Second Life and Virtual Worlds
The UKanDo viewer version 4.0 has released. When going to download it I noticed their note that Flash won’t work with this viewer, unless you take some special steps. This is because v4.0 viewers have changed from older web tech, Webkit, to the newer Chromium Embedded Framework.
There is a lot of stuff on the grid that uses flash. So, if you need to display Flash in the viewer go to this Linden article: How to use Adobe Flash in Second Life Viewer 4.0 and later.
As I scan through the posts in the Second Life™ blogosphere I find more and more articles are about places. The blogosphere is becoming a tour guide. It seems Second Life is fashion and tourism. Fashion makes money, tourism doesn’t.
Whatever the case, Inara has an article on Ghost Town. But, her story is not about tourism. Ghost Town is a training area in the Firestorm Team’s regions designed as a game by MadPea. The area opens today (12/19) at 14:00 SLT or 2 PM SLT/PST. They will have entertainment from various people/groups. They are expecting the 4 regions to handle about 200 people.
AvaStar 2.0 is out and supports the new Bento Avatar, or maybe we can call it Avatar 2.0. After all we have been talking about it long enough.
Actually, Bento doesn’t have all the changes we have been asking for in Avatar 2.0. Also, if we call it a number it should probably be 3 or 4 or something higher as there have apparently been other significant changes to the avatar over the years, before my time. But, this change does make it possible to get all the things we have been asking for or at least comes close.
Today we have a post from the Lab about changes to the SL Avatar. See: Introducing Project Bento – New Bones Added to Second Life Avatar Skeleton.
What are the changes?
Ever wish you could incorporate a tail, wings, or second set of arms into your avatar? How about having animations for facial expressions and finger movements? Yes, we know that there are some incredibly creative workarounds that give you some of these, but they can’t leverage skeletal animation, so they have been very complex, often fragile, and very expensive in performance and resources both in your Viewer and the Simulator.
Did you know Linden Lab has new avatars for the noobies? I had not realized it. But, Cerise @ SLUniverse posted about the new avatars and I noticed that post. Want to see some of the new avatars and mesh clothes?
This image shows the first page one lands on after clicking JOIN. By default they now have ‘Classic’ avatars selected. It is still possible to select Vampires and People. Those are mesh body avatars. But, the Classic Avatars look to be all new. The older avatars are still in the Library. I just don’t see them on sign-up process.
Inara has an article up about the new testing of Community Gateways. We have seen the idea of community gateways appear a number of times over the years. We are now on the eve another iteration. In this one Linden Lab, Firestorm Developers, and MadPea Game Designers have teamed up to create a new gateway.
See: Firestorm ready to launch Gateway; MadPea join as partners.
The new gateway will be open Saturday 10/31 with events at; 13:00 SLT – Mankind Tracer, 14:00 SLT – Nance Brody, 15:00 SLT – The Changhigh Trinity Sisters Fire Show, and 14:00 SLT onwards – DJ Quad.
Check Inara’s article for more information.