General News

Valve-Steam and Second Life

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With coming presence of Second Life™ on Steam™ gaming several possibilities open up. Probably just as many questions come up too. It is too early to know how Valve™ and Linden Lab™ are going implement the union. But, people in general are interested in what Value is doing and thinking.

Valve’s Steam

An article I came across this morning is: Can Valve Go Beyond Gimmicks With Its Gaming Goggles And Wearable Computing? The opening paragraph is what caught my interest.

Virtual reality and the quest for the perfect controller are the stuff of science fiction, but in reality traditional controllers work perfectly well for gaming. Much more exciting than wearable computing is the possibility of a Steam Box.

A good virtual reality controller for Second Life would be great. Has this been in the works for awhile? Is this some part of plan? I suppose it could be… or not.

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Second Life Group Edit Update Week 36

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Baker Linden was at Friday’s Server-Scripting User Group meeting. He updated us on this week’s progress.

My news is that my group member changes will soon be deployed on ADITI. You’ll need a development viewer to test (on ADITI). You can find them here:

I’ll be posting in the JIRA (SVC-4968) on which regions this will be enabled (on ADITI).

There may be some issues during testing. When getting the member list of a large group, other info (group title, group info, etc.) may not properly load. This is an issue with the speed of ADITI’s  SQL server and shouldn’t occur once live on AGNI. To receive the rest of the data, wait for the member list to appear (this can be upwards of a few minutes), go back to the My Groups panel of the people floater and view the group profile again. The query will be cached this time, and the member list will appear quicker than it did before (depending on your connection speed). The rest of the information should be received this time.

If you find any problems while testing, please send me [Baker Linden] a message in-world (on AGNI) or email baker -at- lindenlab -dot- com.

This means we are getting close to having the update in a viewer for use on AGNI, the main grid. I think 4 to 6 weeks, but it may be sooner. When this rolls to the main channel older viewers not using the new group editing API code will be limited to editing groups equal to or less than 10,000 members.

I expect all Third Party Viewers to be adopting this code. I suspect the Phoenix viewer may be pushed into the ‘old’ viewer group and not get it. But, its awesome decedent: Firestorm, will certainly get the update.

#SL JIRA Change Reactions

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The big news sweeping the Second Life™ community is the change in the JIRA. It is not a popular change. I’ve been following the threads I can find to see the reaction. I’ve updating my previous post with new links. I’ll repeat them here.

[vimeo 49016161 400 240]

The video is comedy/satire. It well describes how many of us see the Lab’s JIRA change.

Threads

Innula Zenovka: Changes to the jira.. hiding bug reports? – SL Forum

NeoBokrug Elytis: Point gun at foot, pull trigger. [JIRA CHANGES] – Main thread at SLUniverse.

Botgirl Questi : Bugsy Linden Interview: The Real Story Behind the Jira Change – Comedy or… biting satire

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Thinking About #SL Mesh Modeling?

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I wrote the following for an SL user that wants to learn to build mesh items for Second Life™. If you are thinking about learning to build mesh items for Second Life, you too may find it interesting.

First: 3D modeling is not as complex as it is voluminous… There is just so much to learn… So, my suggestion is to avoid getting bogged down in details and cover as many aspects of modeling as possible. Then as you choose to make things, get into the details related to your project.

With and Without Normal Mapping

Modeling for each world or game has its restrictions and limits and Second Life certainly does. You will find lots of generic modeling tutorials around that are NOT Second Life specific. CG Cookie is a great source for good to great generic educational tutorials. Their best stuff is not free. But, it is cheap, cheaper than a book and more up to date. Also, some of the purchase-to-view stuff becomes free after a time. I tend to purchase a month’s access every now and then. I download the lessons so I can go back and review them later.

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PhotoTools for Second Life

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Update Note 2014-04-10: The Photo Tools are not part of the Firestorm Viewer and do not need to be installed.

I saw these tools mentioned on Hamlet’s New World Notes in an article titled: Want to Take Great SL Images? Get Mr. Weaver’s Phototools! These are tools made for the Firestorm Viewer (Firestorm 4.1.1 (28744) Jul  9 2012 21:43:46 (Firestorm-Release)). The tools will only work with the default skins.

Mayfair – Not the default settings

This is an interesting addition to Firestorm. It is a rational and logical arrangement of the controls by William (paperwork) Weaver that affects how the viewer renders with world. If you are a photographer this is going to be a way handy tool. All the settings that affect the render appearance are in a single panel consisting of 6 tabs. Some of the controls open other panels, but basically it is one new panel, but what a handy panel.

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#SL News Update Week 34

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First… there will be no MetaReality podcasts until September 24th, due to RL problems and RL work load. So, I doubt we will see an update on the Mesh Defomer before then. 🙁

SL Support

If you use a Third Party Viewer (TPV), Second Life™ support can be really annoying. There are viewer problems and server side problems. If it is a server side problem, it really doesn’t matter which viewer you are using. Support should help out and get the problem fixed regardless of the viewer being used. That idea is taking root at the Lab.

Scripting-Server UG August 2012

Now that the MAJORITY of viewers in use are TPV’s, this problem is a significant pain. A process is starting to change that and hopefully reduce the problem. BUT… and this is a big butt… er but… first level support people have a hard time figuring out what are viewer and server side problems. So, some work is going into developing processes to help them decide.

To understand what is happening and what to expect one has to understand the problems support people face. One problem is the Lab’s support people are not trained in how to use or help with TPV’s. That would drive the support training costs and time requirements beyond anything reasonable. If only some TPV’s were supported to reduce cost and time required, there would be a load of drama about which viewers were selected. So, that means an all or nothing approach. It is going to come down on the nothing side.

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