Qubit Holographic Signboard
Welcome to the world of quantum! That doesn't mean anything, but we fully expect it to double sales anyway. The Qubit is our new premium alternative to the classic SuperBit titler/signboard, and it's designed to deliver pure, unadulterated eye-candy in a way seldom seen on the grid!
Wear the object named "NS Qubit." It attaches to your nose by default, but can be moved to other places if you think you know what's best. Go on. It's fine.
Next, click the Qubit to open its menu. If you're using a Companion, ATOS/CX, or other NS robot controller (and you absolutely should be) then anyone can get to this menu by looking for 'sign' and then choosing 'access' from within your 'devices' menu.
Like the SuperBit, the Qubit provides two main features: display of graphical signs and display of hover text, called a 'titler' in roleplay geek parlance. Both of these features have been upgraded.
Signs are now 512 px wide by 1024 px tall, and displayed as orientation-independent holographic particles. These signs are extremely cool and very pretty. You can easily make your own and add them to the Qubit by dropping the textures in. Some rules:
Your mood is a short status message describing what you're currently doing. For example, it might be "Cruising for new sources of lubricant" or "Fixing PC Load Letter." This is basically equivalent to a status message you might post on social media. If your region has an NS NanoCom Region Monitor, it will show your mood message next to your name for all to admire.
But your titler can and should be used to display more than that! To add other text to your titler, you need to set the template under the "setup" menu of your Qubit. Basic usage involves putting the special keyword "<mood>" (with angle brackets, without quotes) in the middle of your template, e.g.
[blockquote]I am currently: <mood>[/blockquote]
Which will display "I am currently: Fixing PC Load Letter." if you used one of the extremely good examples above.
Now, you might be tempted to simply put in your name at this point, but don't. The titler can do that for you. Prepare for...
Unfortunately, the titler has a pretty low length limit, around 256 bytes, and bars are much longer than they look (an empty gauge is only 16 characters wide, but takes up ~80 bytes because Unicode lacks a block-width space.) You'll have to be pretty selective about how including these fields in your template.
Like the SuperBit, you can set your mood and sign with system commands: mood and sign, respectively. You can also set your mood template with "@mood template", e.g. "@mood template <name>\n \n<hp_c>".
Unlike the SuperBit, the Qubit has two layers to the titler, the foreground and background. The background layer is only used for showing the backgrounds of gauges. Their colors can be independently adjusted using their respective options in the "setup" menu. These might seem a little unusual at first, but they're fairly intuitive once you know the basics of how floating-point colors work.
Here are some examples you could input:
More examples of R, G, B values can be found here.
If you have a color in 8-bit format (values in the range 0-255), divide each by 255. For example, orange might be 255 red, 127 green, and 0 blue, which roughly equals 1 0.5 0 as in the second-last example above.
Getting started
Wear the object named "NS Qubit." It attaches to your nose by default, but can be moved to other places if you think you know what's best. Go on. It's fine.
Next, click the Qubit to open its menu. If you're using a Companion, ATOS/CX, or other NS robot controller (and you absolutely should be) then anyone can get to this menu by looking for 'sign' and then choosing 'access' from within your 'devices' menu.
Capabilities
Like the SuperBit, the Qubit provides two main features: display of graphical signs and display of hover text, called a 'titler' in roleplay geek parlance. Both of these features have been upgraded.
Signs
Signs are now 512 px wide by 1024 px tall, and displayed as orientation-independent holographic particles. These signs are extremely cool and very pretty. You can easily make your own and add them to the Qubit by dropping the textures in. Some rules:
- The signs are always displayed at an aspect ratio of 0.5. If you want a square sign, leave the top half blank.
- Most signs will tint according to your system light color. To avert this, affix "hc+" on the front of the filename, e.g. hc+pmp. When referencing the sign through the interface, the "hc+" prefix is hidden.
- Like the SuperBit, you can make sign sequences, but the name format is more distinctive: put "#0" on the end for the first image, "#1" for the second, and so forth. Images cycle once every ten seconds.
- Signs are not shown while moving. This is intentional.
- Best results come when the background of the sign is transparent, not black. To quickly convert a black-and-white image into an alpha channel in Adobe Photoshop:
- Open "Channels" from the "Window" menu.
- Ctrl-click the thumbnail next to the "RGB" channel to get a stencil selection of the image's luminosity values.
- Create a new channel (using the icon at the bottom of the Channels window)
- Flood-fill the new channel white, using the paint bucket tool.
- Clear your selection and switch back to the "Layers" panel.
- Create an all-white layer that hides everything.
- Export the final image as a 32-bit TGA (Targa bitmap).
