Second Life – Page 44 – Nalates’ Things & Stuff

50% Off Blueberry Stuff

2018/04/14 by Nalates Urriah

Yay, Blueberry is having a sale starting this April 13^th, a Friday the 13^th. Which in some cultures is considered an unlucky day. While there is no empirical data to suggest these Fridays are any worse than other Fridays, the superstition lives on.

So, six years in Second Life™… 13^th pretty neat time to have a sale. Happy Birthday Blueberry

Not everything is on sale there are some exceptions. You’ll see them listed in the promo image above.

Blueberry is popular. I love how the clothes fit my Slink body. The clothes look good. So, I expected the region to be full. The main region, Lenox & Blueberry, is limited to 20 basic account avatars plus 5± premium member avatars. The store is designed for as lag-free an experience as is possible given the nature of a store in SL. Adjacent is the region Palua. Its limit is about 30± basic members. Adjacent to Palua is Just Because. It has a limit of 25 or 30.

Second Life News 2018 w15

2018/04/10 by Nalates Urriah

Servers

This week there is no roll out to the main channel. It continues to run version #18.03.27.513831.

Blue Steel and Le Tigre won’t get a roll and will continue running version #18.03.29.513939.

Magnum will get an update Wednesday to version #18.03.29.513939.

All are Internal fixes…

Any regions running 14 days or longer without a restart will be restarted.

Second Life Viewers

The main viewer remains version 5.1.2.512803, which came on week #10.

The Great Bakes-On-Mesh Debate

2018/04/09 by Nalates Urriah

Well, we are getting an upgrade to the Server-Side-Avatar-Baking service. That is fact. What the service does is old news. The blogosphere was covering it in 2012. By August 2013 it was considered a success. (Ref)

So, what is the service, aka SSA or SSB? Prior to 2012 the classic avatar skin, tattoos, underwear, shirt, and jacket were composited into a single texture in your viewer and used to render your avatar. This is like the process we use in Photoshop, GIMP, and other image editors when we bake a set of layers into a single JPG or PNG image.

A significant part of the viewer’s render process was the baking effort. Once I was dressed and my clothes baked into an image safely cached on my computer, I was good. BUT… whenever I saw a new avatar, my viewer had to collect all their textures; skin, tat, bra, and top and bake their clothes into a texture to put on the avatar and render it. Everyone was doing that.

With 6 possible zones (ie., hair, head, upper, lower, eyes, skirt) to bake and 3 of them having 5 layers we were downloading a bunch of textures just for the classic body. So, something like 15 or 20 textures per avatar. In a region with 40 avatars… that is like 40×20=800 textures… if they were 1024 textures that could be as much as 3+GB of texture, admittedly in extreme cases. Plus, our viewer had to composite them before the avatar could be rendered. Each viewer was doing this and the region was coordinating the downloads.

Pages: 1 2 3 4

Other News in Second Life

2018/04/08 by Nalates Urriah

Talent, some we have in abundance in Second Life. I was hitting that ‘Next Unread Topic’ link in the forum and found My bad drawings of my worse avatars. This is a thread started in June 2017 and still running. People draw a cartoon sort of caricature of their avatar and post both a picture … Read more

Second Life News 2018 w14

2018/04/03 by Nalates Urriah

Servers

The main channel updated to version #18.03.27.513831. The new version has only Internal Fixes.

The RC’s Blue Steel and Le Tigre will update to version #18.03.29.513939 on the usual Wednesday cycle. Also, only Internal Fixes.

Magnum will continue to run #18.03.27.513831.

From the Server and Scripting UG we hear about more region crossing work. Simon Linden is doing some work on crossings. BUG-214653 – After half-unsit at failed region crossing on vehicle due to network lag, “Unsit” button will not work.

Crossing regions at speed… fast cars, planes, boats, and motorcycles, have a big problem. I was recently testing an Apolon helicopter. Great fun. But, region crossings are an annoyance.

Second Life’s The Wastelands

2018/04/03 by Nalates Urriah

So, what is The Wastelands? It is a game within Second Life™. It is a bit different. It uses a somewhat typical post-apocalyptic setting. The 10 regions making up the game area are all Moderate rated. Full nudity is prohibited and no sex… O.O

Also, the game has been around since 2006. Making it definitely an SL classic.

This video was taken as I begin to explorer The Wastelands. I happened to be there when the monthly meeting was announced and The War Zone game started. Luck. I don’t plan to video the meetings. This is a one-off type thing.

I clipped out parts of the video and sped up parts I left in. So, reading the chat as it scrolls by won’t get you a transcript of the meeting. So, I have a transcript below.

The War Zone game as I understand it is a control the flag game. I have seen it played and heard the rules explained once. The flag is radio-active. So, carrying it will kill you. As you run with the flag the other team is trying to kill you. You are going to die. But, games have the ability to resurrect you. At the end of the game whichever team controlled the flag the ‘most time’ wins. And… you have to stay in the region.

There is a fans’ mobile ‘bleachers’ that follows the flag. You sit on it to follow the moving game. That is kinda neat. It is jerky. So, that is what you see in the jerky parts of the video. It isn’t my computer stuttering.