Category Archives: Second Life

Things about SL

Second Life News 2018 w09

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The last few days we have had some people complaining about login issues. I’m one of them. But, the problem is so erratic and apparently random I can’t put any useful information in a JIRA.

This morning there was some issue with logins. Only 17,000+ were on when I logged in at 10:45 Am SLT. On my trackers next update, 19,000+ were on. That 17k is an extraordinarily small number. The low for the day is about 7,000… but it may have been zero. My tracker only grabs data every 10 minutes. A lot can happen in the computer world and RL in 10 minutes.

Lauressa - Close-up

Lauressa – Close-up

I currently show 3,000 to 2,000 people logging in every 10 minutes. This is indicative of some grid wide problem.

Status only says they are investigating intermittent login issues.

Update 11:00 AM SLT – Seems the problem is a DDOS attack. See Unscheduled DDoS. This is not a Linden Lab specific attack. Early indications, often wrong, suggest it is possibly an attack on America. I would not be surprised to trace it back to North Korea. They will likely react to the sanctions just placed on the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. So, appease them now and face a nuclear attack later or deal with them now?

Did you know the average duration of a mass shooting is three minutes? What is the response time of the police in your neighborhood, to your sports arena, movie theater, or school? Continue reading →

Second Life Bits 2018 w09

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Contest

Mystical Timbers Photo Contest

Pictures have to be taken on the sim, either on the ground or on the platforms, will run until the end of March, when for a limited time a voting board will be placed in the harbor area.

  • 1st prize is $L 2750
  • 2nd prize is $L 1500
  • 3rd prize is $L 750

Please enter your pic in the Flickr group and also please send a full perm pic in-world to SolKing.

Region: Mystic Timberland

Flickr Ad

Lauressa - Sandcasted Love

Lauressa – Sandcasted Love

Save 50% on Monthly SL Membership

The Lindens are offering a deal in Premium Membership. See: Get more out of Second Life – Save 50% on Premium*. Notice the asterisk. It is 50% off the first monthly membership payment.

The monthly membership plan costs US$9.50 per month. So, you save $4.75. The annual payments total $114 without the deal and $109.25 with the discount. However, you get a L$1,000 signing bonus and a weekly stipend of L$300. Or 300×52+1,000 = L$16,600 or about $65.10. This brings the annual monthly cost plan to $44 for this first year.

However… if you go with the annual payment plan the cost is $72. With the bonus and stipend that drops to about $6.90 for the first year and $10.82 per year thereafter.

Oops, goofed the math. Fixed 2/26 @ 3:30 PM SLT

Content Creators’ UG Meeting 2018 w08

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I usually use Medhue’s video from his live stream of the Content Creators’ meeting and refer people to it. But, this week Medhue’s stream has no audio. Fortunately, I made it to the meeting this week and made a video.

But… all is not wonderful. Vir Linden’s mic was not working well. Examining the sound waves in Audition I see Vir’s voice is severely clipped. This happens when an input overdrives the system. You hear it when you turn the volume up too high on a radio with cheap speakers.

To some extent, this can be fixed in post-production. But, I’m a novice to intermediate audio person. I’ve never had to clean up an audio track this badly clipped before. I helped it. But, it ain’t great.

The time marks below are for my video. Following is my summary based on what I understood.

00:30 – Alexa Linden talked about the 360 Snapshot Project Viewer at the Content Creators’ UG Meeting (2/22). My take on the viewer is here: The Newly Revised 360-Snapshot RC Viewer is Out.

00:30 – Alexa Linden talked about the 360 Snapshot Project Viewer at the Content Creators’ UG Meeting (2/22). May take on the viewer is here: The Newly Revised 360-Snapshot RC Viewer is Out.

Continue reading →

The Newly Revized 360-Snapshot RC Viewer is Out

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Alexa Linden talked about the 360 Snapshot Project Viewer at the Content Creators’ UG Meeting (2/22). We last saw this viewer update in week #27-2017 (July). This is the black sheep or Cinderella viewer. It is the one that gets pushed to the back when a fire breaks out and some big bad bug has to be squished. But, YAY! We have a new version. See Official Alternate Viewers.

