Second Life

Things about SL

Second Life News 2013-35 #2

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ToS Change?

There seems to be another ToS change. I have not looked to see what it is, but I did get a prompt to agree to the ToS today. I was in a hurry to be some place, so I didn’t read it.

Main and RC Channels

All the planned changes covered Tuesday have rolled out. All seem to be working. So, there really isn’t any ‘news’ for that part of Second Life™.

The server change that allows a server to restart as soon as all avatars are out of the region is on the RC’s. For now this is a region owner or estate manager tool. But, the plan is to move it into the Server Update Roll Out process to speed up the process.

There has been some discussion of having the server trigger a shutdown-coming-event in scripting. This would allow viewers and scripts to respond to a shutdown. One could have a viewer TP you to another region rather than let you get logged out. Expect such a feature to be a third party viewer feature first.

For now this is just talk. 

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ADITI IP Tutorial Problems

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Some users are having a problem seeing the Mesh IP Rights Test. If you have uploaded mesh to the Preview grid you know that you have to take the test once for the main grid and again for the Preview/Beta Grid ADITI. Only after passing the test can you upload mesh objects.

Their browsers are showing a blank page. BUG-1640 – Mesh Upload Verification – IP Tutorial in Aditi Grid leads to blank page – unable to verify for meshuploads.

There is no ‘for certain’ fix or work around. Try using different browsers. Try logging out of the web site and closing your viewer. Then clear your browser’s cache. Then use this link: Second Life Preview Grid IP Tutorial.

If you cannot get to the tutorial, file a trouble ticket and refer to BUG-1640. If you choose to file a JIRA Bug Report, file in the WEB project and refer to BUG-1640.

Oculus Rift in Second Life’s Berlin 1920

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Jo Yardley has been talking with Björn-Christian Bönkost. Björn has a Rift SDK unit that he is using with David Rowe’s CtrlAltStudio Viewer. Björn visited Berlin in Second Life™ and Jo got him to write about it. You can read his account here: First Oculus Rift user visits Berlin.

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I think for anyone thinking of trying out the Rift, Björn ‘s comments say it very well: “I was impressed, amazed and stunned. The city is bigger than anything you can find as a demo for the rift.” 

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Second Life Access Controls

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The release candidate package running on all three server RC channels has a feature to add more access controls. We did not get much information on the feature. However Maestro Linden has posted more information in the SL Forum in response to questions.

Plus there were follow up questions and follow up answers. The idea is to make griefing harder and to give parcel owners more control. But, the controls for the feature are not in the current main SL Viewer. We will see them in a coming release. 

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Rod Humble Interview – July

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In July AllThingsD.com published an interview with Rod Humble that I missed. You can read it here: Linden Lab CEO Rod Humble on Second Life’s Tween Years (Q&A).

There are some interesting points in the interview. One is about mobile. The Lab apparently has a working viewer for mobile phones and tables, sort of… It seems building a user interface is pretty hard and likely the reason they have not been released.

Rod also says they are watching Valve to see if they build a console box and Android for their box. The existing consoles don’t seem to interest him.

There is also a hint of where Rod is at in promoting Second Life™. In talking about companies directing the content of their games Rod was pointing out the Lab intentionally avoids that. The interviewer was contrasting Twitter’s directive help and pointing out how they advise media outlets to Tweet, I read that as directing content style. Rod replied the Lab is interested in that, which I take to mean content direction advising and direction choosing. But, if he were to let the company do that he feels they should be very good at it. I gather he has not gone that direction because of his saying this, 2013, is the first year he has felt Second Life performance is ‘good’. He says the Lab may look at reaching out more next year, 2014.

It would make sense to not go 100% on a promotional program to bring people into SL if it was not performing well. One only promotes things when they are proud of them. So, we may see the promotion of SL change in 2014.

It is a short interview. But, there are some interesting insights.

RestrainedLove Viewer Redo

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Just days ago Marine released a new version of the RL Viewer. It had the replacement feature for z-Offset, Hover, Height Adjust, or whatever you want to call it. The problem is it had a gotcha Marine did not anticipate. But, that has been fixed and new version of the viewer is out.

This is a bit of a messy fix. Marine got it working. But, is not real proud of the hacky code needed to make it work. But, it works.

Also, it is not that easy or straight forward to use. READ THE INSTRUCTIONS.

See: RestrainedLove Viewer 2.8.5.5.