Second Life and Virtual Worlds
December 12, Friday, there will be a meeting for discussion of the new Marketplace features. It seems few merchants know much about the coming change. The announcement is here: In-World Feedback Session.
I guess this tells us how few residents actually keep up with SL news, either via forums or blogs. Of course that reflects a similar RL fact that only about 20+ million of 300+ million people in the U.S. watch TV news (national news).
Last Friday the at the Third Party Viewer Developers UG meeting we got some news.
The big news is that Firestorm is to release a new version of their viewer 12/10. Jessica said about 6PM. I am guessing that is SL Time (PST).
Jessica has posted an announcement explaining what is coming in this release and what is NOT going to be in it. A lot of things seen in other third party viewers are not going to make it into this release. There are:
These are big improvements in the SL experience. But, they came with 6 bugs that the Firestorm team considers deal breakers. See the blog post for the list: Be Careful What You Wish For.
It seems Jessica is expecting some blow back from users. I expect she’ll get it. But, to rip on someone that is providing you what is arguably the best viewer available for Second Life and certainly the most popular, show serious ingratitude and a major personality defect.
I am disappointed that these important features are being left out of this release. But, I wrote earlier of the releases notes and ALL the STUFF being included in this release (See: Second Life News 2014-50 – scroll down toward the end of the article). There is no shortage of new stuff and fixed problems. Be grateful. I’ll have to deal with my disappointment and try not to rip too harshly on those that lack enough class to avoid venting their disappoint on others.
It looks like the Samsung Head Mounted Display (HMD) know as Gear VR is out or almout out for retail sales. The Road to VR has an article comparing the Gear and Oculus. The short story is it appears Oculus is doing software and software tech while Samsung is doing hardware. However that works, it is a device making it to market with the Samsung brand name.
See: Samsung Gear VR Detailed Review: Part One – Design Comparison to Oculus Rift DK2.
See: You can buy Samsung’s virtual reality headset right now for $200.
See: Buy Samsung Gear VR.
This Tuesday and Wednesday we will have rollouts to the main and RC channels. The main channel will get a maintenance release running on the RC channels. The main things in this release are:
I’m busy with RL Work. I probably won’t get to blog much between now and the end of the year. There doesn’t seem to be much going on in SL development. So, I won’t miss much.
Developers are busy, but through the holiday season things seem to move slowly. We should see a Firestorm release soon. STORM-2067 – Glossy Projectors, a change in how reflections and materials interact is apparently complete and headed through QA and toward release. Along with that change STORM-2056 – Projector reflections do not respect the environment intensity parameter also appears completed.
Experience Tools is moving forward, but not ready for release. The Auto-build tools are near completion, which will mean more stable viewers.
More Group Chat changes are in the works. But, the big improvements have been made. Expect only minor improvements and may be better message error notices.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, Nal.
There was no roll to the main channel today. No packages were pending in RC.
Once again all three channels will get the same package. Wednesday will see a maintenance package roll out to the RC Channels.