Category Archives: SLV2, 3, 4, 5, & 6 Series

The Linden made series of viewers

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 # 28

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General News

A thread in the SL Forum is about what the Lab should do to get more people into Second Life™. (Thread: Its amazing how strong SL seems to be!?) I read through it. Seems everyone has their opinion. I see no real suggestions based on anything other than opinion. So, I doubt the Lindens will find anything worthy of their time. But…

We Are....

We Are….

Are you aware of what the Lindens have done and are doing to attract new users? Or maybe how much they are spending on advertising? Or even how targeted Internet advertising works?

Are you aware the Lab has done and continues to do lots of A-B testing?

If you can’t answer yes to most of these questions and whip off some of the university studies carried out in SL then why would you think you are qualified to advise the Lab on what they should do?

In the article The Daily Grind: What tends to attract you to an MMO? Massively Overpowered provides a way to get information that people actually may know something about that could be useful. The title explains it all. Continue reading →

Second Life News Week #27

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SL News – General

Windows 10 Build 1903 – This is the current significant update from Microsoft. For now, it is an optional update.

In the SL community, a number of people have had issues after installing 1903. NVIDIA users have to use one of the newer viewers to avoid video issues when exiting the SL Viewer. The Lindens latest default viewer (6.2.3.527756) has a fix for the problem. The viewer will automatically install the update. You don’t need to do anything.

The What’s New video for Windows 10 is here…

Windows 10 1903 Optimization – This is another video that is an extensive guide. If you are trying to squeeze the most from your computer, this is the guide you will want. The changes he recommends are reversible. 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 Week #24

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Other News

Server Deploy Posts – They are back… Last week speaking to Caleb Linden at the Beta Sever UG meeting I learned there was a problem and it would get resolved. It apparently has as there is a deploys posts this week.

Caleb posted the announcement Monday about noon SLT/PST. Yay!

June 24 – This is the date Premium Membership Rates increase. Until then you can renew for one more billing cycle at the current rate, US$72 per year, which is a deal. I just renewed. I am good until 2021.

Someday Soon

Someday Soon

With Premium, one gets a L$1,000 signing bonus (down the road) and L$300 per week. At the average exchange rate of L$250 to the US$1 that is L$16,600 or US$66.40. Net cost is $5.60. With a jump up to US$99 the net cost goes to US$32.60. That seems like a huge rise until one considers the cost of some other games.

Star Citizen with ships costing US$400 to $2,500 and EVE Online at US$15/month are particularly expensive. Other monthly games are often US$10 per month or US$120 per year. Continue reading →

Second Life News Week #23

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Friday was the Third-Party Developers’ UG meeting. Lots of updates on what is going on. So, check the Other News. …speaking of Other News, I am changing the order of these posts. The more interesting stuff I’ll put at the start meaning Other News. That pushes Server and Viewer reports down the page. They are still here.

The Server-Scripting UG meeting was well attended 20+. Lots of questions and answers.

Bad, Bad Panda!!

Bad, Bad Panda!!

Other News

Teleport Problems – The Lindens think they have those fixed. They have been watching the new stats they started collecting weeks ago to find the problem. It is looking good… or at least, better. If QA and RC testing had gone well, we would likely have seen the changes go grid wide this week. Maybe next week.

My experience TPing and Crossing is better. I’ve been flying and sailing with way fewer disconnects. Flying in certain RC channels I have not disconnected. From time to time in main channel regions, I do fail to connect to the destination region and get disconnected. Still, way less often.

I do still get unseated… I get left behind as my heli or boat continues on. A number of times I have recovered and caught them and continued on. Other times the controls are borked and I delete the vehicles and relog. Continue reading →

Second Life News Week #22

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We have not had a Deploys post since 5/6, 3-weeks no post. Some have speculated that since viewers have a new release notes system the server’s release notes will be updating. But… rumor is no. Also, the wiki release notes have not been updated.

Centaur Photoshoot & Parade

Centaur Photoshoot & Parade

Monday was a holiday in the USA, Memorial Day – remembrance of those Americans that died in WWII.

So, the Lab was closed Monday. Things may be a bit rushed and behind today. I didn’t really expect a main channel roll today, but we got one. Also, I suspect the server update sequence is likely out of pattern from the TP-Crossing Disconnects problems. Continue reading →