Second Life and Virtual Worlds
Things about SL
Linden Lab has just added a new flock of non-human avatars to SL. See: July Update
These avatars and vehicles are in your Library folder in your inventory, now. They will soon appear in the Basic Mode viewer.
They Lindens are saying chat lag has been greatly reduced. I haven’t heard of any new technical details since my last update on the subject. So, I’m assuming it is just old news making it to the forum.
No server updates last week. No Mesh meeting this week. So, I went down to the Hair Fair. That was an expensive adventure. But, the prices are amazing and most vendors are contributing 50% of the cost to Wigs for Kids, a worthy cause. Stop by and donate even if you don’t buy anything.
The Hair Fair is popular. Lots of people are going. Especially as they learn about the prices. So, getting in can be a problem, lots of server full messages. There is a way around that problem. Open the World Map and search for Iridium. You’ll see four regions that are obviously related; Osmium, Rhodium, Iridium, and Platinum. Find one of those areas with the fewest people and TP in there. Any area with less than 45 people will probably let you in.
This week saw the Mono2 update roll out to the main grid. This update has cycled through the testing process for weeks. Many were looking forward to its roll. Things did not go as well as expected. The problem, new fixes and coming fixes are discussed below.
The Mono2 roll out revealed a structural problem in the testing cycle. The percent of homestead regions in the release channels was too small to catch a problem in this upgrade. Hours after the Tuesday roll out the Lindens knew they had a problem. By noon Tuesday they knew the problem was big. None of the homestead regions were working well. By Wednesday morning they realized the scope of the problem.
The Phoenix hour is a bi-weekly show facilitated by Phaylen Fairchild (the nosey heifer – hilarious inside joke – see 52:00±). In the video Jessica Lyon is speaking for the Firestorm/Phoenix team. This week’s meeting is mostly about the recent survey on five features in the viewer, which the Firestorm team ran. The following is a summary of the meeting. The times are HH:MM:SS or just MM:SS and they are approximate. The words here are my paraphrasing of the video not a transcript. So, my take may be different than yours was or would be or than what Jessica intended. Simply it is what I took from what they were saying.
If you watch the video be warned that while the video starts at 00:00:00 the sound failed until about time mark 07:00±. So, you can skip into the video without missing anything. Also, the video is mostly just talking heads. So, if you listen without watching, you won’t miss anything. The only URL presented I give as a link below.
Today one of the long pending updates has finally rolled out to the main grid. With any luck, it will work fine and a roll back can be avoided. So, what is in this new roll out?
The big gun in this roll out is Mono2. Kelly Linden is generally blamed for the Mono2 Update… well… attributed is probably a better word. But, since no good deed goes unpunished… we can thank him while gathering tar and features. Whatever your feelings on Mono2, it has been a long time coming. Today it was rolled out to the main grid.
Mono2 is an update to the Linden Scripting Language (LSL) system. The original language is one created by Linden Lab for use in Second Life (SL). Scripts are used by residents to make things like doors open and teleports teleport. Scripts are written in a language. Many of you will have heard of JavaScript, which is used widely with web pages. LSL is a somewhat JavaScript like language used exclusively in Second Life with a dialect used in OpenSim (OSSL). I suppose one could say the relationship between JavaScript and LSL is a bit like English and Spanish being Latin based languages. Your ability to speak one does not allow you to speak the other, but any other Latin based language will be a bit easier to learn.
Mesh cost is still an annoying topic of conversation. It is still undefined. But, we are getting closer to a cost and we are learning more about the reasons for the costs. The Lindens are definitely being more open about the Linden costs. That hasn’t done much to improve the manners of residents participating in the meetings. 🙁
This subject keeps coming up. Kyrah Abattoir asked the question in a new way. Quoting, “Figuring out a sane and conservative way to implement “set by UUID” for Meshes, builtin delay by link set for example, to prevent excessive mesh swapping/animating attempts, yet allow loading and unloading a mesh for legitimate uses. It seems to me this question assumes a swap can be done and that it is frequent swapping that overloads the sim. Originally many hoped that mesh could be animated as sculpties are.