As always I like the new installation by Cica Ghost. There are a lot of mesh stuff but good frame rate for my Oculus so it is well done.

Have no idea what it means but you can always go and see for you self.

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Sky%20Atoll/158/212/25

For some reason I wanted to go exploring today and came to a different place.

A tribute to Pink Floyd and a very different graphical sim. It is big and there are someone to love to build in his or hers own style. It was a nice walk before i lost contact with the sim. Do not know if Kitely closes the sim after a while??

Here is a link from Opensimworld if you want to visit.

http://opensimworld.com/hop/76588-Dark-Side-of-the-Rainbow

Vacation is over and it is time to start working again. I have been playing a lot of games and explored many virtual worlds. Several hours a day. I have been driving trucks, flying, solving problems in the Thalos principle and of course been to Second life almost every day.

As I see it my Oculus rift have changed everything. I do not play all games in the Oculus and I have

A new 24 screen that makes it a lot more fun. Not everybody have the tech stuff I have but I suppose the market penetration for all the good game play stuff will only be greater.

When I am looking at where 2worlds2go will go in the future I see that multiplayer and virtual worlds live on for decades but games are short range stuff. You play and often forget.

In Euro truck 2 and in Flight simulator you can produce new add-ons forever. Second life still is a market for content. The life for virtual products last a lot longer if there is a multiplayer option.

There is some confusion at the moment about what platform will be the big next thing. Sad to say Second life looks outdated and the physics is not there to do anything new. I love it and think it is great in VR but no something must be done to make it survive. Altspace VR is cool in the Oculus and some nice games is in there. High Fidelity is a good platform but with a serious lack of tools. Sansar is still a enigma.

As a artist I really hope there will be some solutions in the next 6 months. I have a few ideas around how to create a new world on the other hand I only have 10 years of work left in me. So a new platform would be great. There are game system like Unity that could be intermediate solutions. But then there is server structure and network that do not look so good.

It is all in flux. The work continues.

I wanted to write some software again but not until now i found a new project.

When i do some tower controlling on IVAO i use several different website and the Ivac software. Scratch pad on paper and several other documents just to get the planes in the air. And as Ivac 2.0 still is some time away i thought it would be nice to have a tool i can use so i do not have to use a lot of other stuff.

And this is my early alfa and it works but there are still a lot of functions and debugging to do.

I have tried to contact the IVAO software team and logostics but so far i have heard nothing so i am doing some experiments with Navigraph data and some other data i got from the net.

 

The Specs so far is.

The software pulls the active nordic planes from the net  and create a strip window as the one above.

When you click on a strip it gives you a text in a other window with the clearence to read to the pilot.

At the moment you get callsign, airline, The airport and city. (i hate when i have to say "to your destination insteed of the place the pilot fly to), and the squawk.

I want to try to let the software figure out departure and QNH and so the clearence is complete.

If you push the airline icon in this window the activity as pushback or taxi will update on the flight strip.

Next here is when you push the strip again you get the next thing to read to the pilot so you always have some support for your memory and thats a good thing when you are a newbie.

I am not planning for the software to connect to Ivac as there is a totally new client coming. When its coming?

I thought this could be a nice project meanwhile.

Thye work continues.

Today I visited two very nice builds on the hypergrid. One on the OSgrid: Waterworld film and one on Soloton-Grid:Romenna both very good builds.

Rómenna is a big build and you can walk around the streets of a ancient city and explore every corner. It is well done and impossible to run in Second life. It is just to big. There is so much to see a and more info on http://soloton.selfhost.eu/Weltraumbahnhof/05%20Kunstausstellung/14%20Romenna/14.html

Waterworld on the OSgrid is just one sim in comparison but it is nice to see what you can do if you get the chance to build what you want. Very nice and if you walk around you are soon lost. It would be easy to put a game in here. Reminds me somewhat about Fallout.

Hypergrid address : hg.osgrid.org:80:Waterworld film

These builds are both the reason why Second life have a hard time to compete. Both are made with Opensim tech and hosted with a lot less money than a SL island. High Fidelity´s idea of a self hosted hypergrid is already here.

A very nice thing is that there are more and more good builds on the hypergrid. Today i took a trip to Pompeii. I have been there a few times in RL but i think i like the virtual tour better. Some of the buildings are very well done and you get a good idea what it could have been like to live there once.

A very nice lesson in history and a greatway to show how Opensim can be used in education. Can´t wait to put my VR headset on and visit again.

There is a link on the Metropolis main island. Adress hypergrid.org:8002

When i was out exploring i found Joe Builder on the Hypergrid and he told me that he got some vehicles on his grid and big areas to drive them. Joe is a builder in all sense of the word. Lost world have big areas connected with the hypergrid.

