It looks like the Lab is going to do consistent monthly news updates. This month we got a new update Monday as to what is happening in Second Life. August Update If you regularly read this blog, you’ll probably find you know most of the things announced in the blog post. But, there are some things I did not know about, so you won’t have found out about them here.
The New Splash Screen
Splash Page
I think everyone is now seeing the new Second Life Splash page. This is the one a wrote about: New Login Screen Arrives a few days ago.
Region Settings
If you own land you can now set the Windlight values for your land. Note, I wrote OWN. Estate Managers can make use of the controls to set the region’s Windlight values. As a regular user you can only set how your viewer handles them.
As a regular user if you have your Windlight set to DEFAULT, you will see whatever settings the region owner has set for the region. The dialogs change a bit from what you are used to. For instance the setting to use region values used to be in World->Sun or Environment, depending on your viewer, and there you found a choice to use the Region Default. Now the familiar Sunrise, Midday, Sunset, and Midnight are all that is there. You must open the Environment Editor then Environment Settings to switch back to the region default. It would be nice to have that choice a bit less deep in the controls.
You can read Region Environment Settings to learn more about how these new dialogs work.
The Windlight Presets are still usable. You can override the regions settings, just as you always have been able to do.
The big change here is that a landowner’s settings will be seen by everyone that does not override them. As always, using the Windlight Presets or custom settings will change the world only for you.
Profiles
I suspect most of you have seen the new profiles. The announcement has a lot to say about the new profiles. They still lack good navigation when used inside the viewer. It is awkward to get from inside the viewer out to the web pages in a browser. But, once there navigation is better because the browser support BACK and page history.
I’m having fun with the Profile Feed just now. But, that will probably wear off. It is not overly useful. I use Twitter and have been playing with Plurk. I tried Google+ and liked it, but the nyms problem moved me to close the Google+ feature before they locked down all my Nalates web tools.
More New Second Life Avatars
New Avatars
There are more new avatars. These are complete avatars that new players can click and use in Basic Mode. In Advanced Mode they are in the Library. Adam n Eve made and outfitted these avatars. They say the idea was to make them low lag.
Payments
The Lab is doing something to make payments easier. I suppose this has more to do with SL Users that live outside the USA. I know many have complained having problems making payments and purchasing Linden currency. Whatever they have done we should start to see it this month…
Mesh
The mesh updates here give you far more information and what is happening and planned timelines. See the upper menu, Things & Stuff -> Mesh Related. That item pulls all the mesh stuff into one page.
About 30% of the main grid, AGNI, is now mesh enabled. The Release Channels are running the Mesh Prep 2 update. ADITI is running even newer versions of the mesh server software. ADITI also updates more times per week… or even per day than the Release Channels.
Email Resubscribe Page
There is now an email subscription control panel… no… it’s not in your dashboard… or at least if it is I haven’t found the link. The page lives in a server named: lindenmktg. I suppose that tells us something. Whatever it tells us the page is here: Second Life Email Subscription Control.
It looks like it could be used to grief people. Pop in an email address and hit submit. I tried the page and I get an error message saying the system is down. Think they figured out there could be a problem? Hard to say. But, the page looks pretty raw to me. I suspect lots of changes to it in the coming days. I also expect it to require a login to use. So, expect to see it as part of your Dashboard soon.