General News

Second Life News 2014-46

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Group Chat

I think most people have noticed it is better. So far, I have been able to comment in groups such as Firestorm Support without a problem, a group I seldom could connect to. I could listen, but not post comments, about half or more of the time.

Blood Letters - Mad Pea 2014
Blood Letters – Mad Pea 2014

Posting to any large group was a problem. That has now mostly been resolved.

We are losing the open post of any chat that starts after I login. In some cases it is not noticeable. In others it is apparent. The Lindens are aware of it.

Today grid status reported the internal utilities servers would be getting updates. In the Server Scripting meeting we learned that additional changes to group chat were being rolled out. So, this is likely that change going into place. The Lindens say not to expect visible improvements. That doesn’t mean there aren’t any, just that they are not likely to be as noticeable as previous changes. 

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Second Life Bits 2014-46

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Radegast Viewer

Ciaran and Inara quote from a post on the Radegast Viewer Blog. Radegast is a light weight viewer handy for the visually impaired. The developer is Latif Khalifa. For health reasons he is no longer able to develop the viewer. It is open source, so someone may take it over.

Sad… I wish the best for Latif.

Server Scripting Meeting 2014-46
Server Scripting Meeting 2014-46

Ebbe Altberg at Engadget

As noted in an earlier post Ebbe was on a panel in New York at Engadget’s get together discussing virtual worlds in apps beyond gaming. There is little in the discussions about SL2 other than closed beta will likely start mid 2015. Both Ciaran and Inara have more to say about what was discussed. I still see most of the VR talk as hype about what great things they are GOING to do. I am waiting for it to solidify into something we can touch and do. But, knowing how people see VR developing is good for perspective and has some predictive value.

For a summary see: Virtual reality has a future beyond video games, and it’s already started. 

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Second Life Bits 2014-45 #2

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CDN

The Content Delivery Network is used by all viewers. No viewer update was needed for CDN to work. It is a pure server-side thing.

Meauxle Bureaux 2014
Meauxle Bureaux 2014

Ciaran wrote about the problem he and others run into in: CDN Teething Problems & Meauxle Bureaux Should Be In Destination Guide. Some regions just refuse to render. Lots of textures fail to load. The usual leave and return tricks are not working. When these textures fail to load they FAIL to load and there seems little we can do about it.

The Lindens are aware of the problem and have posted on the SL Blog about the problem, what they think is causing it, and the hope it will pass with changes being made by both the Lab and the CDN provider. See: An Update on the [Second Life] CDN Project.

If you run into this problem, please file a JIRA report. Add your RL location (City, State, Country) and ISP name.

And like Ciaran I encourage you to check out the mole abode: Meauxle Bureaux. 

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Second Life Bits 2014-45

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Flickr

I am finding lots of people that make amazing images using Second Life. Blanche Foxclaw is one of the people that is posting images I like.

Silver (Close-Up)

Nebraska Oddfish has posted an image of her ‘average experience… a small number of people are complaining about this problem.

My average SL experience these days...

Fab Free Help Wanted

Fabulously Free is looking to add bloggers to their family of writers to help with their blog. See: Want To Join Our Blogging Team? The requirements, guide lines, and applications questions are all on the page.

Jingweidu Technology Co., Ltd

Jingweidu Technology Co., Ltd is taking pre orders for their Oculus Rift knock-off. Hypergrid Business has an article on it. See: Chinese Oculus alternative hits the market. (US$327± depending on the day’s exchange rate.)

Capital Exchange & Second Life

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I see that SL Capital Exchange is suspending trading in Linden dollars. Today I see they announced:

On July 16, 2014, I filled out the first form for the Skill Gaming Application for Capital Exchange Stock Market Simulation Game. From that point until today, there have been numerous correspondences between me, my law firm, and Linden Lab. As of today we still do not have an official determination, positive or negative, on our application.

I was hoping that because much of the delay has been on the part of Linden Lab, that we would be allowed to operate past the November 1, 2014 deadline set forth in a recent post by Linden Lab. Unfortunately I was informed by Rowan Linden that we cannot. So therefore effective immediately, I am suspending all trading at Capital Exchange until our application is approved or denied by Linden Lab.

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See the full article for more details and information: Capital Exchange Suspends Activity Until Further Notice.

Drax Radio Hour Show 42

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Drax and Jo have episode 42 of their Radio Hour out. Ciaran has a review of the podcast out. Seems the uninformed media is again voicing ignorant opinions about Second Life™. Only a small part of Ciaran’s discussion is devoted to the journalistic stupidity. The rest is pointing out what’s in the Drax/Jo episode. He provides a good summary of the show, so I’ll skip that task having a busy day ahead of me.

See Ciaran’s: Drax Files Radio Hour Ep 42 – Leaping, Bashing The Beeb & 2007 Oldbies. (Note: at 7:30 AM SLT (PDT) Ciaran’s site was down with DB access error. – I read the article via Feedly.)

See Drax’s Radio Hour 42: show #42: been there, done that!

Drax has included a video in the show’s blog page. (9 min)

You see the problems volksvlijt is having using the Oculus Rift. Also, at about the 4:00 minute mark you can see and hear volksvlijt talk about texture thrashing. I suppose the dual image render for the Oculus is using up video memory faster and causing the thrashing.

From the problems volksvlijt runs into I suspect that the Linden Oculus Rift Viewer still has a ways to go.

There are a number of videos embedded in Show 42’s page.