I visited a wasteland. Drove a truck, killed some zombies or something. Visited like Jurassic park, a space station and a underwater world. I think there are much more but not everything is up all the time.

 

Joe told me he is using older Opensim and ODE and it worked good.

Hyperlink: http://lostworld-os.com:8002

Dont forget to take a tour on the Jetski.

Had some time over on my vacation to do some real gaming so I packed up the Oculus rift and got going.

First thing is that it is not easy to get games to work. There are a lot of older games that are very well done and easy make the update times for the Oculus. You can also buy new ones made for the Oculus on Steam.

Older games needs a lot of extra stuff and it is not easy to get them going. Different graphic drivers do not work with all software. Everything is alpha some things beta and every edition do not work with everything else. For me it takes a day of reading and googeling and testing to get a game to work. And I have been working in the computer business a long time.

Software to look for is VorpX, Opentrack and Flyinside for FSX.

This said. When you finally get things to work it is beyond amazing. When I did my first liftoff from the runway in Flight simulator X I screamed with joy. The feeling of flying a real plane was overwhelming.

Some of my other fav games is Test drive unlimited 2 (difficult to get working) and Euro Truck Simulator 2 (Super simple to get working. Built in support on Steam), The feeling of being there. Driving around or competing like I have done in GRID (Very difficult to get working). I just do not get how race drivers do it the amount of concentration is staggering.

I have been trying to fly on the moon in Lunar flight. A game made for the Oculus. On Steam. I am great at crashing in to things.

I have done Wow, Portal, Half life 2, Deus Ex: Human Revolution. These games are easy to get going with VorpX but the scale of thing in the games are totally off. You are in a land of giants and it feels wrong. One way of playing these games are in VorpX cinema mode. That works better. You sit in a home cinema with a giant screen in front of you for some reason that helps. Still got the 3D.

When you get over the initial movement sickness of virtual reality it is so good and you will never want to be without it again. I cant wait until the headsets come out and there will be more games developed for VR.

I have been spending two days now with the Oculus Rift and I have had a lot of fun. It have been nothing of what I did expect. For good and worse. After some experimenting I finally got it going. Not to difficult. Of course I use DK2 so not much software are ready to use. It is very new.

I have been testing games and of course Second life. And I have to say SL looks better in real immersive 3D. The Oculus screen is still to low resolution but you get the idea where virtual worlds are going in the future. I thought that rides and big landscapes would be the best but I was so wrong. Rides gets me motion sickness. When to may things move the brain just cant take it. Big landscapes do not translate very well to 3D. No it’s the small areas, houses and glades that really work the best. 3D art looks great. There is a new art form coming now me think.

And of course the avatars. That’s the best of it all. Wow what cool avatars there are out there in SL land. When you see them in the Oculus there is a big difference from the ordinary computer screen. I just had to check out the adult areas and whhooohhooo HOT stuff. Guess why many people will buy this thing.

What I would like to have in SL is a nice café where you can sit and look at people passing buy. Just like RL.

The Oculus Rift is a big thing. I did some testing of some old games but size and gameplay are really off. I had a lot of fun with Half life 2 though. It updates so fast that I did not get any motion sickness. It is still a problem but maybe DK2 will fix that.

Cant wait to visit some more places. My city on the OSgrid when it come up again and many more. Virtual worlds feels fresh again.

I find it somewhat strange when talented artists live in SL as secret. But it is also refreshing. I read about Mr. Godard at New world Notes and decided to find Mr. Godard in SL but there are almost no information on the profile and not many traces in SL.

The photos are very good and I found another fav photographer in world.

Check out the Flickr stream at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mr_godard/

Wish I could make pictures like that!

I started this simulator build some months ago and started with building a very basic setup. I wanted to use the simulator to fly on Vatsim and also do tests as my knowledge of simulator builds are basic none at all.

Now the simulator is back in my artlab for another phase of building. Just using it have increased my know how in sim building a lot.

I started out with measurements for a Airbus 320. But i fly the Flight 1 ATR72 so i soon found that it did not really work. I do my flying with an old broken joystick and a store joystick is not sensitive enough for sim flying. My landings for my VA, not so good statistics. So the Airbus is out. I have been studying hundreds of different cockpits and they are all different, even the same plane can have much different cockpits. But the basic function is the same. There are instruments, radio, navigation and engines.

I have a very small gaming company and i want to test all kinds of planes and simulators. So i want to build a multi purpose simulator. I want to one day fly the ATR and maybe a Boeing the next.

So this is what i have learned about simulator building.

Side walls. At first i did not care about them. Maybe wanted to skip them. But no they are more important than i could imagine. Because of maps and other stuff. I have had the maps in the room but that’s not very real. When the controller want me to fly BABAP 3C and i go over to the book shelves and get the maps. No book shelves in planes. I have now bought a small Android pad that i will put in the cockpit for the maps. I see that they have that in planes today. You can buy one for almost nothing today. It is useless for most things but works OK for maps. I have my Ipad for checking facebook while flying.

