#opensim

[liftedpixel]

time for hypergrid safari

[jojomanda]

Stark Dystopia on OpenSim. An abandoned island with much to explore. If you want to just walk around and look, or RP, this is the place for you. Located at Stark Dystopia on Zetaworlds/Opensim

[avatarlife]

Guess the sim from AvatarLife.com ?? Comment

[faithfromund]

(via https://www.flickr.com/photos/faith_fromund/53455507723)

[siobhanmuirromance]

Nara Malone and I were visiting with a unicorn lately while we worked on our upcoming OpenSim Community Conference project

[teslakuhn]

Thanks for the Support

I was successful to move my domain and page with another provider. Hosting a contest for anyone interested in strategically placing themself at my 3D game room. https://patreon.com/teslakuhn

[focusmagazine]

Midjourney Woman by Angela Thespian - FOCUS Magazine Via Flickr: I'm not sure how much credit I should take for these! Other than I'm getting better with prompts!

[starryskydancer]

Starry's guide to reducing graphical weight in Opensim (avatar version)

Warning: This essay is not finished - it's posted for the purpose of recieving criticism

This essay covers changes that you can make your avatar to reduce it's graphical weight

Graphical weight adds up, and seemingly small things can cause graphical lag -it makes a big difference when it's cumulative. I believe that my instructions will have very noticeable results if everybody follows them.

Graphical lag and long download times are not the same thing, but long downoad times are often caused by graphically complex objects, so the issues are treated as the same for the purpose of this essay.

~~Starry's guide to reducing graphical lag (and download times) : Avatar parts and clothes~~

Keep your avatar's render-cost down by being careful with the objects and textures that you wear.

When objects are rezzed, you can right click and select "edit" and then "more info" in order to see this display cost.

I'm not sure I can really explain an "ideal" render cost, rather, I would suggest the kind of graphical fidelity that you would expect of of a PS2 or Wii game.

How much is ideal depends on how high resolution you want your object to be, and how much graphical weight (potential for lag) and file size (potential for long download times) you're willing to subject on yourself and others.

Beware that other people may have lower spec computers or lower download speeds than you do.

This may take some practice; removing parts from avatars could cause them to malfunction, but is worthwhile when it works.

Get rid of unnecessary hidden prims

There are often hidden prims inside of things, these have a few uses, such as containing a script or making the object easier to position. Sometimes they only exist as place to put the creator's logo.

Hidden objects like these are drawn by your graphics card and yet are not seen by anyone.

It's good idea to keep the original unaltered object just in case you break something, but wearing the object with this hidden prim or keeping it in your region is usually unnecessary.

Scripts can sometimes be removed from the hidden object, placed inside the visible one and used that way.

Scripts are sometimes unnecessary once they have been applied and can be removed before wearing your object or before leaving the object in your sim.

If the hidden prim was used to facilitate easier placement or rotation of an object, it may be worthwhile to remove the hidden prim and then position it anyway. (this won't be realistic for some things.)

Take Note! If you remove the root object from an object, this will change it's name to whatever it's new root object is. This will also unassociate your object with whatever inventory folder it came from.

To remedy this, I name the modified object the name of the folder. Once I have "taken" my object, this lets me isolate the both of them by name when making an inventory search - this makes it easy to drop the modified object back into the folder.

Mesh objects- when made correctly, are less graphically heavy than their sculpted equivalent.

2. Use smaller textures

Creators often use textures that are too large for the object; try replacing large textures with smaller ones (make a copy of your object first.)

1014px is (in my opinion) too large for mesh shoes or gloves or hats or anything smaller.

3. Consider repeating or tiling textures.

Some items can be made to have repeating patterns that are represented by using the same texture over and over again, allowing you to cover large objects with smaller textures.

This is one method that may require you to make your object from scratch.

4. You don't always have to wear your entire mesh body

If you're wearing full-length mesh trousers, is it really worth wearing your mesh legs underneath?

If nobody's going to see your legs, it's worth considering taking them off!

