Second Life

Things about SL

Alchemy Release 3.8.2

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A new release of the Alchemy Viewer is out. The announcement is here: Alchemy Release 3.8.2.

Serenity At The Beach
Serenity At The Beach

The highlights of this version are:

  • OpenSimulator Support
  • Build tools improvements
  • Second Life 3.8.2 Base and library updates
  • Update to the Visual Studio 2015 toolchain for Windows
  • Support for up to 2 gigabytes of texture memory

New features:

  • Add a means of aligning materials to texture
  • Add Script Options from the Build>Scripts> menu to the right click>build> submenu
  • Hypergrid support/multigrid support
  • OpenSim Varregion support

There are some other improvements and bug fixes. Release Notes.

Comparison: Mesh Bodies

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The site MeshBodyAddicts.com has new reviews and comparison charts of the mesh bodies available in Second Life. So, if you are shopping, this is a good source of information. See: Reviews: Isteni, Tonic & Dude SLink!

Visage Head Becky
Visage Head Becky

As of now there is no Render Complexity Information in the reviews. With the Complexity Feature on the way (See Quick Graphics viewer in Alternates) I think this is a huge oversight.

If you have wondered about the Omega Applier, see: Omega Solutions.

Server Updates Week 38

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Both the main and RC channels are getting updates this week. This is a step up as several of the past weeks we have only seen one or the other get an update. Two packages are going into the RC channels.

Main

This update package has the Navmesh fix (BUG-9504). No other change is listed.

RC Channels

Blue Steel is getting a package that improves inventory performance. See my article: Second Life Inventory Update Week 37+.

Le Tigre and Magnum are getting a package that has fixes for:

  • BUG-9683 “Feature Request: llGetAttachedList() – returns a list of root keys of all visible attachments worn by an agent.”
  • BUG-9891 “[Feature Request] – llGetObjectDetails() constant OBJECT_CLICK_ACTION”

Second Life’s Paradise Lost

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If you haven’t heard… Paradise Lost is an artistic performance of Adam and Eve’s ejection from the Garden of Eden. It has been made into a movie, machinima. Canary Beck and Harvey Crabsticks are the movers and shakers behind the production and  Forren Ashford is the machinimist.

Huckleberry Hax has a good review of the movie and covers some of the back story. Check it out here: Paradise Lost: The Movie.

The news is there is a premier presentation of the movie this Friday, Sept 18 @ 4PM (presumably SLT) and it releases the 19th. Watching a machinima in Second Life™ may not seem that interesting. But, the production is about more than acting before a camera to present a movie. The use of sets, animation, and audience participation via RLV made it a unique experience in SL. The recording of the production into a movie is no less ambitious. Hax suspects the movie may make a new benchmark for SL machinima.

Basilique’s Performing Arts Company is the organization used to create the production and has its home in the region named Basilique (SLURL). Their blog is here. For Basilique news see: Regional news. For a calendar of events see: Basilique Events Calendar.

4 ways to watch Paradise Lost – The Movie – Limited seating. First come…

Viewer Update – Quick Graphics

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We have a new release of the Project Viewer version 3.8.4.304916 that came out last Thursday. I saw it update my install when I went into SL this morning. This version apparently has some fixes that improve performance. Or it may just be that debug code has been removed. Whatever, I get way faster frame rates.

A number of bugs with Avatar Complexity have been fixed according to the release notes.

I am finding that most of my Jelly Babies come from high KB values, bytes of attachments. Setting my Complexity to MAX means something else triggers Jelly Baby render. KB triggers the Jelly Baby render just under 10,000KB. The default setting is 10,000,000b in Debug Settings’ RenderAutoMuteByteLimit. But, a 9.8mb avatar went Jelly Baby. Complexity was 98,000± with 29m2. So, I am wondering if there is some computation involved.

I’ve seen some ridiculous avatars in the new visitor hubs: Complexity 184,000, 33m2, and 341,000kb…

This viewer version is a bit more stable. If you have been wanting to try it, go for it now. It still sucks up memory and I clear it when the viewer starts slowing down. It takes longer to fill up memory now. I have used the viewer to visit new user landing areas with lots of people for about an hour and not crashed. I think I only cleared memory twice (using System Explorer – Free program)

Second Life Bits Week 38

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RSS Feed Change

I am not up on what is happening here. But, Oz Linden said something about upgrading the Linden systems to RSS2, from the RSS1 they are running now. RSS is: Rich Site Summary. Which is a format for delivering regularly changing web content. Feedly reads the RSS feed from web sites to do its thing.

So, I expect this to be a change to the Linden web sites. Newer is better. Right?

310 - Primrose softblue
310 – Primrose softblue

SnapShot Panel Revisions

Many weeks ago we got a new Snapshot panel. The panel was designed by NiranV and has been revised by him again. The revision is being built into the SL Viewer now. There is some problem with the underlying Freeze Frame feature. Once that is resolved we will see the change appear in an RC Viewer. 

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