A Second Chance for Second Life

I haven't been using Second Life much recently, but I wasn't sure why. Now I know. I've just tried the WindLight First Look Viewer, and its atmospheric effects - sunsets, clouds, water etc. - really transform the Second Life experience.

The problem before, I now see, was that Second Life was just too lacking in visual richness. With the WindLight First Look Viewer, Second Life is closer to real life in the sense that you can now just be, and watch the world go by. Time to give Second Life a second chance, perhaps.

Second Life Open Sources the Sky (and Clouds)

Linden Lab continues to do good in acquiring and open-sourcing cool technology:

Linden Lab, creator of 3D virtual world Second Life, today 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.

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Following the acquisition of this technology, Linden Lab will integrate Windward Mark’s WindLight into the Second Life Viewer and will open source the code under a General Public License agreement. The Viewer (available here: http://secondlife.com/community/downloads.php) featuring WindLight will be immediately available for PCs, with a Mac version to follow.

“This is a great example of the benefits of an open-source model,” said Cory Ondrejka, CTO of Linden Lab. “Our core development team is tightly focused on improving the Second Life experience in terms of stability and scalability, but open sourcing has enabled external developers to integrate additional enhancements that are also hugely valuable; WindLight is one of these. We’re excited to bring this technology to Second Life and pleased to have such a talented team of developers join Linden Lab.”