Make a copy of your mesh body and rez it in a sandbox, and then unlink the parts that will be covered by your clothes.

"Take" the rest of the mesh body and apply it to your avatar with your clothes.

It's a good idea to make your original mesh body into one "outfit" in your outfit gallery, and make the new body with missing parts (and clothes covering it up) into a different outfit.

Nobody will ever know you have no legs, and you'll decrease your render cost considerably!

Take note: it's simply a good idea to not wear objects that you are not currently using, such as genitals when you are clothed, or HUDs that you don't need.

5. If your avatar has mesh tattoo layers or clothing layers, remove them.

Some avatars have a second or third "skin" which was used to apply tattoos or clothes over the top of the bare body; with the implementation of Bake-on-mesh, I believe this to be an outdated feature.

Clothing can now be applied to mesh bodies in similar fashion to how they're applied to system avatars and don't need extra clothing layers.

6. Skintight clothing? Paint it on.

A good pair of knickers or tights (pantyhose) is skintight, and I personally think that using models for them is overkill- adding too many polygons and texture information to a scene for the amount of detail that is needed.

Seek out your underwear and tights in the form of system clothing or BOM clothing, rather than models. It's probably a good idea to include swimsuits and leggings in this category.

7. Minimise graphical weight caused by alphas.

Materials that use the alpha channel are considerably more laggy than materials without them, and the issues is even worse when you use blended alphas instead of clipped alphas.

You can reduce the cost of your avatar and other items considerably by changing the alpha mode of it's materials from blended alphas to clipped alphas.

Some textures are opaque and were uploaded with an alpha channel by accident- these should be displayed on the "none" alpha mode.

This will also prevent the object from being subjected to alpha sorting problems.

You will find this setting by right-clicking the object in question and selecting "edit", and then selecting the "texture" page - the alpha setting is next to the box with the texture shown in it.

You may want to navigate to the checkboxes and enable "select face" or "edit linked" to select specific parts of the item for editing.

Some textures will be unnattractive on a clipped alpha mode.

If you take an interest in designing textures yourself, then it may be a good idea to design textures to use with clipped alphas rather than blended ones.

8. Optimise your models.

If you are a 3D modeller, I request that you be careful to optimise your models and their texture usage properly.

It's discouraged that you make models and textures at the level of resolution expected of a modern Triple A game.

Opensim requires users to download model and texture files on the fly, which means you could clog up someone's bandwidth or use up the amount of files their internet service provider allows them to download by being in their vicinity.

In my opinion, the kind of graphical fidelity expected in a Wii game is the maximum limit of what is realistic for people in Opensim to download and display.

It is also my belief that most people here have older or lower spec machines- I simply do not think Opensim attracts the triple-A gamer type.

Well-made Level-Of-Detail models are important for your object to display properly at a distance- without adding unneccisary weight to a scene.

I may link a tutorial that I find appropriate in the future. I have to find one first.

For people who don't make their own avatar models, be careful when selecting your avatar- many mesh avatars are higher poly than they should be.

It is true that we have to compromise with the content that already exists on Opensim. I believe that my own base avatar- which I am unwilling to part with, is higher poly than it should be, I compromise by wearing no mesh clothing.

[amorecrea]

This is an editted form (it is shorter than what the finished product will be.) For mor information visit https://wopoli.com/

[liftedpixel]

Want to see something different? I'm streaming Hypergrid Safari to YouTube:

🟦 #jessicapixel 🦒 #hgsafari #opensim

[jojomanda]

Come explore the underwater city. Dont forget to grab the free scuba gear at tunnel entrance and explore ruins and marine mammals! The Stark sims are at zetaworlds on Opensim. https://zetaworlds.com/

[ai-news]

I’ve been interacting with OpenSim bots — or NPCs — for nearly as long as I’ve been covering OpenSim. Which is about 15 years. (Oh my God, has it really been that long?) I’ve been hoping that OpenSim writing would become by day job, but, unfortunate #AI #ML #Automation

