Second Life News 2014-26

Servers

The Deploys thread tells that the main channel is going to update Tuesday to the Sunshine package that has the AISv3 updates. This ran on Blue Steel last week. The main release viewer had the AISv3 updates. With the AIS running on all the grid, this feature will be everywhere and the viewer can take advantage of it.

The Station 2014
The Station 2014

There is also an anti-griefing measure included in this package. Since that is a security issue the Lindens don’t talk about the nature of it.

RC Channels

Blue Steel and Le Tigre will both get the same new maintenance package. The package has the new Linden Scripting Language (LSL) functions for handling materials. To see the effects of the Materials System you must have the Advanced Lighting Model enabled. 

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Second Life Voice Offline

There is an announcement up that Second Life’s ™ voice system will be offline for maintenance June 24th (Tuesday) from 12AM PDT. There is no ETA for its return.

See the Grid Status page:

[Posted 3:24 AM PDT, 23 June 2014]  Our voice provider will be undergoing scheduled maintenance on Tuesday, June 24th beginning at 12:00 AM PDT. Residents may lose voice access during this time. Once the maintenance is complete, some residents may need to relog to return to voice. Please continue to check this blog for updates.

Second Life User Groups

Nyx Linden is going to fold his UG meeting into the Server/Scripting UG. So, the Content & Mesh UG closes with today being its last meeting.

Nyx Linden told us today, “This will be the last regular meeting for this user group. I’m moving on to other projects and haven’t been able to keep up with the details of content creation tasks as well as I used to be able to.”

World of Particles - 2014
World of Particles – 2014

Whirly Fizzle and others asked the obvious question, “Are you being reassigned to the new world stuff Nyx?” I found the answer a bit ambiguous when Nyx answered, “I’ll still be in world from time to time, and will be helping Oz whenever any avatar issues come up or with any other pieces where I can assist of course.” So, I find that a bit fuzzy. But, I’ll take that as a yes.

Oz Linden told us, “Topics that otherwise would have come here can be brought to either the simulator UG or one of my open development meetings.” And continued by saying, “I don’t know what the new platform team will be doing to engage with users, or when.” I take this to mean no one knows for sure what they will be doing or when they will be doing it. Things are changing for the Lindens and while Ebbe can make off-hand comments I suspect the Lindens (staff) are still limited in what they can talk about. 

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AvaStar 1.1 Beta Released

On Sunday Machinimatrix announced the release of AvaStar 1.1 Beta. Gaia Clary is saying there will be no more test releases as the last one is not drawing any big reports. This suggests AvaStar is near completion for the Fitted Mesh addition.

The announcement is here: Avastar-1.1 Beta is Out. The download is via your personal link for AvaStar.

I am guessing that with the exception of minor changes this beta will be the final release.

Second Life News 2014-25 #2

Friday’s Third Party Viewer (TPV) Developer’s meeting was long, 2 hours. The last hour is covered in Second Life 2.0 Coming. That is the exciting news, SL 2.0 is coming!

Viewers

As of Friday there were two RC Viewers; SL Share and Snowstorm. SL Share has been in the cue for some time. It is the likely candidate for promotion, probably late in week 26 or in week 27. The Snowstorm RC has a bug that is in the process of being fixed. I expect a new version to make it out to RC in week 26.

The Project Viewers haven’t changed since I last wrote about them.

The code for the Group Ban viewer is here: https://bitbucket.org/baker_linden/voorhees_groupban. With the code released to the wild TPV Dev’s are integrating it into their viewers.

Jessica of Firestorm says they are integrating ‘Interesting’ and hopefully SL Share features for their next release. The Sunshine AISv3 changes probably won’t make the next release. Experience Tools may make it. But, the team has not had time to examine the changes needed for Experience Tools.

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Second Life 2.0 Coming

Ebbe Linden spoke at the TPV Meeting 6/20. We learned that Second Life 2.0 is in development and will likely go into Closed NDA Beta late this year. EARTH SHAKING! I’ll relate the comments below in the order as Ebbe did. He did not seem to be at the meeting to announce the news. But, it has gotten out.

The World - by: Nicolas Raymond - Flickr
The World – by: Nicolas Raymond – Flickr

Ebbe, the Linden Lab CEO was at the Friday TPV Meeting. He says he is enjoying popping into the various meetings. I think in general the users meeting him are happy with him.

Ed Merryman asked about Ebbe’s plans for player retention. See: TPV Meeting. I’ll touch on the things I think are interesting. But, listen to the video/audio for a sense of Ebbe.

Ebbe clarified what he means by making Second Life easier. He definitely does not mean making it dumber. He wants to keep the power and find ways to make things easier for new users to understand and learn. 

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