Second Life: Third Party L$ Resellers GONE

On Monday Linden Lab announced the end of the L$ Reseller Program. As of August 1st, 2015 it will only be possible to buy L$ from the Linden Exchange. Resellers have about 6 weeks to sell their stock of L$ and close their businesses.

In the announcement they provide a video tutorial on using the Linden Exchange for those that have never used it. Apparently some people have only used Resellers for their purchase of Linden dollars.

I don’t remember the Lab telling people that the Reseller Program would be a temporary step in their plans to provide international players access to L$. So, I suspect some people will be upset with the Lab. 

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Second Life: Eclipse Magazine

Second Life™ has a collection of publishers with some interesting magazines. These tend to be online magazines. Eclipse Magazine is one. It is an interesting collection of information and opinions. The June issues is here: ECLIPSE Magazine June 2015.

Eclipse Magazine - June 2015
Eclipse Magazine – June 2015

This issue features Draxtor Despres as a Second Life evangelist… well, that is accurate use of the word, but I hadn’t thought of using the word with the name Drax. The article is kind to Drax, deservedly so, and I think may give one a new take on Drax. See page 42.

A section of the magazine is named Voices from the Grid. The section is described as a monthly survey of the ideas and opinions of SL residents on salient issues. Page 57.

Phoenix Welles, Tymmerie Throne, me: Nalates Urriah, Sands Leavitt, and Gorgeous Yongho (Juicy Bomb). We talk about what we hope and think Project SANSAR will produce. And did you know SANSAR is the Sanskrit word for LIFE? 

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Second Life’s Legacy Viewer

In an odd twist the Lab has made available a legacy Second Life™ viewer for those running obsolete, unsupported operating systems.  That means Windows XP and Mac OS 10.7 and earlier. You may know that current releases of the SL Viewer will not install on these older systems.

Something Old
Something Old by Ermandalee, on Flickr

You can get a copy of this viewer from the Official Alternate Viewers Page. Official name: Second Life Obsolete Platforms Viewer version 3.7.28.300847.

This viewer will NOT update. There will be no updates and while I am not sure about the auto-update feature I suspect it is disabled. 

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Second Life and Oculus Rift

I and other in Second Life™ are waiting for the retail release of the Oculus Rift. Jo Yardley has an article on the Oculus Rift. Seems she is announcing they have an announcement about a coming announcement… See: Oculus announcement about the Rift Headset, it is coming. It is all about this video:

Release of the Rift headset is still planned for first quarter 2016. The video tells us nothing. All we see is the version of the hardware to be released. Jo has lots of information about the Rift in her article. 

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Second Life’s 32-Bit Viewers

The Lab and most other viewer authors are building 32-bit programs. We are seeing more people building 64-bit viewers. The Lab has yet to move that direction with their Second Life™ Viewer. The stats coming out of the Lab show that 64-bit versions are way more stable or in plain English; crash less often.

Lifeguard Kwai
Lifeguard Kwai by Bernard Broono, on Flickr

The game PlanetSide 2 is discontinuing support for 32-bit systems. Specifically their new version of the game will only run in a 64-bit operating system. Massively OP mentions it in their article: Planetside 2 Discontinues Support For 32-Bit Client. The game managers realize some people will be locked out of the game. From there stats it is ‘a very few people.’ Management presumably feels keeping up with technology is worth the cost of losing a small number of users. 

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