Metareality Podcast 2013-5

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This week Metareality has a new podcast out: New Spaces. There is not a lot of new hard news in the cast, so it is harder to summarize. The discussions Gianna, Qarl, and Drax have touch on many aspects of the topics. I decided to try and get index points to the discussions. But, I’m not going to try to paraphrase them.

Metareality Podcasts
Metareality Podcasts

The following comments on the podcast are my take on what was said.

01:00 – Discussion regarding comments on last week’s podcast topic: Is the Market Place having an effect on land sales. Basically is the Market Place killing off land sales? They don’t think so. The why is interesting but hard summarize. Also the topics blur as asides are used to describe why each thinks as they do.

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Second Life DNS Login Problems – Help!

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For some time we have known that some people have been having problems logging into Second Life. The error messages when dug out of the log show DNS problems. Now Monty Linden is looking at the problem. He has posted requesting help in the SL Forum. So, help out folks.

First some explanation: DNS stands for Domain Name System. This is an arrangement of servers across the world that turn ‘domain’ names, like SecondLife.com, into IP Addresses. Just like phone books allow you to look up a name and get a phone number. With the number you can make a call. It is the same with computers. They need that IP Address to make a connection.

Generally your ISP provides you the address of a DNS server. From that server you get all other addresses.

Mac users have had an especially hard time with the problem.

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More Dio

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Ciaran Laval has a good update on Dio™. Ciaran has several links to examples of different uses for Dio. One is a Sherlock Homes story. Ciaran also links to the YouTube Tutorials page for Dio. You will need that link because searching on Dio at YouTube is a bit of problem, it goes Spanish.

I suggest rather than just using Dio, Spanish for gave, in a YouTube title, use Dio.com. Searching for Dio Tutorials give 110,000 results today and none of them pertinent.

There are 6 tutorials in the set. They run 2 to 3 minutes and burn up about 15 minutes. But, they give you a great insight into how Dio works and what you can do with it.

I’m playing with it. I find I am doing much better after having watched the tutorials.

Dio does go down for maintenance and upgrades and it disconnects you from time to time. That is Beta. So, don’t be too surprised if you get a disconnect message.

Also, I am finding the site is slow, whether editing or using it. I rechecked my connection today to see if it was me or them. It’s them, IMO. So, be patient.

SL Region Management Problems

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WARNING: There is currently a problem that appears to be part of the Region-Crossing update. If an estate manager or other land owner bans and ejects a user, the region will crash when they leave the region. Oops!

It is currently unclear what the details are. Try ejecting without banning then ban. I have no idea if that will help.

The problem is related to https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SEC-1204 and https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SEC-1215. I can’t read the JIRA items in SEC, as most of us cannot. So, it is a pain getting details.

Some of the hinky details are in the Deploy thread: Deploys for 2013-01-28.

Second Life Materials Update 2013-5

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You may have noticed the RC channel Blue Steel is running the server side of the Materials System update. While there is no Project Viewer available yet, this suggests that it is getting close. What more confidently suggests the nearing release are these screen shots of Materials in use.

Materials System in Action - Normal & Specular - Enlarge
Materials System in Action – Normal & Specular – Enlarge

The above image shows an interesting surface. I think that is a simple cube with a normal map. 

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New Second Life Controller Experiment

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A new post popped up on the Linden Blog today: Reaching into Second Life with Leap Motion.

[youtube -8WkyBBwYTI]

I’m not sure this is something I would be interested in. But, it does show the Lab is experimenting with things, which leaves me wondering if it is just pure research or part of some project. I get the idea it is a promotional thing. But, who knows?

They say:

If you have a Leap Motion controller and would like to experiment with the Second Life Viewer, you can find the source code for these experiments at http://bitbucket.org/simon_linden/viewer-rabbit. The indra/newview/llleapmotioncontroller.cpp file contains most new functionality. The Viewer is built to work in several different modes. These modes can be used to control the avatar while flying, send data into Second Life for scripts to intercept, detect hand motions that trigger avatar gestures, or control the camera and avatar movement. To switch between these modes use the “LeapMotionTestMode” value in the Debug Settings, accessible from the Advanced menu.