The Imprudence Team is building a new series 2 viewer based on the new Linden Lab Viewer 2 code. Wednesday they released a test build of the Kokua Viewer. This is probably what many would consider Alpha version software. Before you run off to download it, read on.
First off, they are warning you that this viewer may do horrible things… shrink your male package or sag your breasts and fatten your butt while killing your pets and erasing your inventory and hard drive. Did I say this is a test viewer? It is a test viewer and may have some dandy bugs like you might find on the SyFy channel. I did not find any but you have been warned.
Not much exciting stuff this week. There is some confusion as to what is happening. If I understand correctly the Maint-Server updates are still in the Blue Steel channel and they have been rolled to the main grid. The updates are a collection of fixes to known problems, a couple of bugs that crash sims and a logging thing that should help performance have been added to Blue Steel and will now be testing.
A little disappointing is the fix for jumping vehicles, the bounce as they move from prim to prim, which in testing on the ADITI grid has been removed. The fix worked with Havok 4 (which was on the main grid in mid 2010) but has been shown to create unexpected side effects with Havok 7 in ADITI. See JIRA SVC-5880 for the history of this fix. So, the lab will backup and try again.
Starting on May 2 the Lab began running a Sweepstakes. The sweepstakes started at 10AM SLT on Monday, May 2, 2011 and ends on Monday, May 16, 2011 at 10:00 a.m. SLT.
What You Win
You win a Grayson Linden Home on 1024 sq meters with 234 prim limit (I assume the house prims do not count). It includes 1 year free premium membership, which has a L$300 weekly stipend. It includes L$5,000 ‘furnishing bonus’. It is unclear whether this comes to the winner in L$ or some kind of store credits. I am assuming it is Linden cash.
I’m not big on buying land in Second Life. So, I have no idea if this is an improvement or what. Vogy Linden has posted in the Second Life Blog → Land and article about the changes in how land can be purchased. The big change is one no longer has to go through support to buy land. That is probably a good thing. The process is now executable in-world.
Start by looking at the Mainland on the World Map, and enabling the check box “Land for Sale.” When you find a parcel that you might be interested in, check out the owner. If the parcel is owned by Governor Linden and marked, “Abandoned Land – For Sale,” then you can purchase it by clicking on the “Buy Land,” button.
The Linden’s are telling us the mesh data format is going to change. This means the meshes uploaded to this point will no longer work. Mesh objects will have to be uploaded again. While this is a pain for many the change is made to get more stable mesh objects.
SL Mesh Changes
The changes have to do with renaming fields in the mesh data and removing some fields that are not going to be used. Additionally some meta-data is being added to allow mesh to rez faster. The document outlining Linden Lab’s mesh data format is started, per Runitai Linden.
These changes will roll out this week in ADITI. The changes will also necessitate a viewer change. So, you will need to get a new Mesh Project Viewer.
There are new things coming for the Basic Mode of the SL Viewer series 2.
Sign Ups Per Day - from Dwell On It.
We are seeing more signups per day now. About 3 weeks ago I would not have agreed it was a trend. I think it is still early but the spike is different than the one in November. So, something seems to have changed. It may be the Basic Mode is having an effect.
Basic Mode
The top question of new users in Basic Mode is: where is my inventory? Another is: how do I get to Advanced Mode? Where is the sidebar?
If you have thought about that Advanced Mode one, the answer is unnecessarily difficult. The answer is: Close the viewer, restart, but don’t login, change to Advanced, close the viewer, open the viewer and login. Whew! This has to be made easier. Even something like how the clear cache process works would help.
Also, because so few of us are unfamiliar with the Basic Mode we cannot answer a new resident’s questions. We want them to change to a series 1 viewer or advanced mode. At that point the new users is swamped. So, while we have a much better beginning step, the next step is still too big.
It appears that Basic Mode users are going to get an inventory. I wonder if the easier way to open packages and wear items that Rosedale spoke of at SLCC 2010 is going to be implemented. That would be nice. Whatever the case I suspect some simplified inventory will appear. But, with inventory are new clothes and appearance tasks to learn. It will be interesting to see how the new Basic Mode changes.
