Second Life and Virtual Worlds
Every so often someone figures out a new way to scam those in Second LifeTM. Seems a new scam has popped up.
Links are placed into comments in group chat. Most of us just paste a URL (http://www.someplace…) in and keep going. BUT… SL chat has the ability to make text links (link), text hiding the URL. Seems those are being used to mislead people to a hacking site. The bait is some promise of free or cheap goodies in the marketplace.
There was no Project user group meeting this week. Some of the users showed up and there was some discussion. Not much of substance was related while I was there, about 30 minutes. Also, no one was using voice. Conversations were in local chat.
Since there was no voice used I sped up the video by 100% (x2). I also added some of the Server Scripting user group meeting. It too is in local chat without voice… x2.
It is looking like several people expect Project Bento to go into RC status this month. I expect the project to stay in RC status for longer than most candidates do. We have to wait for AvaStar and MaysStar and possibly MaxStar (?) to stabilize, people to learn to use them, start uploading animations, and reporting bugs.
Once the project has an RC my interest jumps up. I’m not a good enough animator to deal with the mechanics of how it works and be helpful. My ‘why does it…’ questions with ‘because you did or didn’t…’ answers would slow things down.
I like to have a collection of tutorials to which I can send new Second Life™ users. Every so often I update my in-world note card list. I give that to new players I meet.
Strawberry Singh has a series of introductory(?) videos and she is adding to and updating her collection. Her post Introduction to Second Life is pretty much an outline of those videos. She has done a good job of answering questions new users have. Including signup, downloading, and installing the viewer, something often missed by tutorial makers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7t3tNQ_53us
I find 1 or 2 posts a month in the Second Life Forum asking how to get into SL. These are people that signed up but somehow didn’t realize they needed to download the viewer. It has been a while since I signed up a new avatar. So, I don’t really understand how they miss understanding they need to download the ‘game’. I just know they do. And these are people that write well when posing their question. So, they aren’t mentally handicapped or simpletons.
Inara Pey noticed something in the recent Linden Lab press release that I passed right over. The Lab refers to Project Sansar as SANSAR™. Subtle.
Inara contacted the Lab and got a sort of left handed confirmation.
See: Lab confirms Sansar’s title and issues first Creator Preview invites.
They now have a Sansar Flickr Channel.
Tapple Gao is providing a free tool for those doing movement animations, e.g., walking. You’ll find a copy in the marketplace here: Walking and Turning Test Treadmill. It is free.
The idea for the tool was to provide a way to eliminate skate from animations you create. With some walking and running animations my avatar appears to skate across the floor/ground.
With this tool you can play the animation, as opposed to wearing and having to ‘move’ to play it, stand in place, start the treadmill, and see if your feet and the treadmill are in sync. If not you’ll need to adjust the time scale of your animation.
Handy.
I’m into math. So, I think it would be nice to have a control that would let me speed up or slow down the treadmill by a known percentage. While there aren’t any buttons for that. Apparently I could do that via the chat interface.
By knowing how much to speed up or slow down my animation I would be able to eliminate a lot of trial and error testing.
This morning an announcement appeared on the Linden Lab Press Releases page: LINDEN LAB BEGINS INVITING CREATORS TO SANSAR, THE PLATFORM FOR CREATING SOCIAL VR EXPERIENCES. (8/31/2016)
The Lindens say ‘more than 6,500 people have applied’ to participate in what I’ll call the beta phase of Project Sansar.
This will be a rolling invitation. Some will be invited now. More later and even more with time.
If you haven’t applied and you are a creator, there is a link on the PR page.
The opening day will be sometime in early 2017. I expect that will be when I get in for the first time.
While none of this is really new to those of us in SL, it is a milestone that it is happening now.
An interesting question is how tightly NDA’s will these invitees be bound?