Welcome to the ninth Sign of the Kite (SOTK) newsletter of 2016. Remember SOTK is the shortform newsletter that keeps you up to speed with all things Kitely and OpenSim. It is written BY residents FOR residents and is neither sponsored nor endorsed by Kitely. The newsletter is also available in pdf format.
Got news of your world or group, an event, a recruitment drive, a newsworthy shop, product or promotion? Drop a brief notecard on avatars Graham Mills_2 or Dot Matrix inworld or PM Graham or Dot via the Forum. All that’s needed are 2–5 sentences with a title, URL and/or hypergrid address. All times in PDT, please, and nothing A-rated/NSFW. Copy deadline is 17:00 Wednesday for inclusion in Friday’s news.
Note that we’re currently running a fortnightly publication schedule.
Kitely update
The Big News from Kitely was the arrival of revenue sharing on the Market so that creators of multi-faceted products can split income automatically as it comes in. There’s also a 0% option for collaborators who maintain a watching brief rather than a direct interest. Discussion of the revenue sharing setup featured in a number of Community Meetups before the actual release (one reason to be there each Sunday) and other aspects were raised then such as the potential for sharing revenue with charitable/good causes.
In other news, Ilan is away so Graham sort-of chaired last Sunday’s meetup where we welcomed several new folk such as Giz (who has a new clothing store on the Market, Oh!Ihnen) and Skindup. Somehow discussion turned to golf (Graham blames Skindup) and Graham had fun pondering how golf could be used as a metaphor in builds or enveigled into one or more community events (a murder mystery, perhaps). Serene won the competition to be the least competitive avatar present while Ada came up with the genius idea of sandtraps that talk in a disparaging manner when brought into virtual play. Kayaker subsequently ran one of his excellent boating sessions.
The multi-grid treasure hunt remains in progress and Kitely features prominently with the largest number of regions taking part, not least due to the endeavours of Shandon and Dot but also many others besides. The hunt finishes 15th May.
Events at Freda’s Fantasy
Tuesdays 2pm PST, starting 4/26 Kitely Free Association Open Chat
This is the Tuesday chat that has been hosted most recently by Dot Matrix. Freda will host for as long as the group will have her. Please come prepared to chat in text or (if you must) in local voice. Topics will be determined as we gather week by week. The LM will take you to the front door at the main house. Come on up the stairs to find us.
Wednesdays 5pm PST, starting May 4. Beta Readings for Freda’s novel-in-progress, Ermengarde The Expansive And The Year of Long Light.
Freda (Stephanie Mesler in real life) published Ermengarde The Expansive, the chapbook, a few years ago. Now, she is finishing the first draft of a full-length Ermengarde novel. It’s ready for beta-listeners and Freda hopes you will be one of them. In that first Ermengarde book, we met a plump princess who couldn’t get her father’s respect, even when she caught a falling star with her bare hands and slew a dragon all by herself. In the novel to be shared aloud in Kitely, Ermengarde becomes Queen, marries badly, saves the world from destruction, frees an oppressed species from slavery, and frees herself of unreasonable expectations.*
Beta-readings will be held in Freda’s Fairytale cottage at the foot of her Magic Mountain. Use the LM to get to Freda’s Fantasy and then select Fairytale from the TP pad menu located at the landing.
* If you would like a free copy of the original Ermengarde The Expansive chapbook, send email to StephanieMeslerWrites@gmail,com. Put “subscribe” in the header.
HG address: grid.kitely.com:8002:Freda’s Fantasy
News from Seanchai
Seanchai continues its partnership with real-life Tacoma Little Theater in a new build themed on Russian author and dramatist Anton Chekhov. This accompanies a Chekhov-inspired RL play at the Tacoma Little Theater as well as inworld readings:
Anton’s Stories
Saturday, April 30th at 11am (Pacific)
The Love Letters of Anton Chekhov — Selections
Sunday, May 8th at 11 am (Pacific)
HG address: grid.kitely.com:8002:EXPLORESeanchai
The EXPLORE estate also contains the popular Gatsby-inspired builds.
