The Lab is making a further offer to US residents this weekend, with a three of the Amazon Second Life packs on special promotion until Sunday September 8th.
The three packs in the offer are:
The Premium Vehicle Pack – which includes L$4000, thee hoverboard, premium sailing boat and dune buggy – is now 30% off at $17.49
I’ve commented before on why I feel that these packs are potentially a missed opportunity, and the promotional offer would perhaps suggest the packs aren’t proving particularly popular.
Perhaps of greater interest, although only warranted a passing one-liner in the blog post, is the fact that the SL viewer and the above packs, together with the “deluxe” vehicle packs, are now available through Amazon in the UK and Germany.
The viewer and SL packs are now available on Amazon in the UK and Germany
While the current offer does not extend to either country, likely as a result of local management boundaries, etc., within Amazon itself, rather than anything on LL’s part to limit things, the announcement that SL is now available through Amazon in the UK and Germany does carry the promise that future promotions may well include both countries.
During my time blogging, I’ve had the good fortune to be able to review various tools developed by Yuzuru Jewell for use with Second Life, notably Rokuro and Tatara, both produced under his Kanae Projects brand, and aimed at supporting content creation.
Yuzuru recently informed me he was working on a new tool, which represents something of a departure from his other apps – a text-to-speech conversion tool which allows chat entered into Second Life (in open chat) to be converted to speech and listened to via headphones / speakers. The tools is now almost ready for release, and Yuzuru kindly allowed me to have preview access to a beta version of the application and take it for a test drive.
The app, Idobata Pro, will be available for both Windows 7 32-bit and 64-bit as a ZIP download, containing a Readme file and the program executable. No installation is required; simply drop the EXE file in the folder from which you want to use it & create a shortcut as required. However, it does require Microsoft Speech Platform 11 is installed on the PC.
Idobata: text chat-to-speech
Once “installed”, simply double-click on the EXE / shortcut to launch Idobata.
Options and Set-up
The application runs in a single window, no tabs or anything to fiddle with, and set-up is a simple matter of using the presented options.
Buttons
START/STOP – starts / stops the text-to-speech conversion. Note that settings cannot be altered when conversion is active
Interval – set the delay between text chat and voice conversion
DEFAULTS – reset Idobata to its defaults.
Speech
Comprises three options:
Voice: allows you to select a voice option the application will use for speaking the chat it obtains. The default for this is Microsoft Anna US English
Volume: volume of the voice playback
Rate: the speed at which chat is spoken. Positive numbers mean faster playback, negative numbers means a slower playback.
Chat File
Select whether you wish to have chat converted directly from the viewer (requires you select the viewer and avatar) or from the chat file (requires you provide the chat file location). Currently, only Firestorm and Second Life are recognised by Idobata, so if you’re using another viewer, try using the convert from chat text file option.
Chat Mask
Allows you to define a chat mask:
Secondlife chat – the app will only read back an avatar’s Display Name (if set within SL)
[YYYY/MM/DD hh:mm] – the application will not precede chat with timestamps
Custom(RegEx) – allows you to set regular expressions which will not be read back by Idobata
Speak translated chat – if you use translator within SL, Idobata will only read back the translated text, not the original language text.
Using Idobata
Click the START button to use the application. You’ll get a brief thank you message, which you can use to adjust the rate of playback, if required (click STOP to adjust the settings).
That’s it!
In Use and Feedback
Idobata works well, although the voice can take a little getting used to – adjust the Rate option in settings if you have problems understand what is being said.
The app potentially has a lot of uses, particularly if you’re engaged in something and don’t keep track of button flashes in CHUI or things like console messages , chiclets, etc., or indeed, if you’re off doing other things. For example, I spend a fair amount of time logged-in to SL but working on other windows, and so have the viewer minimised a lot. Idobata has already proven worthwhile for me as it allows me to hear who comes on-line, so I can flick back to the viewer if someone I need to IM comes in-world without my having to constantly flick back and forth with the viewer.
There are a couple of minor irritants – neither of which are Yuzuru’s fault per se. One is that Idobata has no way of determining the origins of what is being entered into chat – it simply converts everything in the channel. This means that in places where there are a lot of spammy objects, it can get a little annoying (I was at a region where a greeter bellows out every single new arrival and how far away from it they arrive; that got particularly old very quickly, both with the announcement appearing in chat and Idobata reading it back). The other is the US Microsoft Anna voice – but that’s purely personal!
Idobata will be available from Monday September 9th via Yuzuru’s Kanae Projects website. The app can be used in a trail version for three days on a “try before your buy” basis, and licences for the full product will be available for L$1250 through Yuzuru’s in-world store.
Ah, the fun fair! The Ferris wheel, carousels, and rocket rides; the roller coaster; the zombies, malevolent-looking giant clowns and staccato gunfire; the ….
