Category Archives: Second Life

Things about SL

Second Life 2015 in Review: February 2015

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This is the second of may be twelve articles on what was happening this past year, 2015.

February 2015 – 43 Articles

The RC server channels got an update to fix a teleport problem SL Go users were having.

Maison de L'amitié

Maison de L’amitié

Viewer-wise we were being told it would be some time before we saw Webkit abandoned and a move to Chromium Embedded Framework. Well, it is December, almost a year later, and we are seeing the change in RC Second Life Valhalla Viewer version 4.0.0.308641. So, it was some time…

The first week of Feb the main viewer was version 3.7.25-299021. The RC viewers were:

  • RC Experience Viewer version 3.8.0.298001
  • RC Login Viewer version 3.7.25.298971
  • Project Hover Height Viewer version 3.7.25.298129
  • Project Importer Viewer version 3.7.25.298441 – Getting lots of negative feedback and bug reports.
  • Project Managed Marketplace Viewer version 3.7.25.298865
  • Project Oculus Rift Viewer version 3.7.18.295296
  • Project Tools Update Viewer version 3.7.25.298862 – This went mainstream this month. It is the viewer built with the new compiler.

In February we were noticing a slowing of updates, server and viewer, but improved communication between the Lab and users. We were also noticing slower rendering and more items not rendering.

In mid Feb we saw an RC of Login Viewer version 3.7.25.298971 release. The Lab was A-B testing login screens.

The new versions of the viewers compiled with VS2013 will be driving Windows XP users to other viewers. The Discussion on dropping support for XP had yet to heat up.

More work on and testing of Group Chat was in progress. HUD’s were detaching after teleport. Oz Linden spoke about how bad an idea cache clearing is. See: YouTube Oz on Cache Clearing @ 1:01:20.

Render Muting was in QA. We know it now as Avatar Complexity Information, which as of December was still in the RC viewer stage.

Week 6 saw the conclusion of the 2015 planning meeting. We heard nothing about what was decided. However, excitement within the Lab was said to be high. We already saw the Lab’s post on recent improvements to Second Life; Hover Height, Notifications, Mesh Import, VMM, Graphics Settings Presets, and developer tools.

Gaia Clary was asking for feedback on AvaStar.

The No Link> error started showing up.

Astrid Kaufmat was writing about Fitted Mesh not fitting and the need for a new avatar. At the time I thought there was little chance of a new avatar. But, Project Bento (Dec 2015) has proven me wrong.

A Freeze Frame bug started causing problems. Freeze Frame is a feature in the Snapshot panel. Closing the panel with Freeze enabled froze your world. The only escape was a relog.

This was the month OSGrid came back online after L O N G time offline. Later in the month more assets were recovered.

Net Neutrality and Chinese hacking was all up in the news. See: Net Neutrality Explained

Road to VR was on about social VR. Lots of people in the SL community, including me, were blogging about VR.

A handy work-around for tweaking a region’s Windlight settings was revealed by Honour McMillan. See: Changing Windlight & HDR. Designing Worlds did a series on photography with Strawberry Singh, Honour McMillan and Wildstar Beaumont. See: Second Life Photography Tips.

MayaStar was released. The Maya side of Blender’s AvaStar tool.

Shug Maitland was blogging her wondering whether SL1 could compete with SL2 (Sansar). Later in the month Oz Linden was speaking on the same point. See: Second Life Continuing … for real…

Blender released a set of free 3D brushes. See: Blender 3D Brushes – Free.

Avatar render cost continued to be a big topic in the SL Blogosphere. Avatar Render Cost 2015-07

This month we started to hear more about Windows 10.

The gamer’s blog MASSIVELY closed. The employees behind it came back with Massively Overpowered a few weeks later.

Bento Feature Request – No Lock

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Adeon Writer has filed a Feature Request in the Second Life JIRA: BUG-10990 – [Bento] A formal method of bone-translating animations is vital for the creation of proper facial expressions.

Included in the JIRA is this quote:

[04:28:52 PM] EpicGordon Broome: I don’t like getting involved in development, JIRA’s or forums or whatever. But disallowing bone translation in animations is ignoring some very basic fundamentals of animation theory, dating back decades. I’ve scrapped multiple projects because of the lack of squash/stretch in walk cycles (Toony characters). This update is also going to break features in an upcoming avatar of mine, regarding facial animation. Which is funny, because they give us so many new facial bones – that we just can’t use properly. Raise eyebrows, pull up mouthcorners for a smile, extend a tongue, using only rotations? I cannot for the life of me see a GOOD REASON for this limitation.

