Category Archives: Viewers

General Viewer Information

Second Life EEP Coming… coming… soon…

by

0

The Second Life Environmental Enhancement Project (aka EEP) has taken way longer than anyone at Linden Lab thought. I suspect the reason for that is the old render engine. It is an ancient (in computer time) engine and the original programmers long ago moved on.

Linden Made Panel v6.4.0

Some problems encountered in the project lead the Lindens to bring in some specialists. They have been working on resolving some complex problems. About a month ago, I’m not following viewer development as closely as I used to and my sense of time frames is shaky, the number of problems fixed exceeded the number being reported. So, we are likely to see EEP release soon, probably in April. I’ve missed my guesses a few times now… Lindens are more optimistic.

I am more optimistic because Whirly Fizzle hasn’t found any EEP bugs recently.

Continue reading →

Second Life Images/Pictures

by

2

The Lab has a very interesting image on display in  Home > Blogs > Inworld > Second Life Pic of the Day 02.06.2020. I found it interesting because of the avatar poses.

From Second Life’s Blog

Getting poses is sometimes hard. In some cases, one has to make their own. I suspect Madd Flair did some manual posing to get this shot. Or it could be built into the coaster, I have not checked. However, it looks very posed, unusual for built-in poses.

I doubt the image is taken from the Black Dragon viewer. Would be nice if they said. However, Black Dragon gives a ‘prettier’ render by default, thus my doubt.

From the How’s your avatar look today? thread Scylla Rhiadra spun off the thread Making Avatars Look Good in Black Dragon! Share Your Hints and Advice! (Link) This thread explains how people get those perfectly posed shots you have been wondering about.

NiranV the author of Black Dragon has been posting in the thread, so there is some good information and ‘how-to’.

Second Life News Week #42

by

0

General Second Life News

BoM

See the feature… change… request BUG-227585 – [BOM] Display the new Universal wearables between the Skin and the Tattoos ones.

Gael Streeter (of GA.EG products) has pointed out a possible problem with the use of the Universal Layer added with BoM, Bakes on Mesh.

As it is now, most are familiar with the original Classic layers provided by the SL system pre-BoM and pre-Mesh, Skin, Tattoo, Underwear, and Clothes. These stacked respectively from bottom to top. Each layer could cover the layer below.

10,000 Hours

10,000 Hours

The Universal Layer added a new layer between the Tattoo and Underwear layers. The order of layers doesn’t seem all that important as layers other than skin can be used for any purpose. The problem comes in how people think of the layers and figure out how to use them. So, using a tattoo layer for anything other than a tat is confusing until one learns what is going on.

Skin makers for bodies and heads have run into the problem of adding shiny and wet looks. With the Universal above the Tattoo layer, things get a bit complicated and require way more textures and layer-items to get the look possible if the Universal were moved down one layer.

Think of it as a tat maker having to make their tats for the Tattoo, Universal, Underwear, and possibly the clothes layer so we can dress as we want and stay mix and match. Continue reading →

Pages: 1 2 3

Second Life News Week #40 & 41

by

2

Flickr

There are new changes over at Flickr.

Ebbe

Ebbe Altberg, the Linden Lab CEO, talks about what investors should consider and ignore when investing in virtual reality. See Three Things to Focus On, Three Things to Ignore (Podcast).

Third-Party Dev UG Meeting

There are 4 viewers out. Plus, the main viewer. The Ordered Shout Down RC is looking good. From that I would gather it is the current likely bet for the next promotion. The Maintenance RC is doing OK. The project viewer for EEP has a couple of bugs yet to fix. New employees specializing in graphics now available to work on those. So, hopefully… A Voice RC viewer should be out next week, maybe.

Voodoo Moon

Voodoo Moon

From the Firestorm peeps, the Firestorm release is going fine. No real problems found yet. Adoption is good.

There was a discussion about BoM adoption and use. The opinion seems to be things in the fashion community are still way disorganized.

Blogger Awards

If you are looking for people that blog, vlog, or photograph Second Life then you just hit found the pot at the end of the rainbow, Ballot for the 2019 Bloggie Awards. The ballot is 38 pages of categorized URLs.

Voting is open until Oct 19, 2019. But, you have to vote in every category… tedious… before you can submit any vote.

