Category Archives: Kokua Viewer

Second Life News Week #36

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General News

SL Travel

Ever wonder how the SL travel and places blogs find those awesome places?

It seems the Blogger & Vlogger Network has a list of them. (here) They also have a form one can fill out to add to the list. So, they find these places when people stumble-on or otherwise find them and add them to the list.

Only those who dream learn to fly

Only those who dream learn to fly

The list is titled Photogenic, Rezzable Sims. Rezzable? My first thought was griefers will LOVE this list. However, many of the locations require membership in a group to get rez-rights and a number of those groups have a Join Fee. About 20 of the 37 locations are listed as free. If there is a cost it is referenced in the listing. They also have the region’s maturity rating, PG, Moderate, and Adult. Nine are rated Adult, but not all 9 are hook-up places. And even those that are, look good.

The list apparently has some age. Several of the links landed me at places other than the obvious intended landing point but the correct region. However, a couple of regions were gone or repurposed.

I found Backdrop Cove (Map URL) in the list. Got some pictures. This place is not as crowded as Backdrop City. So, posing and setup was nicer. Also, you can rez stuff without having to join a group. They use a 60-minute return. It is a moderate region and the pose and animation stuff I saw was PG. Donations are appreciated. Please help out. Continue reading →

Second Life News Week #34

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General News

At the Server and Scripting UG meeting, Simon Linden tells us there are several server updates in the pipeline. This means we are likely to see a steady series of updates rolling out.

Oz Linden tells us that soon the server Release Notes will be moving to the new release notes system now used by the viewer’s release notes. Not everyone is happy about that. But, release notes are being moved out of the Wiki.

N552 Family Breakfast

N552 Family Breakfast

The SL Wiki has an update planned. When asked if the SL Wiki was to be phased out, Oz replied, “[2019/08/20 12:07]  Oz Linden: if I proposed killing the wiki, there a[re] Lindens who would show up with pitchforks…rest assured that it is well defended.

One of our background-priority projects that is getting some attention is updating the wiki software, actually … no predictions when that might happen, but Someday™”

So, the wiki is to remain.

There is and has been some discussion about some way of adding script cost… something like Land Impact. The idea is to push people to write more efficient scripts and to wear fewer of them. Rider tells us that is a BIG project and unlikely to happen any time soon. Plus, it is only a popular idea with landowners.

Slink @ Hair Fair – See the announcement here. The hair Slink made available at the fair has an interesting coloring HUD. Lots of coloring control. Continue reading →

Second Life News Bits 2019 Week #29

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General News

Preparations for the 9th Annual Christmas Expo are now underway. See REGISTRATION OPEN – 2019 SL Christmas Expo.

Updating the EEP RC Viewer – If you are running on Win-10 v1903 with NVIDIA and update the EEP viewer as it requires by clicking OK, it will trash your video settings. I mean your screen will go wonky and require a computer restart to reset it. The NVIDIA reset (Win Key)+Ctrl+Shift+B won’t help.

Paint for Shergood's H-160

Paint for Shergood’s H-160

Avoid the problem and download the EEP RC Viewer from the Alternate Second Life Viewers page. You can install over the top of the prior install.

AvaStar – Welcome to Avastar 2.79, the new release, July 14, 2019. This will be the last release for Blender 2.79. With this release the version numbering changes. I suppose the point is to make it easier to know which AvaStar works with which Blender.

AvaStar 2.79 will NOT work with Blender 2.80 and above. The next version of AvaStar will be 2.80 and it is being designed to work with Blender 2.80 and up.

Shergood Aviation – New waypoints have been released. These are server-side changes. So, various aircraft do not have to be updated. This is primarily a help to H-160 and Chinook pilots and GPS HUD users. It will be of less importance to older craft but, still a nice improvement.

A notice was sent to the Shergood Aviation group (SLURL) members explaining how to make use of the new waypoint system. To get a copy, join the group, look in Notices.

Topless Cruise – Cruises start weekly Tuesdays 1PM SLT (21:00 BST / 22:00 CEST) – To get updates, join the group Topless Cruisers.  (SLURL)

Sailors are welcome to change wind direction. I try to make it without changing wind direction. For me, it depends on whether or not I hit some laggy regions where I cannot maintain control of the boat.

Everyone is welcome to the after-party. This week it is (‘was’ depending on when I get this published) at Twice Bitten Villa. (URL)

Servers

Again… no Deploys post.

My home region in the main channel was restarted this morning. It is running version Second Life Server 19.06.14.528215, which is the same version as last week and the week before.

Blue Steel is running the same version as of Tuesday morning. I presume Le Tigre and Magnum are also. I will have to look tomorrow to see if they change.

Aah Ha. Simon Linden at the Server-Scripting UG says we will get an update on the Magnum channel Wednesday. Saying, “a tiny performance boost … one crash fix, an esoteric TP failure fix, update a system library … general fix-it stuff that isn’t likely to be visible.”

Simon also points out that various employees are on vacation. So, some projects, like Scripts Run %, are not being worked on. Continue reading →

Second Life News Week #26

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Getting the news out took a bit as I decided to include my own Meet the Lindens video. Pantera Północy posts his videos more quickly than I do. I get bored with his single camera angle. I also process the video to improve the audio… since my camera is moving around have to capture audio at my avatar’s location, not the more easily controlled camera location which has the audio level is all over the place if I move around. That single spot audio is not the best, so I think it still needs some help. But it is serviceable.

Other News

I’ll start off with this alarming bit of news showing where RL government is going with climate change, Climate Apocalypse? Ireland To Ban Private Cars, Import 1M Third-World Migrants. Whatever you think about Climate Change, make sure you aren’t just drinking someone’s Kool-Aid.

