General News

Second Life: Third Party Developers News 2016 w/40

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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. 

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Second Life: New Easy 360 Camera Coming

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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. 

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Second Life: The New Facelight

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Facelights were a basic part of a well-dressed avatar, back in 2008. Especially for a dark skinned girl that wanted her eyes to show in her pictures. But, when Linden Lab added the Advanced Lighting Model (ALM) feature facelights often produced a good imitation of a solar flare. (Earth has been dealing with a solar flare since Friday, 9/30 – Phone giving you problems?)

The video shows one of my new facelights. The first part shows it attached to my ‘Center’ attachment point. The later part of the video shows it attached to my ‘Spine’ attachment point.

Facelights are now BAD and we see few people wearing them. A few merchants still supply facelights with their skin or clothes products. Photographers mostly use ALM and Windlight to handle their lighting needs. Some high-end photographers use PROJECTOR lights. But, old style facelights are pretty much a thing of the past. We seldom need facelights these days. But, there are still occasions when we need to add extra light.

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Second Life: Beggar Bots

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People are reporting more occurrences of Beggar Bots hitting their groups. BUG-40546 – Group Chat Spam Bots. People are asking if they should be reported. The ToS is fuzzy on the topic. In general begging is not a violation of the ToS. Spamming is. So, we see varied opinions on whether to report or not.

Whirly Trapping a Beggar Bot
Whirly Trapping a Beggar Bot

The apparent consensus among those in the know keeping up with such things is: REPORT ‘EM. The Lindens are working at closing and banning accounts of the spammers.

Group managers have the Eject and Ban tool. Some do not realize it has been upgraded. Originally it did not terminate the current chat session. So, E & B didn’t immediately shut them up. Now it does. (SVC-32) 

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Second Life: Halloween 2016

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October is almost here. Halloween is near. The Highlight’s page in Featured News is listing lots of Halloween oriented places. Soon there will be rotting virtual pumpkins all over Second Life™. Oh… wait… even more scary, those evil pumpkins never die.

Botanica’s Halloween Haunted Cornfield Maze
Botanica’s Halloween Haunted Cornfield Maze

Check the Featured News and the Destination Guide often as new places will be appearing almost daily. Those listed Friday are:

  1. Angel’s Haunted House – fun, actually scared me a couple of times
  2. Dark Sewers
  3. Slaughter Creek
  4. Medieval Fantasy Manor
  5. Deadman’s Island Haunted Sim
  6. Haunted Home of Frankenstein
  7. All Hallows at Moochie – pretty place
  8. Shenanigan’s Spooky Halloween Cemetery
  9. Screaming Woods
  10. Oh the Horror Cart Sale & Hunt
  11. Skeleton House – Halloween Store

Halloween is becoming a huge economic thing in developed countries. Almost as big as Christmas. I dress nicely for Christmas parties but, I DRESS UP for Halloween.

Second Life Changes 2016 w38

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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.

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