Category Archives: Changes

Second Life Did What?

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They dropped the price of land. Wow!

Goodbye Mystical Fea / Au Revoir

Goodbye Mystical Fea / Au Revoir

OK, it is not a major thing, just 10%. But, that is significant. Also, the steps up increasing land owned are smaller. So, it is cheaper to increase the amount of land you own.

You can read about it here: MORE LAND FOR LESS MONEY?

For Premium Members they have doubled the allotment of free land on the mainland. Premium Members can have 1,024m2 of land tier free. That is a 32x32m square of land or 105×105 ft. This is twice the previous allotment.

It won’t change my life. But, I will think more about getting land. But, having JD on one side and Mercede’s Beach Haven on the other would make it hard to move away.

OpenCollar No Longer OpenCollar?

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More SL drama. Unfortunately, about 100,000 SL users will be affected. It seems in November 2017 there was a sudden change in the OpenCollar programming team. Wendy Starfall and Garvin Twine were doing most of the work, programming, marketing, support, etc. for the last 6 years.

The early founders, from the history I can find, are Nandana Singh (now Nirea Resident) and Athaliah Opus. Several involved in the OC Project say they have ignored the project for the last 6 years or so. Leaving it to Wendy, Gaven, and others in the team to do the work and pay for websites and land (regions). But, we would have to define what the speaker means by ‘ignored’.

A point came when Nirea and Athaliah decided the OC project was going the wrong way. It seems that while the open source OC code was being maintained with no income for the programmers from it when the active programmers decided to sell an add-on under a brand name called Virtual Disgrace and some other things based on OC open source code.

“You can't stop the future You can't rewind the past The only way to learn the secret ...is to press play.” ― Jay Asher

You can’t stop the future You can’t rewind the past The only way to learn the secret …is to press play

The entitlement mindset folks decided it was an outrage that programmers working for free should even consider working for a profit and not giving them everything free… So, the great divide opened. The eventual result Nirea and Athaliah reclaimed the OpenCollar in-world group and kicked Wendy and others on the new path out of the group.

OpenCollar remained fee. But, the programmers were making other toys and selling them on their own. I could use the OpenCollar code and make a toy and sell it. But, you would still be able to get the free OpenCollar code and made your toys and sell them. Continue reading →

Second Life and the CLOUD

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Inara Pey has apparently sat through a dry video of Tara Hernandez’s, Senior Director of Systems and Build Engineering at Linden Lab, presentation at Amazon’s Las Vegas promotion for their services. She has written about it here: SANSAR AND SECOND LIFE IN THE CLOUD: LL SPEAKS AT AWS RE:INVENT. The video is here:

That is a 34-minute video on YouTube. There are some gems in the video that interest Second Life™ people.

I had not realized the first iteration of SL used a graphics engine designed to circumvent the Windows graphics and go directly to hardware. This go-to-hardware was the early game-graphics optimization used by most of the industry. That is long gone. Now OpenGL is the optimization that interfaces with all the various graphics systems in use with SL.

Inara covers the main parts SL’ers will find interesting. But, the video is loaded with tidbits about Second Life and how they are changing away from the problems with ideas for Sansar. So, some seldom talked about SL things are described in the video.

There is about 10+ minutes of tech description on Sansar and how it works. And toward the end some words on how they plan to adapt Second Life for life in the cloud.

Third-Party Dev Meeting (Leaks) 2017 w44

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There is some news this week. Most are from a couple of leaks. They give us a clue as to why the release of the Firestorm viewer is delayed. So…

The Linden Voice RC Viewer has 1 bug still left. The Lindens are hunting for the cause of an intermittent channel misconnection. If I understand the voice system mistakes which region you are in and connects your voice to the wrong region. Of course, voice doesn’t work when that happens.

in simple words

in simple words

Vivox, the providers of SL voice, is working on the problem and thinks it is in the SDK….

The Alex Ivy RC Viewer got an update Thursday. The viewer is doing well and Oz Linden is happy with it. However, there was a bug in the updater part of the code. It caused those updating some problems. I ran into it. A manual install corrects the problem.

The Lindens can’t get a good grip on how well the 64-bit viewer is doing as the 32 & 64-bit versions report as the same viewer. From other indicators, the Lindens know 32-bit version has people crashing way more often than previous versions. The 64-bit version is crashing way less than previous versions. Apparently, there is a WAY SIZABLE difference between 32 and 64-bit versions.

Crashes are typically early in the login… Oz suspects it is crashing during the benchmarking tests. Continue reading →

Planned Second Life Updates

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The Linens have announced some new things coming to Second Life™. Some are good, some are a pain.

In the pain department first, there is an increase in the fee to buy Linden dollars (L$). It is going from US$0.60 to $0.99 per transaction. This goes into effect today, Nov 2, 2017. Dang. I need Lindens…

Also, when cashing out the fee goes from 1.5% per transaction, with a $3 (USD) minimum and a $25 (USD) maximum to 2.5% per transaction, with a $3 (USD) minimum, and no maximum. This happens January 3, 2018.

- to The Mist -

– to The Mist –

Why? Thank criminals and government regulators. The cost to remain compliant with regulations is going up.

In the goodies department, money is being budgeted for; new features, engineering support, customer support, billing systems and upgrades, and customer acquisition outreach. These are all good things. I like new features. Animesh is the exciting one. The improved server-side baking for 1024 rez and adaption for use with mesh bodies and other mesh attachments is intertwined with animesh phase I & II. But, it has great potential to reduce avatar induced lag.  Continue reading →

Second Life – Rights Policy Change

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Lately, we have had more articles and videos appearing that deal with or touch on Rights Infringement, theft. Hamlet on New World Notes posted Linden Lab Updates IP Enforcement Policies To Make DMCA Process Stricter.

Back Roads

Back Roads

He points us to a significant warning now included in the Policy statement.

If you are unsure whether you hold rights to a particular work, or whether the content you are reporting is infringing your legal rights, please consult an attorney before filing a DMCA Notice. Please be aware that under 17 U.S.C. § 512(f), you may be liable for any damages, including costs and attorneys’ fees incurred by us or our users, if you knowingly materially misrepresent that material or activity is infringing.

I agree with Hamlet the purpose is more to scare than actually bite. But, it certainly opens the door for the Lab to go after those filing frivolous DMCA notices.

Second Life: New Things

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I missed the Content Creators UG meeting this week, lunch and drinks with friends. So, of course this is the week we got word from the Lindens that we are getting new shiny stuff, a new project: Animation Extensions.

Zizi

Zizi

The new extensions will extend how and what we can animate in s couple directions. First is what is being called Supplementary Animations. These are for the new Bento skeleton.

If you don’t animate in SL or haven’t been around forever, you probably don’t know there used to be just the avatar default animations (think duck walk) and the animations we played via script. Our Animation Overriders (AO’s) worked by the viewer continuously asking the server what out avatar was doing (walking, sitting, flying, etc.) and then telling the server which animation to play.  Continue reading →

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Second Life: Will We Bake Our Mesh Body Avatars?

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The idea of baking mesh avatars has been a subject coming up in the Content Creators UG over the last couple of weeks. The idea is to change how mesh avatars work. If you don’t understand how a Classic body layers work now, this may be confusing. I’ll try to sort it.

Mechanical beauty

Mechanical beauty

Starting back a couple of years, the Lindens added Server Side Appearance baking (SSA). The Classic avatar is made of three separate parts; head, upper body, and lower body. The parts allow layering of textures placed on the Classic body. Sort of like sticking decals one a top another.  Continue reading →