#SL Region Crossings

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Well… things are a mess in regard to region crossings. Andrew’s Friday afternoon meeting was overrun with region owners, sailors, and aviators looking to find out when regions crossings would be working better. 54± people were in Denby, which made it hard for me to get in. Later in the meeting there were 80 people in the region. Persistence does work. 40+ were in Longfellow and 10 or so were stuck in Hanley.

Full Regions for Server Script Meeting

Some of the meeting was relayed to the Second Life Beta group chat.

Since the latest server update and the recent kernel updates region crossings with vehicels have become a problem. Walking or flying across is less of a problem then attempting to drive, sail, or fly a vehicle across.

There is also concern about the Havok upgrade that went into testing this week.

Whatever the case, sailors and aviators showed up in mass at Fridays user group meeting. I’ll have more information later, after I have time read through some chat logs and meeting minutes. Watch for Server News.

New Things Coming to #SL

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For some time I’ve read the blogs and posts of SL users saying the Lindens developing Second Life needed to spend more time in SL. The idea being that if they used the product rather than just developing what they think we need, SL would be a better place. I think it is a good idea.

It seems Rod and Will think that is a good idea too. Hamlet posted, “Linden Launches Monster-Dodging Game for Premium Users UPDATE: Rod Humble Explains — It Was Made With New Tools Coming Soon for SL Game Developers” which is about a new game in Second Life. He has been chasing down his contacts in the Lab to find out what is up with that.

A quote he got from Rod says they built the game not to be building games, but to learn what tools are needed to be able to build games in Second Life. That pretty much is the idea many of us have put forward for Lindens. Walk in our shoes and you’ll understand. The Lab has now done that. They built a game to find out what we are up against.

Whether walking in our shoes is a better idea than listening to us is yet to be seen. I am more and more certain that the idea of transparency for the Lab’s development is a thing of the past. Much like Obama’s idea of government transparency has faded.

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Astra Viewer 1.6.0.2 Download Review

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I haven’t kept up with the Astra Viewer nor do I know much about it. I did a review of the viewer in March of this year. (OpenSim Astra Viewer Review). I saw in my net reading that Astra Viewer has mesh render ability. Hmmmm. Maybe it is worth an update.

If you don’t know, the viewer is targeted at Aurora-Sim and OpenSim. It is said to work with Second Life too. I haven’t tried it in SL.

Astra Viewer
Yellow Arrow Points to Mesh Object

Finding It

A quick search of my blog reveals the download link, oops it’s broken. So, I back off the URL to the just the web site… Oh! It gone too. Dang. A Google search for the viewer download takes me into the Google Code repositories and shows a number of Astra Viewer download sites… ummm well… some of those are AstroViewer.

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Bits and Pieces Week 44

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Teleport Problems

More people are having problems teleporting and see the message about Granting Capabilities. One can usually get around the problem by using the World Map. Re-logging can sometimes clear the problem. Others feel it is the region one is in needing a restart.

New Destination Guide

The new 3.2.2 Development Viewer (244260) pops the Destination Guide Bar open after login. This makes it much nicer and easier to use.

Destination Guide

This development viewer is slow. I get 4 to 6 FPS in my cottage. Ping is horrible, 600+ms. A quick change to Dolphin Viewer 3 didn’t fix the FPS problem but did cut the ping in half. The region was good, Time Dilation 1.00 and Physics 45 FPS.

SL News – Boring

In general the Lab is working on its secret projects and performance improvements. Also, we are entering the holiday season for the Lab’s staff, which means no big projects or changes start. All combined that makes for little interesting news.

Great Insights

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On Loki and the Goonies, Loki has posted an insightful article on Second Life gaming. You may have seen and even played his Evil Giant Worm Massacre. In true entrepreneurial style Loki is looking to provide a service and have it support his effort. The money to pay tier has to come from somewhere.

Evil Worm Massacre

Destination Guide

The Destination Guide is helping Second Life users in many ways. For merchants it attracts shoppers. For clubs it helps bring patrons. For game developers like Loki it brings new players. For the typical resident it provides a way to find interesting places.

Loki points out what is needed to make the Destination Guide a tool for all levels and types of users.

One of Second Life’s biggest problems is revealing the extent of Second Life and its massive content.

Loki has what I think are great ideas for improving the Destination Guide and Second Life.