Second Life

Things about SL

#SL Scripting Update Week #25

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Kelly Linden presides over the Scripting Group’s Office Hour. Every other week Kelly does triage on the list of scripting JIRA reports. There is a wiki page for those interested in the triage effort. See: Content Creation/Scripting User Group. There is a JIRA Search Filter on the page that is handy for those participating in the triage. It lists the JIRA items to be considered in the meeting.

If you watch Twitter for meeting alerts, the Scripting Group’s Tweet is wrong. It sends people to Mesh HQ in ADITI. The meeting is in Ambleside (161,92,30), AGNI. Hopefully that Tweet will get fixed. The Office Hours listings page has it right. See: Linden Lab Official:User Groups.

The triage meeting alternates with an open discussion secession. One week is about triage and the next week is open discussion. Announcements and news is the first agenda item each week. So, don’t be late, like I was this week. 🙁

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Mesh Cost Update II Week 24

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The explanation of mesh cost in the wiki has been updated. We still don’t have a real cost. But, how the cost will be determined is solidifying. See: Costs and Fees

Upload Cost

There will be an as yet undetermined upload cost. It will be based on model complexity. Complexity will likely be some combination of triangle count for each LoD and Physics shape triangle count.

Prim Equivalence – Resource Cost

This is the item that is going to affect your tier cost. Cost will be based on the greater of these three items.

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Firestorm 2.5.1.16671 Beta Viewer Released Review

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Firestorm, often called Phoenix-Firestorm, is the series 2 viewer that will replace the Phoenix viewer. The Firestorm team is endeavoring to make Firestorm a transition viewer that series 1 viewer users can use without too much trouble. Also, new users coming from Linden Lab’s viewer won’t be totally lost. Plus the viewer can be customized to be more series 1 or 2 like.

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Firestorm Viewer Beta

Download and Install

(Download) The Firestorm announcement recommends a clean install of Firestorm and suggests the previous settings file won’t work with the new viewer. Unfortunately the Firestorm uninstall while asking if you want to remove all files, doesn’t. The cache files and folder are deleted. (C:\Users\[user_name]\AppData\Local\Firestorm\). The settings and logs files are left behind. To remove them one needs to delete the files in: C:\Users\[user_name]\AppData\Roaming\Firestorm\.

If you are into saving your chat logs, remember to move them to a safe location before deleting the folder.

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#SL Mesh Update Week 24

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The mesh meetings are getting interest and the agenda is getting lots of items. Today’s meeting had 16 items on the agenda when I checked it.

Mesh Upload Enabling

I posted an article on this a few days ago. See: Second Life Mesh Enablement. I guess this was brought up in the Closed Beta for Mesh. At that time some thought the idea was shot down and dead. Obviously not, it’s back.

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#SL Scripting Update Week 24

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Today Kelly Linden had a meeting in Ambleside, AGNI. It is sort of the Scripting part of Content Creation/Mesh Import/Scripting Group.

LLCastRay()

This is a new feature being added to the Linden Scripting Language (LSL). Many scripters in SL are eagerly awaiting its roll to the main grid. Right now we rez and throw prims to simulate bullets fired from a gun. While effective it is not the most efficient way to simulate bullets.  In laggy sim’s one can literally walk on bullets at the sim edge.

Kelly is hoping to see this feature make it to the main grid soon. Exactly when is unclear. It seems to be wrapped in the Mesh release. His advice is to add a request for the release date information to the Mesh Meeting Agenda. I have to wonder if all the various things wrapped in the mesh release is suggesting the Lindens are planning some big news media splash.

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Mesh Costs Explained

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In the SL Wiki we have been given the equation that represents how mesh complexity is converted to Prim Equivalency. The page has changed from time to time and the values used in constants have changed too. Often changing without the wiki page updating.  Frequently a release of a Mesh Project viewer changes all the equivalency values we have been seeing in the viewer. Changes to the simulator software have also changed the values shown in the viewer. Several have been guessing at what the Lindens are actually trying to achieve with these changes. Speculation on what the Lindens will do and why is ranging from hopeful to ridiculous. Now Runitai Linden has explained the Linden goals.

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Mesh Equivalents

The Fallacy

When the Linden’s used the worlds ‘Prim Equivalency’ the stage was set for residents to start comparing prims and sculpties to mesh. The Lindens may have even been thinking of mesh as a prim type. We know that the first mesh we saw in open beta was very sculpty like. The Build Floater even had a mesh asset in the same place as a sculpty has a place for (sculpty map window) the sculpty map.

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