I have this feature – http://imgs.moyloon.com/i/05d71e3d26.png – almost done for a new avatar of mine, a pose-able tongue. The new rig has two bones for this explicit purpose. But they are useless, as I cannot pull the tongue out of the mouth in any good fashion. I cannot pull the mouth corners around without arbitrarily locking them to rotating around a bone.

Not to mention non-humanoid avatars. We’re getting so many new bones – and yet we’ll be limiting the design freedom so much, since anything non-humanoid will be unable to avoid issues caused by inheriting rotations, since locations cannot be transformed.

Allowing animations to do this is a trivial change, as I’m fairly certain that limitations were put in place to prohibit this (Hence why .anim’s were able to do things .bvh cannot), rather than requiring lots of labor on the engine.

It doesn’t affect me personally, too much. If this is the way it ends up being, I’ll just hog more resources by alpha swapping meshes, and using more animations for each of these different states. However, it’s unnecessarily clunky, and will ruin a lot of content creator’s livelihoods in its current implementation.

Visit the JIRA and click WATCH. You’ll get update emails as this ticket proceeds. DO NOT voice opinions in the JIRA! Opinions and ‘me too’ is for the forum: Project Bento Feedback Thread. The discussion there is growing quickly.  Continue reading →

Second Life: More Project Bento Information

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AvaStar 2.0 is out and supports the new Bento Avatar, or maybe we can call it Avatar 2.0. After all we have been talking about it long enough.

Where's Dim Sum? #348 - Moonhouse (Telrunya photo contest - Opal Lei)

Where’s Dim Sum? #348 – Moonhouse (Telrunya photo contest – Opal Lei)

Actually, Bento doesn’t have all the changes we have been asking for in Avatar 2.0. Also, if we call it a number it should probably be 3 or 4 or something higher as there have apparently been other significant changes to the avatar over the years, before my time. But, this change does make it possible to get all the things we have been asking for or at least comes close. Continue reading →

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Second Life’s ADITI Inventory Update Change

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You may have encountered log in problems trying to get into ADITI, aka Preview or Beta Grid. Today in the Beta Server UG meeting we learned that the problem is fixed or just about is. Along with the fix are some changes. Be WARNED! Inventory is going to behave differently.

OH Damn It, you've melted my ice cold heart

OH Damn It, you’ve melted my ice cold heart

If you logged into ADITI today or changed your password, Thursday 12/17, depending on the time of day, you may experience an odd inventory update. Coyot Linden extended his apology to anyone so unconvinced.  Continue reading →

Second Life 2015 in Review: January 2015

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I like looking back at the year to see what has happened and get a perspective of how Second Life™ is progressing. On a week to week basis I tend to lose perspective. Also, many of the things that have changed this year are forgotten, taken for granted. Other things I am often surprised to realize how long I have been waiting  for them.

boule de neige....Un ange

boule de neige….Un ange – snowball …. An angel

So, I publish my review in bits. I don’t have time to do the whole year in one sitting.

January 2015 – 23 Articles

If you don’t know, WordPress has an Archive feature that allows one to see the articles published for any month in any year a blog was operational. Look in the column of this blog to find drop down.  Continue reading →

Second Life: NEW BONES, New AvaStar 2.0

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This is a big deal. I’ll get into what it means and what some of the possibilities are.

For years Second Life™ users have been asking for more bones. That would let users make avatars with tails that are easily animated. Or with more than 4 arm-leg appendages. We will be able to have a centaur with 4 legs, two arms, and a tail, something that is way complicated now and pretty lame. Or a spider with 8 legs.  Continue reading →

ALERT: Second Life Avatar Changes!

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Today we have a post from the Lab about changes to the SL Avatar. See: Introducing Project Bento – New Bones Added to Second Life Avatar Skeleton.

What are the changes?

Ever wish you could incorporate a tail, wings, or second set of arms into your avatar? How about having animations for facial expressions and finger movements? Yes, we know that there are some incredibly creative workarounds that give you some of these, but they can’t leverage skeletal animation, so they have been very complex, often fragile, and very expensive in performance and resources both in your Viewer and the Simulator.

Second Life: New Animation Overrider

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On my long ago first day in Second Life™ I was trying to figure out why I waddled and other females swayed when walking. It didn’t take long for me to learn about Animation Overriders, AO’s. I used ZHOA and then ZHOA II during most of my time in SL. But, there have been advances in AO tech since the ZHAO units were developed. Now we have another advance. I’ll take a look at it and whether it is worth the effort to change to a newer AKEYO NITRO AO. My review follows.

NitroAO_002

The NEW AKEYO NITRO AO

I don’t know when ZHAO first appeared. I found it 2008 when I first went looking for an AO. AO’s improved as the Linden Scripting Language improved. The Mono scripts reduced the memory load, but did little else to change how AO’s worked or their features. Continue reading →

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