Second Life Mesh Deformer Update 2013-37

There really is no news on the Mesh Deformer. There is some discussion about it on Plurk. I was amazed at the amount of misinformation in the Plurk thread. I probably shouldn’t have been. The Internet provides a means for people to vent their emotions without any requirement for intelligent thought or reason. In the field of Internet communications libel is considered a high form of journalism and seldom incurs any consequence and leads to irresponsible behaviors.

Runatai Linden Mesh Avatar - Way Cute
Runatai Linden Mesh Avatar – Way Cute

Karl Stiefvater (Qarl Fizz) is reported as commenting to Oz that two years is too long and the Lab should get their s##t together. It took a minute or two to find the original comment quoted in Plurk. It seems Karl was trying to start some movement at the Lab by trolling the JIRA report STORM-1716, the Mesh Deformer feature request. 

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Second Life News 2013-37

I was hoping to hear some word on what new projects the Lab is working on. But, not yet. May be in a couple of weeks.

Interest List Viewer Side

For a few weeks now the server side of the Interest List changes have been done and rolled out. But, the viewer side of those changes is taking some time. The team working on the viewer side is still stomping on bugs.

TPV Dev Meetin 2013-30
TPV Dev Meetin 2013-30

When changing Interest List code there is lots of opportunity for mistakes and things not to work as expected. The team is working to avoid a bad launch of the viewer side changes.

And we are told this viewer side Interest List stuff is not one of the secret things coming…

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Simulator Sickness

There is an article on Polygon.com about the Oculus Rift people working to solve reverse motion sickness. Polygon claims this is THE major obstacle for the Rift. I am certain it is a problem. I certainly am hearing more people mention motion sickness in reviews of the Rift. Whether it is THE problem or not I am less sure.

Dog * Feriry = Seasick - By Oliver Ruhm, Flickr
Dog + Ferry = Seasick – By Oliver Ruhm, Flickr

As the article points out, motion sickness is about our sense detecting motion that our eyes cannot see. This is like being below deck on a rolling ship. You can feel the roll. But, the room appears stationary. 

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Second Life News 2013-36 #2

From my perspective things are quite on the development side of Second Life™.  I suppose the Lindens could just be busy cleaning up CHUI, SSA, and working on HTTP. We also know they are working on the Advanced Experience Tools, which is probably requiring the rewriting of much of the permissions handling code for the SL system. But, every now and then we get a hint some neat new things are coming. Beyond ‘neat’ we know little if anything.

Beta Server Meeting 2013-33
Beta Server Meeting 2013-33

Andrew Linden said Tuesday that he had been fixing a griefing exploit. This is the one where large prims could knock avatars out of a region. Once upon a time that had been fixed. But, at some point the fix had been broken. That has now been fixed and the code is running in the RC channels.

While we no longer have any user group or Linden person associated with the SL Web Sites, we have heard that Monty Linden is doing some ‘web site maintenance’, which I suspect is adding some of the newer HTTP protocol code to the sites. But, we don’t really know. I guess that adding the newer HTTP communication stuff to the Direct Delivery process would be an improvement. 

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Second Life Android Viewer

The Second Life Third Party Viewer Directory lists a new viewer for the Android 2.1 and up devices named LittleSight. It appeared on the list about September 3, 2013.

LittleSight Android SL Viewer - Image: Google Apps Store
LittleSight Android SL Viewer – Image: Google Apps Store

This is a Japanese made app. The current version according to the web site appears to be 1.2.0. But, on Google Play it is listed as version 1.4.1.

While it is listed as an app for Android 2.1 and up one user reports it working fine on 1st generation Androids. Since it is free-to-try there is little risk to checking it out.

The web site for the viewer is written in Japanese. Google Translate is not that good with Japanese. So, I find it hard to understand. That may explain my confusion over the version number.

LittleSight 1.4.1
LittleSight 1.4.1

The free app can be found on Google Play. But, it is not completely free. It may be better to call this a free to try app. The catch is you cannot teleport. You login to a single location, which you cannot select, until you purchase their service.

Users are rating LittleSight 3.1 out of 5 with 65 reviews. Mostly re views are good. Complaints I noticed are about earlier versions. It seems most of those have been fixed.

It appears to be a chat viewer for SL with the ability to use the SL World Map for navigation through SL, once you purchase the app’s service. I didn’t find a cost for the app’s service. Not having an Android I can’t really check it out.

 

Nomine Closing

When I first came to Second Life™ it was not long until I decided I had to have a better skin. I spent months searching for one I liked that fit the look I wanted. I selected a Nomine skin. I still wear that skin.

I saw a post on SLUniverse today that Munchflower Zaius has health and cash flow issues and will be closing/selling the region housing the Nomine store.  Munchflower’s market place store should remain open to the end of the year.

Some customers that are on the Nomine subscriber are getting notices of the closing. Caete posted a copy of the notice she received in the SLUniverse forum.

Nomine Closing

🙁 I wish Munchflower the all the best and as easy a health battle as possible.