Second Life News 2013-24

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At the Content and Mesh User Group meeting the topic of the Mesh Deformer came up. Oz Linden attended the meeting to field the question posed by Mona Eberhardt : “What’s the current status of the mesh deformer? What features have been requested by content creators? Of these features, which are the most important and which could be omitted or postponed?”

A Drunk Bear and a... whatever that is.
A Drunk Bear and a… whatever that is.

Oz Linden’s response, “The deformer is waiting for LL resources to evaluate how well it works and what its performance impact is. I have not been able to get the required people on it yet. I’m optimistic that will happen, but can’t offer any timeline.

Sorry… I know that’s not a great answer, but consider that it could be worse.”

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Mesh Deformer 2013-23

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There really isn’t any new news. Oz Linden and Lab are involved in other projects. Oz says he is continuing to pester management for people to work on the avatar and Deformer. But, people, users, are poking around trying to find out what is happening with the Deformer. That is leading to more drama and fussing in the JIRA.

Mesh Clothes in Non-mesh Viewer
Mesh Clothes in Non-mesh Viewer

I Won’t Buy Mesh

Yeah, yeah, whatever… I understand the sentiment. I don’t by mesh clothes. I do like some mesh hair and have bought some. But, posting in the JIRA that you won’t buy mesh is of no help to the development process. Duh! Nor do the Lindens care that much about what we do or don’t buy. There is plenty of buying going on from the Linden viewpoint.

I follow some fashion blogs. There is a lot of mesh clothing out there. People seem to be buying it. I have no way to know if the hold outs not buying mesh outnumber those that are buying mesh. Whatever the case, I doubt the Lab is concerned one way or the other. 

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SSA Context

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The week of May 26 to June 1 Oz Linden checked and reported that 1,665 different viewer versions that logged into Second Life™. That is an approximation of the number of different viewers in use. The SL system records viewer version strings. Each version of a viewer is to have a unique ID string. But, this is open source and people do whatever they do. So, there is a probability some ID strings don’t get changed. Thus I say approximate.

Viewer Production
Viewer Production

Some of these versions are one user only viewers, meaning: someone compiles a viewer for their own amusement and use. They never distribute the version. They may or may not change the version string.

Then there are the griefer viewers. They try to imitate other viewers and may duplicate another viewer’s version string to hide.

The result is going to be more viewer versions than the system recognizes. 

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Second Life News 2013-23 #2

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There is a bit of news coming from various places.

SSA

Server Side Appearance has a problem that the Lindens have been working on for the past week. Well, thinking about, I’m not sure they are writing code. I first mentioned the problem of corrupting modifiable eyes and skin when going in and out of SSA enabled and disabled regions here: SSA Coming Not Too Soon.

Corrupted Textures
Corrupted Textures

Some people say the problem is unique to the Phoenix Viewer. Latif Khalifa tried the SL Viewer 1.23, pre-SSA Singularity, Imprudence and Phoenix. But, only found the problem on Phoenix. Whirly Fizzle said. She could reproduce the problem on the SL Viewer 1.23. Whirly says old FS viewers were OK and did not have the problem.

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New LSL Functions Coming

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Kelly Linden let us know he is working on two new additions to the LSL (Linden Scripting Language). They are:

llReturnObjectByOwner

llReturnObjectsByID

The functions require the prim containing the script be owned by parcel owner or estate manager. The function only operates on objects on land in the same region/parcel as the script.

The ByOwner version takes a scope flag of PARCEL, PARCEL_OWNER or REGION (only usable by estate managers). They require a runtime permission (PERMISSION_RETURN_OBJECTS). This permission is *special* and the permission can be asked of and granted by group owners to operate on group owned land.

They do not handle encroachment.

The functions will return the number of objects returned OR an error code.

There is a throttle on the number of objects allowed in your parcel-pool per hour. If your parcel has a limit of 2000 you can return 2000 objects per hour.

llReturnObjectsByOwner cannot return objects owned by the parcel owner or estate managers.

llReturnObjectsByOwner will return all objects owned by the ID specified – for example Maestro could return all objects owned by Kelly on Maestro’s parcels with 1 call.

These should be a welcome addition to SL. It will make it much easier for land owners to deal with griefers. Kelly does not have an ETA, normal. But, since we are haring about them, they are close to candidate release.

Philip on High Fidelity

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There are little bits of information that popup all over. On cNET there is an article about an interview with Philip: Philip Rosedale’s Second Life with High Fidelity.

The author’s (Dan Farber) take in the article is what High Fidelity is has not yet been determined. Really? I’ve been hearing things that have me thinking it will be a virtual world with less lag, more detail, and a better user interface.

In this article Philip says High Fidelity will be a mix of virtual world and augmented reality that will surpass the real world. There are aspects of human interaction that Philip does not believe can be captured. Think: smell.

Philip also thinks that eventually mobile devices will be able to interact with large data sets… massively detailed virtual worlds. He is thinking 5 years out.

I will point out that nVidia is taking on building video processors for Android. That should lead to lower power consumption video chips and better graphics on mobile devices.

We also find out that Philip has 10 people working on the High Fidelity project.