Click for the full size image – taken at Slightly Twisted, December 2013
“Snow: when the world appears fresh and new, waiting to be explored”
#7 in an occasional series
Day: December 22, 2013
2013: a year in review (1)
It’s once again that annual time of reflection. The winter is with us, the old year is slowing dying, the new year awaits, and it is time to look back across the highs and lows of the virtual year as seen through the pages of this blog.
This year has been even busier for me than previous years, so rather than give you a sea of text to wade through, I’ve opted to break things down into three more manageable offerings, starting with January through to April, and have tried to limit myself to bullet-points to the various links. I’ve not attempted to dot every “I” and cross every “T”; rather my aim is to highlight the main items of news for each month (or those which raised a smile), and those aspects of other VWs I had time to cover and well as a look back on some personal elements of my SL times over the year.
For those into art and SL exploration, I’ve also summarised installations and regions visited by month in the hope that doing so will stir your own memories of those events / places.
- May-August can be found here
- September-December can be found here.
January
Second Life and the Lab
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I couldn’t help poking at the Lab early in the year with the “Palme d’Face” award I start the year with a look ahead at 2013; not as a series of predictions, but a look based on what we’d seen in 2012
- More details on Versu’s upcoming release start to emerge
- Together for Sway raises a stunning L$ 1,551,825 in just two weeks to help Sway Dench meet her RL living costs during a 6-month convalescence following major brain surgery and unable to use SL, her major source of income, as a result
- The long-running dispute between Gala Phoenix, proprietor of Curio Skins and Hush Darkrose / Verikai Vargas, proprietor of Hush Skins, reaches an out-of-court settlement
- Region and event griefing as a means of extortion comes into sharp focus
- I look at the issue of tier and tier cuts from the Lab’s perspective
- The Lab updates the Mainland Abandoned Land Policy
- The Lab acquires Blocksworld
- Linden Lab launched dio in a “beta” mode, (and I sign-up and took a look through it
- The Lab starts to promote SL via Amazon in the US, offering both the viewer and special “vehicle” packs; I wonder if they’re really on the right track with the packs, while a bit of a cock-up in the “free offer” department presents the opportunity for a little humour
- The month rounds-out with a sneak peek at materials
Platform News
- The Lab starts the year with further work on threaded region crossings, improving the way very large objects are handled by the server during rezzing and working on a new pathfinding capability to keep characters within parcels
- Work continues through the first half of the year to bring CHUI and materials processing to maturity, Server-side Appearance marches cautiously forward and Monty resumes his HTTP library work, something which will occupy his time for most of the year, and Andrew continues his focus on interest list work
- There is no major news on the deformer – the state of play for most of the year – but Baker Linden works to improve mesh object rezzing performance
- STORM-68 work commences, to allow content creators to set default and persistent permissions against object creation
Art Reviews
Events
- One Billion Rising in SL is announced
- The initial calendar for RFL events in SL is released
- MadPea Games launch Room 326
Pey’s Travelogue
Personal Notes
- I resume my coverage of NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory mission
Other Worlds
- Kitely announce their online Kitely Marketplace
February
Second Life and the Lab
- I kick-off the month with coverage of Simon Linden’s work on Leap Motion
- dio gets a further look
- The Lab launches Versu on the iPad
- On behalf of the Firestorm team, I commence detailed coverage of their User Meetings
- The excellent SL-focused documentary Login2Life gets a new lease of life on YouTube
- The Lab starts adding external advertising to their web properties.
Platform News
- “Deferred rendering” in the viewer becomes “Advanced Lighting Model” ahead of the full deployment of materials processing
- Server updates result in an increase in incidents of diagonally adjacent regions failing to render in the viewer increase and region crossing issues continue
- Aditi log-in and inventory issues continue
- Work continues trying to resolve camera issues and “content warping” when crossing regions, and reports continue about sudden and massive region lag at live events
- I played with the SSA viewer after a further SSA load test is held on Aditi and problems continue to delay the release of the materials viewer-side code
- Towards the end of the month Region restarts get new notifications and concerns grow over the “breaking” of z-offset height adjustment with SSA, while Andrew’s interest list work moves forward
- CHUI reaches the SL Beta and Development viewers
Art Reviews
- Art Deco – Art India Gallery
- Dangerous Evolutions – LEA
- The Inspiring Orientation Stage 2 – LEA
- Mediamorphosis – ars Simularcra
- Song Bird – Song Bird
Events
- One billion Rising launches the official SL video, the regions are developed, and following the event, I offered a reflective piece on it
- Fashion for Life releases its 2013 schedule
- Accept: a story in modern dance
Pey’s Travelogues
