Second Life and Virtual Worlds
July 22 Blender 2.53 Beta was released. This is the version with the radically new user interface. (See image) This new interface is going to take some getting used to. It is available for Windows 32 & 64, Mac OS X, Linux 32 & 64 and Solaris.
Update 8/15/2010 – Be sure to read Emerald Viewer Scandal Erupts… Again
Update II: 2010-08-11 – More information was posted about 2439. It seems some security issue came up and they are fixing it. Some number of Emerald users are running into problems, inventory loss, av not rez’n, failure to login, viewer crashes… seems to be a small but significant percentage. There are apparently some problems on the Modular servers which are slowing the fix process. You can read it here: Re: Beta 2439
Word in world is that for now the 2439 version will not be blocked, so one can continue to use it. In a few days a new viewer version will be out. Then the 2439 version will be blocked.
The next release is to be based on the 1.5 version code base… sure… and that means? I’m not sure… yet.
Update: 2010-08-11 – The blog post for the 2439 build of the viewer and links to it have disappeared. AleiaSerenity Sapphire of the Emerald Support Team posted: “there were some issues with the avatar texture feature on the pie menu so the dev’s removed 2437 from the blog” …ok… Well… read through the bugs section of this post. I suspect the high number of inventory problems may have something to do with it too. The number of people re-downloading inventory has to be placing a load on LL servers.
The Modular/Emerald team released its latest version late Saturday – 2439. This version appears to have lots of fixes and changes. So, you may find some Preference Settings have moved. It does retain my settings from the previous version. Yay
The change log at Modular seems to be lagging. So, it is hard for me to tell what is new and not.
For those less than thrilled with new SL 2.x interface, Emerald’s new version remains close to the 1.23 viewer interface. One really big plus in this regard is they have a Clear Cache button on the Edit -> Preferences – [Network] tab, something the SL 2.1 viewers lack, or I can’t find.
Updates are being added to the Bugs section. Latest 2010-08-09
Update 2010-09-15: From one of the Snowstorm office hours meetings comes word that some releases of the viewers are not registering the Webkit, Quicktime, Flash, and other DLL’s correctly.I don’t have a fix.
This problem is popping up again. My previous post is here: Second Life Media Plugin Webkit Fail – The comments there have more suggestions and fixes.
Jesica Brown found a new solution I had not heard. Find the slplugin in the SL Viewer folder and right-click it, then set it to Win95 compatibility mode. Thanks.
Threads on the SL Forum are:
Media_plugin_webkit failure – Error with media_plugin_webkit – TV’S PLUGIN
Update 2010-07-29 – There is a JIRA: http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17087
Windows 7 – 64 bit seems to be having additional problems with this issue. Currently there seems to be no fix. Vote at the JIRA.
Please leave comments in the original post.
Linden Lab (LL) has fixed Second Life Search… well somewhat. Getting listed in search took time and some regions would never make it into the listings and others already in would fall out. Also, search has changed how it works or may be more accurately said, how it ranks the results. Those changes are important to merchants and shop owners.
I had to do some searching to find out how to turn shadows on in the current SL Beta 2.1 viewers. The former instructions found on New World Notes, or Gwyneth Llewelyn’s SL 2.0 Beta still running too slowly on your Mac? No worries! are a bit out of date. It is easier now.
Juicy Bomb’s Second Life 2.0 Shadows instructions are good… plus all the cute clothes are fun.
In my July 14 article Kirsten Viewer S20 (29) Released I included a video by Marx Catteneo showing the use of Kirsten Dynamic Shadows and a Projector used like a flashlight. I think it is very neat effect.
Of course I wanted to know how it is done. So, how does one make a projector?