Changes

New Second Life Viewer Pipeline

by

As reported before, a new viewer pipeline with various release candidates is coming online. It is mostly in place now. I don’t see where any recent announcements have been made by the Lab. Inara over on Living in the Modem World, has written about it. But, I think we are all a bit unsure how things are going to work. I know I am. I’m experimenting with things now.

I’ve updated my machine to use Win 7-64 in a dual boot scenario. This gives me a clean starting place for experimenting with the new viewer pipeline. Until today the only viewer I had installed was the main SL Viewer. I have all the other viewers on the other side of the dual boot in Vista 32. So, I can get to them. But, not from Win7.

I have clean AppData folders as a new Win7 user. Plus caches and log areas are new and fresh. 

Read more

SSA Follow Up 2013-28

by

We now have SSA enabled on the Le Tigre Release Candidate channels. For a list of regions running SSA see my article: Le Tigre Regions List. So, what is it like? Well, my opinion is it really depends somewhat on the viewer you are using, but generally better.

Non-SSA Region
Non-SSA Region

So, far my best experience has been with the Production release of the SL Viewer version 3.6.1-278007. I’ve had some crashing as I tp from SSA to non-SSA regions. But, otherwise, it is the best I’ve seen.

The Beta version of the SL viewer is another story. It is the worst of those I tried. I expect that to change. It is called beta for a reason.

Read more

Update on SSA

by

Surely by now you know SSA is Server Side Appearance, which is about baking your avatar appearance. The Lindens have posted a second notice that SSA will be here next week. See: It’s Time to Update Your Viewer!

And they reuse their previous video:

[youtube jwglL3VXI80]

Please make sure all your friends know about the coming update and the need for them to be using a recent version of whatever viewer they use. 

Read more

More L$ Exchange Information 2013-20A

by

Gwyneth Llewelyn has published her take on the new More Options announcement by the Lab. See: Financial crisis in Second Life ended? There are some details and gotcha’s worth knowing.

Gwyneth speculates on whether the Lab will turn off the cash out feature of the LindeX. As it is now the More Options change means other exchanges CANNOT convert L$ to RL currencies.

If FinCEN is forcing the Lab to move that direction, it will happen. But, that would be a huge hit for the Lab. There are people making a RL living from their SL businesses. Preventing any outward cash flow would kill those businesses.

For instance the motion capture company just covered in The Drax Files would likely drop their efforts in SL and move on to something else.

Personally I think stopping the outward cash flow will kill Second Life. As things are now SL provides entertainment and income. I’ll have to look to see how many private islands/regions are a shop of some kind. Tier is paid by sales. That tier payment thing could continue. But, some significant portion of those people are taking money out of SL. I suspect that significant portion is likely to give up their land.

[poll id=”12″]

Lab Makes L$ Exchange Announcement

by

There is a new post on the Second Life™ blog announcing: More Options for Buying Linden Dollars.

Quoting:

With a credit card, you can purchase L$ on the LindeX using 27 different currencies, including EUR, GBP, JPY, and AUD. If you don’t have a credit card, you can also use PayPal, which can be connected directly to a bank account in more than 193 countries and regions.

OK… most of us know that. Then they go to say:

Now, to give users more options and make it easier to purchase L$, we’re launching a pilot program of Authorized Resellers of L$. These sites are authorized by Linden Lab to purchase L$ on the LindeX and then resell those L$ using a variety of international currencies and payment methods. To be clear: per the Terms of Service, these resellers will not be allowed to purchase L$ outside of the LindeX (i.e. they will not be able to buy L$ back from users and cash people out). The list of Authorized Resellers participating in the pilot program is available here.

They also acknowledge there is a problem with cash out time via the LindeX saying:

We know that users are also concerned about the length of the LindeX’s cashout process and the limited choice of currencies when selling L$. We’re currently investigating ways to improve that experience for users while still providing superior fraud protections, and hope to hasten the cash out process and offer new currency options in the future.

So, something is at least in the works. I expect to hear more as the day wears on.