[metaverse-ar-vr]

OpenSim active users are up by 1,039 this month, reaching a new all-time high of 48,234. The total land area also increased, by 489 standard region equivalents. However, the total number of registered users on all the public OpenSim grids fell by mo #AR #VR #Metaverse

[siobhanmuirromance]

So the Nookettes from Nara's Nook did a thing yesterday at the OpenSimulator Community Conference. We're talking about 3D storytelling. If you want to see our talk: Nara's Nook: Our 10 Year Adventure in 3D Storytelling, it starts at 3 hrs 33 minutes in the recorded stream.

[swissforextrading]

Scientists unveil a DIY structured-illumination microscope

04.03.24 - Scientists at EPFL have published a guide to building an add-on that turns a standard optical microscope into an instrument capable of producing super resolution, 3D images of cells, organoids, and embryos. For hundreds of years, the optical microscope was the only tool available to scientists wanting to study the movement of cells, bacteria and yeast. But the diffraction of light made it impossible to observe objects at resolutions of less than 100 nm because the resulting images were too blurry to be of any use. This physical limit – known as the diffraction barrier – was finally overcome around 15 years ago with the development of super-resolution microscopy, allowing scientists to peer deep inside living specimens, study the behavior of organelles, and observe how cells interact with viruses, proteins and drug molecules. One of these new methods, known as structured illumination microscopy (SIM), is highly prized by researchers because it produces high-resolution and high-contrast images with low photon exposure. Despite the advent of nanometer-resolution electron microscopes, optical imaging continues to play a key role in life-science research: it offers greater flexibility in terms of equipment and lets scientists observe live samples in normal developmental conditions. However, cost and availability constraints mean that SIM imaging remains out of reach for many. To get around this problem, scientists at EPFL’s Laboratory for Bio- and Nano-Instrumentation (LBNI) within the Interfaculty Institute for Bioengineering (IBI) at EPFL’s School of Engineering (STI), have developed a way to transform a standard optical microscope into a high-resolution device using inexpensive, commercially available components. The team has published a detailed how-to guide in open-access format, along with a series of video tutorials. A compact microscope that non-experts can build and use SIM overcomes the diffraction barrier by reconstructing the areas of high spatial frequencies that normally appear blurred when viewed through a conventional optical microscope. This method offers a twofold increase in resolution, enabling scientists to observe details as small as 100 nm across. SIM works by projecting a standard illumination pattern, such as a grid, onto a sample. Images, captured with different illumination patterns, are then processed by an algorithm to produce a higher-resolution reconstruction, harnessing the moiré effect. Back in 2019, PhD student Mélanie Hannebelle needed a microscope with precisely this capability for her research. That’s when she came up with the idea of building one herself for the LBNI. Other labs had already made similar devices, but they were complex, cumbersome, and difficult to reproduce. Hannebelle wanted to design a more compact alternative that non-experts could build and use and that didn’t require expensive upkeep and maintenance. “We sourced electronic components of the kind used to make the video projectors you see in classrooms,” says Georg Fantner, a professor at LBNI. “We altered and arranged them, so they were capable of projecting a light pattern onto a sample.” Illustration of the optical sectioning effect when using the openSIM. On the wide field image, out of focus light is noticeable in the image; on the openSIM image, only the part of the sample directly in focus is visible. Sample: fixed mouse intestinal organoids labeled for E-cadherin. © 2024 LBNI Tested and approved by life-sciences researchers The LBNI team wanted to find out whether their new microscope was a viable and practicable alternative. So they asked other labs to test it. They teamed up with the groups of Prof. Andrew Oates, Prof. Matthias Lutolf, Prof. John McKinney and Prof. Aleksandra Radenovic to test the instrument on real world research samples. “Our colleagues asked us questions, told us about their needs, and shared their samples with us,” says Prof. Fantner. “We were… http://actu.epfl.ch/news/scientists-unveil-a-diy-structured-illumination-mi (Source of the original content)