March

(41 Articles) – At the beginning of March we see the first of the World Makers videos from Drax Dupres, the maker of the Flufee Missions videos. We pretty consistently see a new video in this series each month.

Baker Linden’s Large Object Rez project makes it to an RC channel. We learned this change may affect small objects and large objects. See: Second Life News 2013-10. The package eventually rolls to the main channel in week 11, mid-March.

It was this month Simon Linden spoke about an experiment the Lab was conducting to change how the system decides whether to render an avatar or at an avatar imposter. See: Second Life News 2013-10. I’m pretty sure we have never heard any more about this experiment.

This month we learned that April 15^th would be the cutoff date for Magic Boxes.

Over in the Preview Grid (ADITI) I and others are still having problems with inventory. When changing the password to force an inventory update things can go wrong. See: Aditi Inventory & Login Problems.

Nyx Linden explained how the problems in the Preview Grid affected the SSA pile-on test. See: Second Life News 2013-11.

Region crossing problems popped up early in the month. Monty Linden in the Server Beta Group explained some of how region crossings work. See: Second Life Region Crossing Problems. Vehicle region crossing problems were explained about mid-March by Andrew Linden. See: Second Life Vehicle Crossings.

March is a month where we started hearing about limited resources at the Lab hindering update releases. Eventually the backup of software waiting to release will result in a new way of releasing viewers: Viewer Release Pipeline.

CHUI remains in Viewer Beta.

In March we saw an update to Vivox, they gave us better voice quality.

In the first week of March Group Bans comes up as a feature request. In mid-March this became an actual project we now call Group Ban List. Planning the feature started in mid-March and it seems Baker Linden was doing most of the work.

The HTTP package moves from QA to testing on the Preview Grid. Concerns about problems with the various vending machines that rely on external servers comes up.

The Interest List seemed to continue to add on problems. This month we get reports of avatars rendering oddly, like avatars that are 4000 m away being rendered. Pathfinding characters behave oddly visibility-wise. Also, some methods of clearing the visibility cash stopped working. There are also problems rendering objects that are behind you. We realize there was a problem when we would turn around and objects previously behind us would not render.

A second round of Interest List changes moves from QA to testing on a Preview Grid in mid-March.

The loss of the Avatar Height Adjustment, or the ability to change the avatar’s Z-axis position, becomes more of an issue in the month of March. Third party viewer developers are trying to find a replacement feature. For details see: Second Life’s SUN-38 Dilemma.

This month changes to the Grey Goo Fence (GGF) were being considered. The fence is a limit is that prevents scripts from rez’ing new objects until the region fills up. Because of griefing attacks using sound, the lindens are considering adding offense limit for sounds.

This month we got word that The Google Reader would be going away in July 2013. This impacts lots of people in Second Life™.

In mid-March Linden Lab quietly offers region pricing discounts to educational and nonprofit organizations.

Midmonth the package with Multi-Threaded Rez rolled to the main channel. Several Interest List improvements were put in the testing on the Preview Grid. Monty Linden gives us information on what’s coming in the HTTP planned updates. See: Second Life News 2013-11 #3.

We also got word that a new scriptless AO is coming. When we learned what they were talking about it turned out to be a set of scripting commands that allows one to change the default animations. Once those are set, no script is needed to keep them working. This turns out to be a Kelly Linden project.

The new AO project is officially announced about March 21. See: Second Life Scripting Changes. The new script changes make into an RC channel in week 13.

Along with the AO project we learned that we are getting Ribbon Particles, Particle Blending options, and Particle Glow options. While the server side of these features was being rolled out we still had to wait some time for these features to get added to the viewer. For more information on the feature see: Second Life Scripting Changes.

Avastar 1 RC 1 is released. This is an add-on for Blender specifically for working in Second Life.

SL10B is announced. See: SL10B Announced.