Second Life: Third Party Developers News 2016 w/40

Viewers

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.

Love You Forever

Love You Forever

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.  Continue reading

Second Life: New Easy 360 Camera Coming

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.  Continue reading

Second Life: Bento Hands – Vista Beta Out

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. Continue reading

Second Life Changes 2016 w38

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.

Dark and Red

Dark and Red

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. Continue reading

Second Life: Marketplace Issues

Word is getting around that the Marketplace (MP) has shifted to the new search feature. There are some problems with the new search. I like it, but nothing is perfect.

Kitty From The Garden

Kitty From The Garden

One problem is items removed from the MP are showing up in search. Another is how title words and keywords are ranked in the search algorithm has changed. More weight given to title words. The fear is this will lead to cluttered item names. Some believe people will start cramming there keyword list into the items name, title.

Whatever the case on these problems, there is a place where you can discuss the problems you have with the new search. See the SL Forum thread titled: Marketplace Search Issues [ New ].