Month: September 2011

BURN2 Land Rush 2

Posted on by Inara Pey

The second Burn 2 Land rush will take place on Saturday 10th September, so if you if you wan to have a camp at Burn 2, so if you missed out in the two Round One sessions, now is your chance to claim a campsite.

Here are the details:

  • The land rush will be open to all, without restriction. You may purchase as many plots as you like. The only condition is that new plot locations will not be adjusted to match with your existing plots purchased in Round One
  • All payments must go through the land terminal on the parcel. If you pay someone directly we will not be held liable for a refund of your land terminal fee ($4L)
  • By participating in the Land Rush you agree to the rules and decisions made by the DPW in the execution of these rushes. You also agree to all Builder Guidelines and the Burning Man Ten Principles
  • Builders may have up to two assistants. The builder who owns the plot is responsible for their assistants’ actions at all times, and ensuring that all builders are knowledgeable of the Builder Guidelines, Policies of BURN 2, Second Life Terms of Service and the Second Life Community Standards
  • On the completion of the Rush, any remaining plots will be sold on a case by case basis by members of the DPW authorized to sell plots and certain members of the Core Team of Burn 2. Please ask for assistance through the BURNING MAN 2.0 group with these sales.

If you have any questions, please contact Kev Sweetwater or Diana Renoir in Second life.

Dolphin 3 launches with mesh rendering

Posted on by Inara Pey

dolphin-logoLance Corrimal has launched Dolphin 3, the latest in the Dolphin range of Third-Party Viewers, and another alternative to Viewer 2.x/3.x.

The new release follows hard on the heels of the Firestorm “Mesh Beta”  brings with it a wealth of new features – including mesh object rendering. The full list of new features reads:

  • All new goodies from Linden Labs up to their internal version 3.0.3:
    • Mesh object rendering
    • Camera depth-of-field
    • Avatar physics
    • Native 64m prim support
    • Build tool improvements (see below)
    • Increased maximum cache size (up to 9984 Mb)
    • Increased maximum setting for LOD (up to 8 )
    • Mini-map back in the People sidebars with options to turn off & re-size
    • Enhanced parcel privacy, a check box in About Land/Options
  • Marine Kelley’s Restrained Love v2.07.03.03
  • All of Lance’s own additions to Dolphin 2, with the exception of Qarl Fizz’ “select Linden plants” patch, which does not work with the mesh engine

The improved build tools include:

  • Ability to perform simple mathematics in the spinner controls in the Build tool’s Object tab (numeric fields in Position, Size, Rotation). For example, to double the length of a prim along the y axis you enter sy*2 in the y-size field. The other “variables” are px/py/pz for position, sx,sy,sz for size, rx,ry,rz for rotation.
  • A new button in the Build tool is present, so that creators can create a sculpted prim directly instead of first creating a box and then changing it to a sculpt.
  • The maximum number of repeats for textures has been set to 256
  • The maximum size for hollow has been increased to 99.99% from 95%
  • More precision (4 decimals) in the spinner controls in the Build tool, together with a way to increase and decrease the single digits with your keyboard

This release does not include mesh object uploads, for the same reason a Firestorm 3, and may also have inherited the Linden-generated nVidia 400-series+ crash bug – so caution may be required in using Basic Shaders.

I’ll hopefully have a features review of Dolphin 3 out within the next 24 hours.

Related Links

LL offer Premium membership at 50% discount

Posted on by Inara Pey

Linden Lab have slipped in a new offer to encourage the take-up of Premium memberships. For a limited time (i.e. this weekend), people can sign-up at a 50% discount  – but only if they sign-up for the Quarterly payment plan and only for the first billing cycle.

While such quarterly offers are not uncommon – my ISP offers new sign-up 1/3 off their first quarter bill for phone & broadband charges, for example) – one cannot help but feel the Lab are perhaps being a tad tight-fisted here. While I can understand that Annual membership is hard to discount to the same degree – why restrict the offer to Quarterly only (and perhaps even why only the first quarter?).

The discount offer. The small print reads: “This limited-time discount offer is available only for memberships on the Quarterly billing plan. Discount will be applied to the first quarterly billing cycle only and all future charges will be at the regular Premium price.”

Why not offer a 25% discount on monthly memberships, applicable to the first 3 months alongside a 50% discount on Quarterly memberships?

Of course, there is a risk that, in offering such discounts, LL will annoy their established Premium members. But the fact is, currently, and the new additions to Premiums notwithstanding, there is little enough being offered to tempt established users with free accounts into jumping onto the Premium train; and while the various offers might appeal to incoming members, one feels that overall, people will – by their very nature – opt to go the “free” route first, rather than “risk” signing up – again, discount notwithstanding – to limit their exposure.

Both increasing the attractiveness of Premium memberships and promoting them to the user base is a good idea. One just wonders if there is a consistent and workable strategy behind it that will lead to success.

