General News

Second Life Bits 2016 w/47

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Lumiya viewer adds support for Google Cardboard. Inara has an article detailing it. There are some interesting user interface ideas.

Inara covers Radegast’s recent voice issues, a viewer apparently favored by the disabled.

Nothing beats a friend
Nothing beats a friend

VLC

You may or may not be aware of the VLC media player. It is a free, open source video player. It has basically replaced QuickTime in the SL viewers. The development team, VideoLAN Project has added the ability to view 360-video and pictures. See: VLC media player now supports 360-degree videos. 

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Second Life: Dragons as Art

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I’ve seen several people write about “From Here On There Be Dragons.” It is an art exhibit in Second Life(TM). Follow the previous link to find a SLURL and visit. The exhibit closed January 31, 2017. I decided to check it out.

Still pictures don’t do it justice. Since I’m learning Adobe Premiere Pro, I decided to video the exhibit and use it as another project.

Exploring the exhibit is a reoccurring ‘leap of faith’ trek. There is a lot if invisible flooring to walk across.

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Second Life: Horizons’ Land Prices

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Horizons land is pricey. As of Wednesday, the least a parcel was going for was L$1,010, the most L$35,029. The average is L$11,216.

Horizons Nov 2016
Horizons Nov 2016

While most parcels in SL have 1 or 2 bidders and go for L$500, Horizons land has 6 to 15 bidders.

I am not surprised to find a mix of parcels that have yet to be sold and a number that are for sale by owner. Meaning some enterprising people are working to flip the properties. But, I don’t see for sale signs when walking the hoods.

One person has purchased 4 adjacent parcels and put in a custom home and forest.

There are a number of parcels that have not sold, ever… as best I can tell. So, there is land available or that will come available. So, I don’t see why the bidding war. People…

I wonder if the Lindens will create landing points in Horizons for new people. I live south of such a hub. It is often interesting. It does make me glade I have EJECT power on my land. So, I think landing hubs for newbies would devalue the land… for residential use. It might be good for a brothel.

Mesh Addicts Explains Bento

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Daria of Mesh Body Addicts blog has a video explaining Bento. It is great for the person that is just interested in knowing enough to understand what it is about and what the difference between the classic skeleton we have not and the new Bento Skeleton,

Daria promises to provide more information in a future animation.

The people working with mesh clothes will notice Daria’s ideas about collision bones is a bit off, not as precise as one would need for a tutorial. But, for a light weight explanation she is accurate.

Awesome. Thanks.

Peace Comes to Second Life… Really?!?

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Well, for about a minute… when all the guns in Second Life broke… Now, there are work around steps and viewer fixes and… Whatever, you can again shoot those deserving of annihilation.

So, what happened? Why can’t I shoot that scumbag werewolf and save the hot mini-skirted damsel? Seems the Lindens fixed a problem in the process of building Horizons, that’s my thinking. As they expanded controls for use with Advanced Experience Tools (AET), Horizons is an advanced experience, the scripting functions needed a bit more control. So, as reported some time ago we got new SIT commands. See: Second Life News 2016 w45 and for more details Scripting.

Fallout Wasteland - liqueur.felix
Fallout Wasteland – liqueur.felix

I suspect somewhere in that process the Lindens noticed some REALLY OLD bugs, think beginning of SL time, which are now just oddities for most scripters and fixed them to make it easier (and likely make it more logically correct) to do Horizons. The result is all the weapons designed to deal with those bugs/oddities broke.

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Second Life: No Change Weeks

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As the holidays arrive we enter a time when the Lab closes down to a skeleton staff and employees take time off. It is a time when things are done to minimize the possibility of system problems and crashes. So, if it is working… don’t change it. Next week (47) is one of those weeks.

Countryside 2

I haven’t heard an official set of dates for this year’s no change weeks. I expect this one starts today and certainly tomorrow 11/19 and runs to 11/28.

The next set is Christmas-New Years. I expect it to start about December 17-21 and run to January 2. As Christmas falls on Sunday what the Lindens will decide to do is a bit unpredictable as the group seems to have significant input to management.

Whatever they decide, I wish them a full Thanksgiving (yum), a Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year.