General News

Second Life News 2019 w18

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Last Friday there was a Third-Party Dev UG meeting that ran 48 minutes. The video is here. I’ve included the interesting stuff mixed in.

Servers

The main channel will stay with version #19.04.22.526534. No restart. This is the version pushed to reduce disconnects. In my experience, things are much better.

Blue Steel, Le Tigre, and Magnum will update to version  #19.04.25.526669 on Wednesday. The version is listed as having Internal Fixes and Fixed EEP Regressions.

Rider Linden met with an SL group, Visionaire, to explain EEP. It is an hour plus video.

From the Server-Scripting UG: [12:34] Oz Linden: And we’ve already put in place a bunch of improvements [think detectors & stats] to our RC monitors to help prevent a similar recurrence (with more coming soon)

As of the 4/18 server change was to roll the server OS back. In doing so some are seeing less script time available. One or two have seen a drop from 100% of scripts to only 30% to 60% run.

Oz says they have lots of performance data for that metric. So, they will be checking as they move to re-upgrade the OS. The simulator OS has to update as part of the pre-move to the cloud.

There are other script performance things planned. So, the Lindens will add in a look at the script slowing issue along with those.

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Second Life’s Newest Continent – Bellisseria or Land of Linden Homes

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New Linden homes… neat. You can read the Linden announcement here, Fresh New Linden Homes are Here with New Themes and Larger Options. You can read the SOLD OUT notice that came 48 hours after the opening.

Their homes are on a new continent to the southeast of Sansara. As of 4/18 word is this Linden Homes continent is named Bellisseria. Will find a number of the regions are named with the prefixes SSP and SSPE.

Get The Freight Out Map of Continents

The new Bellisseria continent is connected by ocean regions to Sansara. Thus, the interconnected area we can sail and fly in has increased considerably. Initially, there were no public lands on the new continent where one could rez a boat or aircraft. However, at the time the group GTFO (Get the Freight Out) had members living in the new continent that had set their property to Rez-OK.

I am not providing the SLURL’s as I haven’t asked permission to share them and with new Rez-OK places popping up you won’t need them. These private places seem to be a thing shared only among the GTFO players/participants.

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Who is having SL Photo fun?

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Fun Photography – Every so often I mention the SL Forum thread ‘How does your avatar look today?’ (page 665 – Looks for short) In it, someone (name withheld to protect the guilty) posted a picture with their avatar in bunny custom… not the furry kind, the Playboy kind. So sexy.

The picture started a thing… my tail is cuter than your tail… no… not competitive just fun… people curious to see how they looked as bunnies and some probably were influenced by a bit of exhibitionism and took the opportunity to show off. I suspect some measure of that fun and look-at-me stuff runs through those all peeps posting in the thread. My hand is up.

The Bunny Pictures

However, there is a thing in the group about getting together for group photos. Probably one of the more fun things people in the thread do. I think of it as girls behaving badly… I’ll leave the interpretation of the term ‘badly’ up to you. Those older and younger than I seem to have different meanings for it. I intend this as the fun type ‘badly’.

Whatever, that ‘get together thing’ got Saravendi thinking (post). Seems things weren’t working out for people to get together in their bunny outfits. So, she very nicely PUT them together from the photos they posted. That was a hit. The idea grew, lots of Me-Too-Please posters followed. So, lots of additions and a growing picture which Saravendi was neat enough to keep editing.

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SL’s Big EEP Fear

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It is April 1… but I’m not putting you on.

In week 13 there was a third-party viewer UG meeting. A significant part of the meeting was spent discussing the EEP – Enhanced Environment Project (EEP).

The EEP Viewer is in RC and has been for several days. It is the big push in the viewer pipeline. Vir Linen thinks the Love Me Render viewer is the likely next candidate to be promoted. But, EEP should be ready to release in 2 to 3 weeks… Firestorm thinks they will be 2 to 3 weeks behind that. I think 5 or 6 weeks behind, but I’ll be happy to be wrong.

EEP Editing Problems – 4/2019

As soon as EEP releases the Lab will move on to EEP2. Some of the things people want in EEP are being put into EEP2 to allow EEP to release sooner.

EEP is causing the current black stars and changes in the appearance of some Windlight (WL) environments. So, lots of complaining going on. I’ve turned off ‘Use Region Default’ on my Firestorm viewer. You do that in Preferences->Firestorm->Windlight->Automatically change environments… (uncheck). I can still control whether WL is using the region-default WL or not with the Photo Tools controls. 

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Second Life ‘Featured’ Destination?

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Today I see the Lindens are featuring a Drax video on SL’s Insilico (URL Destination Guide – This lands one at the OLD main landing point.) in Destinations. I personally thought the video fell far short of portraying Insilico as the amazing build that it is. But, Insilico has lost its awesome. It is no longer the amazing build of perspective and scale illusions of the Skills Hax days (2015 and before). So, Drax made the best of what is left.

Drax made a video in 2015 that does a better depiction of Insilico… abet, as it was.

In 2016 it was thought Insilico would close. See my Insilico Update – The LONG Story. Things worked out and Insilico is still around but without Skills Hax.

In SL search there are a number of links (7) into Insilico. Checking them and the older LM’s I have I find most are useless. I would say this is the primary Insilico Cyberpunk Roleplay LM (SLURL). The SURL in the Destinations article is pretty lame and totally inadequate when one considers they were promoting roleplay. However, land there and hang out, you will get you a link in local chat to the Cyberpunk RP location. Now if one just notices it….

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Second Life Bits and Bites… 2019 w11

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Yes… bites.

Skin Fair 2019 is here.

Skin Fair runs to Marth 24. Visit here: Visit the North Sim and Visit the South Sim.

Word is it is busy and hard to get into. Yeah, expected. Remember. Peak SL usage is between 2 and 3 PM SLT (PDT). Minimum use is 12 hours later… 2 to 3 AM. I didn’t have a problem getting in. I did get disconnected trying to walk across the region boundary. My second day visiting the regions were working better. But I was chicken to walk across.

The regions are laggy, 35+ avatars in each of the two regions. The sim performance is decent stats-wise, but walking is a pain. I land, move out of the way and then flycam through the event.

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