Nikon unveils D800 DSLR and yes, its pixel count is enormous.

A 36 MP sensor  wow you need  plenty of storage space for your photos. The D800 looks like a great  camera  but so it should  at $3300.00. That was about the price for the D300 a few years back and it has proven  the best digital camera I have  had so far. 36 MP is good to have when you want to crop and still keep sharpness to your photo. The D800 is an impressive camera

As you can see from resent videos the work in The Lost Castle is progressing, we keep on finding more and more interesting infomation about Mori Tadamasa’s original Castle at Tsuyama City Japan. This means additional fun, work and gives us more insight in to how the lifestyle might have been not only in the inner Castle area but also in the township forming around the Castle it self (today’s Tsuyama City).
Miyoko is creating that traditional Japanese feel to the project by adding animations, textures clothing and designs. We still have many rough edges to smooth we hope to be part of the Hypergrid soon We like you to visit us then and explore The Lost Castle. Vivox voice is enabled in The Lost Castle so you can chat by voice if you so like. Until then have fun.

Additions to “The Lost Castle”, We have added a few sims to the west of the Castle town . They will be home to the township that is outside the  Castle moat. Miyoko’s 5 level Temple is part of what will happen outside the original Castle town. This is the first video I have attempted with Nirans Viewer I still have a lot of tweaking to do but I like Nirans . This is a Diva distro, at the moment it is not a megaregion setup  but  I hope that will be the end result. It is run locally  and has 26 regions at the moment the final product will be somewhere between 25 to 30 regions. The dense building is in the Castle town inside the moat most of that is mesh.  Further out towards the edges on the  a north side  will be mostly forest, west farms and rice fields,  south  and east  outer township  and farms South also has the mountain-range waterfall and mill. We are experimenting with  mesh and a combination of mesh sculpties and prims over all it works really well. However the problems with physical shape for mesh is still bothering us I hope we will solve that  asap. This is a short clip to show the Temple and  two farm houses and what can be done with Nirans viewer.

“The Lost Castle” sets the scene of Japan early 1600. It took 13 years to build. The Castle survived  for many years however was partly destroyed by fire in 1809 then later broken up in 1875. Today only one building (reconstructed) stands together with the stone foundations that many other buildings once rested upon. With the help of  Opensim, mesh, sculpties, prims, “Miyoko Solo” and “Honey” we are digitally reconstructing “The Lost Castle”  We plan to have the project open in early 2012, before that  I wanted you to know what we are working on and give a short preview to show our work in progress. picasa album photos

The Lost Castle

The holy grail as it seems is to have everything happening in the browser. I agree with this because it is where we spend a lot of our time and most of us know how to use it and we are comfortable with our browser. Plugin to browsers give the browsers more horsepower but WebGl super-charges it. I was playing with WebGl water by Evan Wallace mesmerised by gravity, light, reflections and waves when something caught my eye, I had Fraps video capture program running in the background and it was telling me it was ready for action in Chrome browser? So I started to record my play and you can see the result below. I have noticed that Fraps will work on some websites and in some web apps. Yes I am a fan of Fraps so it really made my day. Now WebGL is not working in all browsers It works in Chrome , Firefox and Safari I think you have to enable WebGL in Safari before it works. Have a look at what Evan Wallace is doing the WebGL water is just fantastic.

Almost a week in to testing mesh @Troppo SL.

Mesh is by far the most complex change I have seen during my stay in SL, it is an exciting change. Is is good or bad?  I think it is for you to experience and for you to make up your own mind how, what and if you want to use mesh. If mesh can live together with prims and sculpted items in harmony all is well and I guess this exactly what Linden Lab is trying to do.

I don’t think that is an easy task, especially if at the same time you are trying to make it in a business like manner.

