Oskar Linden Gone?

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It seems this rumor is more fact than rumor. I think it is a tragedy. Oskar has been one of the more communicative Lindens.

So, what hard evidence do we have? The best I have seen is from Jessica Lyon, the lead in the Firefox Development Team. While I often disagree with her take on facts, I’ve never seen her get the basic facts wrong. She made a statement Saturday on the SLUniverse forum. See post: #21.

In this post she avoids characterizing the information. She does voice her feelings regarding the drama surrounding the information.

There is a post in the thread #62 that is supposedly from Oskar. If that is his post, then it is the authoritative statement on what happened.

There really is very little information on what happened. I will miss Oskar.

#SL News 2 Week 44

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Well the roll out went nowhere near as planned. There were problems starting out that pushed the rolls back one day, from Tuesday to Wednesday. And that pushed Wednesday’s roll back a day. But, then the actual roll to the main channel rolled out the wrong version…

Server/Scripting Meeting

The Main channel was to get the code running on Blue Steel. Instead, an older version of the server code from a couple of weeks ago was rolled out. So, the main channels has regressed. I don’t know which version. Lydia Craig reported end up on version 12.10.12.265813 when the release notes said it should be 12.10.19.266079, which would be a one week regression.

Only a few people have noticed the glitch and posted in the forum Deploy thread.

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#SL Materials System Update

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This Content Creation Improvement Informal User Group is not completely dead… they are having meetings. Still Tuesdays at 3 PM in Hippotropolis.

The subject of glass materials with refractive properties came up. It is confirmed that there will NOT be any glass or refraction in the first release of a Materials System and likely not until the third stage of the Materials System. One has to wonder how long that will take.

Normal Map

I had forgotten that currently normal maps are used with water surfaces. In the Environment Settings you can add a normal map for the water surface.

It seems there are two flavors of normal maps; OpenGL and DirectX, which I didn’t know. There is more than two ways to do ‘bump’ on surfaces but, we will only get the tangent space normal maps style in the SL Materials System. The difference is in how the maps are created and used.

OpenGL uses -Z and DirectX uses +Z… or visa-versa… doesn’t really matter. By ‘-Z’ I mean the values are taken as a negative direction. That means dark is either up or down. The different types just reverse the way color values are used… sort of like a negative image that was common with old film cameras. In Photoshop press Ctrl-Shift-I to invert an image’s colors and get the negative or inverted colors.

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Flufee Shooting Stuff

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With no Metareality podcast for the last couple of weeks we will have to get by with Draxtor Dupree’s latest episode of Flufee. Watch out this has a trick plot twist.

[youtube ewvbq7xSEbE]

See… the meanie killed the hero…

#SL Adult Content Problems

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I used to attend the Adult Content User Group (ACUG) meetings. Some of the most fun people were there. But, IMO Viale Linden pretty much killed off the user group. It was pretty much dead by the end of 2011. There are resident groups that organize their own projects on the adult continent. But, they little of the Lindens.

Now a year since the end of the user group Voodoo Redek is trying to get the Lab to change its stance on the ACUG or at least help out with the griefing issues in the adult continent’s Zindra’s Vortex Help Island/sandbox. Viale Linden is gone so there are possibilities things are changing.

The Zindra Help Vortex is one of the sandboxes where volunteers help new users and those wanting to learn about building in Second Life™. Of course it has an adult content lean, but that is not a requirement for those using the Vortex.

The Vortex has been having more than its share of griefing problems. The volunteers are tired of filling Abuse Reports with no apparent effect. Voodoo finally got to the point of saying something.

You can learn more about the Zindra Help Vortex on the Vortex’s site.

You can read Voodoo’s article here: Message from Voodoo 10-05-12

Members of the Adult Content community are trying to get something organized with the Lab to improve things. We will see what happens.

 

 

#SL News 1 Week 44

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The Tuesday roll out to the main channel has been postponed to Wednesday. Wednesday’s Release Candidate roll outs have been postponed to Thursday. This delay is from some backside problems.

Main Channel

As expected the main channel is getting the package running on Blue Steel & Magnum. This is what they call a backend infrastructure change. We won’t see any changes in operation, unless it breaks something.

Mesh Alpha Rendering Problem – See Invisaprim Below

Blue Steel

This is getting an upgrade of the code now running on Le Tigre… I’m not sure whether this is supposed to mean Blue Steel and Le Tigre will run the same code or not. Until the detail release notes come out I won’t know.

This channel may get the server fixes that are hoped to fix some of the Sudden Massive Lag problem event managers are seeing. BUG-355 

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