Month: February 2015

New Firestorm Release Coming

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Firestorm Logo
Firestorm Logo

The Firestorm (FS) team is tentatively planning a viewer release for March, which they hope will have all the Linden updates and bring FS current with the SL Viewer. There is some concern about whether the Lab will have Viewer Managed Marketplace (VMM) ready in time for the FS Team to integrate it into FS for the next release.

The anticipated release for VMM is near the FS feature freeze window for the March release date for FS’ new version. That means the FS people  have to rush the inclusion or delay the release, if the Lab hits their early release date, which could happen. I wouldn’t bet on it. But, I also wouldn’t bet against it. 

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Bryn Oh Machinima

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Art… we all have our preferences. If you have ever looked at my Flickr Favorites you have an idea of the type of art I like. You’ll probably suspect Bryn Oh’s work isn’t something likely to appeal to me as it never looks like what I have as favorites on Flickr. But, I am fascinated by Bryn’s work. It always has an ability to pull me in. I always take time to look at it.

The video is a re-render of itself with some missing dialoged added. It seems Bryn’s cat deleted some of the dialog in the previous render. – – Hey… it’s his story and he is sticking to it. Cats are sneaky devious creatures. 

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Second Life Bits 2015-07

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Unreal Engine

Jo Yardley has posted about the graphics available when world builders use the Unreal Engine. See: Stunning demo shows what is possible in VR graphics with Unreal Engine.

I am sure it will be pretty awesome to use the Oculus Rift HMD in a world like this.

Improvements

Ciaran Laval has an article up on his site that gives a good summary of recent changes in Second Life and coming changes. See: Linden Lab Ask Us To Check Out Improvements To Second Life. I’ve mentioned some of these weeks ago but he goes into more detail and collects them into one place.

Daniel Voyager has a similar article: Linden Lab publishes upcoming improvements to Second Life.

Directly from the Lab: Check Out the Latest Improvements to Second Life. 

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Google Chrome Bookmarks/Favorites Changing

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This is a big change. I’m not sure I like it. In fact I currently dislike it so much this may be a change that drives me to Firefox or CoolNovo.

Google's New Bookmarks Manager
Google’s New Bookmarks Manager

The change was only appearing in the Beta version of Chrome, which I run. But, it is feedback from beta users that will decide if this feature becomes mainstream, which is probably a near certainty anyway, based  on Google’s past history of how they change Chrome and other Google products. Feedback may change it, but I doubt it will stop it.

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Avatar Render Cost 2015-07

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Penny Patton writes about reducing her avatar’s render cost. (See: Draw Weight.) Kay Jiersen picked up on the article and wrote an article too. (See: Render weight best practices for Second Life.) Some time ago I wrote: Second Life Performance: Render Muting, which is about the same subject.

Penny Paton's Example of Dense High ARC Mesh
Penny Patton’s Example of Dense High ARC Mesh

Penny is pointing out there is a bit we can do to change our render cost with only a minimal change in appearance. Kay suspects few people are even aware of the Avatar Render Cost (ARC) feature in the viewer and have no clue they need to do anything. I agree with Kay. But, she goes on to recommend changes to Second Life, which is where I disagree.

Kay made field trips to various places in Second Life where she recorded the ARC values of avatars in the regions. Kay points out that only 81 of 190 (42.6%) avatars would render using a setting of 80,000 for Render Muting. That means 109 or 57.3% of the avatars would not render .

The horrible frame rates (FPS) I am getting have me looking at a new computer and a better video card. But, I actually have little hope that will help FPS in regions populated with 30+ avatars.

On an empirical basis Kay found that jewelry is a major culprit in high ARC. 

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