Second Life

Things about SL

Shakespeare is Leaving #SL

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We hear lots of accounts of people leaving Second Life. I suppose they are. They always have. According to Metaverse stats the average player retention is two years. But, we also have new people signing up and new regions coming online. It is hard to know if Second Life is gaining or losing ground. So, may be region loss does mean SL is shrinking. Region loss has been a trend. We have been measuring SL success by concurrent users. That is decreasing, but seems to have reached a plateau. The Lab says in general more people joining and playing but spending less time in Second Life. There are reasons for that, so it may be true. And there are some interesting reasons that The Old Globe Theater in Second Life is closing.

Metaverse still provides some statistics on Second Life. Their closing and new regions graph shows a little surge in regions opening. I certainly would not call it a new trend. It may only be from this weekend’s sale on regions, US$1,000 off. Only time will tell if the trend is changing. But it is a change.

Metaverse's Closing and New Regions

Customer Service

The story behind Ina Centaur leaving and allowing the four regions the Old Globe Theater occupies to close is described in a blog post and letter to the patrons of SL Globe Theater and Primtings. You’ll find it here: Our Magic and Our Passing – Goodbye from the SL Shakespeare Company, Primtings, and sLiterary [SIC].

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#SL Scripting News Week 43

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There was an informative discussion in the Scripting Group. The scripting group’s general discussion meetings are good meetings for advanced LSL programmers to attend.

Operators Precedence

If you don’t understand precedence, sorry Google for an explanation. (LSL Precedence) It was brought up that the operators || and && should have equal precedence. Kelly Linden conformed that they are not equal.

Estate Owners Access List

The update running on the release channels will likely make it to the main channel this week. This will give residents the ability to use the new LSL functions discussed in the Server Update News here. ( llManageEstateAccess(integer action, key id) ).

The idea behind this function is it will make it easier for estate managers to manage ban lists.

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#SL Mesh News Week 43

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Lots of news happening this morning. Some viewer related news came out in the Mesh Meeting. For those that have been trying to upload mesh with the new viewer and OpenGL fixed viewers news hits on what the problem is.

Mesh Meeting in Second Life ADITI

SH-2595

SH-2595 – Upload menu won’t calculate fees. This problem blocks your ability to upload. Models that would previously upload will not work. Prep Linden has posted in the JIRA thread. It seems there was a fix and it got lost not making it into a merge. However the fix is in the Development viewer.

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Zindra Expo Meeting Summary

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Unfortunately I have RL commitments for each Saturday noon and missed the meeting. However, the meeting transcript  is posted. So, I looked through it to get the meat of the meeting. The hope is that we can create a group that can have influence with the Lab. We seem to ne having problems with the new management doing more and more things in secret and then springing them on us. The result is land owners are leaving SL for other grids. This meeting is about building an influential group to improve communication with the Lab. You may want to follow it to how it does or does not work to pattern a group after it or avoid its mistakes.

Facilitator

Ginette Pinazzo instigated the meeting and facilitated it.

Ginette runs a city called Future Femdom, in the Zindran region of Popke. Also she is one of the continuing officers in the Zindra Expo group. She is generally active in developing Adult Content within Second Life.

Purpose

The underlying purpose of the meeting is gathering those of like mind interested in promoting various adult activities and businesses in Second Life and the Zindra Adult Continent. That coincides with the purpose of the Zindra Expo Group.

Adult Content in this context is about what interests adults. That includes but is not limited to sex.

Gathering Land Owners and interested residents is an effort to gather a group that can work with Linden Lab and discuss the SL user interests with the Lab. A primary focus is gathering the Land Owners as it is felt their voices will carry more weight with the Lab.

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Phoenix Hour Summary and Index Week 42

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A new Phoenix Hour meeting was last week. I’ve indexed the video below. You’ll see indexing after the summary.  You can find the video here: Phoenix Hour Oct. 18, 2011.

Summary

There is not much new information this week. I decided to condense it down to quick summary.

Both Firestorm and Phoenix are waiting on Linden Lab fixes to problems in the V3 code. That means we do not know when we will see the next release of either. Last week several adoption blockers were discussed. Most of those are now taken care of, so the next release probably won’t be a beta.

Also, the next release of both viewers will have mesh rendering. Firestorm almost has a working mesh upload. They will also include a right click feature to have the selected texture download from the server. This is for those things that just simply won’t rez.

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