Second Life

Things about SL

#SL Materials System Update

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This Content Creation Improvement Informal User Group is not completely dead… they are having meetings. Still Tuesdays at 3 PM in Hippotropolis.

The subject of glass materials with refractive properties came up. It is confirmed that there will NOT be any glass or refraction in the first release of a Materials System and likely not until the third stage of the Materials System. One has to wonder how long that will take.

Normal Map

I had forgotten that currently normal maps are used with water surfaces. In the Environment Settings you can add a normal map for the water surface.

It seems there are two flavors of normal maps; OpenGL and DirectX, which I didn’t know. There is more than two ways to do ‘bump’ on surfaces but, we will only get the tangent space normal maps style in the SL Materials System. The difference is in how the maps are created and used.

OpenGL uses -Z and DirectX uses +Z… or visa-versa… doesn’t really matter. By ‘-Z’ I mean the values are taken as a negative direction. That means dark is either up or down. The different types just reverse the way color values are used… sort of like a negative image that was common with old film cameras. In Photoshop press Ctrl-Shift-I to invert an image’s colors and get the negative or inverted colors.

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#SL Adult Content Problems

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I used to attend the Adult Content User Group (ACUG) meetings. Some of the most fun people were there. But, IMO Viale Linden pretty much killed off the user group. It was pretty much dead by the end of 2011. There are resident groups that organize their own projects on the adult continent. But, they little of the Lindens.

Now a year since the end of the user group Voodoo Redek is trying to get the Lab to change its stance on the ACUG or at least help out with the griefing issues in the adult continent’s Zindra’s Vortex Help Island/sandbox. Viale Linden is gone so there are possibilities things are changing.

The Zindra Help Vortex is one of the sandboxes where volunteers help new users and those wanting to learn about building in Second Life™. Of course it has an adult content lean, but that is not a requirement for those using the Vortex.

The Vortex has been having more than its share of griefing problems. The volunteers are tired of filling Abuse Reports with no apparent effect. Voodoo finally got to the point of saying something.

You can learn more about the Zindra Help Vortex on the Vortex’s site.

You can read Voodoo’s article here: Message from Voodoo 10-05-12

Members of the Adult Content community are trying to get something organized with the Lab to improve things. We will see what happens.

 

 

#SL News 1 Week 44

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The Tuesday roll out to the main channel has been postponed to Wednesday. Wednesday’s Release Candidate roll outs have been postponed to Thursday. This delay is from some backside problems.

Main Channel

As expected the main channel is getting the package running on Blue Steel & Magnum. This is what they call a backend infrastructure change. We won’t see any changes in operation, unless it breaks something.

Mesh Alpha Rendering Problem – See Invisaprim Below

Blue Steel

This is getting an upgrade of the code now running on Le Tigre… I’m not sure whether this is supposed to mean Blue Steel and Le Tigre will run the same code or not. Until the detail release notes come out I won’t know.

This channel may get the server fixes that are hoped to fix some of the Sudden Massive Lag problem event managers are seeing. BUG-355 

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#SL News 2 Week 43

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I’ve been distracted on weekends, so I’m just getting to writing up the last of the news from last week (43). There is no great news, but there are some interesting things.

Large Group Edit

The code for this change rolled out Wednesday. It had problems and was rolled back the same day. It is however currently running on the Snack Release Candidate Channel. You can get the details of that in: Second Life Large Groups Edit Week 43.

Server Scripting Meeting Oct. 2012

Part of the reason for getting this change up and running is to get it where Third Party Viewer Developers can test their viewers against the new server code. To use the new Group Editing code on the server viewers need to change the viewer code. Getting the code on a release channels allows TPV Dev’s to get their QA people and Beta testers involved.

The Problem

The package with the Large Group Edit code had a problem with the llSenor() function. It stopped returning a sorted list of objects. The sort is on distance. Not being able to figure out what is close or far meant breedables were not able to find food or each other… you know… to breed… The lack of loving was tragic.

The problem has been fixed. So, this week (44) we should see it move into one of the main release candidate channels.

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#SL Large Groups Edit Week 43

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Getting this update out is proving to be a problem. Not so much the large group editing as the things it is packed with. You know, everyone bundles…

Oskar Linden posted in the SL Forum about the problems with the roll out to the Magnum Release Candidate Channel. See: Large Groups Fixes LIVE on AGNI.

The short story is the roll out was rolled back Wednesday due to issues in the llSensor() function.

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New #SL Zindra Event

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The Zindra Expo group carried an announcement today:

NEW EVENT IF YOU OWN LAND OR BUSINESS ON ZINDRA
Attention all Zindran landowners and business owners…….if you own land / business on the adult mainland, whether its a club, store, role-playing sim, etc, anything…..Zindra Expo group is planning a very special event that can benefit your publicity and Zindra in general. This is a very humourous activity, and we are working with artist Silene Christen to plan it. Contact Ginette Pinazzo for details. ALSO, if you know other such landowners or business owners, spread the word!

So, if you have shops on the Adult Continent, Zindra, this is a chance to get some publicity.