Second Life and Virtual Worlds
Things about SL
If you have never been shopping at Bare Rose, you have missed out on a classic shopping experience of Second Life™. I think everyone should go at least once.
Ciaran Laval has an article up on Bare Rose turning 10. That is old in SL years. (6 SL Days = 1 RL day – 4 hour days in SL) Something like 60 years… well… that is one way to look at it.
See: Bare Rose Celebrates Its 10th Birthday With Story Based Hunt. This is more adventure than simple hunt.
Second Life™ is getting a new tool to hopefully induce people to reduce avatar generated lag; the Avatar Complexity Rating. I’ve written about it before and I am trying to play with the Project Quick Graphics Viewer version 3.8.4.304761, which adds avatar complexity settings and notices.
The notice that appears in the upper right of the screen just after login tells you your avatar complexity number. I suggested that it be colored, green good and red bad, just as the Show Avatar Render Complexity Information (ARC) display does.
Instead, they added a link in the notice to this SL Wiki page: Avatar Rendering Complexity.
They note the other factors that can cause avatars to be rendered a Jelly Babies;
You can change the values of these settings in Debug Settings. See:
As you may have guessed, the last two are mostly to stop some griefing issues. But, those settings can be used to improve viewer performance.
Changing RenderAvatarMaxComplexity in the Debug Settings doesn’t seem to be a problem. Whether I change it in the Preferences panel as the Lindens recommend or in Debug Settings the change is reflected in the other. But, getting to the Preferences setting is much easier. Whether changing the setting there affects other settings not affected by using the Debug Setting, I have no information. It is a possibility, but I have not seen anything that leads me to think that happens. But, this is a Project Viewer and it will change.
Link to more pages below…
Second Life’s Strawberry Singh posted Juggling Raccoons. She mentions Mutresse having raccoons at the The Arcade Gacha. An endless event running but now with Raccoons. You can teleport to the Arcade using this SLURL or search in the World Map using The Arcade.
They are cute and the video is pretty neat.
As of 9/3 we have a new version of Project Quick Graphics Viewer version 3.8.4.304761.
My first experiences using it are not good. Within 5 minutes is was getting 2 or 3 FPS and going Not Responding. Memory use wasn’t all that high, 1.3gb. But, using System Explorer (free program) and clearing memory still helps.
The main viewer, Second Life 3.8.3 (304115), ran much better. So, unless you are wanting to play with the Graphics Settings feature or Complexity Settings, you may want to wait a couple of weeks before you try it.
Mesh Body Addicts has a post on the new Slink male body. See: SLink Male Body is OUT & the new MBA Sim! Expect a MBA review soon. Slink’s announcement is here: The Slink Physique Male is now @ Slink.
With the release of this body comes support for Omega Appliers. They say,
With this body I have introduced Omega support. This means you will need to purchase the Slink activator from the Love -n- Lust Designs marketplace store and use it with your Physique body and your Omega HUD.
If you have male hands and/or feet there is an update. Go to the store and get updated. The change is they now use Omega appliers.
Many Slink items for males are discounted until September 18th. Visit the store to see those.
Once upon a time Second Life™ had community gateways, Linden sponsored, built, and managed. In 2010 they closed. In 2011 user sponsored gateways opened. (Reference – an out dated list of gateways) In 2011 when Rodvik Linden, then CEO, was asked if they would ever come back, he didn’t know what they were. Then in late 2011 we got the Destination Guide and user gateways were depreciated.
So, are they coming back?
First, if you don’t know, community gateways are places where new users are dropped at first login. The location is designed for new users and is typically filled with tutorials and teaching experiences. Back in 2011 Prim Perfect did a piece on what are Community Gateways: So what were these community gateways? An answer for Rodvik Linden. Gateways are sort of synonymous portals. The portal is the sign up web site. The gateway is the region the portal sends you to. That it isn’t set in stone, but it will give you a since of how the words are often used..
We have already been speculating on whether portals for Sansar are a good thing. See: Drama: Community Portals for Second Life 2. We have had loads of people documenting how bad some of the gateways are: Second Life: The New New User Tutorial. We have had some great gateways: Second Life Player Retention 2014-21.