Hang on…
…”The zombies, malevolent-looking giant clowns and staccato gunfire” …?
No, I haven’t taken leave of my senses. I’ve decided to drop-in on DeadPool, currently in the Editor’s Picks in the Destination Guide. It’s an amusement park where time seems to have been frozen in the 1970s, or as the Destination Guide description puts it:
Aged elegance is re-animated in DeadPool, a new experience ripe for exploration. Watch as the bygone disco days rise again! Zombies roam the overgrown and wistful spaces of a forgotten amusement park, see the old roller-disco flash and strobe while amazing DJ’s pump dance-worthy beats.
Thematically, this is the place which sort-of picks-up where MadPea’s magnificent Carneval left off, although it is of a different colour and experience, and so shouldn’t be written-off as a variation on the theme; it is as unique as Carneval ever was, and comes with very different risks. At Carneval, for example, the roller coaster was actually ride-worthy (I use “worthy” here in the sense of the ride being in one piece); however, the roller coaster at DeadPool takes the warning, “Patrons ride at their own risk” to a whole new level – and it has some interesting pose positions hidden within it! :).
The amusement park covers the entire region and offers a lot to see; in this I do recommend fiddling with windlight, as while the default is very atmospheric, it does mean you risk missing the smaller details if you’re not careful. There are a lot of opportunities here for the SL photographer to enjoy; although you may need to keep one eye on your surroundings. The aforementioned zombies can be a bit of a pain in the neck … or wherever else they opt to bite you when they find you :).
Which leads me to the gunfire. Some of the zombies are evidently “shootable”, and during my visit several people were availing themselves of this fact …
For my part, I kept myself occupied by dodging the zombies and playing around with windlight to grab shots. I was actually unable to make up my mind as to whether I should keep it light and airy in order to catch the details, or dark and atmospheric, to match the environment; hence the reason some shots may appear to be somewhat removed from my usual fare.
There are some safe areas if you want to avoid the zombies. Standing under the two giant clowns at the entrance to the park is one of them. OK, so some with a specific phobia of clowns might find the definition of “safe” somewhat lacking in this context, admittedly. If this is the case, try the decrepit theatre across the region, up on the hill. It’s also zombie-free and offers something of a place to rest a while, and even to have a sit-down…
The park is the work of the region’s owner, Xjetx Chrome, together with Megan Prumier. It’s an altogether different destination, and one worth checking out if you’re into clubs, photography, amusement parks, a ride on the wild side – oh, and zombies, of course! Now, where exactly did I put my shotgun … ? 🙂
For the almost a year now, I’ve been living entirely in my Linden Home – and enjoying it. As regulars know, I shopped around for the house I wanted in terms of theme (Tahoe) and layout, and while you can’t pick your location, you can at least move regularly in order to find a nice spot. I was fortunate: I lucked out and gained the house style I wanted and in an area I liked, with a river nearby, first time. It’s been more than enough for me, and I didn’t think I’d move back to a private estate – not so long as I had a Premium account, at least.
New home…
Then I discovered the joys of sailing, boating and flying, and in doing so gradually fell in love with the regions in and around Blake Sea – the Honah Lee islands, Second Norway, the Nautilus coast and canals, and so on. So much so, that I’ve ducked and dived from time to time looking at land in the greater Blake Sea area and trying to determine if I really wanted to make a move.
Well, long story short, I have.
The house set in its new locale, looking across the rock “patio” to the house proper, with the lounge visible. “Lady of Calas” sits at the dock.
Thanks to Nber Medici, I’ve acquired a nice parcel of land which is ideally suited to my needs. Located in the north-east corner of a themed island, it gives me complete access to the waterways around it, and also to Blake Sea, together with more than enough room to put up a house, have a dock and moor my E-Tech Sparrow Lady of Calas. I’ve only just moved in, and am still working on bits (hence why no major blog articles so far today!), but I think things are coming together nicely.
The “Lady of Calas” from the lounge
House-wise, I’ve opted to use the rock-top house which I talked about back in January 2012, and which was featured as a setting for advertising some of Ample Clarity’s PrimPossible range of furnishings. I chose the house as it fits the broad theme of the estate, it’s a build I like (if I say so myself), and the textures I used in it are perfect for materials (and once again, a huge hug to Max Graf for putting me right on specular maps :)). I’ve only just started fiddling with adding materials, so it is liable to be a while before the place looks respectable in that regard.
And the house from “Lady of Calas”
The great thing about the location, besides being a corner plot, on a themed estate, with access to Blake Sea … OK, one of the great things 🙂 … is that I’m only a hop and skip from Hollywood Airport, so it’s fine and dandy for me flying-wise as well. I’d actually like to have the (non-flying) display model of my Spitfire out on the land – but the covenant requests aircraft aren’t permanently rezzed; so I’ll be foregoing that. Not that I’m complaining; as much as I enjoyed my Linden Home, I’m already appreciating having a garden and space outdoors to wander around in again, so have planted some trees to give the place extra character and which compensate for the lack of flying machine display :).
