SLV 2.7.1 Development Quick Look

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Once a week or more often I upgrade to a new version of the Snowstorm Development Viewer. It is one of these versions that eventually becomes the next Beta Viewer. This version has a couple of features I’ve been expecting.

Update: The SL Viewer 2.7.0 Beta is out and the 2.7.1 version is the same.

Graphics

Kirsten’s viewer has had dynamic shadows revealed as Preference settings for some time. Now this version of the SLV has the settings out where users can turn them on and off. In the left column of settings in the Graphics tab you’ll see the new settings.

Lighting & Shadows – This setting will be grayed out if your hardware does not support it or if Atmospheric Shaders are disabled (another setting in Preferences). Turning this feature on should engage deferred rendering. You should see little difference in the render, but the image should look better. The impact on Frames Per Second (FPS) while using medium power hardware should be small if even noticeable. There is a major improvement on the number of lights rendered. Previously 6 or 8 was the max. It is unclear how many can be handled now. In the past months we have seen over 200 render in tests. (See: KirstenLee Viewer S20(40) Released) The quality of Avatar Impostures improves. You probably won’t realize when your viewer is or isn’t using impostures. Shiny and Bright should look better.

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Second Life Basic Viewer

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I suspect most of us ignore the Basic Mode in the SL Viewer. However, the Lab isn’t. They are studying and figuring out how to change the viewer to make entering #SL easier for new users. A recent change…

Voice

The Basic Mode Viewer in its latest incarnation has voice. It is disabled by default. There is a microphone button that is clicked to popup a menu allowing one to enable it and select input and output devices. It replaces the Speak button we have in Advanced mode.

Destinations

The Destinations Guide at the bottom now shows the number of destinations in category. Once a category is selected the number people in a region is displayed.

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New Second Life Search Beta

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Today Linden Lab announced a new search has been rolled out and is in use. This new search has taken longer to arrive because the Lab elected to make a large change rather than a series of smaller changes. A test group has tested this new search and found that it gives better results than the search we are using 75% of the time. Really?

New Second Life Search

Where is this Search?

Didn’t notice it in your viewer? That is because it is not there. One must get the Search Project Viewer to see it work.  Download: Search Project Viewer Oh boy, another install… In Windows it installs the viewer in: C:\Program Files\SecondLifeProjectViewer-Search. This means it should NOT affect your other viewers. This version is: Second Life 2.6.9 (230635) May 23 2011

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Myst-Uru Crossroads

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This is one of those articles about part of my past life related to Myst games. If you are an SL or OpenSim fan and have never heard of Myst or Uru, this won’t be of much interest and may not make sense. However, you may be interested in some of the sociological issues, but this is mostly for the Myst-Uru community. If you are curious about why trolls and online abusers do what they do, then you may want to read on.

Image by: gideon_wright @ Flickr

Lots of ‘I am Quitting’ Going Around

I’m seeing lots of forum and blog posts about people quitting and leaving the community. They have lots of reasons why and most are about how the community is so bad and how Cyan has done so much to destroy the community. We see the same stuff in most online communities. However there are some unique aspects in the Myst-Uru community I will point out. First a bit about human nature to put us on the same page.

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Second Life Avatar 2 and 3

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If you make clothes for #SL avatars you know the problems with the SL Avatar 1, the one we have now. Making bikini bottoms, panties, and shorts is difficult as the texture mapping blurs sharp lines on some parts of the avatar. Shoulder straps jog around rather than run straight, so one has to jog the design to get close to a straight strap. It is a pain. So, the idea of a better avatar has been coming up for years. Are we going to get one?

Second Life Mesh
Second Life Avatars

The answer is yes and no. May be a more accurate answer is; some day. The Lab would like to build Avatar 2.0. However, their effort is going into getting general mesh ready for the main grid. (5/23 Reference – Nyx Linden) Any work on a new avatar by the Lab won’t start until after mesh is out and stable.

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Revised #SL Mesh Arriving

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The viewer using the new mesh format should be out Thursday of this week. The ADITI grids should have the new server side mesh software installed across most of the mesh regions. Mesh in ADITI will likely vanish as it is returned. New versions of user mesh will have to be uploaded. We’ll see an announcement when the sims and viewer are ready.

Update: See warning below.

#SL Mesh Design Blender 2.57b
#SL Mesh Design Blender 2.57b

New Format

With any luck the new mesh format will be published on the Wiki this week. That means OpenSim coders can start making their changes.

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