Second Life

Things about SL

#SL Last Names Coming Back

by

I saw Danial Voyager’s post about a comment in LL’s CEO’s Feed. Rod wrote that last names are coming back in 2012.

You may have been following the JIRA Feature Request to being last names back. See SVC-7125 – Bring Back Last Name Options!

This JIRA had 2,139 votes and 696 watches. That is probably some sort of record. It certainly shows that the most residents do not know the importance of clicking Watch.

There is a stream of new comments added to the JIRA item just about every day.

Racism?

The lack of last names seems to have created a form of racism. New SL users with the last name Resident are claiming discrimination. The only way to know is create a new Alt and walk a mile in their shoes.

Read more

#SL Scripting News Week 50

by

Kelly Linden thinks tomorrow (Tuesday) the Le Tigre update will roll the main channel. Chances are good it will work this time. It contains a large number of fixes and some improvements.

Once it rolls to the main channel there will probably be no further upgrades until next year. After this week Second Life enters a no change window and a number of Lindens take holiday.

Vehicles

Havok and script functions are being looked at to improve movement in SL. In the wiki is a function… well more of a subroutine… warppos() that handles movement over more than 10m. Some consideration is being given to making the function a built-in function, may be llWarpPos(). No promises.

Read more

#SecondLife Global Illumination

by

You may not have noticed the Graphics Setting feature: Global Illumination. It began appearing in viewers some time ago. But, now it has disappeared from the SL Viewer. So, what’s up?

What it is…

Global Illumination is the label used to describe how light is handled in 3D games. Its purpose is to make lighting more realistic. It adds ‘reflected’ light effects. This means if you are standing with a blue wall to the right and the sun to the left, some blue light will be reflecting on to your right side.

Status

Back in May 2009 the Lab, Runitai Linden, posted a video showing new features they were working on. See: SL Tech Demo above.

The video (above) includes Mesh and Global Illumination. At about 1:34 in the video you can see a sun cycle that shows an example of Global Illumination. (GI) Notice how the sun seems to reflect off surfaces and illuminate other surfaces. That is the Global Illumination.

Read more

Dolphin Viewer 3.2.0-22166 Review

by

A new Dolphin Viewer version has made it out. I see it has a new build tool, Particle Editor, which is way nice.

Dolphin Viewer 3.2.0 Download

Dolphin Viewer Buttons Tool

Download and Install

The file size is about 26mb, on the small side for an SL viewer.

The install process is more like the SL Viewer install now, opening multiple little windows as it installs. These are indicators that files are being copied from a network location. Just like the SL Viewer these windows stall with 0 seconds remaining. One can leave them open for as long as they like. They’ll sit right there on your screen.

Read more

Phoenix with Mesh

by

The Phoenix Team has released a new version of Phoenix. This one has mesh support, as in it renders mesh.

Read Phoenix Viewer Mesh Update.

The team is warning this viewer is not their most stable release, at least they do not expect it to be.

They are also saying it is possibly the last version of Phoenix. There may future releases if needed. But, more likely not.

RLVa did not get updated. If you are looking for the newest and greatest RLV viewer check out Catznip. Kitty Barnett writes the Catznip Viewer and works on Firestorm’s RLV implementation.

Also, the team is providing less Phoenix support and focusing on Firestorm.

 

#SL Server Update Week 49

by

This week in The Server Beta User Group we have some social issues mixed in with the technical issues. At least the roll out for this week went well. But, the blow back from the RC KT channel started to get out of hand. Olie’s made a another fine mess that can’t be blamed on the Lindens.

Main Channel

The main grid gets the roll out from the Magnum Release Channel. This upgrade changes the Mute features to use the new People API. This means a mute in world is respected in your Feed and on the web site. It is unclear whether this includes the Market Place.

Server Room - Image by: Tom Raftery - Flickr

Don’t expect to see this working on the web sites for some time. The feature has to be rolled to all the simulators and then enabled on all of them before it can be enabled on the web sites. I am guessing we may see it working in January.

Blue Steel

This RC got a set of tools from diagnosing voice problems. In Andrew’s Friday meeting word came that fixes for some voice problems are in the update. It seems in the process of creating the tools it was possible to find some issues and deal with them. Rolling these tools to the grid will make it possible to more easily find voice problems.

Read more