Recently there have been a number of articles about the shape and size of avatars and things related. Penny Patton has been on about how camera position affects our perception of size in SL for years. Now the Lab is preparing to support her altered camera position settings. Plus, she has written articles on avatar size and the effect it has on everything else in Second Life™.
This image is the work of Luc Viatour – https://Lucnix.be
I’ve written a number of articles on the same and similar subjects. Several pointing to Penny’s articles and expanding on the subjects.
Saturday was the annual Mole Day. Inara has an article on Mole Day with all the details.
SL Moles are the guys that build all the SL Governor’s public works things. We hear little about them, but they are a key part of Second Life™.
Mysterious girl.
The Machinimatrix Blog got hacked. It is fixed and all is well again. (Ref) The Machinimatrix people did not recommend changing passwords. But, it is probably a good idea.
NiranV the author of the Black Dragon Viewer has an article up on Projector Lights. Part of the information is about setting up Preferences in the BD Viewer. Then Niran gets into setting up the projector lights.
Projector lights are way neat and greatly improve the appearance of a scene. They make night and club scenes much more dramatic.
Catznip Viewer is releasing a beta, they describe it this way:
Catznip R12.1 (beta1) has been posted for patrons (64bit only). We’re testing dramatically faster texture rezzing (new, Catznip unique OpenJpeg). Prejump & landings animations optionally disabled and a slew of crash fixes.
Texture rendering speed was the obstacle to my use of this viewer.
Kitty Barnett, the author of Catznip, is looking for some financial support. So, this beta is only available to those that contribute through Patreon.
This is the 8th anniversary of Myst Online: Uru Live. Get details on the Myst Online website, Anniversary. Events through to February 7th.
Gacha Garden has a new event in progress. There are dozens of free gifts spread around the garden. There is a shopping guide here.
I’m not much of a gacha fan. I tend to only go when there is an exclusive item from a designer I like only available as a gacha. But, Gacha Garden is fun. Join the group. Lots of trading happens there. If you have an item you want to sell, this is a good place to start.
This is not her only article on reducing land cost or making more efficient use of Second Life. So, you may want to browse her blog.
I’ll point out here that Penny’s ideas on the ‘Default Camera Position’ are being adopted by the Lab. We will soon have “Preset Default Camera Positions” as a feature of the Linden Viewer.
Doors – Another thing with Penny and her building to scale. In another article, Smaller Doors Anyone Can Fit Through, she on about making doors into SL building to scale.
The handy knowledge in this article is for those that have bought homes/building other have made. How does one scale down a building and still fit through the door? Penny has the answer.
Animations – I came across this video from a post in a Plurk.
Notice the hand and face animations.
On Plurk Dutchie® has been promoting the ‘dance’ chair. There are some NSFW images from the dances.
The main channel is now running version #18.01.17.511913. The version ran on all three RC channels last week. It is reported in the wiki as having Internal Changes. Mazidox Linden described it at the Server Beta UG as, “This week we promoted a couple of things to RC on Agni including DRTSIM-367 (internal fixes) and a version of the service that handles avatar bakes, built with the new version of our OS.”
Shhhhh
The bake service is not actually a simulator change. It is a change in a backend service. The server and service have to work together. So, there is probably some simulator change. But, maybe just in which API it uses to bake the avatar.
The Linux Operating System (OS) the Lab uses in its server gets updated every so often. They have been (are?) in the process of another OS update.
Skies – Hamlet has been following Stevie Davros’ development of improved sky textures for Second Life’s Windlight™. Today Hamlet is writing about their release. Seems they are now available in the SL Marketplace.
Below is the installation tutorial for Mac and the Linden viewer. I highly recommend using the package with Firestorm. But, while tedious they are usable with the Linden viewer.
This installation information for the viewers will be good until the release of EEP, Enhanced Environment Project, a Linden developed enhancement. There is no ETA for the release. I definitely expect it to release in the first half of 2018. But, I could be wrong.
You’ll find some free cartoon clouds. Other artistic clouds sell from L$99 to L$599. The Natural Clouds package sells for L$599 and has 8 cloud textures and comes with 60 Windlight settings files. You can see the effect of the package in a Flickr collection. Very awesome. A more organized collection showing the clouds in the various packages is here.
Warning: Changing the cloud textures requires some basic file handling. Also, clouds must be chosen before the viewer is launched. For the Linden viewer, this means going in and renaming a couple of files each time you change clouds. With Firestorm, it is a matter of a one time install and a menu selection before logging in. (Preferences->Firestorm->Windlight (tab)->Cloud Texture (drop))
Also, see my earlier article New Skies for Firestorm for a bit more information. There is a link to Juicy Bomb’s 2013 tutorial there too.
