Second Life

Things about SL

Second Life Bits and Pieces 2014-4

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SL Forum

Ciaran Laval has an article up talking about getting the Lab to make a section of the SL Forum for podcasts. See: Should The Second Life Website Have A Category For Podcasts And Inworld Media Shows? The article is more than a question. Ciaran goes into a bit of the history of Second Life™ podcasts.

Quadcopter - image by: John_Biehler - Flickr
Quadcopter – image by:
John_Biehler – Flickr

If you think it is a good idea, post a feature request in the SL JIRA. Remember. There is no ‘Feature Request’ option in the JIRA. Just file a bug report and put the words ‘Feature Request’ in the title. The request is seen and moved to the Lab’s internal feature request list and quickly closed. It isn’t forgotten just because the JIRA item is closed. It lives on in the internal processing of the Lab.

I was having trouble with the JIRA this morning. So, if you have trouble, don’t be surprised and it probably is not you.

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Second Life’s HTTP Tech Note Explained

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There is a section in the Second Life™ forum about technology: Tools and Technology. Thursday afternoon (1/16) Linden lab posted article there titled: Raising the Roof: The HTTP Project. The post is about the changes coming to how the SL Viewer and SL servers communicate.

The abbreviated point in the post is: communication between our viewers and the servers is and is going to be better and does and will use less bandwidth. This means fewer problems logging into Second Life. Also, more reliable connections and fewer disconnects. The changes will mean fewer capabilities from routers and gateways will be used, allowing the less expensive routers to handle Second Life better. And in general things will download faster. 

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Drax Radio Show #2

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The podcast was out early this morning. I wasn’t. This morning I have been playing with my new blog theme, which breaks my Dreamweaver. So, the podcast is a nice break from sorting out database changes and the WordPress foibles of setting up a local copy of a live site.

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As always, what I write about the podcast is my take on things. So, listen to the podcast before flaming. You can listen to it or download it (nice addition to Drax’s blog) here: Drax Show #2 Osprey Therian. Drax links to a CNN article on Osprey. I think it would be nice if Osprey’s friends posted some comments on the December 2013 article.

I am not making any pretense of transcribing the audio. My comments are just that comments on what is said in the show. I’ll be clear when I make a quote. 

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Second Life Interesting Viewer 3.6.14-285213

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Interesting RC Viewer

This viewer is not yet the main viewer for Second Life™, but it did get an update Tuesday 1/14. This is the Interesting RC Viewer. It is known for faster scene rendering. You can download it here: Second Life RC & Project Viewers. If you are doing photography, this version could save your sanity. Even shopping things are rendering fast. I haven’t got to use it much. But, it seems great, better than previous version.

Interesting RC Viewer - 2014-01-14 - Fast Render
Interesting RC Viewer – 2014-01-14 – Fast Render

Remember. To run the RC you need to turn off Automatic Updates or have Automatic Updates and Willing to use RC’s both enabled. The later is preferred.

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Fitted Mesh Base Avatar Files

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A couple of years ago we were sorting out just which files we could get that had a model of the Second Life™ avatar with a default shape. We were going to need that for use with the Mesh Deformer. A good ‘default shape’ file will still be needed on the OpenSim grids. I wrote a long article on which files were which and did a lot of testing of the files to find the differences and decide which file to base my work on. I am sort of in the same place now with Fitted mesh.

Linden SL Avatar - Wiki - Image #1
Linden SL Avatar – Wiki – Image #1

To see the older files, look in the menu above, The Stuff->Tutorials Index Clothes.

The Files

I’ll say that OFFICIALLY there are no files for Fitted Mesh… yet. The reason for that is Fitted Mesh is still in development. So, there is no FINAL version of the avatar. But, we do have two files that can be used by experimenters. I’ll explain what we have have now.

Linden Fitted Mesh Avatar

The Wiki has a ZIP file that has a number of files in various formats. The files appear to have been last updated 12/16/2013 4/2014. They are provided in a ZIP file and include the file I show below. The Mac folder has the same files with slightly different file names.

You can see there are Blender, Collada (dae), FBX, and Maya (ma). The last two are AutoDesk file formats. For compatibility consider:

Autodesk FBX technology helps to enable the interchange of 3D data between the following Autodesk products: Autodesk® 3ds Max®, Autodesk® Maya®, Autodesk® Softimage®, Autodesk® MotionBuilder®, Autodesk® Mudbox®, Autodesk® Smoke® and Autodesk® Flame® software.  Consult the compatibility charts below to learn about the level of support for these applications.

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Second Life News 2014-3

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This week there are no updates rolling out to the servers. At this point all we know is Maestro Linden has said they want to allow the existing packages to run for another week. We may learn more at today’s (1/14) Server & Scripting meeting.

There are a couple of speculations that it is from a problem with region crossings or the rash of unscheduled inventory maintenance events we have been seeing. The maintenance passes are happening several times per week. SL has been working pretty well for me, so I have no guesses at this point. I do continue to see people in Answers complaining of being logged out. I’ve run into that problem too. But, only once.

Religious Places in SL

We have an interesting new page in the Second Life Wiki: Religious Places. It seems to be the result of effort from Anaimfinity Resident. Anaimfinity notes the page should be complete this month. If you know of place that is not on the list, you can add it.

Mimes

Strawberry Singh has her Monday Mimes going again. This week’s is about practical jokes. I’m admitting nothing… it wasn’t me.

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