Linden Lab Announcements: Mesh & Teen

Update: 2010-10-06 – Added link to SL Wiki and Mesh Costs

OSGrid
SL Meshes

Second Life Teen Grid

The teen grid closes at the end of this year. Today Terrence Linden posted in Welcoming Teen Grid Organizations to the Main Grid that 13 to 17 year olds will be allowed on the main grid. Previously they planned to allow 16 to 17 year olds on the main grid. The change today is the Lab will allow 13 to 15 year olds into regions owned by approved organizations. Current teen organizations will continue to operate past the end of the year without interruption.

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Wow! Second Life Mesh Support

Second Life
New Mesh Skirt

Update 2010-09-15after fold Update 2010-09-15 11:28 PM – Update 2010-09-16 – Details from Nyx Office Hours – 2010-09-17 – Update 2010-09-23 – Link to new Mesh Wiki Page

Wow! Oh wow! I thought this was a feature that was almost dead. I did not expect to hear another word on the subject this year. Here is whasup.

The current news out is the closed beta testers that have been under NDA, are now released from the NDA as part of the Lab’s new open door policy. They have started talking and posting videos. The Lab has a page up on their YouTube.com channel. See Second Life Channel Meshes – This is a play list, so you can see a bunch of videos.

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Second Life Leaks – Meshes (Update)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeSu_4Taupk]

Linden Lab (LL) has said this quarter we would see the release of the new meshes. (Second Life Meshes Update) May be for Second Life’s 7th birthday we may see the new meshes. Those working with them have been under NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) and not talking. The rumor is LL released them from their NDA and then re-imposed it. During the time they were released quite a bit of information made it out.

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Second Life Meshes Update

OpenSim Devokan
Meshes

In August of last year I wrote about meshes coming to Second Life. We have a type of mesh in SL now, they are called Sculpties. But sculpties have lots of limitations. Placing textures on them and controlling LoD (Level of Detail) is complex and they tend not to show their real shape until we get close. They are also slow to render, starting out as a sphere.

The meshes we are about to get are what I’ll call free form meshes. T. Linden is telling us today that we will get them some time in Q2. Yay! See Second Life Blog: Q2 Coming Soon: What’s Ahead For Second Life

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Preview of Coming Things in Second Life

Here is a cool video of the 3D mesh import and dynamic shadows coming to Second Life. If you click to watch on YouTube, you can click the HD button and see detail and read the menus. I suggest that and stop the video to check out what is in them.

Video Gone… 🙁

It is interesting to see ‘Upload Model’ in a menu. As they advance through the video they turn on dynamic shadows. If you have used Kirstenlee’s S-18 viewer and played with dynamic shadows that part will be familiar.

Use of ‘Deferred Rendering’ for shadows is an older technique that Maya has used for years. It has been improved over time and will likely give the Second Life Viewer the ability to render hundreds of lights instead of the 6 to 10 it handles now, without a significant performance hit.

For a bit more information see New World Notes. And their follow up: Aimee Logs Into Second Life… From Within Second Life!

Another good blog post is here: Linden Lab Announces Mesh Support

The ability to remote access computers from SL is a possibility too. See: Trescothick Aims To Please

Also, notice the shadows and lighting. Under the arches there is a light reflection. This is diffuse light or indirect lighting. Usually only done when ray tracing is available. So, this will be a big step up for SL.