Second Life Materials Scripting 2014-21

What we can do to automate materials is limited by the lack of script functions to change materials. The legacy materials have scripting functions. Those however only change the older material properties. There is no script control for normal and specular maps.

Simon Linden is working on LSL functions for materials normal and specular maps. Maestro Linden has been testing them. This week (21) Simon did not see them ready for any testing in ADITI. But, that they have been working on them and playing with them is great news. 

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Group Ban 2014-21

This is a feature many large group owners are wanting… desperately. Once it rolls out things should be nicer in several ways.

This is the feature that bans and ejects a user or group of users from a group. Now we can eject them. But, on open groups the ejected user just joins up again and they are back. Group ban will add them to a list server side and the servers will not let them join the group again. Pesky problem solved.

On Wednesday an infrastructure part of the feature rolled out to the backend servers. This isn’t anything we can see now, but the main grid is a step closer to having Group Ban. One more change is needed before the server RC channels get the new code for Group Ban. The Tuesday down time messed up that schedule. I suspect it will recover quickly.

Maestro says that only one region server update will need to go through the RC channels. That assumes no bugs.

There is a set of viewer changes winding through QA and then RC. But, we are getting close to having Group Ban.

Second Life News 2014-21

Second Life Down

The Lindens had some excitement Tuesday. The roll of new server software started as usual. But some time in the morning logins started to fail. About 8 AM something went wrong. The chart of concurrent users from etitsup.com was given to me by Shug Maitland.

The Disturbance
The Disturbance

You have to correct the time for SLT/PDT as the chart shows local time for the UTC-4.5 zone for Caracas and/or St. Pierre. Add 4.5 hours to the times to get Second Life or Pacific Time. 

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Oculus 2014-21

Hypergrid mentions an article published by Wired regarding the Oculus Rift.

The article is interesting, giving insight into the creation of the Oculus Rift people and the technology. The article includes a video that to some extent I see as a separate article in its own. Consider the video an overview on Virtual Reality (VR).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3o8vsU0Dw-4

There are some interesting bits of information within Wired’s article. For instance, the Oculus people have been bombarded by requests from the Hollywood crowd, the techies that make the media, for information and participation in projects. So many that Oculus hired a director of film and media. 

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Second Life Player Retention 2014-21

Prim Perfect did a show on Player Retention issues in Second Life. The video is now up on their site. The video runs 57 minutes. Saffia Widdershins and Elrik Merlin host the show. The Guests are; Brooke and DaveR Linden, Carl Metropolitan – academic, and Jo Yardley – historian and creator of 1920’s Berlin in Second Life.

The Inspiring Orientation - Learn to Fly (2012)
The Inspiring Orientation – Learn to Fly (2012)

I’ll paraphrase what I have heard. Listen to the video before complaining to any of the participants.

Index

02:20 – End of introductions. Elrik starts a clip of a video that sets the context of the discussion. You may have seen this video. It is entitled the New Avi Experience in Second Life. It portrays a disastrous first encounter with Second Life. The full video runs 10 minutes. It can be found by clicking my link just above.

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