#SL News Update I Week 15

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Oskar Linden updated us on this week’s server updates.

The Lindens had planned to roll out the threaded region crossing update that has been in and out of release channels for weeks now. Last minute build errors prevented its promotion. So, Phase I Threaded Region Crossing goes back into QA. We won’t see it reappear for a few weeks.

Beta Server Meeting in Morris, ADITI

Coyot Linden says the reasons for the fail are not relevant to SL users. I suppose that means it has more to do with the Lab’s compile and update process than a failure in the region crossing part.

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Second Life Interesting

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Strawberry Singh with her fun nature does a fashion blog and a hilarious Plurk line (example she Plurked about: Brown Vag) I check both each day. She finds awesome skins and lingerie. Great photography. But today she surprised me and posted about doing a promotional piece for Linden Lab. See the image. I think it is one of the best promotional pieces for Second Life that I’ve seen.

Strawberry's Blog and Art

To see it on the Second Life site, you need to log out of the SL web sites. Then visit SecondLife.com. You may not see it as the first image. However there is a pager button in the images so you can look through the images. I have all the ones that came up for me, 5, after the fold.

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#Second Life News Week 15

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There is a little bit of breaking news today and a couple of good tips. I’ve rolled the server and viewer news together. the viewer news is mostly in regard to coming features and fixes.

Viewers

The Runway Project Viewer is version 3-3-0-252906. This is the viewer being used to find the cause of Cloudy, Blurry, and Grey Avatars.

I asked Vir Linden about blurry avatars today. They have found a number of problems that cause it; caching, texture baking, texture pipeline, etc. They understand a number of the causes. They also have some causes they don’t have figured out and some cases are still unexplained. So, the problem is not yet completely diagnosed.

For those parts they understand, they are writing fixes. But, it looks like the problem will continue. Oz Linden expects it to take significant time to fix. That’s the impression I get listening to various Lindens in that circle.

The ‘invisible-avatar-on-two-monitors’ problem has been fixed. I’m not sure which viewer version the fix is in.

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#SL Content Creation Week 15

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I was curious if the Lindens knew how many people use features like AO (ambient occlusion in this case) and Sun/Moon shadows. So, I asked them. Seems they do not track that information. There assumption is that people will be using shadows and AO.

Content/Mesh Creation UG

The consensus of those at the meeting, some top content creators, is that baking shadows into textures for use in SL is probably a poor idea.

With ambient occlusion the consensus is to include AO in the bake. It seems several have the opinion that the viewer’s AO is weak enough that it needs help.

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Second Life Adult Content News Week 15

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The Adult Content User Group has pretty much evolved into a joke and is poorly attended. It supposedly meets the 3rd Monday of the month now.

Dream Promenade

However, activity in regard to Adult Content is alive and well, pretty much growing into resident driven private groups. But, the Lab is still involved to some extent in some areas. The Adult Hub is a cooperative effort between a private group and the Lindens.

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