Ouch! I just saw where Gaia Clary, mover and shaker of Machinimatrix.org, has just posted how Avastar® is being changed to be an OpenSim focused tool rather than a Second Life™ focused tool. I think that strongly suggests how Gaia sees things going in the future.
Second Life
Things about SL
CtrlAltStudio Viewer 1.0.0.34288 Released
This update is for 3D viewers. It is not an update for Oculus users. Version labeled 1.1 as a series for Oculus users.
You can install this version over immediately previous 1.0 version series, notice that is just the immediately previous version. Otherwise you need to do a clean install.
The viewer omits the Havok® library used for Pathfinding editing of the Navmesh. So, this viewer is usable on OpenSim grids.
You need NVIDIA’s 3D Vision with driver 314.07 or later installed and setup to get 3D. This is a shutter glasses 3D setup. Nvidia 250, Quadro, AMD HD 600, and better cards should be capable of running the viewer in 3D mode. But, you will need a monitor capable of 120hz operation and of course the shutter glasses.
You will also need to run the viewer Full Screen.
Be clear. This 3D viewer does not support anaglyph 3D.
This version is based on Firestorm 4.4.2 code.
There is a Mac OSX version and Mac OSX installer thanks to Cinder Roxley.
Download: Stereoscopic CtrlAltStudio Viewer.
Second Life Hover Bug
Lette Ponnier has an article up on a bug I haven’t seen. See: Editing Shape Shoves Your Avatar Into the Floor.
The link text pretty much says it. You edit your appearance and suddenly sink into the ground. If this has bit you or you are just curious, follow the link.
Second Life News 3013-40
There was no roll out to the main channel this morning. All the RC channels were running the same version as the main channel.
RC Channels
There is a new maintenance package that will roll to the RC channels Wednesday. All three get the same package.
The package has a fix for a problem with group notice delivery to large groups. I’m not sure which delivery problem this is. Just delivery is supposed to be better…
A new option JSON_DELETE has been added to llJsonSetValue(), for deleting elements in JSON strings.
Also there is code for a more correct sort order of objects and texture loading during scene load. This is server side code that will support a viewer side change.
Second Life ToS Meeting Summary
Toysoldier has a blog post up on the ToS meeting I mentioned on Sunday. He has made a transcript of the meeting available as a PDF. See: Transcripts from Sep-29 SL Inworld Meeting on L.L. TOS Issue.
Ernie Farstrider, a RL retired academic administrator for all of a large university’s intellectual property, sponsored the meeting. Ernie states that he believes “moral rights” are unalienable. He provided links to Harvard’s pages on moral rights. Kylie Angel Skyborne facilitated/moderated the meeting.
It seems Toysoldier Thor has been pushing this issue in the creative community. He was asked to speak at the beginning of the meeting: (I’ve made spelling and grammar corrections [ ] as this was taken from a transcript of live chat. This is not a full transcript, but highlighting of the things I found of interest.)
Darien’s Thinking on Avatar 2.0
There is an interesting post on SLUinverse about Avatar 2.0 by Darien Caldwell. See: A Modest Proposal: Moving toward Avatar 2.0.
Darien’s idea of making a new avatar compatible with the current avatar’s UVMaps is a deal breaker for me. That just drags those problems along. Fixing the UVMaps and attempting to use older clothing made for the previous UVMap is going to be a problem causing even more distortion.
Darien does key in on the layering problem. We can layer system clothes. We cannot layer textures on objects, like mesh avatar bodies. Adding that capability would likely be a complex change to the system. Whether it is or not, it would allow the use of even more textures. With the texture load increase coming from Materials use, that could be a serious lag producer.