Second Life Bright Canopy Update

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Inara has a good summary of what has happened and what is going on with Bright Canopy, the SL Go replacement. The TL:DR is simple. User behavior was not what the Bright Canopy peeps expected. The change from expected behavior drove up backend costs of the service. They were losing money and things had to change. Thus the service shut down.

See: Bright Canopy update

rho
rho

Basically, no one other than Amazon is making money from this project. If they cannot figure out how to turn that around, expect the doors to close.

There is a future in being able to stream high end games. With VR coming there will likely be more demand for the service. The challenges and/or symbiosis come from Intel, who is working to add more graphics power to their CPU, Apple and others wanting to challenge the NetFlix style streaming services and add gaming, those battling to take over cable and satellite delivery services, and others that want to add gaming as a facet of their entertainment services.

My point is there is industry interest in what Bright Canopy is doing. There may eventually be some way to deliver a SL/Sansar experience to lesser powered hardware.  But, as fast as hardware is developing/advancing the need deceases each year. That makes it hard to predict whether Bright Canopy will find an economic model that fits enough people’s needs for their service to remain viable. It is life and death for them, so the motivation is there. At some point the hardware and tech they need will be cheap enough, it is just a matter of timing.

Second Life Server Update Week 37

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No roll to the main channel this week. I didn’t expect any rolls as it is a short week with Monday being an American holiday.

the very bored
the very bored

The RC channels did get a new package. Surprising.  This is another boring Internal Simulator Fixes package.

Calab Linden seems to have permanently taken over making the Deploy announcements. He is making the forum and wiki posts. They seem to be turning into boiler plate announcements. He might as well abbreviate the reporting in the forum to Yes or No.

We can assume Internal means there is no user apparent change to the server. The change will have something to do with issues that affect operation in ways only important to Lindens. So, may be a variable name changes to better describe its function, a change makes package roll out more efficient, communication between a backend service improved… all things that say little to the user. But, these are still of interest to the geek crowd.

The lack of new features or improved existing features suggests most of the work is happening on larger projects or the viewer. We know there were changes to the inventory processes and Experience Tools going on. We haven’t heard that they have ended. Also, a VIVOX update was expected. We just aren’t getting information about those things.

Second Life: How Old is Bare Rose?

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If you have never been shopping at Bare Rose, you have missed out on a classic shopping experience of Second Life™. I think everyone should go at least once.

Bare Rose Oct 2014 - Something for Everyone
Bare Rose Oct 2014 – Something for Everyone

Ciaran Laval has an article up on Bare Rose turning 10. That is old  in SL years. (6 SL Days = 1 RL day – 4 hour days in SL) Something like 60 years… well… that is one way to look at it.

See: Bare Rose Celebrates Its 10th Birthday With Story Based Hunt. This is more adventure than simple hunt.

Avatar Complexity Update Week 37

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Second Life™ is getting a new tool to hopefully induce people to reduce avatar generated lag; the Avatar Complexity Rating. I’ve written about it before and I am trying to play with the Project Quick Graphics Viewer version 3.8.4.304761, which adds avatar complexity settings and notices.

Complexity KB Value
Complexity KB Value

The notice that appears in the upper right of the screen just after login tells you your avatar complexity number. I suggested that it be colored, green good and red bad, just as the Show Avatar Render Complexity Information (ARC) display does.

Instead, they added a link in the notice to this SL Wiki page: Avatar Rendering Complexity.

They note the other factors that can cause avatars to be rendered a Jelly Babies;

  • total attachment surface area
  • total attachment byte size

You can change the values of these settings in Debug Settings. See:

  • RenderAvatarMaxNonImposters – The maximum number of avatars closest to your camera who may be fully rendered. Avatars beyond those will be rendered as ‘imposters’, which means that the rendering will be a little simpler and they will be updated less frequently. Increasing this value can cost you in performance if you’re in a crowd. This does not cause them to render as Jelly Babies.
  • RenderAvatarMaxComplexity – Any avatars over this complexity will be drawn as solid color outlines. Changing this value directly may cause problems; use the slider in the advanced graphics preferences floater.
  • RenderAutoMuteSurfaceAreaLimit –The limit for the total surface area of attachments before switching to solid color rendering. The default (10 million square meters) is intended to protect against deliberate abuse and should rarely be encountered.
  • RenderAutoMuteByteLimit – The limit for the total number of bytes of attachments before switching to solid color rendering. The default (10 million bytes) is intended to protect against deliberate abuse and should rarely be encountered.

As you may have guessed, the last two are mostly to stop some griefing issues. But, those settings can be used to improve viewer performance.

Changing RenderAvatarMaxComplexity in the Debug Settings doesn’t seem to be a problem. Whether I change it in the Preferences panel as the Lindens recommend or in Debug Settings the change is reflected in the other. But, getting to the Preferences setting is much easier. Whether changing the setting there affects other settings not affected by using the Debug Setting, I have no information. It is a possibility, but I have not seen anything that leads me to think that happens. But, this is a Project Viewer and it will change.

Link to more pages below…

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