FBX the winner for SL 2.0?

Posted by Chic Aeon on Friday, January 9, 2015

I have to admit that I haven't been keeping up with SL 2.0 announcements of late. I have been spending a lot of time in OpenSim in Back To The Land mode.  But this bit of news got my attention today.

SL 2 will only use Autodesk FBX formatted files, the scripts are based on Javascript and it will run in Chrome
This wasn't an official Linden Lab press release by any means but it came within a very long, well written response to a question about mesh versus prims. I could not find any official disclosure that mirrors his statement and have asked the writer to site his source. No reply as yet, but I will update this page as I get more information.

{later note: The poster wrote back stating that this was (I am paraphrasing) an educated assumption based on High Fedelity (see the comments to this post just now up) and Unity. 

Looking up the poster I found someone with many hundreds of followers who is in both SL and OS and has lots of techiness in his portfolio along with mesh building -- a perfect candidate for an invitation to test the new platform.

So for me, and for now, and until I hear differently -- this statement seems to be a lapse in that non-disclosure-agreement, most likely brought on by the siren song of the creative writing muse. I go there too. I am personally treating it as that; you can make your own decision.

Recently I have downloaded some mesh files for personal use on my land in OpenSim. I found that some converted well from their native format and others not well at all. Hopefully this won't be an issue for builders.

IF this intel is correct, it puts the new platform in the Cloud Party camp (different tech undoubtedly but still browser based as we already suspected).  The rules were very different there so it is likely that designers will need to think differently.  Hopefully many of them are over there now working on their skills to make a beautiful world for the first arrivals.



This entry was posted on Friday, January 9, 2015 at 10:30 AM. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response.

  1. gravatar

    # by Inara Pey - January 9, 2015 at 12:43 PM

    Speaking as a High Fidelity alpha user, that actually sounds like it has been in part lifted from High Fidelity.

    - High Fi uses FBX (only, at present)
    - The entire UI and tool kit is JavaScript (although Chrome isn't required).

    A lot of people are still under the impression that because Philip Rosedale is running High Fidelity, by extension, Hi Fi "is" the Lab's next gen platform. Which, as we know, is not the case.

    So far as I'm aware, there is no external testing of the Lab's new platform going on, simply because the Lab only recently got to the stage f internal demos at the end of last year, and that was somewhat behind schedule.

    My sources for this latter statement are Ebbe Altberg, plus a number of LL staff who have witness the demos (but will say not more).

  2. gravatar

    # by Chic Aeon - January 9, 2015 at 2:23 PM

    Thanks for the input. I published it write when I was adding the answer to my "source" question.

    I do know (unless they are telling a lie) that at least one clothing designer has applied and signed a NDA. Whether they are over there or not, I of course have no info. Suspect yours -- close to the source -- is correct. :D


    Thanks for your comment.

  3. gravatar

    # by Chic Aeon - January 9, 2015 at 2:26 PM

    Also, like you I was going by the "we are behind schedule" comment from Ebbe and actually surprised to hear that testing might be going on.

    It WOULD be good if people stated their ideas as opinions or guesses rather than facts -- and then again, we don't KNOW that this wasn't a misspoken bit of info that we shouldn't know yet.

    Time will tell.

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