Latif Khalifa has passed away

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Latif Khalifa has passed away… age 46 I understand. I barely knew him. I would hear/see him in some of the SL user group meetings. My take is he was an interesting personality. I agree with the bloggers I’ve read that he will be missed, at least by those that knew what he was about.

You not being here just makes me cry
You not being here just makes me cry

Gimisa tells me “Diva Canto” wrote:

Latif’s contributions to the open source SL ecosystem were vast and varied. He was one of the original contributors, and the main maintainer, of libOMV, a library that embodies the LL protocol and data structures. LibOMV lies at the heart of OpenSimulator, as well as many SL/OpenSim bots developed by lots of people.

Latif also developed Radegast, an alternative viewer used by many, especially people with disabilities. He also contributed to the Singularity viewer and its offshoot, Replex. He participated in the SL Architecture Working Group, and in many technical discussions in the OpenSim-dev IRC chat channel. He was a vocal advocate of free open source software.

Second Life: Fast Money

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It is splashing across the Second Life™ blogosphere that the Lab published an announcement: Faster Credit Processing & Upcoming Changes to Fees. The Lindens think 75% of the SL users taking money out will be able to do so in 2 days, working days.

I Forget Which Side I'm On
I Forget Which Side I’m On

Fees are going up. You can read the announcement to see why, but the info is:

As of April 5, 2016, instead of charging a flat fee of $1 (USD) per transaction, we will charge a fee of 1.5% of the transaction value, with a minimum fee of $3 (USD) and a maximum of $15 (USD). Additionally, the fee for purchasing L$ on the LindeX will increase 10¢, from $0.30 (USD) to $0.40 (USD) per transaction.

This is a good thing for most of us. But, see this thread: Anyone received this email from LL?

Project Bento Update Week 9

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I could make this week’s meeting. But, Inara has an audio recording of the meeting. See: Project Bento User Group update 7 with audio.

The set of bones has changed to meet feedback from SL users. It isn’t all they want, but it is what can be done now.

Lifted [We are more than light]
Lifted [We are more than light]
There was a neck-bone thing that users were on about. The problem is that adding bones within the chain of existing bones breaks legacy compatibility. An alternate option was figured out and added. 

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In the News: Project Sansar

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Daniel Voyager has an article up pointing to an interview by Ryan Matthew Pierson with Ebbe Altberg, Linden CEO, and Peter Gray, Linden marketing. See: Linden Lab’s Project Sansar and the Future of Virtual Reality. The article is about what is required for Virtual Reality (VR) to go mainstream.

ℜØSE Siabonne #paparazzoted
ℜØSE Siabonne #paparazzoted

The TL:DR is that Second Life did not catch on because the rewards of Second Life didn’t cover the cost of the learning curve, in people’s perception. The article puts that much more convincing worlds.

Ryan covers how Sansar will be different and that it targets the ‘developer/game maker’ rather than the user. But, he never answers the question implied by the first half of the article.

So, interesting, but no great insights.

Danial writes far more about the article from the perspective of a resident of Second Life™ that lives through the times being discussed. (Click Daniel’s name at the top of this article.)

OBDUCTION Getting Near Release

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If you are a long time reader, you know I came from the Myst gaming community. I am a big fan of Myst Online: Uru Live. Cyan Worlds the maker of Uru has been working on a new game for a couple of years: OBDUCTION.

Obduction Release
Obduction Release

Game Tyrant has an article about their experience with OBDUCTION at the Cyan offices. See: Exclusive: We Played OBDUCTION, the Spiritual Successor to MYST and it is Brilliant. 

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