Also included is ‘best’ at photo-friendly. So, if you are looking for places that provide interesting backgrounds and gorgeous scenery this is a handy list. Continue reading →

Firestorm 6.3.2 Released – BoM is here!

by

0

Firestorm has their new viewer out as of 1 AM (SLT?) Oct 1, 2019. The announcement is here Firestorm 6.3.2 Released. This is a major update and good news for Second Life™ users. However, it is a mess for OpenSim users as this version crashes OpenSim servers. It is explained in the FS announcement.

BoM Viewer Comparison

This version of Firestorm is a mix of current Linden Viewer features and features from RC versions of the Linden Viewer. So, this would be a viewer actually ahead of the Linden Viewer feature and bug-fix-wise. That hasn’t happened in a long time.

This version is a must-have update. Without this update, you will start to see avatars with blue and yellow textures poking through their skin and clothes. Over time the problem will get worse as more people move to BoM attire. Fortunately, most of the third-party viewers have implemented BoM support. Singularity does not yet have BoM support. I think it may be the only one. Continue reading →

Second Life News Week #39

by

0

General News

Blender 2.80 released a few weeks back. I am waiting for AvaStar to update before seriously trying to use it. And now I see a version 2.81 is planned for release in November 2019.

Blender Nation is doing a series of articles and videos that show the planned new features in 2.81. Look for the Blender development watch.

Bea's Portrait

Bea’s Portrait

Photoshop  updated and added new features recently. See What New? There is nothing that will be earthshattering for Second Life™ designers. There are features that will make those into SL Photography happy.

What’s Next – The Lab has a blog post up on what is coming for Second Life. See What’s Next for Linden Lab? There are notable changes to Sansar. The Lab says they are ‘reimagining’ Sansar. See Your World Is Waiting: The Makers Of Second Life Reimagine Sansar As An Immersive Destination For Gaming, Commerce & Live Events. I didn’t get how this ‘reimaging’ is different from the initial ‘imagining’. Whatever… If you haven’t been in Sansar for a while, it may be time to look again.

Move to Cloud – The What Next article (above) touches on what is happening with the move to the cloud. Inventory and the maps-website have already been moved to the cloud. Continue reading →

Second Life News Week #38

by

1

General News

What’s with BoM and Heads?

My experience point is with GA.EG’s Jennifer head. The rest is hearsay. So, you’ve been warned.

Every Time I Breathe I Take You In

Every Time I Breathe I Take You In

There is a significant problem, IMO, taking the current Bento Mesh Heads into BoM compatibility. As the pre-BoM Bento Heads provide considerable control over makeup, at least GA.EG does, and I see no simple way to provide that control to the system layer style of makeup, I expect little change as BoM capability is added to Bento Mesh Heads.

Thus, the simple change is to add the ability to add BoM skin to a Bento-Head. GA.EG does that with an applier. A new head could be made that has BoM built-in. But, would it still provide a choice of applier or BoM skin? The applier does. A new head would have to add scripting to provide the choice. I find script weight already a problem.

I love the Slink Redux body because it reduces my script load by about 2MB. A BoM-Head that increases script load seems counterproductive. Continue reading →

Pages: 1 2 3

Second Life News Week #37

by

0

Destinations Video

Experiences

Many of you will know Experiences have been borked. The Lindens have a fix, sort of… See their SL Blog post on their fix. See Experience Scripts Experiencing Trouble.

The bug is BUG-227526 – Issue with compiled experiences being lost when a script is copied in-world.

The Shrek Ears Thing

If you used Places Pages in 2017 then you noticed a problem back then. They were suddenly gone. Seems a developer ran a clear & reset script on the live database of Place Pages. Then they found out the database’s backups (plural) were scrambled.

The result was the database could not be restored. That data was gone. So, Place Pages had to be rebuilt by the page owner. It also meant ALL the SL backups were tested to make sure they would work if needed.

It was purely human error. A bummer. But, I bring it up now because from it we learned about Shrek Ears in the Linden offices. You’ve likely seen the movie or at least the trailer so you know what Shrek’s ears look like. But what they mean in Linden circles is unique and SL lore now. The full story is here, “Re-experience the fun of customizing your Place Page!” A Tale of Oops from Ops. Check it out to learn what the Shrek Ears thing is about. Then you’ll understand why some Lindens were recently wearing Shrek Ears… the recent problem with Experience scripts. Continue reading →