Second Life

Things about SL

News Bits 2018 w16

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EVE Online – Seems they are adding a solo-player versus environment aspect to the game. They have created an interesting backstory and weapons that for those participating in that play will greatly complicate the game. If I understand, this will to some degree level the playing field for new and experienced players. For details see: EVE ONLINE’S UPCOMING ‘INTO THE ABYSS’ EXPANSION SOUNDS INCREDIBLE.

let-me-back-in
let-me-back-in

There is a lot of news about events and new aspects of EVE coming out. Search over at Massively.

OpenSim – Hypergrid  Business is reporting a number of OpenSim worlds have been suffering outages. See Outages plague grids this month; Speculoos returns.

A couple of days this month I had problems connecting. A little checking revealed most of SoCal was suffering Internet attacks.

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50% Off Blueberry Stuff

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Yay, Blueberry is having a sale starting this April 13th, a Friday the 13th. Which in some cultures is considered an unlucky day. While there is no empirical data to suggest these Fridays are any worse than other Fridays, the superstition lives on.

Happy 6th Birthday Blueberry!
Happy 6th Birthday Blueberry!

So, six years in Second Life™… 13th pretty neat time to have a sale. Happy Birthday Blueberry

Not everything is on sale there are some exceptions. You’ll see them listed in the promo image above.

Blueberry is popular. I love how the clothes fit my Slink body. The clothes look good. So, I expected the region to be full. The main region, Lenox & Blueberry, is limited to 20 basic account avatars plus 5± premium member avatars. The store is designed for as lag-free an experience as is possible given the nature of a store in SL. Adjacent is the region Palua. Its limit is about 30± basic members. Adjacent to Palua is Just Because. It has a limit of 25 or 30.

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Second Life News 2018 w15

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Servers

This week there is no roll out to the main channel. It continues to run version #18.03.27.513831.

Blue Steel and Le Tigre won’t get a roll and will continue running version #18.03.29.513939.

Magnum will get an update Wednesday to version #18.03.29.513939.

•{ In the morning . . .
•{ In the morning . . .

All are Internal fixes…

Any regions running 14 days or longer without a restart will be restarted.

Second Life Viewers

The main viewer remains version 5.1.2.512803, which came on week #10. 

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The Great Bakes-On-Mesh Debate

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Well, we are getting an upgrade to the Server-Side-Avatar-Baking service. That is fact. What the service does is old news. The blogosphere was covering it in 2012. By August 2013 it was considered a success. (Ref)

So, what is the service, aka SSA or SSB? Prior to 2012 the classic avatar skin, tattoos, underwear, shirt, and jacket were composited into a single texture in your viewer and used to render your avatar. This is like the process we use in Photoshop, GIMP, and other image editors when we bake a set of layers into a single JPG or PNG image.

...Wait
…Wait

A significant part of the viewer’s render process was the baking effort. Once I was dressed and my clothes baked into an image safely cached on my computer, I was good. BUT… whenever I saw a new avatar, my viewer had to collect all their textures; skin, tat, bra, and top and bake their clothes into a texture to put on the avatar and render it. Everyone was doing that.

With 6 possible zones (ie., hair, head, upper, lower, eyes, skirt) to bake and 3 of them having 5 layers we were downloading a bunch of textures just for the classic body. So, something like 15 or 20 textures per avatar. In a region with 40 avatars… that is like 40×20=800 textures… if they were 1024 textures that could be as much as 3+GB of texture, admittedly in extreme cases. Plus, our viewer had to composite them before the avatar could be rendered. Each viewer was doing this and the region was coordinating the downloads.

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Other News in Second Life

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Talent, some we have in abundance in Second Life. I was hitting that ‘Next Unread Topic’ link in the forum and found My bad drawings of my worse avatars. This is a thread started in June 2017 and still running.

People draw a cartoon sort of caricature of their avatar and post both a picture of the avatar and the drawing. Kind of fun.

Thou Shall Not Pass
Thou Shall Not Pass – Nal: Figured this should be under TALENT

Linden Home Insurance – This was a big sale on Sunday, 4/1. It’s Never Been a Better Time to Be a Premium Member!

Belleza – A new update came out this month. Belleza bodies now have Bento hands, a better neck seam for Lelutka heads. Updates are being sent or get a redelivery. Read more here: Belleza’s Bento Update is here!

Slink – There is a version v8 of the Slink Dev Kit. There are only small fixes between the earlier March update, v6, and a day or two later v7 update. The v8 update has a newer male body. The changes are ease of use type changes. Have the Kit redelivered to get the new update.

The source file has not been renamed. So, you can use the link in the email you received in March. It still works. Or get a new a link from the Redelivery Terminal in the Slink main store. Only the files inside have changed.

SL Jobs – Hamlet at New World Notes in Virtual Job Hunting In Second Life About As Daunting As Job Hunting IRL  points us to Lexy Neven’s video HOW TO FIND A JOB IN SECOND LIFE (2018 UPDATE). This is all the basics a newbie would need to learn.

Wild Orchard – This designer has a load of EXPENSIVE gowns. BUT… there is a sale on. Marketplace only. Try Wild Orchard Clearance. L$89 to L$149. Some nice stuff.

The Making of… – I found this an interesting video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6TX86uCOsw – Have no idea why this video only works as a link… :/

Natsumi Xenga is the artist. Her Flickr channel, PICSSR, and Google for all the other places her art pops up.

Second Life News 2018 w14

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Servers

The main channel updated to version #18.03.27.513831. The new version has only Internal Fixes.

The RC’s Blue Steel and Le Tigre will update to version #18.03.29.513939 on the usual Wednesday cycle. Also, only Internal Fixes.

Magnum will continue to run #18.03.27.513831.

Sunrise at Isle of May
Sunrise at Isle of May

From the Server and Scripting UG we hear about more region crossing work. Simon Linden is doing some work on crossings. BUG-214653 – After half-unsit at failed region crossing on vehicle due to network lag, “Unsit” button will not work.

Crossing regions at speed… fast cars, planes, boats, and motorcycles, have a big problem. I was recently testing an Apolon helicopter. Great fun. But, region crossings are an annoyance.

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