[vrview img=”http://blog.nalates.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/sl360_Fishergate_4096x2048_22215455.jpg” pimg=”http://blog.nalates.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/sl360_Fishergate_4096x2048_22215455.jpg” width=”512″ height=”512″ ]

This version handles the stitching… if you have built 360-images manually, you know what stitching is. It is taking a number of pictures in different directions and then piecing them together (stitching) to make a globe-shaped picture. Tedious.

But the new viewer is easy. Take a picture using 360-Snapshot and save it to disk, the picture should be ready to upload to Flickr and other sharing sites as a 360-image without further tweaking. Continue reading →

New SL RC Render Viewer

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For a time, there has been a Project Viewer ‘Render’. That has promoted to an RC level viewer, version 5.1.2.512751. You’ll find it in the Alternate Second Life™ Viewers.

The viewer is based on the Alex Ivy 64-bit viewer technology. It also changes how Jelly Dolls are rendered. One change is a Jelly Doll’s attachments, they now will render on LoD zero. This prevents the higher LoD (think more polygons) levels from loading. This saves memory, which means fewer crashes.

Luanes World - Romantic Sim / Magical Love & Romance

Luanes World – Romantic Sim / Magical Love & Romance

Also, the LoD calculation has changed. No word on how.

Plus, there are about a dozen bug fixes.

Install & Performance

This is one of the largest downloads I’ve seen, 104MB. It downloads quickly.

The install installs over the existing viewer. Settings and stuff are retained. Continue reading →

Second Life News 2018 w08

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A day behind.

Servers

There was no roll of a new package to the main channel. It continues to run #18.01.17.511913.

The three RC channels all updated to version #18.02.12.512536. The changes in this version are listed in the Release Notes as: Internal fixes and Simulator logging improvements.

#167.. Can you ..

#167.. Can you ..

Since I was traveling to see friends I missed the Server and Scripting User Group meeting. It was at the meeting where we learned there is a change to fix a problem in the server that has been crashing viewers.

Seems the server has been sending malformed update data that kills the viewer. The Lindens believe the problem was a memory corruption problem. A server would work correctly right after being restarted and after some time start sending bad information. Inara published a quote of Simon Linden describing the problem. Continue reading →

Third-Party Viewer Meeting 2018 w07

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Not much new information in this meeting. But, lots of updates.

As you probably know the Alex Ivy 64-bit viewer is out as the main viewer. Another update quickly followed the initial release, the Voice RC version was added.

Some third-party viewers have install instructions that tell you to find the SL-Voice files in the Linden viewer and copy them into the install. There are reasons for that, but they are too geeky for now. That copy-paste won’t work with the new voice version. Because of security issues the voice modules have changed and are no longer compatible with the viewer that have not added the supporting changes.

Oz Linden tells us there is another SDK for voice coming with a Mac fix. Also, the spatial sound is now working on the Mac.

There is a Maintenance RC viewer that is out.

Also, a Media update RC viewer with updates to CEF bringing the viewer up to latest Chromium version.

Oz is expecting another update for the Rendering Project Viewer. Expect to see more rendering changes. Oz says he has gotten a programmer with render engine experience back from the Sansar project. Some render improvements were put off because Oz felt the team lacked the necessary experience. Now they have it. Continue reading →

Content Creation UG 2018 w07

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First meeting in a couple of weeks.

Alexa Linden announced that she will add a description to the Aditi regions (Animesh1 to 4) saying they are for animesh only. They Lindens will be returning things that are not animesh and setting an auto-return time cycle for the region.

Medhue made a video, Thank you, Medhue. My Thursday was spent fighting with Microsoft while they ran me in circles.

I’ll provide short summaries of the various topics discussed in the meeting and provide a time mark for the beginning. If you want more info than I provide check the video.

02:40 – Vir Linden tells us the Lab has hired a programmer specializing in rendering. He has worked for the Lab on Second Life™ before, Graham Linden. He is full time. So, things in the rendering pipeline will be changing. There is already a Project Viewer for a branch of viewer changes to the render pipeline. See: Second Life Project Render Viewer version 5.1.1.512446.  Continue reading →