Third Party Viewers Week 44

This is a brief round up of the Third Party Viewers for Second Life that I find interesting. Not in any particular order. The popular feature to be adding is: Restore to Last Position. I explain that in the section on RLV.

RLV 2.9.15 Update

Marine has updated the RLViewer she maintains. She is adding in the feature from Firestorm and Kokua: Restore to Last Position. This is a controversial feature the Lindens have omitted from the Linden made viewer. It apparently generates too many support calls.

What's that sound?

What’s that sound?
[Good facial expression]

The controversy centers around a problem the feature creates. Imagine you have a parcel in, say, Fishergate and it is in the northwest corner of the region. You build and rez stuff into that parcel. You then take them into inventory. You go to a different region, say Furball, and get a parcel in its south central area. When you use Restore to Last Position to rez those items they will poof away. You will most likely find them rezzed at the 0,0,0 point in the region. Continue reading

Second Life Viewers Week 35

From the Third Party Developers’ meeting last Friday we got some news. Not much from the Linden side. I am often wondering if there is really so little for them to talk about in regard to Second Life™ or if the community is wearing them down and they are talking less as a defense. We have been down that road before.

Fantasy uprising

Fantasy uprising

Viewers

RC Second Life Project Oculus Rift Viewer version 3.7.18.295296 – This view is often left behind. Oz describes it as being ‘preempted’.  They have more important things to do and spend time on those rather than updating this version. I suspect few people are using this version as the Oculus type headsets it is designed for are not yet in retail release.  Continue reading

Second Life: Singularity Viewer

A new release is out. It is primarily for users with AMD/ATI video cards. Unless you are having a problem, you don’t need this release.

From the video "Inner winter" 5

From the video “Inner winter” 5 by Pepa Cometa, on Flickr

You may be aware of a recent AMD/ATI driver update to stopped mesh items from rendering. This isn’t a Singularity problem. It affected all viewers as it was a driver problem. If you had an ATI/AMD video card and updated your driver, you had the problem. Continue reading

Second Life News 2014-47

Group Chat

Simon Linden Tells us:

Yes some of the chat servers have been having troubles in the last few days.   I’ve been looking into that … the code running there isn’t super new, and the outages might be timed with some of those [hardware update] restarts.

In any case, there is an update soon for the chat servers, and already another in the pipeline.

Servers

Photo Shoot w/Mr. S

Photo Shoot w/Mr. S

This week there are no rolls for either the main channel or RC channels. Next week is a no change week. So, I expect no roll outs that week either.

We can expect tweaking to the CDN system. This week whatever they are doing that requires multiple restarts is ongoing.

The main reason for no updates is the hardware updating requiring the restarts scheduled for this week. Estimating time for any individual update or the group is difficult as Simon says, “We also have to actually open up the server box and look inside to see if it needs an update, so it’s random how long each one takes.

This shouldn’t do anything grid-wide, aside from extra region restarts.”  Continue reading

Second Life Bits 2014-39

Tokyo Game Show

Lots of news is coming out of this event. None that I’ve seen is about Second Life 2.0. But, I wonder how much tech used by these other games is making its way into SL2.

For more info see: ‘Bloodborne’ Tokyo Game Show Trailer Shows Multiplayer In Action.

Second Life HD Video System

For some time residents of Second Life™ have suffered from TV’s and related systems failing. A set of problems generally tracked back to WebKit. But, now Marine Kelley has made and released a new HD System for Second Life.

See the details here: New product : HD Video System. L$400 See it in world. Continue reading

Second Life Bits 2014-36 #2

CG Awesome

I suspect most people know there is a lot of CG in moves these days. This is an interesting video showing some amazing CG work.

#GamerGate

Have you heard of #GamerGate? I suppose it has been growing for days. The long and drama filled story can be found here: GamerGate: A Closer Look At The Controversy Sweeping Video Games.

#GamerGate is drama just as we see in Second Life™. Only on a larger scale. It is a story complete with sex, vigilantes, hacking, rage quits, and all the rest. Continue reading

Singularity Viewer 1.8.5 Released

This appears to be a significant release of the Singularity Viewer. The release announce is at: Singularity Viewer 1.8.5.

Singularity Viewer

Singularity Viewer

You’ll find the viewer now has a new way to move the avatar around. I am not sure why a new way would be needed unless this is preparation for Oculus Rift. I steer my avatar with a combination of the A, W, S, D keys and the mouse, mostly the W key and mouse. That requires I use both hands.  Continue reading