Things about SL
Politics: It isn’t getting any better.
Hamlet has posted: Donald Trump Vice Presidential Shortlister Newt Gingrich Once Called for US Congress to Meet in Second Life. [sic] There are some surprising bits in this article. One would think Hamlet would be a fan of Second Life, on the realist side. But, still a fan. Check these points: Continue reading
A new version of Black Dragon Viewer is out. Niran has dome some more rendering tweaks. Check out the pictures at Niran’s blog.
This release is a set of minor fixes, one of which is invisiprims.
See more here: RLV 2.9.17
If you are an RLViewer user, time to upgrade.
Seems those using Norton have started having problems since Thursday’s (5/5/16) update. Seems they get double posts in chat and clicks don’t work first try.
Come to my sweet melody
The fix is to uninstall, run the Norton removal tool, and reinstall.
I am seeing lots of people in the Firestorm Support group asking for help with the issue. The problem happens on all viewers – LL viewer, Firestorm & Singularity have been tested.
In trying to dig up more information on the problem I found the SL JIRA was down… I couldn’t get a page to come up. But, then I tried Firefox, I can get the pages to come up in Firefox. Weird. I was using Chrome.
The report I was looking for is: BUG-11891 – Text duplicates in local and IM. Movement lags and sometimes clicking an item requires multiple clicks. Reading you’ll find that group announcements are posting twice too.
Kyle Linden posts the fix the Lab is going with.
Well, most of this is from week 18 but…
Thinking of you
Lindal Kidd has posted about the grid being down Friday night (5/8). I’m usually out shooting pool and drinking. So, I wouldn’t notice the grid being down on a Friday night. See: Grid Down! Residents Scratch Heads.
As to the cause… we don’t know. The grid status message appears to have been a standard canned message. Continue reading
Oz Linden was crashing so the meeting got a late start. Then only ran 20 minutes. Not anything new to talk about. But, there is an alarming change from the Beta Server group I’ve included as the last item in this article.
Aim
The RC Second Life Maintenance Viewer version 4.0.4.314579 has been promoted to the main release. This is the viewer that has a collection of fixes; crashes, memory leaks, input/cursor issues, graphics bugs, invisiprims, formatting, notifications, profiles lockouts, and more.
The invisiprims fix is a reversion back to previous behavior before a change broke them. There is a plan to do something with invisiprims. So, expect a future change. My advice is stop using them. We have better ways to accomplish the purpose they served.
The Second Life Quick Graphics Viewer version 4.0.4.314426 – is said to be nearing release. Oz says they only need to merge it up to the current main viewer version. If it continues to work well with the merged in fixes from 4.0.4.314579 then it is ready to roll out. I would expect the Lab to hold off until week 20, but they want QG with its Avatar Complexity Features out on the main grid.
Second Life Project Bento Viewer version 5.0.0.314884 – This viewer has updated from 5.0.0.313876 since I last reported. Oz tells us they are close to opening up use of the viewer on AGNI, the main grid. That means we can start importing ‘Bento’ animations to the main grid.
I think this is going add complexity to the animation market and the Second Life™ learning curve. For most of us, there will be little or no change. But, special avatars will need special animations. My little Fae Dragon avatar by Grendel in 2008 is now way out of date, being all sculpty and old skeleton animations. I am expecting some awesome new dragons.
Still my little Fae dragon is only 82k ACI, which is about the average of most of my new outfits.
Then there is the Second Life Project Oculus Rift Viewer version 3.7.18.295296 viewer, which has been going to update ‘soon’ for well over a year. Oz says they are working on it and is expecting an update ‘soon’. I think that they pulled people off the 64-bit viewer and kept people on the Rift viewer, says something.
The Lab is adopting the name ‘Jelly Dolls’ in place of Jelly Babies in the RC viewer menus. The babies name is trademarked. Legal is telling Oz to stay away from using that name. So, now the Lab is changing.
A viewer version that has been on the shelf for some time is becoming active. This RC viewer deprecates the old inventory API’s. Once in place and tested a time will be set for when the server side of those API’s will be removed.
More pages… links below.
(Link) Emanuel Maiberg, author, thinks Second Life is a shabby World of Warcraft… Really!?!
WoW 2015?
I have to wonder what part of SL Emanuel has been looking at…
On the beach…
The article points out several good reasons for SL having survived. Fair enough overall.
Quote: “Indeed, the most surprising thing about Second Life is not that it’s still a thing, but that 13 years after its inception, it is still way ahead of its time.” Continue reading
The main channel is getting a new package. This is the one running on the RC channels last week (17), which consists of a crash fix and improvements. The RC channels will continue to run the same package. So, they won’t be getting a restart.
.✩ Aura ✩.
The main viewer remains 4.0.3-312816. No update for a couple of weeks.
RC Second Life Maintenance Viewer version 4.0.4.314579 – This version did update this past week from 4.0.4.314012.
RC Second Life Quick Graphics Viewer version 4.0.4.314426 – This version has NOT updated since last week.
Second Life Project Bento Viewer version 5.0.0.313876 – This version has NOT updated since last week.
Second Life Project Oculus Rift Viewer version 3.7.18.295296 – This version has NOT updated since forever.
The Third Party Dev’s meeting should be this week. But, the agenda page is still only showing 4/22 as the next meeting.
Last week’s report: Second Life News 2016 Week 17. More details on the viewer changes are explained there. Nothing new to report today.