I will put in side walls for added realism.

Computers and wiring. The simulator runs with 3 computers. At first i just put them anywhere and that was not a good thing. Computers need upgrades wiring needs to be replaced and it was a big job every time anything needed replacement. I had to climb in and under the simulator and i have it in a very small room so to much work. I have built a lot of computers and a few big ones so i should have learned that some structure really pays off in the end. So all computers in one place. Wires marked and off the floor.

Outside views. Not as important as you would think. 80% of flying a airliner is looking at the instruments. It is very nice to have when you are taxiing on a nice scenery airport. But at FL250 not that important. And i am using FS2004 for the most of my flying. There are a lot of free scenery. I have to put it on three computers so i am not that happy about buying things. It updates really good. Smooth flying. I also own 3 copies of FSX. (did i say i have a small gaming company? No i do not use pirated software. I cant expect people to buy my stuff and then not do the same.) My computers are not the most powerful in the world so FSX got terrible update times. It looks great but i only use it for VFR flying in my Cessna. The upside is that i can see all other Vatsim traffic on all monitors thru Widetraffic. Buying more powerful computer are a project for the future. I am on a simulator budget.

Pedals, throttle and joysticks. I am going to build my own system. You need all of them for flying and i have found that you really need some sensitive stuff to make it work. My simulator is a two seater so i need a double command. At art school i did some classes in welding, those will come in handy know. I have to do further testing. Hope to come up with something good.

The overhead panel. This a problem still unsolved. It is useful. But not for the price of a touch screen and i really want buttons and gadgets. I think i will build one and the put in the different modules as i expand the simulator. I have seen that you can buy one ready made. But i want to build stuff so i will get back to this one later.

Building a simulator is a big job. And it is growing all the time. But i find the studying and learning new things really fun and relaxing. For me making art and game projects are work. Sometimes complicated and difficult. So when i want a break from it all i just go and “SAS332 request clearance for Gothenburg with information Victor.” it is as good a hobby as anything.

When I was very young we went to the family's summer home every week. On weekends you could go on a steam train.( No I am not THAT old it was a enthusiast thing). So I started to love trains.

Me outside the studio thinking about things.

A friend of the family where a part time pilot. I have spent many hours playing in the planes and hangar, and when I was about seven he let me fly a plane for the first time. I could not reach the pedals on the small Cessna but did some real steering. So I started to love planes.

I am not a train driver or pilot. life goes in its own directions but thru simulated reality I have spent hours flying all over the world and thanks to some crazy people that have built a long part of Sweden for Train simulator I have got the feel for what it could be like to drive a real train.


Now I am going skiing in one of France best downhill ski areas. I was there last year and I was tired beyond what is humanly possible. I realize that very soon I cant go skiing like that anymore. It makes me sad that one day I cant ski at all.


But maybe if I can create and develop the virtual reality I can get a feel for skiing again. I have been flying and driving trains so why not skiing. And so many other people can get the feel for all sorts of things. It is not all about slaying monsters or kill people. I think virtual can be so much more.

During my first years in Second life I met so many people that when you got to know them had all kinds of physical, sociological and psychological disabilities.

And the virtual world made their lives better. I have also met a lot of people from all over the world and found many of us think the same we just need a meeting place.


Virtual worlds can make the world in to a better more exciting place and that’s why I have made it a part of my work.

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/MetaLES/101/56/24

Another one of the new one sim builds as art.

It is very nice when a artist gets a sim to do stuff in. Maybe this one could contain some more stuff or it is the spaces that are the thing. See for your self.

 

You can now transfer your objects to your game system from Second life and Opensim.
A nice video from John Lester explained it to me today and I just tried it out.

Here is the link to John Lesters Youtube video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTlnKOYGFrk
 

My objects on Opensim conference grid.

And in my Blender.

I often go exploring when I run out of ideas for new work and Caledon is a great place to see other types of builds. It is themed and have a lot of good builders.

Just loved this lion.

Planning drawing

 

We are at the OpenSimulator Community Conference 2013. More to read at http://conference.opensimulator.org/2013/

 

The exhibition stall is already on the conference grid.

 

Looks good and it is made very low poly and a few texures to realy speed up download.

Hope to see you there.

 

The exhibition stall looks nice now so now I can do something else for a few days. Then it is sign work.

 

And it is morning once more at the dev grid. I am building the new exhibition for the Opensim conference. 2worlds2go will be there. http://conference.opensimulator.org/2013/ .

I want to do a great build and i hope i have time for it.

So lets start building!