Nalates Urriah

Second Life and Hardware for Oculus

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The Road to VR has an article up by Ben Lang: Two Reasons You Will Want to Buy a New Gaming Rig for the Oculus Rift CV1. Oh good, we are going to need new hardware for Oculus… Well, it isn’t all that bad. But, it is interesting the direction the Oculus will probably push hardware design.

Oculus Rift
Oculus Rift

Ben is pointing out that once the Oculus is near release or at release time, hardware makers will be releasing new hardware optimized for the Virtual Reality (VR) experience. Palmer Luck has been quoted as saying Oculus is working with hardware developers ‘…on all kinds of optimizations.’ He would say what those might be.

Ben tells us how Intel is looking at VR/Oculus. Randy Stude, of Intel, said, “The VR world can expect that engagement with Intel, from the top down, will be very deep.” Considering they make the CPU’s and HD graphics chips as well as the data controls chips (North and South bridge chips) their integration and optimization could be extensive.

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Second Life Viewer 2014-23

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There is a new RC Viewer out: MemShine Viewer version 3.7.9.290582. This viewer is a combination of versions; MemPlugs Viewer version 3.7.9.290405 and Sunshine Viewer version 3.7.9.290131, I have been writing about for 3 weeks or so. I think this version has new fixes for each of the parent versions.

Firestorm Logo
Firestorm Logo
SL Viewer
SL Viewer

This combining of RC versions appears to be an attempt to speed up the release of changes made to the viewer. It seems once again viewer release speed is holding things up. Limiting viewer releases to two per month is a basic guideline the Lab adopted to avoid annoying users with too frequent updates. It would seem the result is things are backing up. 

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Facebook Name Policy

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Toysoldier Thor is going activist in an attempt to get Facebook to change their policy on names and allow anonymous users. I doubt such a change can happen because it would damage a successful financial model. But, I could be wrong. So, help him if you think it a good idea.

See: Time Facebook Fixes “Real Names Only” TOS.

How Facebook Makes Money
How Facebook Makes Money

I suppose if anonymous activists can figure out a way to have a financial impact on FB then they may be able to affect a change. But, to do that one must understand FB’s financial model. 

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Second Life News 2014-23 #2

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Coming Soon

Simon Linden is working a problem to fix a problem that leaves attachments appearing to still be attached. The problem is especially noticeable when a script removes an attachment after a region crossing. See SVC-7626 – Script object detachment doesn’t appear to remove worn object in the viewer. This is an older JIRA of a related problem. Apparently the actual JIRA being worked on got MOVED into the Linden’s private MAINT channel rather than cloned.

Server/Scripting UG 2014-23
Server/Scripting UG 2014-23

The apparent problem is some timing issue in how the servers send messages to viewers. Simon describes the problem as: 

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Second Life News 2014-23 – Group Ban

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We have some actual news today!

Group Ban

This new feature is now running in the main grid in RC channel: Le Tigre. Many people have been looking forward to this feature coming out. If all goes well we could see it move to the entire grid next week.

Art for Games Tutorials
Art for Games Tutorials

Any group owner or manager with proper permissions can use the feature.  You need to visit a region in the Le Tigre channel to use the feature. Also you need to be using the Group Ban Project Viewer. Unfortunately the viewer is not showing on the RC/Project Viewers page. But, you can get the viewer here: Download: Windows, Mac, Linux.

You can find details on using the project feature here: Group Ban FAQ.

Be warned, the bans made in Le Tigre may not stick, meaning a banned person may be able to re-join from regions outside the Le Tigre channel. So, while the ban is server side older regions don’t know to check for a ban before allowing a join. But, the person will be in the ban list.

Once the project goes grid wide you may have to re-ban or eject the banned people one last time.

The server side code is at RC level, meaning it is working as planned and is expected to be the finished product. The viewer is just reaching ‘project viewer’ status, which we might consider the old beta version status.

Expect some changes to the viewer before it rolls out as the main viewer. When the server side code goes grid wide one can then use the Group Ban Viewer and ban people. Since the ban is enforced server-side and all the servers will then be running it, it won’t matter which viewer a banned person uses, they won’t be able to get in the group.

This should make life in group chat much better.

Servers

There was no roll to the main channel this morning. There was maintenance to the servers and logins were down for a time this morning. 

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