SL will correctly load this image as an alpha map, suitable for display on the Qubit's sign feature. - Open "Channels" from the "Window" menu.
Moods and mood templates
Your mood is a short status message describing what you're currently doing. For example, it might be "Cruising for new sources of lubricant" or "Fixing PC Load Letter." This is basically equivalent to a status message you might post on social media. If your region has an NS NanoCom Region Monitor, it will show your mood message next to your name for all to admire.
But your titler can and should be used to display more than that! To add other text to your titler, you need to set the template under the "setup" menu of your Qubit. Basic usage involves putting the special keyword "<mood>" (with angle brackets, without quotes) in the middle of your template, e.g.
[blockquote]I am currently: <mood>[/blockquote]
Which will display "I am currently: Fixing PC Load Letter." if you used one of the extremely good examples above.
Now, you might be tempted to simply put in your name at this point, but don't. The titler can do that for you. Prepare for...
The list of titler template keywords
| \n | A linebreak! If you want two next to each other, put a space between them. |
| <name> | Just your name, no model prefix. |
| <callsign> | What it says your name is when you type. |
| <model> | Your model number. |
| <serial> | Your formatted serial (###-##-####) |
| <authority> | Your @authority. |
| <vendor> | Your vendor (set in _oem) |
| <version> | Your OS name and version. |
| <gender> | A symbol representing your gender. |
| <persona> | Your current persona, if not default. |
| <following> | If you are leashed to someone or something, navigating waypoints, or being carried. |
| <mood> | Your mood message (as above) |
| <power> | A bar indicating your current battery level, with % level next to it. |
| <rate> | Your current power consumption rate, as a bar, with wattage next to it. |
| <celsius> | Temperature bar + value in degrees Celsius - requires ATOS |
| <fahrenheit> | Temperature bar + value in degrees Fahrenheit - requires ATOS |
| <arousal> | Arousal bar + value (if not 0) - requires TESI |
| <hp> | Integrity bar + value (if not full) - requires ATOS |
| <power_b> | Just the <power> bar, no numbers. |
| <rate_b> | Just the <rate> bar, no numbers. |
| <celsius_b> | Just the <celsius> bar, no numbers - requires ATOS |
| <fahrenheit_b> | Just the <fahrenheit> bar, no numbers - requires ATOS |
| <arousal_b> | Just the <arousal> bar, no numbers. Hidden if empty. |
| <hp_b> | Just the <hp> bar, no numbers. Always shown - requires ATOS |
| <power_c> | Just the <power> % level, no bar. |
| <rate_c> | Just the <rate> wattage, no bar. |
| <celsius_c> | Just the <celsius> temperature, no bar - requires ATOS |
| <fahrenheit_c> | Just the <fahrenheit> temperature, no bar - requires ATOS |
| <kelvin_c> | Your current temperature, measured in Kelvin. (There's no reasonable bar for this.) - requires ATOS |
| <arousal_c> | Your current <arousal> level, no bar. Hidden if empty - requires ATOS. |
| <hp_c> | Your current <hp>. Always shown - requires ATOS. |
Unfortunately, the titler has a pretty low length limit, around 256 bytes, and bars are much longer than they look (an empty gauge is only 16 characters wide, but takes up ~80 bytes because Unicode lacks a block-width space.) You'll have to be pretty selective about how including these fields in your template.
Other settings and features
Like the SuperBit, you can set your mood and sign with system commands: mood and sign, respectively. You can also set your mood template with "@mood template", e.g. "@mood template <name>\n \n<hp_c>".
Unlike the SuperBit, the Qubit has two layers to the titler, the foreground and background. The background layer is only used for showing the backgrounds of gauges. Their colors can be independently adjusted using their respective options in the "setup" menu. These might seem a little unusual at first, but they're fairly intuitive once you know the basics of how floating-point colors work.
Here are some examples you could input:
| R | G | B | C | A | (red, green, blue, system color strength, alpha) |
| 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | = full red, no green, no blue, no system color, full opacity (overrides a color with solid red) |
| 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | = black, no strength, no opacity (makes the text invisible) |
| 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | = preserve the system color (full strength and opacity, colors irrelevant) |
| 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.5 | 1 | = mix the system color 50% with black, full opacity |
| 1 | 0.5 | 0 | 0.75 | 1 | = tint the text 25% orange |
| 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | = solid magenta |
More examples of R, G, B values can be found here.
If you have a color in 8-bit format (values in the range 0-255), divide each by 255. For example, orange might be 255 red, 127 green, and 0 blue, which roughly equals 1 0.5 0 as in the second-last example above.