#SL News Update Week 19

Mesh Deformer Examples

It seems Inara & I are credited in some measure for getting the word out that mesh clothing examples are needed. Oz says a steady stream of examples are coming in now. If you want any say in how the Mesh Deformer works, get your samples to Oz Linden.

Server Beta Test Group

Spell Checking

Eventually the Linden SL Viewer will get spell check for chat. There is some user interface feedback to be handled and a couple of fixes. Then it can be merged into the viewer and begin moving through the QA pipe. No telling when the work will be completed.

The dictionaries to be packaged with the spell check are; US and UK English, Spanish Spanish, and Brazilian Portuguese.

See STORM-83Interactive Spell Checking. Also get a copy of the Spelling Project viewer.

People Search

There is some cleanup work for display names that is incomplete that apparently affects people search. Hopefully the cleanup work make people search better. Until then you may find it works better if you type in a name and click the drop down to search for people.

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#SL Damage Control

I heard someone talking about MetaReality having new information from Qarl on the Mesh Deformer Project. So, off I go to listen to it, an hour and 20 minute audio. This one is titled Damage Control, which inspired my title… just in case… never mind.

Well… there is new discussion about the Deformer Drama… but not much on the actual Deformer, nothing that I haven’t already covered. Since I have my notes from the listen I’ll publish them.

Again the time marks are approximate. The descriptions are my take away from the listen. Any resemblance to what is actually in the audio is more than coincidental. Any actual quoting is improbable. But, I did try to convey the ideas expressed in the audio tape.

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#SL Mesh Defomer at Risk

Scanning the Second Life® news today I found an article on new World Notes by Hamlet about Oz Linden reconsidering whether the Mesh Defmer is worth the effort… the bother to add it to Second Life. Hamlet’s article is: Linden Lab Needs Mesh Samples to Test Qarl’s Mesh Deformer — Or May Not Incorporate It Into SL Viewers At All.

Crying Leo by storyvillegirl on Flickr

If you don’t know the Mesh Deformer or the Parametric Deformer is the missing part of the mesh project that was never completed. The Deformer will allow mesh clothes to change with avatar shape controls. It causes mesh clothes to follow the Enhanced Avatar Physics, the clothes bounce with the boobies. The Lindens are considering dropping the project. We need to demonstrate support for the project for it to continue. This article is about getting the support into a visible place for the Lindens to see.

I found Oz’s comments in the JIRA STORM-1716 item.

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#SL Scheduled Maintenance May 8, 9, 10

Taken from the Second Life Grid Status page.

[Posted 9:45am PDT, 8 May 2012] We [Linden Lab] will be performing scheduled maintenance [on the Second Life system] today, Wednesday and Thursday of this week (May 8, May 9, May 10), beginning at 6:00pm PDT each day. Each maintenance is scheduled to last around 8 hours. Please save all builds and refrain from rezzing no copy objects, as some regions may be taken offline and remain offline for extended periods of time. Please follow this blog [Grid Status blog] for any updated information.

See the coming SL News post for some speculation and ideas to what is going on.

Also…

Spikes, Slow Restarts For Some Regions Overnight

[Posted 9:25 pm PDT, 07 May 2012]

Some regions are taking longer than normal to work their way through restarts this evening. In addition, they’re reporting higher-than-normal spikes in performance and viewer instability.

Our engineers have done the preliminary work tracing the problem and will be forming a team early tomorrow to fully diagnose and correct it.

Tonight, please file a “region offline” service request as needed for any region which remains inaccessible to you for longer than 15 minutes or so, and we’ll work with our network engineers to assist the restarts as needed.

Second Life 9th Birthday – Perception

Linden Lab® has announced Second Life’s coming ninth birthday in June. It is a small announcement, 158 words. See: Help Us Celebrate Second Life’s 9th Birthday! If one had no history with Second Life® the announcement would just be an announcement, neither good nor bad. But, those having history with Second Life are having various reactions to the announcement based on their history, expectations, and perceptions of Second Life and Linden Lab.

Tateru in an article on Dwell On It, Anniversary time. Everything new is old again, recalls what, to her, is probably the best SL Birthday in all time: SL3B. Tateru see this announcement as possibly opening the best opportunity for a great celebration in years. She goes on to speculate on why the Lindens are proceeding this way, but that is speculation.

D'ni Refugees at Second Life 5th Birthday

Innara Pey at Living in a Modem World sees it as a shame. For her the collection of regions devoted to the celebration and the large number of builds for the Second Life 8th Birthday (SL8B) made for a great party.

I was somewhat disappointed with SL8B. I like to see great builds. I like to see creative ideas well expressed. I love things like Kerryth’s lacy, fairy like buildings. I like the interactive art. I like finding a bunch of friends parting and having fun. There were 3 or 4 builds in all the dozens that fascinated me. I want to be endlessly fascinated. But, such builds take a huge amount of effort. Building just for a few days and then seeing the build disappear has to take its toll.

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Second Life Interesting

Strawberry Singh with her fun nature does a fashion blog and a hilarious Plurk line (example she Plurked about: Brown Vag) I check both each day. She finds awesome skins and lingerie. Great photography. But today she surprised me and posted about doing a promotional piece for Linden Lab. See the image. I think it is one of the best promotional pieces for Second Life that I’ve seen.

Strawberry's Blog and Art

To see it on the Second Life site, you need to log out of the SL web sites. Then visit SecondLife.com. You may not see it as the first image. However there is a pager button in the images so you can look through the images. I have all the ones that came up for me, 5, after the fold.

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