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| Image with the 5 additional rendering effects. |
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| Image without the effects. |
|
| * AW 6.5 : new features : |
| |
| * Rendering effects added |
| |
| Options - Settings - Graphics |
Recently, Ambient Occlusion has been added as an option for rendering the 3d-scene, creating darker shades in corners and at the lower side of objects (=ambient shading).Now there are 4 additional rendering options, which you can select or deselect. |
| Depth of field / focal camera |
| Bloom (=glow edges) |
| Brighter pixels (sharpen+contrast) |
| Anti-aliasing (smoothen geometry edges) |
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 |
|
| * AW : new privacy statement |
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| As from february, AW registers your computer's operating system when logging in. This information will be used for statistical information, and for support information. Nowadays, if a citizen asks for help or support about a software problem in the AW Forum, then Activeworlds often needs to ask first for the operating system of the user , in order to analyse the problem . Sometimes Activeworlds needs also to know about your video card or other technical information. If Activeworlds has already this information, then they can start to search immediately for the solution of the problem. |
| After implementation, Chris has posted in the AWForum an article called "your gear", announcing that for 950 unique users, therer are more than 650 different systems, of which 75% are below recommendations and 20% above recommendations. |
| |
| * AW : new feature : font scale |
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| If you go to options - settings - general, you can now also use another font scale : if you choose to increase the fonts, then chat the chat window and the F9-tabs window will have larger text. (upgrade of 20 february). |
| |
| * AW : visibility update (changes) |
| |
| In the setting you can determine yourself about the visibility : Options - Settings - Performance - Visibility : |
| * Attempt to keep frames per second near : 25 fps -> you can increase this |
| * Don't let the visibility drop below : 60 meters -> you can increase this too |
| In addition, you can now check : Limit frame rate to : unlimited |
| Last year, the visibility increased from 200 to 240 meters. Increasing visibility with the .ini tweaks is not possible anymore...but : |
| If you choose now in your visibility settings for : "Float" then visibility extends to 400 meters also on "gears below recommendations". |
| The objects will load in a range of 1200 meters, even if they are out of current view. The big advantage of this, is that the objects are loading now from a larger distance when flying forward with your avatar. These new upgrade means a huge improvement in the visibilty !! |
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|
|
| * Version AW 6.5 almost completed |
| The program upgrades of AW version 6.5 are almost finished. This upgrade was necessary to make the program ready for the newest software and requirements, and operating systems of today.On 1st february, there wass a questions and answers session in the world Shalima with Chris the Pegasus, who did the program updates for version 6.5 during 1 whole year. (see calendar). |
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|
| * World building contest announced. |
| Chris (#268597) has annnounced a world building contest. which will be organized during the spring of 2019. (Announced on 20th february on the AWForum). |
| * Everyone can participate (individually or in team), but having an account of older than 1 year |
| * A p20 world (400x400meters) is offered by Activeworlds, also the ObjectPath is offered by Activeworlds. |
| * The theme is your own choice. |
| * No external links are allowed : models, textures ,media must come from the OP. |
| * The contest will last for approx. 2 months, starting in spring 2019 |
| * Goal : A world with rich features and high density content, with high performance and but avoiding lag at the same time. Show talent and skills and share know-how and experience with others |
| * Jury : there is no jury-team ; the facts will show |
| * Prizes : the winning world(s) will have a free P20 world during a full year, offered by Activeworlds. |
| |
| More details will follow soon, about how to participate and when the contest will start and end. |
| As there is no EBTS contest this year, this has been set up instead. However if someone else wants to set up a building contest, you're more then welcome and your contest will have priority. This contest is the first big contest hosting by Activeworlds since 2010. Then there was the GameFest contest event, organized by Flagg (#299024), which left Activeworlds in 2010 as a staff member. |
| * This event has been cancelled in favour of development on the upcoming versions of AW. (See forum : Teamwork - World building contest) |
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| * New from the worlds |
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| * Sinking ship in Mouxi3D |
|
| The world Mouxi3D is owned by Desgros3d (#394224) . For the last few months, he has built together with James. (#381405) a sinking ship with advanced building methods. By clicking upon a button, the ship starts to sink, and finally breaks into 2 pieces. You can read more about it on the Explore page : |
| venice3d.net/2019explore36.html |
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|
|
| * New worlds |
| |
| * Hoziron |
|
| The p30-world Hoziron is owned by Arsène (#152438) . This world existed already before (in 2016) , but has reopened now. At this moment, the world has the same content as the world Français. |
| |
| * Pandora |
| |
Pandora is owned by Starheart (#354303) and exists already for several years, but has come online again and also open to the public. Pandora is a huge world ( p240) with a big project with contributions of several builders and modelers . As some of the members have left, this project is still unfinished. The world consists of mountains and valleys with rivers, and a huge number of different exotic and fictional plants and trees have been used. This is inspired by the moon Pandora of the movie Avatar (by James Cameron - 2009 ). |
| |
| * Bossy |
|
| The world Bossy is owned by Snowkupp (#353181) . |
|
 |
| The world Pandora on position 3N 5E- an abundance of nice plants, trees and flowers alongside the river. |
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|
|
| * Dodgy has passed away |
| |
