Second Life News Week 13

Servers

No updates to the main or RC channels of Second Life™ this week.

Viewers

The main viewer is version: 4.0.3.312684 – March 18 – no change since last week

RC Second Life HTTP update Viewer version 4.0.3.312816 – March 23 – Updated since last week.

RC Second Life Quick Graphics Viewer version 4.0.2.312297 – no change

Second Life Project Bento Viewer version 5.0.0.311861 – no change

Second Life Project Oculus Rift Viewer version 3.7.18.295296 – no change

I have more details for these versions in last week’s post: Second Life News Week 12.

486 - Shania

486 – Shania – Uses materials to simulate iridescence

It is about time for a main viewer update. That depends, as always, on how the RC’s are preforming.

We know the Lindens are working on security fixes, Project Bento, and changes to how Avatar Complexity Information is calculated for transparencies. But, we are hearing little else.

We also know that the Lindens met a couple of weeks ago to decide what projects were next in the cue. There normal process is to decide what projects are most useful to the most users then start planning to see what is needed to accomplish the projects. Once that stage is complete they start coding and decide if the project is feasible with light on the coding issues and the time and budget available. At this point some projects get shelved and they move on to another. We seldom hear about those ‘shelved’ projects. Others are taken to completion. Of those we only hear about them once the Lindens are convinced they will be completed.

It isn’t surprising that we don’t hear much during this phase. That leaves most of the SL blogosphere writing about places to visit and fashion, for now. Tutorials for clothes and avatars are out until Project Bento is completed. Any tutorials made now will be ‘out dated’ in weeks… may be months. So… seems more aspects of Second Life are going on pause.

Bento should not have much effect on mesh clothes for the standard humanoid avatar. So, that part of SL is moving at full speed. Designers are leaning about materials features like specular and normal maps. I’m seeing more clothes that use materials for their look, as the video and picture show. That makes use of ALM (Advanced Lighting Model) more necessary for the full experience in SL.

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