Second Life and Virtual Worlds
With the release of the VLC viewer (4.1.1.320331) we will see the video market in Second Life start changing. It as of today, it hasn’t changed much. As it has in most of the rest of the RL world. So, with 4.1.1 we will have a better experience with YouTube and other services.
NOTE: On starting the 4.1.1 viewer I started crashing. I changed regions and all seemed OK. Before I logged off I got a notice that a newer version was available: 4.1.2.320461. I’ve installed it and it seems to be OK.
RC Second Life VLC Viewer version 4.1.1.320331 – updated Thursday (10/6). This update fixes a problem setting volume. Moving the slider to MAX turned of sound. Oops. This version is in good shape and doing well in RC, meaning few crashes and complaints. This viewer version will probably to promote to the main/default SL viewer in week 41, likely Tuesday.
The RC Second Life Bento Viewer updated to version 5.0.0.320160 Friday. It too is doing well. But, don’t expect it to release this month. The Lindens are letting us use it hopping to find any surprises. There is a crash problem that is fixed in this version. Plus it Improves mesh upload and I think has the bone position lock. There will be Bento meeting in week 41. We’ll likely hear more. Be sure to check: Second Life: Bento Hands – Vista Animations Beta Out.
RC Second Life Maintenance Viewer version 4.0.9.320231 is also doing well. Last week I provided some of the details.
On quality any version could be next main viewer. But the VLC version is a security fix for those using QT on Windows. If you have QT, you should remove it from your Windows machines.
Friday in the Third Party Developer’s Meeting OZ and Troy Linden announced a new feature coming to Second Life™. It is going to be a quick 360 snapshot thing. If you haven’t seen 360 images, click in the image below and drag.
The image was made by Inara Pey, She explains how she made it using the Illiastra Panoramic Camera. (Version 1.3 L$999). See her blog article The Illiastra. Strawberry Singh has also written about making 360 images with Illiastra. I’ve written about the tech here, 360 Image. This is a new tag and it doesn’t pull all my 360 articles, yet.
Most animators attending the Bento UG meeting have been working with animating mesh heads and wings. But, the bones in the hands finalized some time ago. So, it is a little odd that we haven’t seen anyone do something with the hands. Now we have:
Vista Animations has a demo of what they have done with the hands.
They say they are going to release a beta version of the hand-animations ‘soon’. Well, that was a week ago. It’s out now. Link below.
It is then we will see the complications of keeping classic, mesh, pre-Bento, and post-Bento animations straight.
Thursday about noon the Lab announced some of the things that will be changing in Second Life™ viewers. We know viewers will change. But, never exactly what change is coming. See: Important Viewer Evolution Update.
Most of the changes mentioned, we know about.
The viewer’s built in web browser is changing over to Chromium Embedded Frame work. So, it is basically a new browser, like Firefox or Chrome. This affects lots of things inside the viewer, search, profiles, etc. Most importantly it is part of the frame changing how streaming media is handled. There is an RC version of this change on the Alternate Viewers Page.
The avatars are changing and the RC version of the Project Bento Viewer is out, also on the Alt Viewer page.
I missed this when Aki released it three months ago.
The location for Project Bento meetings has changed from what is said in the video. They now meet in Hippotropolis, Agni (the main grid) on Thursdays at 1 PM SLT/PT. I think they moved to the main grid to make it easier for more people to get to the meetings.