Second Life

Things about SL

Second Life – How to Lower ACI – A Script

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One of the complications in 3D rendering is working out how to blend the objects with transparent parts. Think of windows and SL hair. Designers can reduce the complication by how they use alpha layers and blending. I’m not going to try to explain how to set stuff up because I have yet to get it figured out. But, I came across a handy workaround for things we already have.

I buy hair, dresses, and other things that use blending modes. Most are no-mod. But, the script below can be used to modify them.

In the beginning of the video, I am wearing Magika’s Dreamy as purchased. This is hair that in the Linden viewer has an ACI of 4,699. Using the script reduces the ACI by 702. That is a saving of 15±%. This is my first try, so I have no idea if this is typical, minimal, or a max. You may find that high ACI items benefit more.

There is some degradation in the appearance. When zoomed out, it is barely noticeable. Only when zoomed in can you see the difference. Personally, the 702 ACI saving is not worth the loss of appearance.

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Second Life News 2017 w24 – New Shiny

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Servers

There was no roll to the main grid this week. The channel continues to run #17.05.26.326655.

Blue Steel will get a new package Wednesday, #17.06.01.326763. Includes internal fixes.

Le Tigre will get a new package Wednesday, #17.06.12.327066. Includes internal logging and features and an improvement to region starts.

Magnum also gets a new package, #17.06.12.327060. Shoutcast Player fix included. Other changes are an upgrade of the OS.

Tuesday done less left before WE 😜
Tuesday done less left before WE 😜

Shoutcast is the feature that many use to publish the name of the song playing in a music stream. There was some old time fundamental problem with how those scripts worked. Some fix in the server side created a problem with those scripts, broke them. (BUG-100737) The Lindens were not going to build the bug back in. So, they are providing a fix that works similarly. But, all the Shoutcast scripts will have to change.

The fix is something about the characters in the HTTP request stream.

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Second Life – State of VR – Gear VR

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If you are hoping I am going to tell you we have VR for Second Life™, I’ll disappoint you. However, it apparently is possible. But, it isn’t easy and the whole VR thing is a mess, especially if you want to do it cheaply.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmC4nDabAkw&

For an instance of a mess, when you place a phone in Gear VR it auto-launches the Oculus app. Doesn’t matter what app you have running, the Oculus app launches and takes over the device. A bunch of people tell you to insert to the headset without connecting the phone to the headset. WAY lame, but doable. However, without the USB connection made the phone can fall out of the unit.

So… you have to get Samsung’s BK Package Disabler (US$1.49) get around this problem. They have a free version if you rooted your phone. If not, you have to hope the retail package will install. If you did root it, no problem just delete all you phones accounts, installed the root-version of BK, and redo all your accounts… lovely.

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Second Life Server News 2017 w/23

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In the area of server updates, there has not been much exciting news. Or even mildly interesting. Changes have been about data collection, which will guide future changes, and infrastructure changes. But, this week there are some interesting changes people are noticing.

Who knew?
Who knew?

A few people were reporting long down times after this week’s update rollouts. Others noticed there were two rollouts Wednesday. Mazidox Linden took the blame for that. Maz rolled the wrong version to the RC channels. So, a second roll was required to get the correct version in place.

So, both Blue Steel and Le Tigre got two restarts. Lucy is certain that if Maz had had a bear it would have told him he was making a mistake… Forgoing the Bear solution the roll procedure is changing to hopefully reduce this mistakes reoccurrence possibility.

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Second Life – Content Creation UG 2017 w/23

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Getting this video out was a problem. Adobe Premiere started crashing and refusing to show video in the Project Editor panel. Plus, the Hippotropolis region was crashing during the meeting. That made for an interesting meeting and made more work putting the video together.

There were lots of audio challenges in this video. I tried to clean up several places. Cathy Foil’s microphone is over driving the system. Vir Linden apparently talks into a fixed position mic. He tends to move toward and away from it when talking. Anyway, I did what I could with it.

Meeting Summary

Vir Linden starts the meeting talking about viewers. The AssetsHTTP viewer is still in QA, but expected to update the RC in week 24.

Work is continuing on animated objects. Vir has the server and a pre-project viewer working so one can see animated objects. Other viewers crash. So, that has to be handled.

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