LL issue casting call

Posted on by Inara Pey

Linden Lab have issued a casting call for people wishing to participate in an upcoming web-based advertising campaign for Second Life.

The campaign will be similar to the Become Your Avatar banner ads campaign currently to be seen in relations to Second Life, but will also feature video as will as still pictures.

The Become Your Avatar banner ad campaign

As such, the Lab is looking for people who are comfortable revealing their “human side” alongside their avatars in SL with the aim of spotlighting the diverse and creative communities in Second Life.

If you’re interested in participating in the campaign please complete the official application form and get it back to Linden Lab no later than 12:00 noon PDT on Monday September 12th.

Good luck to all who apply, and maybe see you on the casting couch!

MoM: September

Posted on by Inara Pey

September 7th saw the debut of this month’s Month of Machinima selecton by the LEA and showing at the LEA Theatre (SLurl). With the theme of “Seasons”, which can refer to the four seasons of the year, the seasons of your life, and so on, this month sees a range of imaginative and emotive films on offer.

This month’s entries comprise:

  • Unknowable Alien Isles:Chaffro Schoonmaker – a farewell to, and lament for, the Alien Isles installation at Unknowable
  • Duran Duran All You Need is Now by Ian Pahute an homage to the 80s, Duran, Duran and, particularly, their fans – and the passing years!
  • Curves by Hunk Huasner described as “Second Life machinima remixed with Akon’s Nosy Neighbour and other video clips”, a slightly risque mix of in-world machinima and live action film which is voyeuristically humourous.
  • A Pesto for all Seasons by Bleu Oleander, a lighthearted look at the making of the perfect pesto, complete with dancing basil…
  • Nature of Elements by Chic Aeon, which is described as “a video ‘coffee table book’ – there is a message of course, but mostly it is about the pretty pictures”. The message is clear – and one we should all consider
  • Why Now?  by Pooky Amsterdam – a moving question and answer session with Holocaust Survivor Fanny Starr demonstrating the power of Second Life and a world-wide educational and historical forum
  • Love Me Tender Rafale Kamachi, a whimsical tale of attempted murder, longing, magic and transformation in a steampunk setting
  • Visualizing Theorem at UTSA by lono Allen: “The creative forces of art, music and science collide in this new sim wide art exhibit at University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA).” Combining imagery from Second Life and music collaboratively produced in a social media album called “Theorem” by ten musicians , the film celebrates sixteen installations in SL curated by UTSA, which are based on the science and math theories explored in the album.

Kirsten’s Viewer: A sad Farewell

Posted on by Inara Pey

In a sad notice posted today, Kirstenlee Cinquetti has announced the end of line for the foreseeable future – if not permanently – of the outstanding Kirsten’s Viewer. The entry in full reads:

“You may have noticed that the client has not been updated in some time. Sadly Real Life events have taken an unfortunate turn which basically puts an end to any more development. The Plans for S22 have been shelved and the project has been marked as discontinued.

“Installers have been removed as they are now very outdated, the sourcecode will of course remain. The website and forums will stay up for as long is required. Also inworld groups will stay active. It is of course entirely your choice as to how long you continue to use the client, however I do stress that it will fall behind with features and it may be wise to seek alternatives in the near future.

“Dawny has been very Ill, and had to stop working. As you can imagine my priority is to support her in any way possible and that means I have to become the main bread winner, as much as I enjoy working on the client it’s obviously the first thing to go.

“Not much more to say…

“BUT finally I would like to wish everyone who has supported the project over the years, a huge hug and many thanks, Jabba, Altair and all the people who have put up with my ranting and raving and unusual colour choices in UI. 🙂

“Who knows what the future holds! But for now Kirstens Viewer goes into a deep sleep.

“Presses the Shut Down button, Drives spin down, silence……….

“Love to you all, KL”

This is a very sad day for Second Life and Viewer development. Over the years, Kirsten’s Viewer has set the benchmark for SL-related photography and machinima as well as being ground-breaking in many other areas, not the least of which was the development of the first Viewer 2 hybrid client that offered a usable interface well ahead of V2’s own at the time, and which has remained innovative and highly preferable to LL’s own offering. More recently, it became the first and, up until its suspension, only Viewer to support the upload of mesh objects outside of Viewer 3.x.

I’ve always enjoyed using Kirsten’s Viewer – it requires a fairly high-end machine, and at times my PC had struggled with it, but it has always given me faultless performance and the ability to enjoy elements of Second Life that just weren’t available to me through other Viewers – such as the initial iteration of dynamic shadows.

Happier times: Jabba Abbye’s screen capture celebrating the release of S21 Build 9 with mesh object rendering / upload support

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Kirstenlee and the team for everything they have done and achieved with the Viewer, together with a personal message of best wishes and a return to health for Dawny. For now it is Adieu to Kirsten’s Viewer; perhaps we’ll meet again in the future.