Second Life

Things about SL

Second Life Mesh Status Week 8

by

Development work on mesh is proceeding. I haven’t written much about it lately because most of the information is rather geeky… boring. I don’t really care about the details of the equation used to calculate upload cost of mesh nor all the changes made to the equation to make it equitable. I do care about what will make them cheap to upload. Whether I write about it or not there is lots going on in the Mesh Development Project. There is also LOTS of interest in SL Mesh. The Mesh Office Hours meetings are held at the corner of the region because the region is filling up. That allows people to flow into 4 regions for the meeting.

Second Life Mesh
Second Life Mesh in February 2011

First of all, Charlar Linden tells us that some of the mesh objects imported with older versions of the mesh viewer will become invalid. These are typically mesh objects that have a box outline around them in the physics shape display. Use Develop->Render Metadata->Physics Shapes to see the shape.

Read more

Second Life Mono2 Scripting Coming

by

If you create things in Second Life and they use scripts, this change will affect you. The Le Tigre Release Candidate is currently running what one might call the Mono2 Bridge. The Lab currently has it labeled as Mono2-Aware. This is the part that integrates legacy scripting and the coming new Mono2 Scripting engine on the server side of things. So, how will this change affect script writers and script users?

LSLEditor
Mono2 Scripting Enroute

Complex scripts that use various work-arounds may have problems. They could fail. Simple scripts that rely on depreciated functions/commands will likely have problems too. Linden Lab is doing all it can to avoid problems. But, it is impossible to anticipate and know everything that everyone has written into a scrip. So, problems are likely.

Read more

Ascent Viewer Discontinued

by

Charlotte Wirtanen was chatting with someone and explained they have discontinued development of the Ascent Viewer. The reason given was, “…because of Linden Labs’ plans to effectively kill off the ability for 1x viewers to even connect anymore at some unspecified point in the near future.” Whether that is the official verdict or not is hard to say.

The phrasing of “…Linden Labs’ plans to effectively kill off the ability for 1x viewers to even connect…” seems to suggest that a goal and effort was or is being put into destroying series 1 viewers for some nefarious corporate benefit. That is somewhat like saying Ford is building 2011 models to kill off 2010 models. One can still connect with a series 1 viewer. One can still drive a Model-T Ford too. But try to put air conditioning or air bags in a Model-T.

Read more

KirstenLee Viewer S21(4) Release Review

by
Kirsten S21(4)
Panel Close Button

Kirsten has release S21(4) as a non-release-candidate viewer. I hesitate to call it a production viewer as it has moved into the version 2.7 code, which is very leading edge. Only Linden Lab’s Development Viewer is using 2.7 code. Whatever one chooses to label it, this is the viewer most of us would consider to be for daily use.

The OMG! aspect of the viewer is Mesh Upload… O.O …but don’t get too excited. While it is there, it isn’t working.

Read more

A Sense of Second Life CEO Humble

by

Rod Humble is the new CEO of Second Life, as of January 2011. Many of us are curious what he will do with Second Life. What direction he will take it and does he see Second Life as we do? …well… really… All I care about is does he see it as I do and is my fun time safe?

I can’t say yet. I also can’t tell you whether he sees SL as you do or even for sure how he sees SL. Or whether our fun activities are safe or whether SL has peaked and is headed for decline. One can certainly get enough opinions on the eminent downfall of SL or it being on the edge of an eminent explosion of new users from social media. But, we don’t really know what will happen.

Danial Voyager has posted a blog article that provides links to a collection of the latest interviews with Rod Humble. You can read those to get a first hand sense of who he is and some insight to what he is thinking and might do. (Link to an audio interview added below 2/16)

Read more