Second Life Bits 2014-23 #2

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Groups

Ciaran Laval has an article up that covers the history of Second Life™ groups and his suggestion that things change to break a pattern present in SL since it started. See: Second Life Group System Still Needs An Overhaul.

SL users always want more groups. We are limited to 42 now. Originally it was 10, before my time. I started with the 25 limit.

MOLiCHiNO - Fifty Linden Friday
MOLiCHiNO – Fifty Linden Friday

A major part of groups is chat. Adding more groups increases the server load exponentially. Chat lag and not being able to post to a group are common problems we all deal with now as we use groups. I have no idea how many times I have had to send an IM to someone in the group because I could not get a comment into a group chat, connection fail…

Ciaran is suggesting that we shift from the chat we have now to something web based. I suppose something more like IRC, but with more persistence.

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Second Life Interesting Bits 2014-23

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SL Go 7 Days

This past week the SL blogosphere has been talking about OnLive’s announcement that they now offer a 7 DAY trial period of their SL GO product. If you don’t know what SL Go is, OMG! Well, see #SecondLife Gets a Mobile App (early March 2014). Prior to this the trial period was far too short for anyone to get an idea of whether this was a useful service. This longer trail should allow one to use SL Go long enough to learn the basics and actually use it to gain a sense of what it is like.

OnLive 2014-10 Games Page
OnLive 2014-10 Games Page

The last few days I have been experimenting a bit with viewers, something I used to do frequently in my quest for the best viewer. Those were the days when viewers were each very different and had very different feature sets. To some extent that is still true, but I think much less so than in the past.

What I have found is that where FS and SL Viewer get 6 to 20 FPS in a crowd of avatars SL Go runs a pretty steady 40 to 50 FPS on the desktop and my S4 in the same crowds. Impressive.

You might want to give it a try. 

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Second Life and Hardware for Oculus

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The Road to VR has an article up by Ben Lang: Two Reasons You Will Want to Buy a New Gaming Rig for the Oculus Rift CV1. Oh good, we are going to need new hardware for Oculus… Well, it isn’t all that bad. But, it is interesting the direction the Oculus will probably push hardware design.

Oculus Rift
Oculus Rift

Ben is pointing out that once the Oculus is near release or at release time, hardware makers will be releasing new hardware optimized for the Virtual Reality (VR) experience. Palmer Luck has been quoted as saying Oculus is working with hardware developers ‘…on all kinds of optimizations.’ He would say what those might be.

Ben tells us how Intel is looking at VR/Oculus. Randy Stude, of Intel, said, “The VR world can expect that engagement with Intel, from the top down, will be very deep.” Considering they make the CPU’s and HD graphics chips as well as the data controls chips (North and South bridge chips) their integration and optimization could be extensive.

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Second Life Viewer 2014-23

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There is a new RC Viewer out: MemShine Viewer version 3.7.9.290582. This viewer is a combination of versions; MemPlugs Viewer version 3.7.9.290405 and Sunshine Viewer version 3.7.9.290131, I have been writing about for 3 weeks or so. I think this version has new fixes for each of the parent versions.

Firestorm Logo
Firestorm Logo
SL Viewer
SL Viewer

This combining of RC versions appears to be an attempt to speed up the release of changes made to the viewer. It seems once again viewer release speed is holding things up. Limiting viewer releases to two per month is a basic guideline the Lab adopted to avoid annoying users with too frequent updates. It would seem the result is things are backing up. 

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Facebook Name Policy

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Toysoldier Thor is going activist in an attempt to get Facebook to change their policy on names and allow anonymous users. I doubt such a change can happen because it would damage a successful financial model. But, I could be wrong. So, help him if you think it a good idea.

See: Time Facebook Fixes “Real Names Only” TOS.

How Facebook Makes Money
How Facebook Makes Money

I suppose if anonymous activists can figure out a way to have a financial impact on FB then they may be able to affect a change. But, to do that one must understand FB’s financial model. 

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