Linden’s Second Life developers have just announced a decision to release Second Life client source code under the GNU GPL version 2. The impetus for the decision is a need to make Second Life more scalable and reliable. A Second Life resident who blogs at Gwyn’s Home wrote in great detail about why Linden should open up their source code back in 2005. The Linux Journal wrote an article in November, 2006 called “Why We Need an Open Source Second Life“, saying that open source software would fall behind in the development of the 3D/virtual world internet, unless something like the Second Life code were opened to the online community. Author of the article, Glyn Moody, believes that it is very important for open source programmers to develop expertise in the technology underlying virtual worlds. He thinks it likely that the next stage in the web’s evolution will “incorporate elements from three-dimensional virtual worlds”. He quotes Philip Rosedale on why more evolution toward 3D online worlds is likely: continue reading »

What cool open source stuff I have learned about since joining the luf-team Yahoo group! Reading The Millennial Project for science fiction research, as I recently blogged about, led me to the luf-team Yahoo group. It’s always nice when something cool falls into my lap without effort. So often in life, I have put a lot of effort into various endeavors, only to find that, my efforts have proven counter-productive to my current goals. When one good thing leads to another good thing effortlessly, it helps to make up for life’s little ironies. I have learned that there is actually such a thing as open source hardware! How exciting!

The Fabber, a Fabulous 3D Printer You Can Make At Home

One of the most exciting inventions I have ever encountered is the Fabber. The Fabber is a 3D printer that people can make themselves, using open source instructions and readily available materials. It can be used for rapid prototyping. Theoretically, anything that you can design in 3D modeling software, you can print using the Fabber. Think of your 3D object as being cut into hundreds of tiny slices. Each slice is printed out in 2D on top of the previous slice. That is sort of how the Fabber works. The big breakthrough is that the Fabber is in reach of the budget of garage inventors, unlike commerically sold 3D printers. continue reading »

Emmy Huang writes that, “Yes, Virginia, there will be a Flash Player 9 for Linux.”

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In “Worrying About Flash 9 for Linux“, a Linux user worries that Adobe will break another promise to the Linux community about releasing an updated version of Flash for Linux. He notes that Linux users have not been able to download an updated Flash player since Flash 7. He suspects that, just as Adobe’s promises to release Flash 8 player for Linux never materialized, their Flash 9 player promises may be equally empty.

The Sandy 1.0 beta has been released. Sandy is a Flash 3D API, and there’s nothing else like it, if you want to be able to do real-time 3D rendering in Flash. I’ve tried almost everything else that is available on the internet for Flash 3D, and nothing else goes so far beyond being a toy demo. I’ve tried out the first and the second releases of Sandy, too, and it just keeps getting better. One change in this release is that now it’s possible to draw curved faces. Another is the addition of an ASE parser. The remaining changes can be read here.

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Lately, I have been researching methods of animation, IK, physics simulations, etc. in Flash. After reading this tutorial on using verlet integration for advanced character physics, I was happy to find the Flade open source Flash dynamics engine for simulating 2D physics using verlet integration. Now I need to get it working in three dimensions.

This morning, I downloaded the beta version of Filter Forge, which is a Photoshop plugin that allows you to build your own filters. I’m getting excited about it! (It doesn’t take much, sometimes.) It’s free, and anyone can submit filters that they create to the Filter Forge online library. I could spend weeks of my life on this thing! For now, I will try to restrict myself to a couple of hours over this week-end. I learned of it via the Quasiomondo blog.

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Sandy’s Blog announced that version 0.3 of the Sandy Flash 3D API is coming soon. Some features from OpenGL may be added to it. It already incorporates some features from the Java 3D API.

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In July, the Institute for the Future of the Book will release Sophie, which they describe as “an open-source platform for creating and reading electronic books for the networked environment”. The beta release will be available even sooner, for readers of the if:book blog. It will be interesting to see what Sophie allows a writer of digital documents to do. Of course, writers for the web can always use Flash or any number of other tools, but the lower the learning curve, the better, in my opinion. Not every good writer has the time or inclination to learn XHTML, CSS, Flash, ActionScript, etc.

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If you’ve ever wanted to be able to do sophisticated real-time 3D programming in Flash, now you can. There’s now an open-source Flash 3D API called Sandy available to the Flash coding community. Currently in its second version, it’s based to an extent on the Java 3D API. Downloads, tutorials and demos – as well as news and updates – are available on Sandy’s blog.