In addition Seanchai staff will present as follows:
- Thu April 28th – Conan Phoenix on the Sword
- Conan has recently seized the bloody crown of Aquilonia.
- Tue May 3rd – Dead Man’s Chest – Pirates of the Caribbean – conclusion
- Jack Sparrow races to recover the heart of Davy Jones to avoid enslaving his soul to Jones’ service.
Hints & Tips Department
A retopologising workflow for Instant Meshes (as per the most recent issue). Some Blender chops assumed.
Inara Pey reckons QT for Windows has definitively had its day.
The Education Beat
Although post-2012 developments appear to get short shrift, there’s much of interest in a new (free!!) book Learning in Virtual Worlds: Research and Applications.
Selby Evans has an edu-focused Google calendar.
The new Journal of Virtual Studies is out and includes VWBPE 2016 Conference Proceedings!
VWBPE 2016 Conference recordings are also available
Music-on-a-prim (but not as we know it, Jim)
The latest beta of Alchemy 4.0.0 now supports 58 sec audio clips but the adventurous may be interested in generative music that plays indefinitely courtesy of flocking.js. Probably more one for the scripter/musician, flocking produces a wide range of hums, clicks and whirrs and, of course, you can have multiple active prims arranged to produce a continuously varying soundscape as your avatar navigates the world. Whether the experience is best described as harmonious or annoying would depend on taste and skill (Graham has neither in abundance). Some of the examples respond to mouse movement on the web page and work inworld although those supporting voice input stayed resolutely shtum in Graham’s inexpert hands. The major downsides to the default examples is that they must be played by clicking a button and terminate when the world closes.
Meanwhile in other virtual realities…
While the Vive and Rift are now in the hands of the fortunate few, much technology remains distinctly vaporous as far as end-users are concerned. Magic Leap continues to tease with a new video compilation for their AR headset while new kid on the block Sulon revealed their Windows 10-based untethered headset due for release “late spring”. Supporting both AR and VR with room tracking, this would be an awesome platform for OpenSim although it appears that only Unity and Unreal are supported presently. Parsimonious Graham also wonders about the price. Finally, open source High Fidelity continues to release intriguing video demos, this week of object manipulation in what was supposedly gardening using the Vive controllers although it ended with, yes, a golf swing using a somewhat unfortunate garden gnome as projectile. Ouch!
Towards a better understanding of VR development
While this may seem a trifle premature, two (potentially) useful resources emerged recently, one on the use of VR for storytelling, the other a video outlining psychological precepts for design of VR experiences (h/t Neil Canham).
Universal Campus SR
There is a widely held view that representing teaching spaces in terms of conventional (if virtual) architecture misses the point. The focus should be on the learning experience and everything else is a potential distraction. Virtual world campus builds can, however, provide useful navigational assistance as well as conveying an ethos and expectation, possibly even inspiration, akin to the best RL spaces. The virtual, however, also has the capacity to subvert convention and take the build in directions that either increase its usefulness or its affective quality.
Universal Campus is a signature build by Nebadon Izumi and used by Kitely as one of its optional OAR files loaded when a new world is created. The default build is a 2×2 var but this scale, while impressive, is not always necessary when working with smaller classes. The aim was to produce a version that would fit on a single region and contain less than 15000 prims, hence being compatible with a 10-avatar starter world. It was decided that the build would comprise the main hall and science lab in the first instance.
The build (Universal Campus SR or Single Region) is very much a work-in-progress but the current version can be downloaded for use under the same terms as the original, i.e. CC-BY-SA 3.0.
Key info
Production team: Dot Matrix, Serene Jewell, Graham Mills_2
This week’s editor: Graham Mills_2
Thanks to forum and community meetup participants for suggestions
Stay in touch with Kitely events and announcements
On the Web
Kitely Forums: https://www.kitely.com/forums/
Kitely Calendar: http://ow.ly/W2sDL
Kitely Worlds: https://www.kitely.com/search
Kitely Market newest listings: https://www.kitely.com/market?sort=date
Kitely Company blog: https://www.kitely.com/virtual-world-news/
On the Hypergrid
HYPEvents Event listings: http://hypevents.net/