Second Life

Things about SL

Group Ban 2014-21

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This is a feature many large group owners are wanting… desperately. Once it rolls out things should be nicer in several ways.

This is the feature that bans and ejects a user or group of users from a group. Now we can eject them. But, on open groups the ejected user just joins up again and they are back. Group ban will add them to a list server side and the servers will not let them join the group again. Pesky problem solved.

On Wednesday an infrastructure part of the feature rolled out to the backend servers. This isn’t anything we can see now, but the main grid is a step closer to having Group Ban. One more change is needed before the server RC channels get the new code for Group Ban. The Tuesday down time messed up that schedule. I suspect it will recover quickly.

Maestro says that only one region server update will need to go through the RC channels. That assumes no bugs.

There is a set of viewer changes winding through QA and then RC. But, we are getting close to having Group Ban.

Second Life News 2014-21

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Second Life Down

The Lindens had some excitement Tuesday. The roll of new server software started as usual. But some time in the morning logins started to fail. About 8 AM something went wrong. The chart of concurrent users from etitsup.com was given to me by Shug Maitland.

The Disturbance
The Disturbance

You have to correct the time for SLT/PDT as the chart shows local time for the UTC-4.5 zone for Caracas and/or St. Pierre. Add 4.5 hours to the times to get Second Life or Pacific Time. 

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Second Life Player Retention 2014-21

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Prim Perfect did a show on Player Retention issues in Second Life. The video is now up on their site. The video runs 57 minutes. Saffia Widdershins and Elrik Merlin host the show. The Guests are; Brooke and DaveR Linden, Carl Metropolitan – academic, and Jo Yardley – historian and creator of 1920’s Berlin in Second Life.

The Inspiring Orientation - Learn to Fly (2012)
The Inspiring Orientation – Learn to Fly (2012)

I’ll paraphrase what I have heard. Listen to the video before complaining to any of the participants.

Index

02:20 – End of introductions. Elrik starts a clip of a video that sets the context of the discussion. You may have seen this video. It is entitled the New Avi Experience in Second Life. It portrays a disastrous first encounter with Second Life. The full video runs 10 minutes. It can be found by clicking my link just above.

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Oculus Rift and Second Life

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The Lab has announced that they have a viewer ready for the Oculus Rift. The Lab’s announcement is here: Using the Oculus Rift with Second Life. It includes the video I have here.

The big announcement is the release of a project viewer: OculusRift Viewer version 3.7.8.289834 – download. It features:

  • Full Oculus Rift Hardware Support
  • Full UI Support
  • Customizable UI
  • Avatar Head Motion
  • New First-Person View
  • Align to Look
  • Action Key

The viewer detects a Rift and provides quick setup. The Lab writes you can use HUD’s and all of the viewer’s interface functions. We are told we can customize the interface. Also, a new first person (mouse look like – use the M-key to enter it) view has been added. There is a new ‘Action Key’, which I suppose takes the place of a mouse click.

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Second Life Bits 2014-21 #3

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Blender – Baking Normals

I came across a simple to the point video tutorial on baking normal maps in Blender 2.6, which is enough like 2.7 it doesn’t matter. He manages to crash Blender before the end. But, the important part is complete by then.

[youtube bck1eU4e8xo]

SVVR

We are seeing more videos of the SVVR conference. The sound in the current batch is awful. Rumor is some professional grade videos are coming. I am waiting.

Second Life Down Time

The Thursday down time is being postponed. See: Scheduled Maintenance. Presumably the problem from Tuesday that stalled the main channel’s rollout and pushed the RC channel rollouts to Thursday are the cause of the postponement. 

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