Second Life Depth of Field

Honour has a post up titled: How Deep is Your Field in Second Life? She was having a problem getting the viewer’s Depth of Field (DoF) feature to work. She links to Ricco Saenz’s explanation of how to get it working: How to actually capture depth of field on your SL photos. But, not why it does what is does.

Viewer Size Image
Viewer Size Image

DoF is one thing I have found I cannot control in my RL S4’s camera, or have yet to learn how. It is a reason I still use my Sony digital camera for RL imaging. DoF is something I seldom use in Second Life™ because I prefer the control I have in Photoshop. But, I can imagine that some will find DoF more usable in the viewer than adding it in post production. 

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Second Life News 2014-4

Monday was Martin Luther King Jr. day in America. It is a holiday for government and numerous businesses. The Lab considers it a holiday, so the Lab was running on holiday staffing levels. This usually means Tuesday and Wednesday server rolls are skipped or pushed back a day.

This week will be different. Maestro Linden told us last week that a rollout is planned for Tuesday and an RC rollout for Wednesday. We did not have one last week, so may there is a push or they are trying something differently. Whatever, we get rolls Tuesday and Wednesday.

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Second Life Interesting Viewer 3.6.14-285213

Interesting RC Viewer

This viewer is not yet the main viewer for Second Life™, but it did get an update Tuesday 1/14. This is the Interesting RC Viewer. It is known for faster scene rendering. You can download it here: Second Life RC & Project Viewers. If you are doing photography, this version could save your sanity. Even shopping things are rendering fast. I haven’t got to use it much. But, it seems great, better than previous version.

Interesting RC Viewer - 2014-01-14 - Fast Render
Interesting RC Viewer – 2014-01-14 – Fast Render

Remember. To run the RC you need to turn off Automatic Updates or have Automatic Updates and Willing to use RC’s both enabled. The later is preferred.

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Second Life Viewer 3.6.13-284995 Released

The main Second Life™ Viewer is now release 3.6.13-284995. Release Notes. This the RC Viewer known as the Package Fix RC Viewer. The primary change in the update is described in the Notes as:

The 3.6.12 release [previous release] changed the Windows executable name from ‘SecondLife’ to ‘SecondLifeViewer’, but did not remove any executable using the old name that was in the install folder. This could cause some problems with old shortcuts (not including the default one updated by the install) running the previous version (which might then insist on being upgraded, but the upgrade would not correct the old shortcut).

This (and any subsequent) release removes any executable in that install folder that uses the old name; using those shortcuts will now cause Windows to display an error message that the program is not there, so the user will need to modify or replace them with one that refers to the new name.

The folder and executable name changes meant that some people were experiencing a continual update loop. They would update automatically placing the new version in the new and differently named folder, the viewer would restart and work. The new version was being run. At the next login the viewer would tell them they needed to update, it would update, and run. But, each viewer start would require another update.

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Second Life News 2014-2

Recently we have seen a number of people complaining about getting disconnected, repeatedly. No one has determined if it is an SL problem or just problems local to the users being disconnected.

Viewers

The main release SL Viewer today is: 3.6.12-284506. I expect that to change this week.

The RC viewers are now:

We have more project viewers this week:

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Second Life Viewer Fix

I wrote about a problem with the viewer repeatedly downloading updates. The cause is the shortcut a person uses to start the viewer. Initially it was the folder name that changed and threw off the shortcut. Now my recent update to 3.6.13 went into an update loop.

It seems the SL Viewer program in 3.6.11 was named SecondLife.exe. The new 3.6.13 program is named: SecondLifeViewer.exe. So, if you have a shortcut pinned to your desktop, you will probably need to change it again. Just unpin it.

The viewer update or install will create a new shortcut on your desktop. That new shortcut can be pinned to you task bar via right-click drag and drop.

You can also find a shortcut in the Second Life folder in: Programs Files (x86)/SecondLifeViewer. That can be dragged to the task bar and pinned too.