Bits and Pieces 2013-34

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Reflecting back I find this year to be a year when I know more about what the Lindens are doing and have in the pipeline than at any time previously. Yet, we still know almost nothing about what the Lindens plan to put in the pipeline next. That is typical in the free world’s competitive business market place. But, it is certainly annoying.

Really nice lighting and decor. Designed Chaos
Really nice lighting and decor. Designed Chaos

Many of the things the Lindens are doing now are large projects. When Rod started with Linden Lab the plan was to start fixing and changing problems to make SL more enjoyable and useable. First the easily fixed things were fixed. In these years managed by Rod large projects are more the order of daily business. Bake fail was a problem long before Rod arrived. In 2011 the Lab started working to figure out the causes and now in August 2013 a change to reduce bake fail has just rolled out. 

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Exporting Second Life

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Hamlet has an interesting article up today: New Singularity Viewer Lets SL Creators Convert & Export Their Prim-Based Works to Unity 3D & Other Top Platforms. Hamlet explains why this is such an important aspect of Second Life™. Hamlet links to the article explaining how to do the export from SL to Unity 3D.

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I am obviously not paying enough attention to Singularity. I like the viewer but care little for the user interface, V1 style. But, this export feature makes Singularity a must have for advanced users in SL.

Hamlet is excited about the advantage this offers educational institutions.

 

SL Viewer updates to 3.6.3-279564

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The release notes for this version of the Second LifeTM Viewer were published August 12th. There are about 33 fixes and additions. There are eight known issues that remain. Your viewer will automatically update to this version if you are using the default setting to automatically update.

SL Viewer
SL Viewer

If you have “Willing to update to release candidates” enabled, you may get a release candidate. I’m still flipping coins on whether that is a good idea or not. I’ve mostly decided I need to turn off Automatic updates for everything except the main SL Viewer and I have ‘Willing’ disabled on all my viewers. I do install release candidates, but manually.

This version of the SL Viewer Second Life 3.6.3-279564 was put into RC status Aug  6, 2013. Just yesterday it was promoted to the main release. This is the exact same viewer that was the RC, which is the point. 

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Where is SSA Rolling To?

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I got a question about the Deploys thread and where the SSA roll will actually be running. Caleb Linden wrote the Deploys post this week and it is a bit brief. But, all the important stuff is there. Even Maestro Linden tends to shorten what he posts assuming people reading the posts have a basic understanding of the server release candidate process.

Don't Panic
Don’t Panic

In Second Life the learning curve is so high we don’t try to educate every new user with all the details. If we gave them everything the curve would be way too steep. No one would remember that big an information dump. We also do not repeatedly include basic information. That would burn us out. So, now and then we have to catch up the new users. So…

SSA (Server Side Appearance (baking)) is everywhere… or will be by noon SLT Wednesday. 

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Second Life News 2013-34

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By now you probably know that SSA is rolling out to the main channel of the grid tomorrow. The Lindens have made the formal announcement. See: Project Sunshine Goes Grid-Wide!

Wendigo Lake RP Area - Enlarge
Wendigo Lake RP Area – Enlarge

Release Channels

Blue Steel is getting an updated version of the package running there last week. The only change is the SSA code is being added. Otherwise it stays the same. This is the Grey Box fix release.

Le Tigre is going to run the same package as Blue Steel.

Magnum is going to run the package that ran on Le Tigre last week (33). This is the package with ‘internal bug fixes’ that should have no visible changes to users. Of course it is getting the SSA code too.

So, by about noon Wednesday the entire grid will be running SSA, unless something goes wrong.

Nyx Linden says the Lab is confident they have enough servers to carry the baking load. Tomorrow will be the proof. 

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