Niran has a new version of the Black Dragon Viewer out: 2.4.2. You can read the announcement and downloads can be found here. Some of the changes are:
Second Life – NGP and Adult Content
There is what I find an odd dichotomy in how people think a virtual world should look, be, and what people actually want. The infamous Second Life ad that some saw as negative and detrimental to the popularity of Second Life probably is suggestive of the problem.
I know that ads like these are tracked. Google Analytics provides an extensive set of tracking tools. One can track the person from their click on the ad through the web site it sends them to. I can see what they click on while in the web site and if my site is hooked into Google Analytics I can track how many clickers actually signed up. Gotta love those tracking cookies…
The stats tell me which ads are most effective for pulling in signups. I push the most effective ads to run more often. I think it reasonable to think most advertisers do the same.
Second Life in the News Week 14
Another article about Second Life appeared in, of all place, the Leavenworth Times…
See: This company was 13 years early to virtual reality — and it’s getting ready to try again
Matt Weinberger wrote the article and did a decent job of it. Matt is focusing on the business possibilities the new VR revolution is offering.
Second Life News Week 13
From the Second Life™ Third Party Developers User Group meeting we have some news this week. Mostly update stuff.
Viewer Managed Marketplace
Brooke Linen says testing is going well and performance is good. There is a persistent problem with viewer, sim, marketplace communication. They are working on that. Brooke is thinking a couple of weeks to solve the problem.
Jessica Lyon is deciding whether to try an include VMM or release FS without it. Being pressed Brooke pointed out they need to get two server updates through testing and rolled to the grid. Then they will start pushing the viewer. So, the road to VVM could be a couple of months long.
Second Life Voice Fixes Coming
These fixes are coming next week. Vivox has new fixes and the Lab will be adding those into Second Life.
Oz says changes are, “there are assorted things about loading of empty lists at login, person to person calls avoid some not working messaging channel, a microphone test that lets you hear yourself when testing, microphone volume, fixes for device hot swapping, voice dot stops disappearing, and code clean up.”
All these Vivox changes are to be on the viewer side. So, I expect an RC Viewer.
There are individual volume controls on each avatar. Hover the cursor over an avatar with voice enabled and left-click the ‘I’ that comes up. You’ll see a slider so you can adjust volume.
Ed Merryman pointed out that on TP voice can be left behind. Your voice remains behind in the region you left. People in that region continue to hear you and you them. People around you in the destination region cannot hear you or you them. A relog is required to fix the problem. Oz says they fixed that in a recent viewer release. (STORM-2109) I haven’t figured out if it is one of the RC’s or has made it to the main viewer.
Firestorm Viewer Update
The release date is getting pushed back… again… So, they are looking at a beta release then quickly (?) followed by a main release. So, we will probably see a beta viewer released in April. When will the main release appear? No one knows. I am guessing May…
While the FS Viewer has caught up with the SL Viewer code-wise, they can’t release the viewer yet as they are still fighting problems. Some FS testers are finding many more problems with the internal FS QA release than with the SL Viewer. The basic complaints are slow rez, some objects never rez, and there are more attachments dropped on teleport problems.