://www.singularityviewer.org/downloads
• http://www.singularityviewer.org/kb/nightly-builds

As described on the Downloads page, here is how to get the latest build of the Singularity Viewer (use the Beta version):

1. For Singularity Beta go here: https://build.alchemyviewer.org/browse/SV-BETA/latestSuccessful
2. Find the installers at the bottom of the page and download/run the one for your platform.

For Singularity Alpha (which may be less stable than the Beta) go here:
https://build.alchemyviewer.org/browse/SV-ALPHA/latestSuccessful

On 28-Nov-2019 Peter Kappler provided an update to his Firestorm VR Mod Viewer at https://gsgrid.de/firestorm-vr-mod/ – go there to download the latest version and for usage information, source, advice on trouble shooting, etc.

The version of the Firestorm viewer on which the latest Firestorm VR Mod 6.3.3.58049 is based supports Bakes on Mesh [BoM] in both Second Life and OpenSim. Most of the time this will work fine, but if you use extended BoM features please don’t use this viewer to log directly into a grid/region known to run on older 0.8.* server code.

Instructions are available via prompts in the viewer or via information on https://gsgrid.de/firestorm-vr-mod/. In short…

• Press CTRL+TAB to load or unload the SteamVR driver. Do this each time you want to enter VR mode after starting up.
• Press TAB key to enable and disable VR mode.
• Press F5 to open the settings menu, you should see a text menu in the middle of the screen. The settings menu works only when VR mode is enabled.
• Press F6 to increase the selected value. Press F7 to decrease the selected value.
• Press F5 again to switch to the next menu entry.
• By pressing F5 on the last menu entry the menu will close and save the settings in a config file which is located in
  “C:\Users\your_user_name\AppData\Roaming\Firestorm_x64\vrconfig.ini”
  and can be edited directly. Pressing TAB reloads the config file.
• Hold F3 to see some debug info.
• Press F4 to disable and enable HMD’s direction changes. It is better to disable the HMD’s direction interface when editing and flying with the camera. This may be subject to change in future versions.
• Moving the mouse to the corners or the sides will shift the screen to this direction so menus can be accessed.
• In the camera floater 2 buttons has been added to offset the HMD’s base rotation.

In case you encounter issues with a black HMD display…

• Create a program-specific profile for the viewer in your graphic card settings and enable FXAA.
• Second life only supports FXAA. Other types of Anti-aliasing can be disabled.

Notes on Usage

On my Oculus Rift DK2, I found that I needed to adjust the IPD setting to my usual setting (68mm), but otherwise the default VR settings all worked fine.

I would expect that texture shift (+200) will be needed on my Oculus Rift CV1 as for earlier version of Firestorm VR Mod. But that remains to be checked.

Firestorm VR Mod Source

This version of Firestorm VR Mod 6.3.3.58049 is based on the Firestorm source code at Commit 58049 (Fri, 20 Sep 2019 22:08:08). This is effectively the same as that used for the Second Life only Firestorm 6.3.2.58052. The version number difference is because of a revert that took place between commits 58049 and 58052.

With Firestorm VR Mod version 6.3.3, Peter has revised the way he injects VR capabilities into the Firestorm Viewer to make the mod easier to maintain in future and for others to repeat or adapt. The source is available from his web page at https://gsgrid.de/firestorm-vr-mod/.

Impressively, the source is written in a way that it requires only some editing in the llviewerdisplay.cpp and adding 2 files to the project. All changed are marked with ###################P373R##################### comments. Peter also included the openvr header and lib files you will need in the rar. For information about the rest of the files you will need, read how to compile Firestorm at https://wiki.firestormviewer.org/fs_compiling_firestorm

This blog post is to provide resources and access links for the Ciool VL Viewer for Second Life and OpenSim. The latest version is “Cool VL Viewer v1.26.24.1, 64 bits, Nov 23 2019 09:42:01” and supports Bakes on Mesh (BoM)Bakes on Mesh (BoM)Bakes on Mesh (BoM). It is developed by Henri Beauchamp (SL avatar name), creator of the “Cool Products” in SL.

Information and download links at:

• http://sldev.free.fr
• Discussion Forum at http://sldev.free.fr/forum/

OpenSimulator 0.9.1.0 is now formally released as the latest stable version of the open source virtual world platform. See http://opensimulator.org/