Second Life News 2013-49 #3

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Next week (50) we will likely have a rollout to the main grid and another to the RC channels. Then we enter a no change window. We won’t see any new rollouts until probably January 7th.

The packages in the tube right now are minor packages with only a small number of problem fixes.

Viewers have the same no change window. We might see RC and Project viewers updating. But, the main release viewer is unlikely to change after next week (50).

Fitted Mesh Viewer

A new version of this project viewer is out: 3.6.12.284458.

This version lists JIRA item STORM-1985 – Mesh garments don’t adapt to changes in avatar shape.  One of the things mentioned in the JIRA item is FITMESH-6 and how enabling and disabling the Advanced Lighting Model changes the behavior of the viewer’s ability to render shape changed clothing items in wireframe mode. For those of us looking to see how well demo clothes are made before purchasing, this is a definite problem.

Presumably this is fixed in this version.

MAINT-3311 – Skinning to some collision volumes is broken. I can’t read details on MAINT items. But, presumably this too is fixed.

Download here: Alternate Viewer Page.

Breaking Oculus news

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VoidPointer Linden is telling us Oculus Rift support is now feature complete. We should see it release Linden ‘soon’. Apparently he is one of the ones working on Oculus and the Viewer.

If you are not using Oculus then there is no apparent change to the viewer.

When asked Void answered things look ‘really’ cool. He also mentioned he was using Oculus during the meeting. If you have seen Void’s avatar, you can imagine that it would be pretty awesome.

Apparently no one has tossed their cookies in testing.

Void says he has a pretty hot machine, but he is getting close to his normal FPS. So, it may not be that much of an additional load. But, it will be another machine by machine thing.

Void is keeping it a secret what they have done with the viewer control panels. We have to wait for the release and official notice. The same with what he is using for a controller, mouse, LEAP, something else… no word.

Watch for the official announcement. It is hard to predict when that might be. I am guessing not before January.

PS: it works with shutter  glasses.

 

 

Climate Change

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There is no doubt the climate is changing. The problem is which climate science is being published and provided to people. Without a complete story people cannot decide whether to prepare for increasingly hotter or colder weather nor can they tell which politicians are lying with an agenda in mind. Will you be supporting ideas and taxes that help you or enrich politicians and their friends?

Volcanoes

Consider. Recent reports of 2013 volcanic eruptions show 80+ eruptions this year. The average range of eruptions is 50 to 60 per year. 2013 has seen about a 50% increase.

Each eruption throws millions of tons of ash and gases into the atmosphere.  That mean more reflective particulate matter, a big concern in the late 70’s when everyone thought we were going to freeze to death from a coming ice age due to manmade particulates in the atmosphere. The USA’s EPA was formed to correct the problem and done an amazingly good job of achieving that goal within the USA.

But, one volcano can release several times more material in a day or even hours than humans can release in a decade, even at 70’s pollution rates.

Sulfur Dioxide is a common gas released by volcanoes. It is highly reflective when it forms an aerosol compound in the stratosphere.

All this means that we will likely see a 2C drop in global temperatures from 2013 volcanoes. How long will such a drop last? When Mt. Penatubo erupted in 1992 it dropped global temperatures 0.6C – 1.5F for 2 years depending on one’s information source and other effects lasted for years. That was just one big volcano.

Have you seen any of this 2013 information reported?

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Second Life Tier – Again?

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Hamlet has an article on New World Notes about the loss of revenue we think the Lab is experiencing. See: Second Life’s Private Sim Revenue in 2013 Forecast at $48M, Down From $61M in 2010. Hamlet points to an article by Ener Hax: Second Life’s private sim watch, which is based on Tyche Shepard’s Grid Survey.

From the information we have it is pretty easy to surmise that 2011’s revenue from private sim leasing was about US$60 million. Using the same type of data we can surmise that 2013’s revenue is about $48 million. This is only region leasing fees income. That is a loss of about $12 million per year or about a 20% loss. Do you think management might notice that? For sure.

There are some other factors to consider in the overall equation. Wizard Gynoid points out in Ener’s article’s comments; in 2009 the Lab’s income was US$80-100 million with a 50% profit margin and roughly 2/3’s if the income was from region leases/tier. 

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Second Life News 2013-49 #2

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Tuesday the viewers on the RC Viewers’ page updated. We have two new RC viewers added. One is a Maintenance Viewer 3.6.12.284430. The other is the Name Fix Viewer 3.6.12.284323.

The Maintenance Viewer has 29 fixes. You can read about them in the release notes. One of the fixes solves problems with how names render in the chat floater. Problems with the Current Outfit Folder not displaying in viewers with the new Chat Hud UI are solved. Also the problem of the CHUI being moved below the bottom buttons and lost is fixed.

There are other fixes but none all that interesting. Plus the Lindens use JIRA MAINT item ID’s. these are only readable by Lindens. That limits the usefulness and interest in the fixes.

There are currently 8 known issues that have not been resolved. Several of these have to do with how ‘bumpiness’ and transparency render.

The Name Fix Viewer 3.6.12.284323 is a change that has to do with how those making viewers name their viewers. The change is important for TPV Dev’s and the Lab. It allows them to more easily track bugs and separate the tracking data by viewer version. For the rest of us this is an invisible change. Eventually we will see it improve viewer development.

As I mentioned yesterday, the Interesting RC Viewer and Fitted Mesh Project Viewer remain unchanged.