Second Life and Virtual Worlds
I’ve seen my first statement of mesh cost, at least the upload cost.
I expect this defines what our base upload cost for mesh is going to be. I suspect the complexity equations to have their factors tweaked over the coming weeks. Also tier costs are likely to be tweaked. On the Mesh Volunteer page they say they may tweak prim equivalency at any time.
Oskar and Charlar Linden have made and been editing an SL Wiki page titled Mesh Volunteers. The page appears to have been created July 14 and has been getting their attention almost every day since. So, what is it about?
Actually it is hard to place in context. The cookie crumb menu only leads back to the Wiki home page. So, I’m speculating some. Word is out that mesh release is only days away. But, adding mesh to SL is a foundational change to the system. Any change this big is likely to have unintended consequences and unexpected problems. So, the roll out of mesh is proceeding as a very cautious roll out. This new page is probably in preparation for that roll out as it explains some aspects of the roll out that I have not heard.
One of the page’s sections is titled, What are the limitations in this release? The words ‘this release’ strike me as interesting and suggest, at least to me, the page is for the initial roll out.
What are those limitations? It seems some of the roll out plan may have changed. It is hard to tell for sure. But, it warns that not all regions will be mesh enabled and that attempting to move mesh or wear mesh clothing from an enabled region to a mesh disabled region may break the mesh. Ugh! And broken permanently. Ugh Ugh
There are always little bits of news floating around. None are large enough to warrant an article. So, I’ll collect them and post the ones I find interesting when I notice them.
A new version of the Kirsten Viewer for Linux systems is out.
Still lots of churn about user names and ID’s in Google+. Tweats and blogs are giving more information. But, we are only hearing a mix of attitudes coming from Google staffers. Attitudes range from vigilante reporting pseudonyms to ways to fool people and get around the problem. No actual position statements from Google and certainly no change in ToS.
Hamlet at New World Notes is ranting about Google+ and pseudonyms. I characterize it as a rant, but it is rational and he makes lots of good points. Plus, there are lots of good stats on pseudonym use. At one point he adds up all the users that are using pseudonyms in various services. I suspect many of those users are duplicates. But, he makes a good point. Now, does anyone know how to get Google to listen?
We don’t hear much about Zindra, at least I don’t. Zindra is the adult continent of Second Life, sort of a red-light or Amsterdam area. It is actually far more than that. Since June of 2009, when founded, to now it has more than doubled in size growing to 343 regions. Comparing Zindra’s growth with the overall growth of Second Life regions (see: Second Life and OpenSim Stats), which is slowly shrinking, it is rather impressive growth. But, what is going on in Zindra? No… no… other than that.
Once upon a time there was a Zindra Residents’ Group and an Adult Content Group. Only the Adult Content group has an office hour meeting. The Zindra interests are folded into that meeting. Changing the meeting to perhaps two groups/meetings or reorganizing how it is handled is under consideration.
Mesh development is continuing. There is almost no discussion of anything new. The focus is on getting mesh working and the import and cost calculations worked out. The Lindens are concentrating on bug fixes and getting this initial roll out working.
You can see in the image a couple of Tiny’s. These are tiny tiny avatars. Both are way cute.
Experiments by Drongle McMahon brought him to the conclusion that for objects under 0.5 meters the physics shape silently converts to a convex hull. Charlar Linden thinks that is what the system does, but will need to confirm with Nyx to be sure.
I like impartial numbers. Their meaning is not always clear. But, they allow us to form our opinion on some unbiased information. It is up to us to be intellectually honest and consider all sides of our opinions. We hopefully get a rational perspective and keep our opinions within a real context. Is OpenSim replacing Second Life? Is Second Life doomed or about grow or just stagnate?
Yesterday, the 15th, Hypergrid Business published the article titled: OpenSim grids break records for regions; users. Sounds awesome. Of course it is a headline and I expect some hype. They published the following graph in the article to show the data they considered.
The total number of regions in all the grids is 16,959. This is about half the number of regions as Second Life, which is roughly 32,000. OSGrid is the largest single grid with 6,671. ScienceSim is next with 1,810. The stair-stepped saw tooth is from periodic data clean up. People add regions and eventually let them die. Every so often the grid owners clean up the data and registrations. The steps should be getting smaller as clean ups are becoming automated and more frequent.