What is this going to cost?  There is added cost to include mesh.  I am not including the cost for software that you might need to create the mesh. You pay for uploading the mesh in the same way you pay for uploading textures and photos. The price for uploading varies on the complexity of the mesh.  As an example the Lion and Tiger (in the clip below) cost between $L150 to $SL200 to upload, the prim count for each is around 180 prims.

The texture for mesh can be as complex as the mesh itself or it can be simple what is right for one not necessarily so for the next and  the ordinary cost for uploading texture  applies.

How will this affect the performance of SL and Opensim?  Well I don’t know but I suspect that as long as we stay within the old prim count rules we should not see much difference. Adding a bit of mesh to Troppo Island has made no impact but we have not added lot of mesh so time will tell.  When you have a mix of prims .sculpties and mesh and try to determine what effects what performance wise, I am glad I don’t have to work it out. I have no doubt that the quality of mesh can be really good and  can be superior to what we had before. However prims and  sculpties are easier to build with. Lets not get too involved or technical,  lets us test more and get more knowledge, meanwhile here is a short clip to show mesh sculpties and prims living together in harmony:-). Thank you to Linden Lab for giving us the opportunity to participate.

After the disasters Japan has had this year  it was nice to see Japan women s  football team winning  the World Cup in Germany. I hope that win  can be a turning point and that the  Japanese people can start to feel a bit more relaxed in what has been a horrific start to this year for them.

This MOVIE is composed of a lot of Art Works & messages from Virtual world(Scond Life),
to Japanese people who has been affected by the dreadful disaster.

More good news from OpenSim late last week, Diva precented an upgrade of her popular Diva Distro a D2. I upgraded Troppo Club on Saturday and was tweaking settings most of the weekend. Impressed? You bet!!  Then a small D2 update Monday clearing some misconfiguration and all of a sudden it all fell in to place. This is really a huge step forward for OpenSim I only mention a few what I feel are major improvements named in no particular order of importance.

Coalesced items: Yes works fine.

I must admit I haven’t tried with lots of prims. I found out tho that in Megaregions it might be best to stick to the root region with other words what happens to me in subregions is all prims end up in one spot. I can understand why and as long as you keep that in mind no big deal. Btw this is of cause also what happens when you use the “Builders Buddy” in  megaregions.

A Builders Buddy work around:  Use “Holo Emitter”  prims are added in relation to a base prim and not toaa posittion in the region http://www.troymcconaghy.com/blog/2007/9/13/open-source-holo-emitter-for-sl.html

good luck.

Media on a Prim:  Works fine for me this is great news.

Mesh: Is it possible to upload mesh Yes!

Remember there are lots of different meshes. You need a  Collada .dae file,  having said that not all Collada files work either not for me at least but I am no expert in mesh or Collada. I went to SL wiki and downloaded my favourite car, I know this works and beside that it is a brilliant design and a pure pleasure to look at. When I can upload this car and all works fine I know I am on the right track. Google warehouse is an interesting place you can find almost anything and lots of Collada files,  you will see some fantastic designs.

The Car

What is this?  Well it is not yellow so not a submarine but maybe it could be…. what ever, it is charming,  a good test, a large file.

The AirSub?

Mesh is not as easy as it first looks, it is however a gigantic step forward. Will it be disruptive? Yes I am sure it will be……..

Hypergrid:  Is Hypergrid working? Yes it is!

This is most probably the crux of the matter this is how we can communicate and exchange ideas and items between grids, stand-alone or what ever we like to call them. Without Hypergrid we will be building more and more walled gardens of Virtual Worlds I don’t think that is a good idea.

This version is not compatible with earlier models, as a matter of fact if you have old hg addresses in your database that can be a problem. Diva as a tip says delete the old addresses, delete direct from the database. I used wifi logged in as admin and went to link regions and deleted them one by one, might not be the way to go but it is working for me so far. I only had about ten or so links, so was easy to do. If you have 1004 might be a bit different  A milestone week for OpenSim an amazing Group of people producing a first class product with a minimum of fuzz.  Thank you an outstanding and wonderful effort.