Second Life and Virtual Worlds
Rumor was we would see a new version release this past week. The source was good. But, it didn’t happen.
As I pointed out, the flurry of wiki updates I normally see wasn’t happening. That changed Sunday. So, a release is likely… soon.
That would be great. Because the 64-bit version I use eats all my 8GB RAM in less than an hour. I have had VBO enabled. I just disabled it and will be watching to see if that helps.
There is no roll to the main channel this week. See DEPLOYS. The package running on the RC channels last week did not promote. The RC package did update and will roll out tomorrow, Wednesday. The bug found is: Fix for BUG-37573 “Rez silently fails on RC Magnum, RC LeTigre and RC BlueSteel regions”
The main viewer remains 4.06.315555.
Firestorm is expected to release a new version Sunday, 7/31. But, it may get delayed a week. Everything depends on developers and QA testers.
I haven’t seen the rash of wiki changes that usually proceeds a release. So, other than the source being generally reliable, I have no other evidence the release is happening.
But, one is due and soon.
The Third Party Developer’s meeting ran 28 minutes. Attendance has been low. There is news and word on where the Lindens are focusing their attention.
The RC Second Life Maintenance Viewer version 4.0.7.317394 fixes lots of stuff and has some nice contributions by third parties.
RLV = Restrained Love Viewer, formerly Restrained Life Viewer. But Linden Lab® thought that use of the word Life in the name infringed on or put at risk their Second Life™ trademark. So, they pushed on those developing RLV and it changed.
What RLV is, is a set of tools built into a viewer that extends what we can do with Second Life™. The RLV capable viewers have a way for users to program/control each other’s viewers. Just as the Lab’s Advanced Experience Tools (AET) allow a programmer to; attach a HUD to your viewer, teleport your avatar, and do other things without the normal user interaction. So too, RLV allows a programmer to do similar things with your viewer and avatar. The difference between AET and RLV is in the flavor and amount of control the user gives to a third party.
In my reading I came across this article on the Intel Developer site: Unity Tip: Using Second Life As A 3D Modeling Package.
Quoting:
You may need to use 3D modeling to create objects for your project but do not have the technical experience yet to do so, or find that your package of choice does not provide the feature that you need (for example, creating spheres in SketchUp is very difficult). There is an alternative, user-friendly solution though. You can create your objects in the online virtual reality world Second Life
I think that is pretty interesting…
Even more interesting is they promote the Firestorm Viewer as the viewer of choice. Their reason for recommending Firestorm is the Collada export feature found in Firestorm.
The article provides a tutorial on how to export 3D items from Second Life™ using the Firestorm viewer.