Viewers

General Viewer Information

Linden Lab Opens Oculus Rift Beta

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Wednesday about 11 AM the Lab made a blog post: Second Life’s Oculus Rift Integration is Ready for Beta Testers. They provide an email address for those that would like to participate in the beta testing.

Ciaran Laval posted talking about it. See: Linden Lab Oculus Rift.

To be part of the beta team you need to have an Oculus Rift. The only Rift hardware currently available is the Developer’s Kit, US$300±. Some Second Life residents have a Rift. They are the people the Lab is looking for.

No Rift? Don’t bother applying.

CtrlAltStudio makes a viewer that supports the Rift. It is a branch of the Firestorm Viewer. See: CtrlAltStudio. But, David Rowe, the developer, has not been big into the user interface. He has been waiting on the Lab to develop that.

Also, David has joined the Firestorm development team. May be join is too strong a word. Partnered… whatever they are working together. That suggests to me that the Firestorm viewer will probably release Rift support shortly after the Lab’s viewer makes it to the RC stage. Or… not. They may decide a better UI is possible and go to work on their idea of better one, which would delay their release…

At this stage I suspect this beta team for the Lab will have to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement. Everyone is trying to figure out how to do UI’s for the Rift. So, my guess is the Lab will want to make their release a surprise.

Second life News 2014-11

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Servers

The main grid did get a roll out this morning.  The package was previously running on Blue Steel and Le Tigre. It is a maintenance upgrade with bug fixes.

Furniture Shopping
Furniture Shopping
  • Bug Fixes
    • Fixed a bug in which the server release notes link in “About Second Life” would sometimes fail to appear
    • Fixed a bug in which certain objects had incorrect status when crossing between regions
    • Fixed a crash mode

RC Channels

The RC code running on Magnum will now run on all three channels. This is the Sunshine RC with the AISv3 code that improves how inventory works adding reliability and stall prevention. It is considered additional work in the Bake Fail or Server Side Appearance project.

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Second Life News 2014-10 #2

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There are a couple of new RC Viewers out now.

Voice Viewer version 3.7.3.287288 – This RC Viewer pulls in Vivox 4.6.x libraries instead of the 4.5 libraries for improved stability and to address reported issues. If you are having voice problems, try this viewer.

Sunshine Viewer version 3.7.3.287158 – This is a promotion of the Project Viewer 3.7.1.286565. The release notes say it had improved stability and retry capabilities for Server Side Avatar baking. It should be able to better detect ‘stuck’ conditions and clear them so the avatar will render. 

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Second Life News 2014-10

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Perspective

We don’t often get any insight into what Lindens are thinking about going on’s in the Lab. Today one gave us a glimpse.

I’ll wrap up and say that there’s a lot of good talking [in the Lab] going on about what works in SL, what doesn’t, what we’ve tried before and all that … as you know some changes take a lot of time and work, others can be done quickly.    But overall I’m more optimistic than I was 6 months ago, and I like that.

Server-Scripting UG 2014-10
Server-Scripting UG 2014-10

Better Building

Ciaran has an article up promoting Penny Patton’s ideas about building things to scale in Second Life™. See: Second Life Content Creators Should Pay Attention To Penny Patton.

Ciaran is focusing on a June 2013 article that Penny wrote: Building a Better Second Life. I covered it at the time it was published: Best Building Practices in Second Life.

If you haven’t read any of these articles, please do before you start building your dream home. 

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Second Life’s Bug Island

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Have you ever wondered if your viewer and computer were rendering Second Life™ correctly? Do you see what other users see? And if you compiled a viewer, is it rendering things correctly? The answers to those questions can be found at Bug Island.

Of course showing up there and looking to see what you viewer shows you is only half the answer. You also need to know what things are supposed to look like. The SL Wiki shows you the pictures and behaviors, in movies, of what you should see. SL Wiki page: Bug Island Test. 

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