Second Life

Things about SL

#SL ARC Replaced

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ARC denotes Avatar Render Cost. We have had this tool in the viewer for some time. When used we see a numeric value that is green, yellow, or red. Red denotes the avatar’s render cost is too high… according to someone. It tells me I’m almost dressed…

New Draw Weight Shown Above My Head

You can enable ARC reporting in Viewer 2 and 3 via the top menu. It is in the Advanced item. If you do not have an Advanced item in your menu press Ctrl-Alt-D (viewer 3 is a little strange, if you have a problem try using ‘D’ or ‘Q’ with Ctrl-Alt to get Advanced open). Then in V2: Advanced->Rendering->Info Displays->Avatar Rendering Cost. Or in V3 use: Advanced->Performance Tools->Show Draw Weight for Avatars. The change from old ARC numbers to new Draw Weight numbers is about 10 times greater.

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#SL Scripting News Week 46

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This week Kelly Linden’s Scripting meeting covered a couple of interesting things.

Region Crossings

The server update with the region crossing infrastructure improvements did not make it to the main grid because of problems, something with vehicle crossing issues. Check the Server news later this week.

llSetKeyframedMotion( list keyframes, list options );

This function has run into some use problems. It seems there is some problem moving numeric data between SL and Havok that results in serious numeric round off errors. The problem causes objects being moved to drift out of the intended position.

See llSetKeframedMotion() for the scripting details.

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Mesh Workshop

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Today at Models’ Workshop I’ll be presenting information on Mesh in Second Life. Specifically at 11/17/2011 at 5 PM SLT/PST – SLURL.

The Models Workshop

Monica Balut, the founder and owner of  The Models Workshop, is hosting the workshop in her auditorium in Manhattan City (30, 45, 43). You can find her blog at: http://monicabalut.wordpress.com/

This will be a chat text presentation with an importunity to ask questions via chat, which I hope to be able to answer.

I’ll focus more on the practical than the technical. I will try to explain what Mesh is. Mostly I’ll cover what creators are doing with mesh clothes, as I think that affects us the most.

The meeting, with questions, should last about an hour.

#SL Viewer 3.2 Keyboard Shortcuts

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The keyboard shortcuts in the SL Wiki have been updated to show shortcuts for version 3.2. This is the one with the new user interface. You could memorize them and remove all the buttons from your viewer setup. Not something I would do. But, there are some handy shortcuts. I’ll explain some of the ones I like.

The wiki page: All Second Life keyboard shortcut keys.

For User Interface (UI) developers there is a special page for working out shortcut keys based on operating systems. See: Shortcuts SL-UX.

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Where is Torley?

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I am a Torley Linden fan. I’m not a video tutorial fan. I like Torley’s video tutorials more then I like most video tutorials. I’ve watched a large number of them and sent out loads of links to them. I recently noticed the new Viewer Interface tutorials are not made by Torley. (See links in: #SL’s New Linden Helpers)  OMG! What has happened to Torley?

Yay for Daniel Voyager, he went and asked Torley. You can see Torley’s response to Daniel in a post on SLUniverse: OMG! So Torley is no longer doing video tutorials.

It seems Torley is busy educating Lindens on the history and culture of Second Life. I was just gripping about an apparent lack of continuity and history in Linden culture in #SL Mesh News Week 45. May be this is a change in Linden culture. It is the first time I have heard of a company having an employee to explain company culture to employees.

The post following Daniel’s is by Hitomi Tiponi. She has kind words for Torley and mentions the SL users lament that Lindens understood Second Life better. It seems that Torley is fulfilling a long desire to see that Lindens better understand Second Life culture.

It could also explain an early look at the new user interface that made it out of the Lab being Pink and Green. 🙂

Friendly best wishes Torley!

#SL’s New Linden Helpers

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I am seeing blogs on Second Life’s Beta Helpers project. I am wondering what is going on. Second Life used to have volunteer mentors helping on the SL Welcome Islands. These were the people I went to for answers early in my SL experience. The mentors program was closed and now the Lab seems to be starting over with Helpers? So, what’s up?

Volunteers? - Image by mrsdkrebs at Flickr

The Blog View

Danial Voyager is always curious and blogging about interesting and new things in SL. His post gives about the most complete coverage of the new helpers I’ve seen. See: New Linden Helpers Beta Program.

The Problem

Once upon a time… volunteer mentors manned the Linden Welcome/Help Islands. The Lab ran the Volunteer’s group. It is hard to trace that history in the SL Wiki and the forum, as both have changed since the group was disbanded. However, Massively reported on the disbanding in an article by Tateru Nino in November of 2009. See: Linden Lab to disband moribund mentor group.

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