(Click on a thumbnail to see a larger version.)

Well, good news -- the "Heads-Up Display" (or HUD) version of our magazine is now finished and ready for your in-game rezzing pleasure. For those who don't know, this is a burgeoning but still bug-riddled field in SL, is the attempt to publish full-length books and magazines there, in a way so that they can actually be read easily while still logged into the grid. The system I use, for example, is made by a fine company (unaffiliated with ITG) called ThinC; as you can see in the above photos, what it ends up spitting out is an actual book-looking object that you can rez on your own space, and then click on with your mouse to read page by page like a physical book. Then in the last of those photos, you can see why these particular objects are called 'heads-up displays;' because if you wear it instead of rezzing it on the ground, the display will pop up on your screen in flat two-dimensional form, with you still able to click on it with your mouse to move from page to page.

Some people say that such experiments are the future of Second Life, especially in the near future when Linden Lab follows through on their promise to let people texture interactive HTML pages onto prims. Personally, though, it's difficult for me to get excited about the HUD format, because of the limitations involved; why go through all that extra trouble, I keep thinking, for a version that's not as good as a PDF or Word file, when you've got Acrobat and Word right there on the same computer you're on for SL? It's certainly true that the rendering technology isn't nearly as sophisticated as something like a PDF document; that in these HUD versions, what you're basically doing is taking a photograph of each page beforehand, then importing them as simple low-quality .jpgs. As you can see, this means that the layout has to blown up to twice the size of the PDF version to even be legible in the HUD version, three times the size to be easy to read; if I had rendered our entire first issue this way, it would've been over 120 pages long, and who wants to sit around in a videogame and read a 120-page document?

For now, then, what I'm doing is merely a miniature version of the magazine for in-game consumption; two articles only, out of the nine published in the full version, which even by themselves comes out to a 16-page publication in the HUD version. I have a little kiosk at the ITG headquarters for it, in fact, which looks like a wall poster; simply click on it while there to get a free copy sent to your inventory, as well as a landmark to our headquarters and a notecard explaining more about ITG. That kiosk, by the way, is copyable as well; any business who takes a copy and displays it at their own store, in fact, gets a free eighth-page advertisement in our next issue. (Have you now done so and want to get it confirmed? Drop me a line at inthegrid [at] gmail.com and send the address, and I'll come check it out the next time I'm in the grid.)

Anyway, don't forget that we're having a party tonight to celebrate! It's at 7pm SLT; so in other words, 8pm in Denver, 9pm in Chicago, 10pm in New York, and an unfortunate 3am in London. I finally figured out how to get music URLs to work, so we'll be having some live ambient and drum-n-bass coming in via internet radio; and of course a chance to tour the grounds, check out our underwater lounge, get into intriguing conversations with fellow readers, and even go scuba diving or sailing around the area if you want. Then near the end of the party (8:30 or so), we'll be having a mini-fashion show in ITG's second-floor ballroom; it'll feature the clothing of Szentasha Salome, being modeled by the ladies of xXx Fantasy Escorts (one of ITG's advertisers). XFE, then, will be having a little party of their own, over at their own space after ours; we're all invited, although we're warned that "copious nudity might be involved."

By the way, I've made a pretty big change to the ITG seafloor lounge this week; I've replaced the walls with ones that are only partly textured, so that you can see the walls from the outside but not from the inside. Coolio! And even better, it's an animated texture on the outside, so that it looks like moving water hitting against glass walls when you're scuba diving and looking in. And even better than that, the walls are semi-porous now as well, keeping water out but allowing people to walk through them; that way you can change into your diving gear right in the lounge itself, walk through the wall to start diving, then walk back in when you're finished. Holy physics-defying Metaverse, Batman!

I've made some changes to the very top of the ITG complex as well, by the way, since the last update; the railings have now been replaced with something a little more contemporary-looking, a glass conference table and some chairs added as well. I just figured, as long as this was the headquarters for a magazine and all, we better have at least one area that looked quasi-'officy...' even if that particular office, of course, sits on top of a 30-foot-high glass cube, has no walls or ceiling, and is centered around a glass table with no legs or base. Anyway, I'm happy with how it's all looking, as well as the other minor changes made this week (mostly texture swaps for more sophisticated images); I hope you'll have a chance to come by soon, either tonight for the party or another time at your leisure. All are welcome!