I’m quite fond of this open-plan design, and it seems to fit the theme of the estate
Hmm…. I wonder if I fiddle around a bit more, whether I could create a little space to moor my sailboat as well :).
A new SL project viewer was released on September 3rd. The Snowstorm Project viewer 3.6.5.280476, brings with it a number of issue fixes, and includes two capabilities new to the viewer:
A “request teleport” feature (STORM-1838) contributed by Jonathan Yap, which allows users to request a teleport form another user (currently with caveats – see below)
A group eject confirmation pop-up (STORM-1952), submitted by Cinder Roxley, which some may be familiar with from using TPVs such as Firestorm.
Request Teleport
The new request teleport capability, which I first reported on back in week 4, requires both viewers to be using the code for it to work (so for the time being it is limited to the project viewer). Where this is the case:
Select the person to whom you wish to teleport (from your Friends list or Nearby list, etc.), and select Request Teleport
Enter a message in the pop-up, if required, and click OK.
Request teleport: making a request
At the “other end” the recipient of the request will receive the request as an initial pop-up notification and within CHUI:
Receiving a teleport request – pop-up and CHUI message
The recipient can than either accept the request, sending a teleport offer, or reject it, in which case no message is sent.
The teleport offer is again displayed in the requester’s viewer as both as an initial pop-up notification (below) and within CHUI.
Receiving the teleport offer
Note again, that the system will only work where both viewers are running the new code (e.g. the Snowstorm project viewer for the time being). If someone on a viewer with the capability to someone using a viewer which does not have the teleport request code, the request will not be received / displayed.
Group Eject Confirmation
The group eject confirmation sees the official viewer get a new pop-up asking for confirmation when ejecting someone from a group, in order to help with issues where the wrong name is selected and ejected.
The new group eject confirmation pop-up for the official viewer
Again, as noted above, the release notes for the viewer provide a full list of updates in the viewer.
As always, please refer to the week’s forum deployment thread for news, updates and feedback. Deployments are a day behind the usual schedule due to the US Labor Day long weekend.
Second Life Server (SLS Main) Channel – Wednesday September 4th
The Main channel should receive the maintenance package deployed to all three RC channels in week 35, comprising:
An update to region restarts initiated by region owners or estate managers which will see the region restart after the last avatar leaves, rather than waiting for the full countdown period to complete
Preparatory work to support new estate and parcel access controls – these will require an upcoming viewer-side update in order to be visible to users
A fix for a physics-related griefing mode (see below)
A crash mode fix.
Release Candidate Channels – Thursday September 5th
All three RC channel should receive the same maintenance package, which comprises server-side HTTP updates which require a future viewer-side update. In the meantime, these changes should not be apparent in any current viewer release. The updates specifically comprise:
When connections between viewer and web services were closed by the server, the last response was sent without a ‘Content-Length’ or ‘Transfer-Encoding: chunked’ header. Last response will now be sent with ‘chunked’ encoding.
Throttling actions on Capabilities URL result in 503 status codes back to clients. These responses may include a ‘Retry-After’ header with a delta time giving a hint as to when the client may retry the request. In the absence of such a header, client is expected to make ‘reasonable, best-practices’ delayed retry attempts.
Adds support for a new capability, ‘GetMesh2’ for fetching mesh assets with keepalives enabled.
HTTP Notes
The RC deployments look to be the first part of Monty’s continuing work on HTTP connectivity between the viewer and the SL servers. As noted in recent reports, the core focus of this work is on improving mesh fetching capabilities between the two, although Monty is also working on a number of other updates, all of which are aimed at improving the HTTP services between the viewer and the SL servers and making them more robust, as well as paving the way for HTTP pipelining in the future.
Group Ban Lists
Baker Linden continues to work on the new group ban list functionality. The focus is currently on the UI hook-ups and back-end validation checks. It will still be a while before a project / RC viewer is likely to appear, but hopefully not too long.
Anti-griefing Work
Andrew Linden continues to work on “anti-griefing” measures, reporting that the “physics-related griefing mode” which forms a part of the Main channel deployment and which is already on the three RC channels, is to prevent the use of “faux rotating megaprims”.
These are megaprims which used a physics collision exploit to knock avatars out of that region using the ‘resolve interpenetrating objects’ collision logic. “We had some collision-bypass code there specifically for avatars, but it had been broken some time ago,” Andrew explained, the break apparently allowing the exploit. He’s now fixed the code breakage, and reports from a number of RC sandboxes is that it appears to have worked.
Other Items
There was a report made during the Simulator User Group that some LSL events are failing to execute or aren’t being queued / cued when a script is caught in a loop. details were sketchy, but a BUG report was due to be raised.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 