Better Clouds, Wind Coming to Second Life
Duncan Riley
18 comments »
Linden Lab, the company behind Second Life, has announced the acquisition of graphics technology from Windward Mark Interactive. Linden Lab will acquire WindLight, an advanced atmospheric rendering technology; Nimble, a realistic 3D cloud simulator; and associated intellectual property and interests.
Once the acquisition is complete, Linden Lab plans to open source the technology and integrate it into Second Life, bringing a new level of realism to the Second Life metaverse.
WindLight uses algorithms that imitate the ways in which light is affected by real-world atmospheric factors like dust and moisture, enabling the nuances of sunlight, clouds, water and weather to be accurately simulated in real-time. Nimble uses advanced physics models to realistically simulate clouds.
Alliance, an online game developed by Windward Mark Interactive does not form part of the acquisition.
original image credit Tim Bray
Here is a link to some of their Video downloads, pretty impressive…
http://www.windwardmark.net/do.....age=videos
I guess I am missing the significance of this. High quality graphics in video games is expected and the smallest details are given high praise. But in Second Life, are they going to make the company that much more successful? I doubt it. I can’t see many people thinking ‘wow, look at that cloud, I must join’.
Did anyone see on the NBC Nightly News piece on churches in Second Life? I thought it was going well until they showed the non-human characters, especially the middle-aged guy that’s a shorts-wearing cheetah who says that this is the only church he’s felt accepted in. That has to hurt. I know that virtually, anyone can be anyone/anything but that just looked silly.
I guess they didn’t read the 3 rules for virtual world developers b4 inking this deal:
http://yoick.tv/?p=396
Whizzbangery, indeed!
Clouds.
How is that going to generate people’s interest and make money on cloud technology?
If you haven’t seen clouds for years.
Stop playing PC.
Go out smell the real air!!!
Hey, the guys at Second Life farted yesterday. Is that news too? I rely on TC for a bunch of breaking tech news. This is not news. Enough about SL.
Oh wait, I see now. As soon as I posted that comment, I saw the SL ad. Way to help out your blogger cred.
Sigh. I think if you took a survey of what graphics need to be improved in SL I strongly doubt the answer would be the sky.
One look at the scary, amateurish Amish clown in the white T-shirt of those pictures might give you a clue as to what I’m talking about…
Well,
It’s just a part of making the Second Life more First Life (realistic) i guess, to showcase it as a Good Investment.?? whatever!!
Erm. OK. So clouds.
Will that stop people from losing money in what might be a flawed land sale system? No… Will it make SecondVoice more attractive because people can talk about clouds? No… Will it deal with a lack of zoning on mainland? No…
However, it might be interesting to see how much this affects present builds in SL.
Clouds…
Clouds…
Clouds…
Duncan. Are you into drugs?
Jeff
until you pointed it out I didn’t even see the ad, and from what I can make of it it’s for a PR firm that works for SL or something like that, 110% promise you that there is no editorial interference, I have zero involvement in that side of things and I’ve never been asked to positively review a sponsors product.
Commenter No 10, no comment. People like SL, I don’t mind it myself however if you read my review on Entropia Universe you’ll see that I can look at SL objectively. The post is simply the facts, indeed I well and truly copped it when I made fun of SL previously, once bitten, twice shy…can’t please everyone.
Great… as if their cruddy graphics engine wasn’t embarassingly slow enough already.
Still, I guess it’s cheaper to simply add jazzy effects like this than to actually bother to write decent software in the first place.
Great, now Second Life will be even slower. Ugh.
Markedup : You would be doing good if ; in all your lifes work.. you made something that did half as well as SL has …
- yeah I saw the ad too - But I think the real news is the open source fact… buying a company to make them open source is an idea, an approach not thought of before … a year or so ago
@ 13: My thoughts exactly. Secondlife is slow enough as it is. They should fix their performance issues first.