| On 23rd of january Dodgy has passed away at the age of 62, after having had heart problems since december. Besides being a loyal citizen of Activeworlds , he also liked motorbiking. His real name was Martin Philips and he lived in the UK. |
| There is a memorial site in Alphaworld on position 9564N 18824E And on position 1703S 3412W you can find his building area, where he exposed a timelime of his realizations in Activeworlds. You can see that he discovered activeworlds in 2003 , there is a picture of his first house in 2004 , and this continues until 2017. In front of this , you have a stargate , where you can teleport to all his building locations. In these AWTimes webpages, you will see his avatar on various events. (eg: 2016 : Maxpoly Gigabash Party - 2016 : Wings3d Classes ) |
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|
|
| * Activeworlds 2018 visitor statistics |
| |
| The year 2018 was a good year and a bad year for Activeworlds at the same time. The good news is , that updates for the Activeworlds program have been resumed, which is necessary to keep up with the evolution in software, so that Activeworlds stays compatible with the lastest media and operating systems. The bad news is the visitors decline. |
| |
| * User stats |
First we look at the website of Tomas pens.sytes.net/aw |
| When looking at the user stats, we see a constant decline, starting in june. In that month we see a huge decline, but this was because of the change of policy of Activeworlds. As you know, the number of users consists of the number of online users + online bots. Until may, each bot was counted as 1 user, even if 1 person had put more than 10 bots in his world. This was not a fair situation, because those worlds were always at the top of the worlds list. Starting in june, if a citizen puts 15 bots online in his/her world ,then Activeworlds counts this only as 1 user. |
| Second thing that caused the decline was the fact that several supportive websites were started up in the beginning of 2018 by citizens ( awdiscord, jaisp ,locodarwin) , which after a short while didn't seem to be supportive at all for Activeworlds. They wanted to expand the current small community beyond the borders of Activeworlds, by trying to integrate the AW Community into other 3d chatsites (read : competitive websites). And this caused several citizens being banned by the AW staff in may and june. Also the spokesman of the Community Meetings got banned during several months , because he supported those people that got banned. |
| This lack of a spokesman (Bach Zhaa) ,got the AW Community in a bad situation, as that person also organized most of the important events.When he got back, he was not allowed to build in the landing zone anymore. The lack of events , and decline of visitors caused a negative atmosphere, causing some other citizens to leave as well. In spite of that, there have been constant program updates, some new worlds have been started up, and still a steady group of citizens have remained in Activeworlds. |
|
| User stats |
Average number of online users |
| January |
139.97 |
| February |
139.68 |
| March |
124.27 |
| April |
126.83 |
| May |
126.29 |
| June |
85.64 |
| July |
74.62 |
| August |
73.98 |
| September |
72.10 |
| October |
71.20 |
| November |
63.31 |
| December |
60.15 |
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|
|
| * Citizen registrations |
For this, we look at the website of Strike Rapier awportals.com/aw/citizens/statistics |
| The registrations already exists since 2016, but on the website,you can only view the registrations for the last 6 months. AWTimes only started to look at these statistics since september, this means only looking back from march. |
| Here we see a decline starting in september, when the number of registrations dropped below 300 and below 10 registrations per day. This could be because of the AW program upgrade to version 6.5 , not allowing access to AW for visitors which are using older operating systems like Windows Vista and Windows XP. |
| The further huge drop in november and december can't be explained, hopefully the statistics for 2019 will be better. These statistics are , on short term, not so important , because only a small percentage of these new registrations are really remaining in Activeworls. But on the long term, the number should rise again, because Activeworlds needs new citizens, to keep up as a steady community, even with the fact that Activeworlds has loyal users. |
| |
| * Number of worlds |
The number of worlds has dropped to 555 worlds.This was the consequence of the fact that the banned users (and their friends) also ran several worlds in Activeworlds. In spite of that, taking into account that program upgrades have resumed, a lot of new worlds were added in 2018, and also in november and december, new worlds have been started up. |
|
| Month |
Total of registrations |
Average per day |
| April |
392 |
13.06 |
| May |
368 |
11.87 |
| June |
386 |
12.86 |
| July |
312 |
10.06 |
| August |
324 |
10.45 |
| September |
225 |
7.50 |
| October |
257 |
8.29 |
| November |
197 |
6.56 |
| December |
166 |
5.35 |
|
|
|
| * Useful tips |
| |
| * Credit info / Renewing your world |
| |
For renewing your world, you need to pay with credits. There are 2 ways of knowing your current credit amount. Go in the menu to : show - credits (or CTRL+F7). But it is better to uncheck this, because otherwise this info will appear also when you make a printscreen of a 3d scene. The second way : Go in the menu to : options - citizen. At the right bottom corner , you can click upon "shop history", and in the right bottom corner, you see the current number of credits you have. |
| On the website of Activeworlds.com. At the upper right corner, you select "store". Now you go to "pricing details" and look to the number of credits that is required for your world size. |
| If you click upon "renewal" , then you need to enter your world name and world password. This password has been given to you, when you bought this world for the first time. Then select the world size, and your citizen number, e-mail address, and citizen password, and finally submit. |
| |
| * If AW program crashes in the tabsheet Notepad |
| |
| At the beginning of this year there has been a program update, causing problems when selecting the tabsheet Notepad (if you press F9 , then select tabsheet notepad). On some computers, the AW program crashed at that moment.You could not go to the AW Forum. But there is a solution for this : You send a telegram to yourself with these url links: |
| https://www.awportals.com |
| http://wiki.activeworlds.com |
| http://forums.activeworlds.com |
| Then read the telegram message, which appears in the chat window, and click upon the url-links and you will see that the AW program doesn't crash . |
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