Second Life

Things about SL

SL Adult Content News

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I may come across negative in this coverage as I’m frustrated with the ACUG (Adult Content User Group) meetings. I’ve had my tail chewed for wasting people’s time in meetings (RL) I lead and allowing the meeting to wonder.  So, I find the ACUG frustrating. But, we did get some news.

Proposal

This was the meeting at which we where to hear who’s Gateway Proposal was accepted. One was accepted. We have a winner. But, it cannot be announced until Viale Linden has had time to work out things and get possible preparation work done. So… we wait another week.

Image by: dospaz of Flickr

We are told the gateway will be larger than just the Zindra region.

Viale is saying this will then become a community project and the Lindens will not lead it. Right.

Also, he said about the Gateway Proposal winner, ” They are pros at welcoming residents to the adult community and SL in general.” I find that rather scary considering SL’s record of poor player retention.

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Second Life Server Tidbits

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I missed the Simulator User Group meeting. But, I just saw the meeting minutes got posted. There are a few interesting things that came up in the meeting.

TimeWarp

This is the Linden name for the problem of simulators stalling for 30 to 60 seconds, which knocks people in the simulators’ regions offline. Since the operating system kernel upgrades on the ADITI grid that problem has disappeared.

This week, Oct 3 to 7, The Lab will be upgrading the kernel on all the servers running simulators. If I understood correctly, that upgrade will also be applied to many of the support services servers. This means the week will see lots of region restarts. See: Critical OS Software Upgrade — Region Restarts

Regions will see at least 2 restarts and if unlucky 3.

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Critical OS Software Upgrade — Region Restarts

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The Lindens are advising us that we will have an extended period of region restarts starting Monday Oct. 3.

Watch the Grid Status item HERE.

For details on what’s going on check out the server news. In the top menu click THE STUFF > SL Server Related.

Restarts will start at 5 AM SLT/PDT. They will tell us more once the work is about to start.

Exodus Viewer Feature Explanations

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Thursday a new post appeared on the Exodus Viewer blog explaining two features of this new viewer. HDR and FXAA. I had guessed, wrongly, that the HDR was High Definition Render. It is High Dynamic Range. My guess average is sliding down…

Exodus Viewer

The article provides a good explanation of the subject terms HDR and FXAA. But, they don’t explain all the terms they use, like MSAA and others. So, I’ll give a try at an explanation too.

HDR

HDR or HDRI is High Dynamic Range Imaging. Exodus explains it and you can find more detailed information in the Wikipedia: HDRI.

If you have used film based photography or the older digital cameras you have run into RANGE problems. Neither could handle the range of bright and dark the eye can see. So, photographs and digital images never looked quite real because we could not see detail in the bright or dark areas of a picture. The top edge of tire in a car’s wheel well would disappear into the black of the wheel well.

Photoshop users can correct the problem to some extent using LEVELS or CURVES.

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Consumers’ Guide to Mesh Clothes

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Tateru Nino of Dwell On It linked to Satiated Desires’ post, A consumer’s guide to Second Life mesh.  This is a must read for Second Life resident considering buying mesh clothes. No tech or geek, just the stuff you want to know.

If you think I’m geeky when explaining mesh, check out Satiated Desires. Satiated explains things in plain English.

I did notice one inaccuracy. When one rezzes mesh for the first time one cannot be sure the creator understood how many prims the object actually costs. Everyone is learning. Also, if you scale it up or down, you can increase the Land Impact cost. This can trigger things to return when its Land Impact cost exceeds the land’s limit.

Satiated says this could cause part of your home to be returned. Until recently the things returned were unpredictable. The Lindens have been working on that. Now the most recently changed thing should be returned. In most cases that will be the mesh object you just rezzed.