Second Life Bits 2014-45 #2

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CDN

The Content Delivery Network is used by all viewers. No viewer update was needed for CDN to work. It is a pure server-side thing.

Meauxle Bureaux 2014
Meauxle Bureaux 2014

Ciaran wrote about the problem he and others run into in: CDN Teething Problems & Meauxle Bureaux Should Be In Destination Guide. Some regions just refuse to render. Lots of textures fail to load. The usual leave and return tricks are not working. When these textures fail to load they FAIL to load and there seems little we can do about it.

The Lindens are aware of the problem and have posted on the SL Blog about the problem, what they think is causing it, and the hope it will pass with changes being made by both the Lab and the CDN provider. See: An Update on the [Second Life] CDN Project.

If you run into this problem, please file a JIRA report. Add your RL location (City, State, Country) and ISP name.

And like Ciaran I encourage you to check out the mole abode: Meauxle Bureaux. 

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Second Life News 2014-45 #3

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This past Friday was the Third Party Developers’ meeting. This is usually the best source for information about developments in the pipeline at the Lab. This week there is not a lot of news.

Viewers

Benchmark RC Viewer – I been talking about this one. It is the one that ends the use of a GPU table to figure out the default video settings for a new viewer install.

Maintenance RC Viewer – This one is a collection of fixes and feature improvements.

Meauxle Bureaux 2014 - Frost Mole
Meauxle Bureaux 2014 – Frost Mole

AISv3 Fixes aka Attachments RC Viewer – This is a viewer version created to fix problems with AISv3 that were holding up Firestorm Viewer development. The problems were Linden Lab problems and we could see them in the SL Viewers. But, the bugs were a reason the FS Team was not merging the code into their viewer. More on this later. The AIS fixes were moved into this RC Viewer and the code changed to solve issues and make for easier merging into third party viewers.

Oz says this set of code changes are relatively easy to merge and this is the RC Viewer now seen as most likely to promote soon.

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New AvaStar Training Course – Second Life

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Gaia Clary has announced the release of a new course about using AvaStar with the Second Life™ skeleton (armature). The class is on sale for US$12. Find the announcement here.

The announcement is confusing. There is a course you can buy now, but it is incomplete. Huh? You can buy the course (text only $6 – to be completed by end of November) and the course video separately (video only $6)? What!?! Why? We know from the previous course that the meat of the class is in the written material. Both are needed.

The announcement is short:

This course guides you through all aspects of the Second Life Skeleton. This knowledge will help you to create your own SL compatible characters, attachments and animations.:

  • SL Appearance Sliders & Anatomy of the SL Avatar
  • The SL Avatar and rigged Mesh
  • Bone Sliders and Morph Sliders
  • Sliders and Weight maps
  • Weightmaps and Animation
  • Rest Pose and SL Default Avatar
  • Working with non default Shapes

The course video contains a brief self contained introduction into all topics which are covered in much greater detail within the course lessons.

Second Life’s Ebbe Altberg at Engadget

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This year Ebbe went to New York to participate in an Engadget sponsored get together. Sean Buckley describes the panel discussing VR this way:

All three of the entrepreneurs have wildly different takes on how to use VR — Bell’s Matterport 3D camera strives to capture the physical world and make it virtual; Altberg’s vision for Linden Lab and Second Life is to create a platform for creating new experiences within virtual spaces. Roel’s goals are even further reaching: with projects like the Gender Swap Experiment, he hopes to use VR to help humans get along better. “If you can better understand the other you can better understand yourself,” he says. “We’re even applying it for conflict resolutions with partners in the United Nations and other key people.”

A video shows the discussion. You can find it in the article here. It is an AOL-On video, that is a pain to embed here.

Jo Yardley has summarized the video. See: Ebbe talks to Engadget.

Firestorm Viewer – Soon?

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Firestorm Logo
Firestorm Logo

There is a new article up on the Firestorm Viewer site. See: Be Careful What You Wish For. I can read a lot into the article. That doesn’t mean I have it right. The things I am pretty sure of follow.

We have known for some time that the FS Team planned a viewer release for November. It seems the release date is sliding. I am guessing Jessica is feeling pressure or anticipating blowback from users when the release goes out and thus posted the article. We know from her own words blogging is not a thing she really enjoys. Thus we can assume something is motivating the post.

Jessica is explaining the difficulties of releasing a viewer and deciding what is and is not going to be in this release. Her estimated release date is ‘a few weeks’… the word ‘few’ is ambiguous. Dictionaries define ‘few’ as a small number of things. As examples they give 2 to 5. But, in my family 2 to 5 was a ‘couple of’ and ‘a few’ was closer to 10. We have no way to know what ‘few’ means to Jessica. But, I suspect this puts a viewer release nearer to the end of November and possibly into December. 

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