Second Life Viewer Change

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Hypergrid Business has an article by Maria Korolov titled: Linden Lab cuts viewer link to OpenSim. This is about a rather subtle change in the Lab’s viewer that creates a not so subtle result.

Error Message from Version: Second Life 3.4.1 (262681)

To use the viewer on a grid other than the Linden grids a small change is made in the desktop icon used to start the viewer. If you right click on the icon and select Properties, you will see a field labeled: Target. It is in the Shortcut tab. The instructions there tell the computer how to start Second Life™.

Knowledgeable computer users will recognize the text as a command line instruction. If you open a command line window you can type in or paste in the text you find there as a command and Windows will start and run the viewer.

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#SL Direct Delivery & Market Place

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I used to write regularly about Direct Delivery (DD). But, there just isn’t much known about what the Commerce Team is doing with it. None of the Lindens outside the Commerce Team know whats going on, or they won’t talk about it if they do. So, about all one can say is it sort of works and the Lab is working on it.

Merchants are frustrated. A number of them have gone looking for a better choice. Some have closed up shop. But, no one has built a better market place system. There is certainly a demand for a better market place.

My first article that carried the term Direct Delivery was published in mid April 2011: SL Market Place – Direct Delivery. Direct Delivery was on the verge of starting closed beta. In October of 2011 DD made it into the Le Tigre release channel in the main grid. (#SL Direct Delivery in Testing) In mid January 2012 DD made it to Open Beta testing on the Preview Grid Aditi. (Direct Delivery Beta Post) DD launched in mid March 2012. (Direct Delivery Launches)

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Virtual Landmarks

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There is a new proposal on the Linden table. It comes from Toysoldier Thor and can be found in the JIRA as: SVC-8082 – Proposed Global Service for SL:  VIRTUAL LANDMARKS & VLM Mapping Services.

The Problem

Consider what happens when you have a home or shop in-world and your landlord decides to return the land to Linden Lab or for some other reason you have to move. The land is either going to disappear and all your stuff will be returned or your shop or home will be gone. You find a new house, apartment, and/or shop. There is little that can be done to stop that process.

Current Landmark Flow – By Toysoldier Thor – Click to Enlarge

But, consider. What about all the Landmarks that point to your shop or whatever that no longer exists? What do you do with the dozens to thousands of links in the Market Place to your non-existent shop? Did you know there is no easy way to just change the landmark you have included with a product you have for sale? You have to reload the entire product package.

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#SL Group Editing Update

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You probably know that editing large groups over about 10,000 is a big problem. I mention it in #SL Server News Week 31.

Baker Linden is working on getting group editing fixed. At this Friday’s Server/Scripting meeting he had this to say:

I’m almost finished with the server side fix for large group management. I’m hoping that the changes I’ve made will also be compatible with legacy viewers (they -should- be). If the data changes, I’ll make sure to hit up a TPV user group before it goes live to let them add the necessary changes to their group UI windows. With my own tests, I’ve managed to successfully get data for the largest group on Aditi (~40k users) without problems. It takes a couple minutes the first time you do the query, but after that it takes around 3-5 seconds.

I ended up changing the way that works, from when I said that. I’m hoping I can get that data sent across with everything else. The biggest change I’ll be making will be instead of sending all 40k users at once, I’ll be sending groups of members to the viewer. It will make sorting more difficult, as you may get 40 “groups” of 1k members each (for example) this way, we also don’t push upwards of 5MB through UDP. Actually, the way the data is formatted, there will be changes (I’ll make sure legacy viewers get the data the way they’re used to).

It may move to that [HTTP protocol], but right now I have a UDP connection that transfers the data.

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#SL News Update Week 31

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We are in the last stages of the Pathfinding Project. With any luck it will roll out to the main channel next week. As of Friday, it is the candidate for roll to the main channel. But, last minute problems could change that.

The Advanced Creator Tools (ACT) have been released using Run Time Permissions. The original intent was to release them using the Experience Permissions. Run Time Permissions are not use in Linden Realms.

Server/Scripting Meeting

The Griefer Monday and Griefer Monday Postmortem explain the problems encounter with the initial release of the ACT. At the time the Lindens decided to rework the Experience Permissions. When Andrew and Huseby Linden were asked about whether they would be releasing the Experience Tools using the Experience Permissions the answers were ‘Probably, but it is undetermined at this time’ and ‘No Comment’.

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Cloud Party Update

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I hear what I’ll call rumors that Cloud Party has stopped growing… I suppose like lots of stats it depends on the details as to what that means. There are people exploring the possibilities of Cloud Party and the developers are continuing to develop…

Maxwell Graf is building Rustica stuff in Cloud Party. Some others are doing some fun things. You can keep up on the goings on at: Cloud Party Bugle. The blog has a nice list of tutorials for Cloud Party.

The frequency of posts there seems to be decreasing. Hard to say at this point.

Cloud Party has a Twitter channel now.

I don’t see lots of news flowing out of Cloud Party. We probably won’t until it moves closer to release, the end of Beta. I think it is early adopters and experimenters that are working with the start up developers.