Second Life

Things about SL

New Second Life Search Beta

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Today Linden Lab announced a new search has been rolled out and is in use. This new search has taken longer to arrive because the Lab elected to make a large change rather than a series of smaller changes. A test group has tested this new search and found that it gives better results than the search we are using 75% of the time. Really?

New Second Life Search

Where is this Search?

Didn’t notice it in your viewer? That is because it is not there. One must get the Search Project Viewer to see it work.  Download: Search Project Viewer Oh boy, another install… In Windows it installs the viewer in: C:\Program Files\SecondLifeProjectViewer-Search. This means it should NOT affect your other viewers. This version is: Second Life 2.6.9 (230635) May 23 2011

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Second Life Avatar 2 and 3

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If you make clothes for #SL avatars you know the problems with the SL Avatar 1, the one we have now. Making bikini bottoms, panties, and shorts is difficult as the texture mapping blurs sharp lines on some parts of the avatar. Shoulder straps jog around rather than run straight, so one has to jog the design to get close to a straight strap. It is a pain. So, the idea of a better avatar has been coming up for years. Are we going to get one?

Second Life Mesh
Second Life Avatars

The answer is yes and no. May be a more accurate answer is; some day. The Lab would like to build Avatar 2.0. However, their effort is going into getting general mesh ready for the main grid. (5/23 Reference – Nyx Linden) Any work on a new avatar by the Lab won’t start until after mesh is out and stable.

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Revised #SL Mesh Arriving

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The viewer using the new mesh format should be out Thursday of this week. The ADITI grids should have the new server side mesh software installed across most of the mesh regions. Mesh in ADITI will likely vanish as it is returned. New versions of user mesh will have to be uploaded. We’ll see an announcement when the sims and viewer are ready.

Update: See warning below.

#SL Mesh Design Blender 2.57b
#SL Mesh Design Blender 2.57b

New Format

With any luck the new mesh format will be published on the Wiki this week. That means OpenSim coders can start making their changes.

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Designing Cheap SL Mesh

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A recent post on the SL Forum went into the details of creating cheap mesh, cheap as in low upload cost and tier. The actual costs remain in a state of change. There are still some obvious problems with the current implementation of the mesh uploader in respect to cost. But, the basic ideas of controlling mesh cost are becoming apparent.

What Affects Mesh Cost?

Performance is important to Linden Lab. Your render performance in the viewer and the load on the server are both of concern to the Lab. In the viewer it is all about appearance, how the mesh looks in your viewer. That aspect is all about Level of Detail (LoD) and total polygons.

On the server side it is all about physics calculations, which means the complexity of the shape for collision calculations.

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SLV 1.23 Life Expectancy

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The other day Tateru was blogging about the life expectancy of SLV 1.23 and series 1 viewers. (Reference) She was quoting OZ Linden. Today the minutes for the Open Development User Group posted. Oz Linden is talking about where the Lab is with older viewers and has the quotes. So, how long do the older viewers have?

Old Viewers

‘Old’ is always a subjective or relative term. Apparently some residents are using some really old viewers… you know, the ones that come on the stone disk. I guess the Lab just doesn’t bother to block older third party viewers (TPV).

The problem with older viewers is in the way they talk to the Second Life servers. Over time how the servers talk changes and viewers have to keep up. After all when was the last time you saw a rotary dial phone?

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#SL Direct Delivery

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We have an approximate roll out date. This feature is expected to hit the grid this summer, first in Beta and within a couple of months the final version. It is down to weeks. So, what is Direct Delivery?

Direct Delivery is a new way to deliver products to residents in SL. We will have 2 folders in inventory. One folder for receiving items we buy and one for items we want to sell in the SL Market Place.

Arriving new purchases will arrive in the receiving folder. That will be nice. I don’t know how many times I’ve had to hunt for new delivery.

The Magic Box, now used to put products into the SL Market Place, will eventually be replaced and vanish. For a time both can be used.

Brooke Linden promises more information two weeks before Direct Delivery Beta goes live. Watch the Commerce Forum for more information. There is currently a live thread there now with several questions asking for clarification on various things. No answers yet.

Several people have asked forward thinking questions that didn’t occur to me.  Check them out and add any you may have.

I’m curious how this will affect real estate in SL. Merchants will no longer need a place in SL to park their Magic Boxes. That would seem to reduce the need for land in SL. I guess we’ll see.