Because I have the attention span of a magpie, I started yet another new construct. Like the dungeon it's a gaming map scaled up to livesize and expanded into three dimensions: the spaceport bar map that came with the GURPS Traveller GM screen. Just the walls so far, and with some copying and pasting I added shops on either side and some corridor ( Read more... )

Up until now all the 3d modeling I've posted has been in the default gray color. In addition to being unrealistic and flat, it also tends to wash out details. So today I went through some beginner's tutorials on how to use colors and textures in Blender, which have heretofor been a complete mystery to me. The results are pretty striking:


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Today, acting on a whim, I spent 4 hours modeling the first room of the sample dungeon from the AD&D 1e Dungeon Masters Guide. Scaled up to life size. As with my earlier castle project (that I need to get back to), the idea is to create a virtual reality environment that I will someday be able to walk around inside of, as if it were real.


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The basic idea of a passive solar home design is that you build the floor and main walls out of something with a high thermal mass, like stone, brick, cement―cinder blocks are a perfectly cromulent low-cost option―-and then put all the windows on the south face. Light hits the front windows and the thermal mass aborbs the energy and radiates it, ( Read more... )

Lottery's up to $400 million so I bought a ticket. Worth a shot, right? Back when I was homeless I dreamed about winning the lottery a lot, as I saw it the only way I'd ever get off the street. And of course I thought of what I'd do with all the leftover millions after my own needs were seen to. Buy John and Mel a new mold-free house, pay off Liv ( Read more... )

I've been working on a number of Blender projects in the past few weeks  that I haven't yet blogged about here. But this is a new one. A few days ago I was remembering the castle (well, fortified manor house) I always wanted to make out of Hirst Arts blocks, someday, when I have the money to spare for all the molds and where tf would I put it when ( Read more... )

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(Yeah, I'm still referring to "the metaverse" as the net, because it still feels like we're living in the backstory of Cyberpunk 2020)

My snide comment at the beginning of the previous post was wrong. "Metaverse" is a buzzword in VR circles, among industry professionals at least, and has been since at least 2018. And it's basically a vision for the VR future of the internet that sounds pretty much EXACTLY like the Net from Cyberpunk 2013 (pub. 1988) or the Matrix from Shadowrun ( ( Read more... )

"You may have heard of the Metaverse, it's become a buzzword." Lol no it hasn't, but we understand you can't say "OASIS" without getting sued. But holy crap does it sound like OASIS is nigh. A few years earlier than the movie (and novel?) predicted too.

So yeah, been a crazy few days in VR and DCS World news. In a good way, and by "good" I  mean ( Read more... )