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.

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Firestorm Viewer v6.2.4 Released July 12, 2019

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The quarterly release schedule is shot, as the Firestorm team points out in the blog announcement, Firestorm Update 6.2.4.57588. It isn’t like that is news. We’ve noticed that plan sliding. I see this missed timeline as more a Linden-new-feature release complication than lag on the team’s part.

EEP and BoM are near release. The FS team had hoped to get those features in this version. But the Lab is fighting bugs and glitches in both. Both are behind schedule. I suppose the FS team decided to stop waiting.

Firestorm Viewer – July 2019

From what I gather I suspect there is a beta version with both EEP and BoM in testing. Inara’s ‘Paving the Way’ is acknowledgment this version has adaptions for EEP & BoM. The Firestorm testing peeps will know. I am guessing this 6.2.4 version runs with EEP & BoM but has those features disabled. Once EEP and/or BoM release I expect a quick release of a FS Viewer with those features.

I am in the process of deciding if the change in FS render of Windlight™ is me and my Win-10 update to 1903 or the change to 6.2.4. Whichever, something changed. The world looks different.

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Second Life News Bits 2019 Week #28

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General News

Linden Homes – Patch Linden warned the community that the Lab has throttled the ‘Homes Page’. In this case ‘throttled’ means there is now a limit on how often you can refresh the page. Refresh too often and you get a timeout. The server simply refuses to send you a copy of the page.

People are refreshing the page to catch the near daily release of Bellisseria homes. It is bad enough when people sit there poking the F5 and Ctrl-F5 keys. What seems to have become intolerable is the use of automation to do the refreshing. There are browser plug-ins that automate the task. Who knew?

Between all the interested people and the few resorting to automation the web servers are overloading. Thus, the throttle.

Reposed
Reposed

Sansar was the chosen platform for Monstercat’s eighth birthday celebration as a LIVE VR performance. For details about the July 12 event see Call of the Wild: An Upcoming VR Live Music Performance Created by Sansar and Monstercat

I think this announcement begs the question of whether people are learning about Sansar or the Lab is marketing Sansar well.

Hair Fair – This classic Second Life event is a little over a month away, starting August 17th, 2019.

Event management is asking the community help by creating Bandanas to be sold during the event and to round out the event the last day is the official Bandana Day.

Visit the website Hair Fair 2019 for details.

Hangers Liquides – This 5-region cyberpunk area around since 2007 looks to be closing. Hamlet has details. See Second Life’s Most Acclaimed Cyberpunk City Will Disappear This Month

Forum Angels – This is an SL in-world group made for the fashion-conscious AVs who hang out on the Forum. You find them in the Vanity Threads How Does Your Avatar Look Today and The VaNiTy ThReAd.

Wendy of Peanut No9 OpenCollar has a video on creating RLV outfits. You’ll find it on the OC Manual’s RLV Folders ‘OUTFITS’ page.

 

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.

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Last AvaStar Update For Blender 2.79

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AvaStar is updating. This is the last set of fixes and improvements for AvaStar targeting Blender 2.79. The next release will target Blender 2.8. This is significant because Blender is undergoing a radical change. Those of us with work-in-progress are likely to stay with 2.79 for some time. I probably won’t change over until my current projects are complete. So, I want as good a version of AvaStar as possible.

Blender 2.8 Pre-Alpha Splash Screen

Also, I will keep 2.79 on my computer for a long time in case I have to make a change in a project made with 2.79.

Machinimatrix made this announcement.

We are at the junction point!

The plan for the near future is:

– Release Avastar 2.6 around 13-july-2019.
– Plan for Avastar 2.6 to be the last release for blender 2.79.
– Start the final migration from Avastar 2.6 to Avastar-2.8 for Blender 2.80 around 15-july-2019.

Since Avastar is a huge Addon we currently can not tell when the migration will be done. We try our best.

cheers, Gaia

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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.

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