access to the outside

I would really like to be able to access, perhaps a database, or the internet, or maybe even an exterior program.... I can think of all kinds of things that we could do with that kind of flexability.

We could program bots, you know, perhaps to talk to you, or to "pull" information out for you, facts, like the librarian in snowcrash??? How about serving up textures from the net so that SL sims don't have to store that information?

How about serving web pages from an in-house browser? we could order pizza delivery without ever leaving SL (except to go to the front door???? Pay our bills online... LOL Hey, we all want to spend more time in our second life than the first, why not make it so we can take care of first life issues while in our second life???

Ok, I'm getting wierd, but I can see this as being a home away from home, when you're traveling. I mean, you can have your lap-top with everything you need to do your business while on a trip, but can you get a hug from your kids or a kiss from your wife before going to bed? NO! But in SL you could......... LOL

Great idea Ingie!

I think they have to proceed with caution however. Direct links to the entire Internet from within SL have all sorts of potential for both good things, and bad things.

The most obvious way to implement this would be to allow the underlying (sp?) operating system to get control when some special URL sequence is encountered. Unfortunately, Windows is known for some sloopy handling of this mechanism as well as all sorts of undocumented cases that usually get discovered first by virus writers.

I'd love to see something that allowed (for example) a web page to show up rendered on a surface, complete with clickable links. I've yet to see this implemented in any 3D-VR, but I'm sure it will be eventually. The trick would be to make sure that something that might hang your web browser doesn't also hang your entire 3D-VR environment.

PS: I checked out your sig when I saw the reference to Blender. I dabbled with it before it got made Open Source again but I need to give it another try. I'll certainly be trying your tutorials, and also the infon on Gimp. I'd love to see a simple tutorial on making textures with transparencies (for SL) using Gimp.

You need to fix your URL though. You left out the dot after www

http://www.ingiebee.com

I have a tutorial that I think is long winded, like me, lol

Anyway, it's not really linked but it's still there:

http://www.ingiebee.com/Face%20Tut.htm

it makes a face with eyes that you can switch out because there is a transparency. The picture is then saved in tga format.

Hey, I'll try to do a nice simple one here, I'll post when I'm done, but I may want to go into SL first tonight...

Love Ingie

Great!

I'll try this.

(don't forget to fix your sig)

Ok, I made another tutorial, and I plan on doing an in-world class in a week and a half or so... hope you can come.

Try this out, I'll do more in the future too.

Love Ingie

http://www.ingiebee.com/SL/Tutorial_1/A_GIMP_Tutorial.htm

I had no idea, LOL, I just noticed what you ment! Thanks!

BTW I added two more sections to that tutorial, it's more direct, and a little better than the face one

Love Ingie