SL16B Crowd – The Meet the Lindens Tuesday event was attended by close to 200 people, 11 were Lindens, spread over four regions. Max per region was about 55. I didn’t crash and things worked well. People were a bit slow rendering, textures lagged, but no regions crashed. My FPS was in the 7 to 11 FPS (i5, 32GB, GTX-1060 High-Ultra Shadows + Projectors). – April’s mic was cutting out. – The video is a bit jerky. At 7FPS that happens.

Video Abstract

The video starts with Oz and April telling us about their history with Second Life™. Both were residents before they were hired by the Lab. I found this part of the video INTERESTING… Saffia is a good interviewer.

When we can get Oz or other techy Lindens talking, they always have interesting stuff to say and we learn things about the SL system.

In this Meet the Lindens meeting, April Linden confessed that 2 to 6 months ago they moved the SL inventory to the cloud. Not every detail has moved, but basic inventory (database) now runs in the cloud on much faster computers. And no one noticed, which is what the Lindens want. Continue reading →

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Second Life News Week #25

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Other News

Today, Tuesday, was the Server-Scripting UG meeting with the quarterly music thing with Tukso this quarter.

TP/Crossing Disconnects – Lindens think they have most of the problem handled. They aren’t saying much as they don’t want to influence the bug reporting. I think additional fixes are in Blue Steel, but I don’t have any objective information to say so.

The Le Tigre and Magnum regions have the EEP fixes for legacy viewers… the ones we are using.

SL16B – Second Life’s Birthday Party opens on 20th June and runs to 8th July.

June 24 – This is the last day you can renew at the old rates for Premium Membership. Last Call.

Voice Maintenance – June 19th the Lindens will be pulling maintenance on the voice system. They will start at 8:00 AM SLT. People may have problems while system maintenance is in progress. Watch Grid Status for an announcement of completion. You may need to relog after that to get voice working.

Facebook’s Bitcoin – Facebook is planning to get into the cyber-currency game. Their block-chain coin will be named Libra… free? Does anyone think they are providing a free service from the goodness of their heart? I don’t. The concerns being voiced are based on FB’s history of privacy invasion. Now, they will have access to your spending and earning information. A FB alternative is MeWe.com.

FaceApp – This has recently become is a small thing in SL. It is an app for mobile devices to edit portrait images. It is quite fun. I just wrote a how-to on getting it to run on a PC or Mac: The FaceApp and Second Life  Continue reading →

Second Life News 2019 w21

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I am behind this week. Too many fun things to do and work keeps interfering with my life. However, there is some interesting stuff happening.

Servers

Well… no Deploys post this week. However, the main channel and I think RC channels got updates.

Flickr Down – Sad… no pretty picture today.

Second Life Server 19.05.10.527185 – Main channel – Internal Fixes – Fixed EEP Regressions. I think the regressions are the things that broke when the other thing got fixed… Whatever, they are sorting it out.

The RC’s as of Thursday looked like this: Continue reading →

Second Life News 2019 Week #17

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Since last Thursday my teleporting and crossing to other regions has deteriorated. Then today in the middle of the Server-Scripting User Group my Internet goes down. :/ I get disconnected from Second Life think I got bit by the SL bug. Then can’t relog. My computer can’t find SL… A little more troubleshooting and I realize I can’t go much of anywhere on the Internet. Call COX. They are on it. They know it is down.

Fantasy Faire : The Celestial Plain (1)

Fantasy Faire: The Celestial Plain – 2019

About 30 minutes later I’m back up according to the router diagnostics. But I can’t connect to much of any place. Oh… but my laptop can. It uses the default DNS servers and my Desktop uses Google and OpenDNS free. So, I change the DNS servers my desktop uses and all is great. SL works again and better than it has all this last week. Well dang.

So, are my disconnections from the SL server bugs or my DNS server problems or both? No way to tell.

Servers

This week the Deploys post tells us the usual server rollouts are changing. Monday, no changes. Tuesday RC Le Tigre and RC Blue Steel are to update to version 19.04.22.526534. I can’t find any release notes for this but it is very likely targeting the disconnection problem. On Wednesday the same version may roll to the Magnum and the Main Channel depending on Tuesday’s result. Thursday will depend on what happens Tuesday and Wednesday. Continue reading →

Second Life News 2019 w09

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Servers

Updates were planned. A problem was discovered last minute and neither the main or RC channels updated. Simon Linden explained at the Server-Scripting UG Tuesday. The Deploys post now reflects that change of plans.

[2019/02/26 12:02]  Simon Linden: Let’s see … well, for server news, our update this morning got cancelled by another last-minute problem we discovered

[2019/02/26 12:03]  Simon Linden: That stops tomorrows updates as well, but I believe we’re planning on doing restarts of all the regions on the RC channels

[2019/02/26 12:03]  Simon Linden: … and I’m working with another colleague as we speak helping to sort that issue out

[2019/02/26 12:04]  Simon Linden: That’s my excitement for the week, so the table is open for topics or discussion

One of the things to happen with the planned update was a channel with the UDP API disabled. This would test viewers to see if they were in some way still dependent on the UDP API. Those developing viewers or if you want to test can visit Mesh Sandbox 3 in Aditi. It has the planned update running.

You're only here for a short visit. Don't hurry. Don't worry.

You’re only here for a short visit. Don’t hurry. Don’t worry.

Some experimenting with whether or not their viewer is UDP dependent or not have seen some odd behavior. Whirly Fizzle did some testing and reports here.

It seems you inventory will load, the list. But you cannot fetch any of the assets.

So, Firestorm 5.0.7 users have about a week left before that viewer is totally crippled and then soon blocked. Update early. Avoid problems. Continue reading →