Second Life News 2013-18

All the blogs are covering Fantasy Fair, the fund raiser for Relay for Life. So, I’m not saying much, figuring you are hearing plenty. But, if you haven’t been to Fantasy Fair, get over and check it out.

Other Events

There seems to be lots of things happening in Second Life. Daniel Voyager wrote about Tribute City Fashion Week 2013 that starts May 31. It looks fun.

SL10B is coming too. Important dates are:

  • May 20 Volunteer/Performer, Exhibitor Applications close
  • May 27 Sims open to builders
  • June 16 Grand Opening
  • June 23 Official Birthday day
  • June 23 Final day of performances
  • June 29 Sims close to the public
  • July 1 All builds to be dismantled – sims go offline

Viewers

Not much news. The SL Beta Viewer 3.5.1 (274588) is the Lindens’ test viewer for SSA. The Beta version has to pass before they can seriously think about rolling out SSA. Once we see the SSA code roll into the main viewer release, it will be some time before SSA goes live. How little or much time is dependent, in some measure, on how fast people upgrade to the SSA capable viewers.

Niran has another version of the Nirans Viewer out: Alpha 2.2.0a (2692) Released. It arrived Sunday. The DOWNLOAD is here. This is an SSA compatible viewer.

The SL Materials Viewer updated on Friday. But Oz Linden tells us there are a couple of controls in that version that are not working correctly. That will be fixed in the next version. No ETA for that, but I would guess this week. I have to play with this viewer to know, but adding a specular map should reveal additional controls.

Apparently the only third party viewer without an SSA version is Exodus.

There is word that Cinder has a fix for Avatar Offset… or height offset. This is odd because it changes the offset in your local viewer and remote viewers. The current problem is the height offset is not the same in your viewer and other viewers. I think there is some trick along with a forced re-bake of appearance… no details are available yet.

Henri Beauchamp has a feature that turns off SSA and forces it to use viewer side baking. He is thinking this works whether you are in a SSA enabled region or not. The Lindens are saying that won’t work. When the region servers go SSA enabled, viewers not using SSA will fail to render the avatar. Henri is checking. But, I suspect the Lindens are right. Nyx is saying once servers are SSA enabled they will not support the older viewer side bake. New viewers that are SSA compatible should work with either bake process. Those viewers that are not SSA capable will fail to render avatars in SSA enabled regions.

There is still concern about those people that have corrupted Current Outfit Folders getting locked out of SL. See: COF Corruption. Nyx Linden seems to be taking it a bit more seriously, my take. We can hope the Lindens get this handled before people get jammed up.

Nyx says they are looking into a number of fixes around COF for follow up releases. They are supposedly looking at the COF corruption lockout problems and getting that fixed. We can hope…

World Events

When asked about what is coming next in Second Life Oz Linden answered, “Right now we are totally focused on getting the Materials functionality that we have committed to done and deployed asap. Until that has happened, we’re not discussing or even thinking about what might or might not come after.

Well… there is always the Oculus Rift interface to work on…

Danial Voyager also has an article up on InWorldz Dreamshare. This is apparently about providing a way to share your inworld creations with the rest of the world. For creators of virtual products this could be a great advertising tool. If it works out well, someone will likely build something similar for Second Life.

See: Video of new InWorldz Dreamshare.

Honour has an article on Thoughtless Indignation in Second Life. I see this as another case of people reacting without thinking or checking facts. This is becoming a serious problem in many parts of our daily lives. It is almost impossible to deal with as more and more of our institutions fall into disrepute: Report finds massive fraud at Dutch universities. Similar stories have been appearing in most ‘advanced’ countries (NYT). So, it is not surprising that we see more problems in SL.

Hamlet is commenting on another person having problems with Second Life: I Largely Left Second Life to Avoid the People of Second Life (Comment of the Week).

Oculus Rift is drawing Second Life back into discussion with gamers. Hamet commented on it in: I Like That Reddit’s Oculus Rift Group Likes the Idea of Second Life Running the Oculus Rift. Of course this is something they want now… which is normal for humans. It is hard to tell how into the Rift the Lab is. I think they are in the process of deciding.

Cloud Party is planning to add social tools. They added ‘head tracking,’ meaning the avatar’s head now looks in the same direction as your camera. The CP team is thinking about how to create something that sounds like SL’s Destination Guide.

Prim Perfect is writing about Bobbekins use case for Second Life and the Wall Street Journal picking up on it. See Funding Initiatives. It will be interesting to see if the crowd funding projects work out.

The Russians are predicting 200 years of global cooling now. See: Russia’s Pulkovo Observatory: “we could be in for a cooling period that lasts 200-250 years”. That is a solar observatory. Scientists from Britain and the US chime in saying that forecasts for global cooling are far from groundless. More people may stay indoors and play in SL…

SL Market Place

We are pretty well moved over to Direct Delivery and most Magic Boxes are off line. But, the Market Place still has lots of problems. Inara has a good write up on the problem of items showing the wrong pictures. If you have that problem, check her article: Marketplace: incorrect listings – LL offers “clean-up process.”

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