Second Life and Virtual Worlds
General Viewer Information
KirstenLee has not released a new version. However, a teaser is up for version (40). It shows the new live chat system.
May be I missed something in the Snowstorm meetings. Improving chat has been there, but I don’t remember a new chat and interface coming.
Whatever, check it out here: Kirsten S20(40) Viewer Soon…
The previous Beta Release was Second Life 2.2.0 (210127). The current download is 211499. It is available here: Second Life Beta Viewer Download = direct to download. For the paranoid, this is the download page: Download Second Life Viewer 2.
The main download remains Second Life 2.1.1 (208043).
The changes, release notes, for the new beta version are not up, yet. But, they will appear here: Release Notes/Second Life Release/2.2.0.
The mesh viewer just came up on the download page.
Second Life Mesh Project Viewer Download
9:22 AM – Got the viewer and made it into ADITI. Not many people there. Only 3 or 4 in each mesh area. But, others and I cannot tp into the regions. Long wait and then tp fails.
9:30 AM – Cannot tp into Mesh City locations or Mesh Sandboxes (1 to 35). Some of the sandboxes are empty, no people. Others have some people in them.
10:58 AM – …then I find out my Blender is broken. Remove all Blender installs, all Python installs. Install Python 2.7 and Blender Beta 2.54 (nice shinny interface) and that is working again.
Since there seems to be a tp problem, I typed in the destination at login, Mesh Sandbox 33. You can use any sandbox destination from 1 to 33. I made it to a sandbox. \o/
11:00 AM – Jack Linden posts Open Beta blog article: Mesh Import Open Beta Starts Today. There are a number of links to various mesh related wiki articles. (Second Life Wiki Main Mesh Page) There are links to videos. Lots of good stuff.
Code availability for TPV Developers is planed for the end of the week. They will link to it from the Project Snowstorm wiki pages. This means TPV’s can support it once meshes come to the main grid. It also lets OpenSim get started on compatible mesh support. OpenSim with a module add-on has had meshes for over a year.
11:28 AM – \o/ It works pretty well. It is certainly usable. There are some gotchas and small problems in the user interface. But, those will get fixed.
If you plan to try applying standard texturing, make sure to do an inventory load. If all your textures are not loaded, the texture selection list keeps bouncing to the top as more items are loaded into inventory. Very frustrating.
10:45 PM – 🙁 Blender 2.54 is having problems exporting meshes skinned to AV rigging. It seems Blender 2.49b handles it correctly. So, if you are making things that have to skin to the AV, use the earlier version of Blender.
Machinimatrix is making video tutorials using Blender 2.49 to make the meshes and shows importing them to SL. The first two of a series are up. See: The Meshes Trail (Part I and II)
Last updated: See date to the right.
Updated: See new problem with mesh enabled viewers: Can’t Login Second Life
Updated 1/2012: New code in the release channels is causing login issues, basic ghosting where the system thinks you are already logged in. The official fix is call support. I suggest you read on for steps you can take.
Due to a timing issue in the region software we are seeing people fail to properly log out. The result is they leave a ghost behind, not a particle ball, more the spooky kind of ghost we expect to see for Halloween. I’ve seen lots of people making this complaint recently. The Beta Server and QA teams are aware of the problem and they are chasing it down.
The problem results in one’s avatar being left behind somewhere in-world when you logout. It causes a user to show in the system as already logged on, thus preventing them from logging into Second Life.
Over time I’ve decided this is not a viewer problem, at least not a specific viewer. It does not seem to matter which viewer one uses. A poor Internet connection greatly increases your chances of experiencing the problem.
I cam across this tip in the SL blogrum.
Help! I messed up my sculpty-mesh
Gaia Clary, of Machinimatrix.org, commented on the problem. Gaia does great tutorials and clear explanations.
Donations at Machinimatrix.org are appreciated and split between Gaia and Domino.
I had lots of problems with Phoenix 225. So, I’ve been looking forward to Phoenix’s next release. Yesterday I was reading the Phoenix Release Notes/Change Log and looking all over for the 373 download. They put it up today. This version is much nicer.
Download Size – The first Phoenix I used was in the 40+ mb range, and 225 was 33 mb. This release is down to 28 mb.
The install remembers your settings and your cache location setting. Yay!
WARNING: On the download page they advise you to clear your cache before logging in. This means open the Phoenix viewer, click Edit->Preferences->[Network] and click Clear Cache. Then close the viewer. The cache clears on the next viewer start.