Region owners that are building experiences can restrict access to their land to only those that have their specific experience enabled. This allows them to deal with only those participating in their ‘experience’. If a  user decides to block the experience after entering, they will automatically be teleported out. This helps keeps the ‘experience’ immersive.

Dolphin Linden tells us most of the viewer side changes are user interface (UI) changes only. While that may sound like an easy change to make, for viewers like Firestorm that provide a complex UI environment this is not exactly good news, but it’s not bad news either.

Troy tells us the Project Viewer is very near ‘release ready’. I assume he means RC level release ready.

A question was asked about gadgets like the Soul Stealer HUD. This is basically a dance HUD that once it has permission to animate your avatar, the owner can abuse those that have granted it permission. There is no easy way to revoke previously granted permissions. I assume the idea behind the question is how does the Lab plan to handle miss use of AET?

Troy says AET does not specifically address that problem. He goes on to explain that they have thought about the griefing problem. So, AET has controls in the ‘Experience Panel’ to allow revoking permissions and reporting abusing objects and experiences. The panel is about finding and controlling aspects of experiences and their parts. It will probably help with a gimmick like Soul Stealer, but it is not specifically designed to do so. The last time the Lab tried to fix that type of problem they broke all the chairs in Second Life (sit feature).

Oz adds that in the panel there is a way to see what happened due to what experience. So, if something teleports you, you will be able to see what object did that and which experience it was a part of. You can then revoke its permissions and report it. Since the Lab will know who owns the experience, they will know the abuser.

During the beta the Lab will have two example AET projects. I suppose something like Linden Realms 2.0, as Kitty Barnett put it. I am guessing that if we have an AET enabled viewer we can try those out.

Summary

We have been hearing about AET for years, starting in late 2011 with the release of Linden Realms. It looks like AET is going to make its début this year.

Many have been hoping for this release for some time. I think I could make a good case for AET being more desired and important to SL than Fitted Mesh to the creative types in Second Life. The fashion people may not think so. But, those that build regions and role play games in SL will find these tools an awesome addition to Second Life.

This should be fun.