Second Life

Things about SL

Win a Second Life Dream Home

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Starting on May 2 the Lab began running a Sweepstakes. The sweepstakes started at 10AM SLT on Monday, May 2, 2011 and ends on Monday, May 16, 2011 at 10:00 a.m. SLT.

What You Win

You win a Grayson Linden Home on 1024 sq meters with 234 prim limit (I assume the house prims do not count). It includes 1 year free premium membership, which has a L$300 weekly stipend. It includes L$5,000 ‘furnishing bonus’. It is unclear whether this comes to the winner in L$ or some kind of store credits. I am assuming it is Linden cash.

How to Enter?

The entry rules and how to are on the Wiki here: Sweepstakes Rules

Legalise

As you might expect, there is a bunch. I think the only sweepstakes rule that may affect some is the age limit, 18 and older.

You may want to consider that the prize (US$92) is taxable in most countries.

Land Purchase Changes

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I’m not big on buying land in Second Life. So, I have no idea if this is an improvement or what. Vogy Linden has posted in the Second Life Blog → Land and article about the changes in how land can be purchased. The big change is one no longer has to go through support to buy land. That is probably a good thing. The process is now executable in-world.

 

Start by looking at the Mainland on the World Map, and enabling the check box “Land for Sale.” When you find a parcel that you might be interested in, check out the owner. If the parcel is owned by Governor Linden and marked, “Abandoned Land – For Sale,” then you can purchase it by clicking on the “Buy Land,” button.

The post is here: Announcing an Easier Way to Purchase Abandoned Mainland Property

More information is here: Linden Lab Official: Purchasing Abandoned Mainland Parcels – FAQs

SL Mesh Status Week 18

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The latest news on the mesh front…

 

The Linden’s are telling us the mesh data format is going to change. This means the meshes uploaded to this point will no longer work. Mesh objects will have to be uploaded again. While this is a pain for many the change is made to get more stable mesh objects.

SL Mesh Changes
SL Mesh Changes

The changes have to do with renaming fields in the mesh data and removing some fields that are not going to be used. Additionally some meta-data is being added to allow mesh to rez faster. The document outlining Linden Lab’s mesh data format is started, per Runitai Linden.

These changes will roll out this week in ADITI. The changes will also necessitate a viewer change. So, you will need to get a new Mesh Project Viewer.

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Second Life Basic Mode Viewer

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There are new things coming for the Basic Mode of the SL Viewer series 2.

 

Second Life Signup Stats
Sign Ups Per Day - from Dwell On It.

We are seeing more signups per day now. About 3 weeks ago I would not have agreed it was a trend. I think it is still early but the spike is different than the one in November. So, something seems to have changed. It may be the Basic Mode is having an effect.

Basic Mode

The top question of new users in Basic Mode is: where is my inventory? Another is: how do I get to Advanced Mode? Where is the sidebar?

If you have thought about that Advanced Mode one, the answer is unnecessarily difficult. The answer is: Close the viewer, restart, but don’t login, change to Advanced, close the viewer, open the viewer and login. Whew! This has to be made easier. Even something like how the clear cache process works would help.

Also, because so few of us are unfamiliar with the Basic Mode we cannot answer a new resident’s questions. We want them to change to a series 1 viewer or advanced mode. At that point the new users is swamped. So, while we have a much better beginning step, the next step is still too big.

It appears that Basic Mode users are going to get an inventory. I wonder if the easier way to open packages and wear items that Rosedale spoke of at SLCC 2010 is going to be implemented. That would be nice. Whatever the case I suspect some simplified inventory will appear. But, with inventory are new clothes and appearance tasks to learn. It will be interesting to see how the new Basic Mode changes.

SL Community Help

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Some of you know about the changes that have been going on in the resident run and volunteer help groups. Some months ago Linden Lab disbanded the existing Linden run help groups because stats were showing new users getting help from the group were less likely to stay in Second Life. So, some other type of user support was/is needed.

With the forum changes we are seeing an effort to reshape the community and support systems. We have a new knowledge base and an answers section in the community forum… blogrum… wikrumog… whatever that thing is we have now. Also the team responsible for getting it working is having open meetings, office hours. You can find them at: Community Tools User Group

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Second Life Gets Physics Materials

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So what is a Physics Material?

These are materials that can be applied to an object. They allow one to adjust friction, density, gravity multiplier, and restitution… and I have no idea what the restitution part is about. So, with a material you could make a balloon that floats away. Balloons are more fun indoors. Vehicles behave better with 5x gravity.

Eventually these settings will be scriptable. More testing is needed to see if there are griefer exploits the Lindens have not thought of. Once they are pronounced safe, the scripting side will be added.

Material settings do not work on avatar attachments. Avatar attachments are excluded from physics calcs, so Physics Materials have no effect when worn.

Falcon Linden is going to offer a bounty for first person to crash an Experimental Mesh region (ADITI) using Physics Materials. The region is apparently not set up yet. The controls will be in the Mesh Project viewer.

Several new features are in testing on the Preview Grid. This new stuff is coming to the main SL grid in the next few weeks. Until then you can preview it in ADITI.