Second Life may get a new design tool in the Blender addon: AvaStar. Watch the video to see what Gaia is thinking about making.
Second Life Premium Membership Update
The lindens posted about 11 AM today that Premium Members will now have a group limit of 60 groups. Regular or free account members will still be limited to 42 accounts, a magical number.
That is not a big addition. But, it is significant. I just recently went through clearing out groups I don’t often use so I could add others.
What happens if you later downgrade your account from Premium to Free? You keep all the groups you have. If that is 60 groups, you still have 60 groups. But, even if you only have 50, you won’t be able to add new groups until you get below 42. That is a nice feature. Obviously the Lindens were thinking.
Second Life in the NEWS
Massively Overpowered has an article by Bree Royce, I think she wrote it, titled SEX, LOVE, AND MMOS in the Working as Intended column. Second Life™ is mentioned but is not the focus. The image used for the article is from Star Wars: The Old Republic.
Hypergrid Business on Bright Canopy
Maria Korolov has written: Bright Canopy’s viewer in a browser supports voice, uploads, OpenSim grids. She is talking about the Bright Canopy beta that is in progress now. This version runs in an Internet Browser using the FRAME system. She explains how it works.
One of the challenges in using a streaming service is that the actual viewer is running on a remote server. Your computer is sort of doing remote control of that viewer. So, saving files (pictures) can be a problem as the local drive the viewer sees is on the server, not your home computer.
Who is Winning the Virtual Reality Race?
The financial people think it is Facebook and Apple that are positioned to win in the Virtual Reality War. But, it won’t be a fast war. It will last years. Quoting Chris Ciaccia :
[A] Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster stated that virtual reality is likely the next key trend in technology, writing, “We liken the state of virtual and augmented reality today as similar to the state of mobile phones 15 years ago. It likely will take a decade before mainstream adoption as necessary improvements in displays and applications as well as lower pricing are needed to drive demand.”
They expect new virtual everythings to open up; gaming (obviously), live sports, concerts, immersive cinema and social experiences will have a VR version. The article, Facebook and Apple are Poised to Win the Virtual Reality Wars, gives us, at least me, some new ideas about VR can be used.
Second Life: Server Roll Back
This morning (Wednesday) Linden Lab rolled a new package to the RC server channels. This afternoon, about 4:30 PM SLT, they rolled the RC channels back to the previous version.
This happens when something goes side ways and crash rates, complaints, or server metrics show a problem.
We have no word on what the problem was. Expect word to come in the Beta Server user group meeting Thursday.