OpenSim eBook Questions

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Maria Korolov has a post up on Hypergrid Business titled: One-Question eBook Survey. It looks like Maria is planning to publish a couple of eBooks that deal with setting up an OpenSim grid and another on using OpenSim grids.

If you have an interest in OpenSim, click over and place your vote for which you think is a more important and useful book.

I will also point out that OpenSim is a great place for having a test sim. The SL Preview Grid is great for last minute testing just before uploading into Second Life™. For most of us the areas of the SL Preview grid we can use have short ‘return times.’ For some testing that can be a serious limitation. Having a region in an OpenSim grid can give one a permanent base for long term testing. Running a grid on your personal computer is basically free.

 

uRiven = Starry Expanse Project

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Update: 2014/02/04 – Added a video, below the fold, showing a portion of Ercana, a part of Uru Live, that was moved to Cry Engine 3. This is no where near a finished product. It was just a quick move to extract it from Plasma to Blender to 3DS and finally to Cry3. It is a very rough video, but it shows the possibilities.

By now you know I am a Myst-Uru fan and somewhat active in that community. I have Myst-Uru sites included in my Feedly reader and Facebook follows. This popped up in a Cyan Worlds post on Facebook: Unreal Riven. It is an article about the development of a new rendition of Riven, one of the series of games that makes up the Myst games.

Starry Expanse Project
Starry Expanse Project

I found the article interesting because I have thought the use of the Plasma engine to build fan content was a dead end for years. Now I find out Cyan has been working with a group that long ago abandoned Plasma for the same reasons I have espoused for 5 or 6 years.

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Second Life News 2014-5 #2

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RC Viewers

Interesting Viewer version 3.6.14.285213 – In this version the developers are still hunting for the cause of crashes. The crash rate is still too high, but crash measurement may be erroneously high. Not having clear crash reporting leads back to the Google Breakpad work the Lindens are doing.

2014-5 Third Party Viewer Meeting
2014-5 Third Party Viewer Meeting

Few Third Party Developers have tried merging the Interest List code with their viewers. The Firestorm team is waiting for a more stable release of the code.

Fitted Mesh Viewer version 3.7.0.285669 – Recently this version got a refresh and is likely to get one more next week (6). The fix probably arriving Monday (2/2). A later update will likely only be a merge with whatever viewer is current main version. Then this viewer will likely be in the final RC version before release.

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Singularity Viewer 1.8.5 Released

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This appears to be a significant release of the Singularity Viewer. The release announce is at: Singularity Viewer 1.8.5.

Singularity Viewer
Singularity Viewer

You’ll find the viewer now has a new way to move the avatar around. I am not sure why a new way would be needed unless this is preparation for Oculus Rift. I steer my avatar with a combination of the A, W, S, D keys and the mouse, mostly the W key and mouse. That requires I use both hands. 

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Second Life News 2014-5

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Sever Rolls

Tuesday we got a rollout. This package ran on all three RC channels last week. The package contains only one crash fix. So, this won’t be a noticeable change for most residents.

RC Channels

Once again all three RC channels will get the same package. This one contains very little change. A fix for Linden Scripting Language (LSL) function llModifyLand() and an unnamed bug fix are about it.

Viewers

The main viewer this morning is still 3.6.13-284995.

RC Viewers

We have 4 RC viewers and 1 Project viewer.

  • Second Life FittedMesh Viewer version 3.7.0.285669
  • Second Life HTTP Viewer version 3.6.14.285253
  • Second Life Interesting Viewer version 3.6.14.285213
  • Second Life Maintenance Viewer version 3.6.14.285499

Project Viewers

  • Second Life Project Merchant Outbox Viewer version 3.6.13.284731

Blog News

Blogs are mostly talking about whether Rod was a good or bad CEO for SL.

Otherwise most are writing about places in SL. The others are writing about fashion. It leaves me wondering what is going on with SL. We hear several projects are ongoing but we are hearing little about them. It seems mostly partying and shopping is what’s going on in SL.