Second Life and Virtual Worlds
The Main Viewer has jumped up to 3.7.17-294959. This is the new Login Viewer with some maintenance fixes mixed in.
Maintenance Viewer version 3.7.17.294943 – Minor fixes and additions. I’ve listed them before.
Linden Lab has announced they are going to stop development of Patterns, their version of Minecraft, but prettier.
Those that purchased it can still play it. But, the server side functions will no longer work (sharing worlds).
So… was it just not providing the rate of return needed… or did the Lab want the Pattern’s developers for development work on SL2?
Jo Yardley saw Ebbe Altberg/Linden in 1920’s Berlin. He was testing out the Linden Lab Viewer for Second Life with Oculus Rift DK2 support. She also caught his Tweet about having the viewer out next week. I assume he means ‘out’ as in a new RC Viewer update.
If it is as an RC Viewer then I expect it will have the new CDN and HTTP Pipeline features included. But, that is just my guess. The CDN and Pipeline features are probably 2 or more weeks from making it out to the main SL Viewer. But, they would be a BIG plus for an Oculus RC Viewer.
The main viewer is 3.7.17-294959
A Maintenance Viewer version 3.7.17.294943, which is on the Alternate Second Life Viewers page. You can read its release notes here: 3.7.17 Release Notes. Fixes and improvements are:
Login Viewer version 3.7.17.294959 – Release Notes – This is the viewer with the new login screen.
EXCITING NEWS! The HTTP Pipelining Viewer will be going to RC Viewer status as soon as it completes the Lab’s internal QA. Expect it SOON, but not this week. And expect some impressive changes. Monty Linden is calling this viewer the Drano Viewer.
Whirly Fizzle is in Europe and ran some tests. She cleared cache (between each test), and then logged in. With the standard non-pipelining viewer the 105k item inventory took some time to load.
Second Life 3.7.16 (294015) Sep 10 2014 11:08:26 (Second Life Release)
Then again clearing cache between each run and switching to the new pipelining viewer:
Second Life 3.7.17 (294571) Sep 26 2014 12:32:36 (Second Life Release)
If you are measuring load time, you can get exact numbers from your viewer’s log file. Look for “LLInventoryModelFetchDescendentsResponder::httpSuccess: Inventory fetch completed” in older viewers. In the pipelining viewer look for 2014-10-08T23:00:22Z INFO: idle_startup: Inventory and 2014-10-08T23:25:38Z INFO: LLInventoryModelFetchDescendentsResponder::httpSuccess: Inventory fetch completed.
AvaStar 1.2 is out and now Gaia has published an article on what they will be doing now. See: Remarks from the Creators. The interesting take away is that the tutorial videos will be getting updated now that the product has stabilized.
This week has seen some articles on creating great images using Second Life. New World notes has: Top Four Tips for Flawless, Photoshop-Free SL Snapshots, Family Portraits: This Second Life Photographer Has a Knack for Taking Snapshots of Domestic Bliss, and How to Turn SL-Based Images Into Visual Art. There are others that have commented on the aspects of what makes great images and art.
The Internet has a ton of image composition tutorials. Google Image Composition.
The main channels did get a roll out. It was the package running on the RC channels for the last 2 weeks (38 & 39 or 39 & 40 depending on how you count weeks for rollouts). This was the package with teaks to the Experience Tools project. It also included some bug fixes.
The RC channels all got the same package. This is a package that fixes a problem unique to the Skill Gaming regions.