Second Life Bits 2014-49

by

Holiday food and naps are taking their toll on news releases for Second Life™. Most of my SL news sources are turning into travel guides. Most are at least interesting. But, I look at the pictures. If those are interesting then I read the article. Otherwise I’m on to something else.

Ciaran Laval has an article up, It Started With Da Boom, which is about the first 16 regions created in Second Life. I had not known that The Ivory Tower Of Primitives in Natoma was part of the original 16 regions. Ciaran includes a video by Torley of the 2001 Second Life, below.

Read more

Second Life and LoD

by

LoD is Level of Detail. It is a term used in 3D modeling to improve performance by reducing the amount of data that has to be rendered. In Second Life™ it seems to be poorly understood and ignored by many. The result is a poorly performing Second Life. This video shows the major problems.

I did not intend to belittle anyone with the video. But, having a ton of poorly rendering mash in a region gave me the extreme example I needed.

Some of Mad Pea’s builds are absolutely gorgeous. But, with a little bit more work they would not have had the LoD failings I was seeing. It may also be that they intended to have the various victims’ business cards be hard to find and they used LoD to make it even harder. I doubt it, but may be… 

Read more

3D HMD Medical Use

by

While I am excited about Oculus Rift and the competing Head Mounted Displays, it seems we may get them about the same time or even after they appear in other fields. Medical uses seem to an interesting use of the new technology.

HMD Use
HMD Use

Atheer Labs (and they do use an ‘S” in their official name) is developing a device somewhat like Google Glass. Their information pages on the device are here: Atheer Labs, where they refer to this as ‘gesture-based 3D augmented interactive reality.’

They have numerous uses that they show for their device. They imagine assembly and repair manuals that superimpose over the object being worked on. Medical imaging (Fox News Video) that displays x-ray, CAT and MRI scans, and anatomy models imposed on the patient’s body.

Some describe the process as Google Glass meeting 3D. Whatever the case, this technology is breaking into mainstream RL uses.

And there is now the Kissing Bug as a hazard in the USA. (Reference) (DDT Safe but Illegal – University of Nebraska at Lincoln)

Second Life: Crashing Viewer

by

Word is getting around that there is a pre-release version of the viewer for those having a problem getting past the VFS step of viewer launch. It seems it is mostly those using Intel HD graphics chips for their video processor that have the problem.

There is a recommended fix: Viewer 3.7.??-296857. This is a version some lindens and others have mentioned at various times.

The latest possible fix is this viewer: 3.7.??-29????.  This version may be better or worse. The link leads to work-in-progress builds that have yet to be passed through QA. Most of the code has been through QA, but not 100%. But, it will be the latest build in this channel. As I write this, the version is: 297042. As new builds are made this link will automatically update.

I suspect most new users are not familiar with these versions. A couple of years age it was common for SL users to be following these pre-release builds. They have been mostly replaced by Release Candidate (RC) Viewers. In other places the pre-release versions would probably be called the nightly builds. They can solve a specific problem. But, they may also have other issues that make them better or worse than the main viewer.

If you are having a problem this version fixes, there is no reason not to try it. But, don’t expect perfection.

 

Second Life News 2014-48

by

Servers

Tuesday saw a roll out of a main channel update. This update is the tweaks to the way servers work with the Content Delivery Network. Simon says they didn’t change anything with this update. They just added the ability to make changes more easily. I assume that means they added settings controls to the simulator console.

Server-Scripting UG 2014-48
Server-Scripting UG 2014-48

Next week a new RC package will roll out.

This Thursday 11/27 there will not be a Beta Server User Group meeting. This is due to the US holiday, Thanksgiving. 

Read more

Second Life News & Bits 2014-48

by

Servers

We haven’t had any server updates running in the RC Channels. We have had a version running in RC that has tweaks to CDN settings. Those tweaks are rolling out to the main grid tomorrow, Tuesday, Week 48.

According to the Deploys thread there are no new changes being made to any RC channel.

Blood Letters Slow Render Day - 3 to 4 minutes
Blood Letters Slow Render Day – 3 to 4 minutes

A no change window opens Wednesday 11/26 and runs to Sunday 11/30.

Cocoa Bugs

There are no Cocoa bugs for Mac users. Just ask Lindens or Apple engineers. Come on, who are you going to believe, them or your eyes?

But, there is hope. Cinder Roxley is working on those issues, retina resolution support for the viewer, mouse look, and second screen support. So, we may see a fix at some point. This assumes a fix is possible and Cinder seems to think it is.

Read more