General News

Second Life Bits 2015-03

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This was to be a Happy New Year post, the first of 2015. But, blog/server problems messed up that plan. Since then RL has been delaying my getting it published. I’m just getting back to this now. So, belated Happy New Year!

I just thought this was a cool image... See Fab Free.
I just thought this was a cool image… See Fab Free.

Life is still busy for me as I finish up multiple projects with more lining up. I know I’ll be writing less in January than I have in the past.

Inara, Ciaran, and Mona do a good job of covering the news. So, I may move to only covering those parts of Second Life they skip. So, for now I expect to publish more bits and less news.

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The Second Life News-Scape

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Viewer news has been decreasing, at least in my opinion. Most of 2014 I’ve been writing about Firestorm catching up with the SL Viewer and we still aren’t there. Firestorm is basically on a quarterly release plan. So, there is only infrequent news to report in the Firestorm regard.

Peeping Tom
Another Mr. S photo…

Cool VL Viewer and Singularity serve what I perceive to be an increasing smaller audience of the Version 1 interface users. I’m not saying their user count is decreasing. As users on older computers move away from Firestorm and the SL Viewer their user numbers may  increase for a time. But, I think that will change as time passes. And SL2 is likely to be a final nail…

The fans of third party viewers generally follow the viewer developers’ blogs. So, I think the need for news on these viewers is decreasing. Mostly I am less interested in the viewer changes happening now and that makes it hard for me work up the energy to cover them. 

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Second Life 2014 in Review

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Writing the annual review is a lot of work and takes time I will be using for RL projects. Ciaran and others have written their reviews of 2014. I’m going to skip mine this year. But, I do have some thoughts on 2014 and the coming 2015.

I have been tracking concurrent user numbers for the past 3 years.

Concurrent Users 2011 to 2014
Concurrent Users 2011 to 2014

There has often been a discussion about whether or not there is a seasonal aspect to the use of Second Life. I think the chart answers that question. It shows most clearly in the peak concurrent users line and a bit less in the minimum line, but it is still there.

Notice that about July-August of each year there is a low point in the numbers. From then to February-March the numbers increase to a peak then start to fall to the February-March low point. It seems pretty consistent from year to year for the last 3 years. 

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Second Life Bits 2014-49

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Holiday food and naps are taking their toll on news releases for Second Life™. Most of my SL news sources are turning into travel guides. Most are at least interesting. But, I look at the pictures. If those are interesting then I read the article. Otherwise I’m on to something else.

Ciaran Laval has an article up, It Started With Da Boom, which is about the first 16 regions created in Second Life. I had not known that The Ivory Tower Of Primitives in Natoma was part of the original 16 regions. Ciaran includes a video by Torley of the 2001 Second Life, below.

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Second Life and LoD

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LoD is Level of Detail. It is a term used in 3D modeling to improve performance by reducing the amount of data that has to be rendered. In Second Life™ it seems to be poorly understood and ignored by many. The result is a poorly performing Second Life. This video shows the major problems.

I did not intend to belittle anyone with the video. But, having a ton of poorly rendering mash in a region gave me the extreme example I needed.

Some of Mad Pea’s builds are absolutely gorgeous. But, with a little bit more work they would not have had the LoD failings I was seeing. It may also be that they intended to have the various victims’ business cards be hard to find and they used LoD to make it even harder. I doubt it, but may be… 

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Second Life News & Bits 2014-48

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Servers

We haven’t had any server updates running in the RC Channels. We have had a version running in RC that has tweaks to CDN settings. Those tweaks are rolling out to the main grid tomorrow, Tuesday, Week 48.

According to the Deploys thread there are no new changes being made to any RC channel.

Blood Letters Slow Render Day - 3 to 4 minutes
Blood Letters Slow Render Day – 3 to 4 minutes

A no change window opens Wednesday 11/26 and runs to Sunday 11/30.

Cocoa Bugs

There are no Cocoa bugs for Mac users. Just ask Lindens or Apple engineers. Come on, who are you going to believe, them or your eyes?

But, there is hope. Cinder Roxley is working on those issues, retina resolution support for the viewer, mouse look, and second screen support. So, we may see a fix at some point. This assumes a fix is possible and Cinder seems to think it is.

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