Groups
Ciaran Laval has an article up that covers the history of Second Life™ groups and his suggestion that things change to break a pattern present in SL since it started. See: Second Life Group System Still Needs An Overhaul.
SL users always want more groups. We are limited to 42 now. Originally it was 10, before my time. I started with the 25 limit.
A major part of groups is chat. Adding more groups increases the server load exponentially. Chat lag and not being able to post to a group are common problems we all deal with now as we use groups. I have no idea how many times I have had to send an IM to someone in the group because I could not get a comment into a group chat, connection fail…
Ciaran is suggesting that we shift from the chat we have now to something web based. I suppose something more like IRC, but with more persistence.
I am not sure what would be a better solution. Try writing a specification for what a new groups system would be like. Provide all the services our current groups provide. It isn’t easy. I do agree we need something better for the ‘coming boom’ in virtual worlds.
Oculus Rift
Ann Cudworth has an article on Hypergrid Business titled: Oculus viewers updated, still not building-friendly.
Ann gives her take on using the OR viewers in the various grids. She found pro’s and con’s to how CtrlAltStudio and the Lab have handled UI. Neither work for Ann when she is building. She points out that until we have our hands well represented in VR and ways to manipulate things as we do in RL, building with the OR is not going to work well. I agree.
TPV Meeting
Oz is back from a rafting trip. The TPV Dev group is having a meeting today. We should get a burst of news from that meeting. I probably won’t get to it until later in the weekend. I’m not expecting anything too exciting to come out of the meeting. While Lindens are talking more, they are not telling us much about what they are ‘developing’. There just isn’t much on the published agenda.
Fifty Linden Friday
The first Friday of each month is Fifty Linden Friday. Participating merchants have a sign up and provide some of their goods for L$50. SLURL to Molochino, a participating clothing merchant offering lots of gorgeous standard size mesh clothes. Unfortunately, the polygon density is ridiculously high on the items I was interested in. 🙁
Hair Fair
July 12-27 Hair Fair will be running. They are giving bloggers early access. Applications close June 20th. I’ll be waiting for the fair to open.
Macs and FIRE-12172
FIRE-12172 – Intense typing lag when in an area with a dozen avatars.
This is one of those ongoing Mac problems developers are getting to as they can.
Some of the history of the problem is explained. FS 4.4.2 does not have this problem. It is also only seen in older hardware and OS versions. So,… that makes it a low priory fix. It is mostly going to be up to the user to move a newer OS to get away from the problem.
Fashion For Life
This event opens June 7th. The ever gorgeous JucyBomb has a post about being a VIP. See: Are you a Very Important Person? It is a good cause.
Black Dragon Viewer
NiranV is asking for suggestions for what to fix/change in the next release of the viewer. See: Update Time.