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.
- January-April can be found here
- May-August can be found here.
September
Second Life and the Lab
- The SL viewer gets a “request teleport” feature & a group ejection notification
- Yurzuru Jewell launches Idobata, a handy text-to-speech tool for Second Life. Later in the month he launches Keshiki, a screen capture tool for tutorial makers
- LL’s tie-in with Amazon sees SL appear on the UK and German Amazon sites
- The Lab starts opening advertising on its web properties to SL businesses and merchants
- Concern over the extent of changes to creators’ rights as made in August to LL’s ToS start to grow. I contact the Lab directly on the matter and receive a statement from them on the matter. As upset grows about the changes, some start quietly to try to get things suitably resolved, while I follow-up on ideas that the changes were due to the Desura acquisition. Towards the end of the month an in-world meeting is announced, and I offer a post-meeting personal perspective
- LL issue viewer-side support for their new particle capabilities
- The Lab announces SLShare, an opt-in means people to link their SL and Facebook accounts. The capability appears in the viewer near the end of the month, and appears reasonable enough
- Singularity adds the ability to export your own textures when exporting your own content to Collada files
- Lette Ponnier offers some sage advance to those wishing to improve their SL user experience
- Exodus releases a materials-ready version
- The San Diego Union-Tribune publishes a detailed story on Fran Seranade, first broken in the SL blog circuit by Hamlet Au in February). I cover the story and poke LL about it as a result, the story become the most-read article on this blog for 2013, with just under 4,000 readers within the first 24 hours of the Lab promoting it alone – thank you, Peter & LL & all who visited!
- Chris Stokel-Walker, a UK journalist provides an astute look at Second Life
- On top of new platform improvements, the Lab launches a new promo video
- My interview with Rod Humble makes it to issue #49 of Prim Perfect magazine
- Cocoa updates adversely impact Mac users
Platform News
- Week 36: Monty’s server-side HTTP updates start deployment, but require a viewer-side update. These updates include the new GetMesh2 capability and its associated debug, Mesh2MaxCocurrentRequests, both of which are designed to stop people exceeding the server-side capabilities with unreasonably concurrent mesh download requests
- Week 37: JSON gets some updates; recursive rezzing as a means of griefing gets nerfed, although later updates are required
- Nyx essentially nixes any idea of extensive, in-depth changes to the current SL avatar
- A fix arrives for an issues whereby some avatars were unable to access parcels running on regions on the Magnum RC
- Week 39 sees increasing reports or region restart issues, while there is further informal discussion on the idea of an SL avatar 2.0″; region crossing issue return with a bite
- The Lab issues some stats on materials, Monty Linden dives into issues with tethered cellular connections
Art Reviews
- UWA, the Centre for ME/CFS & other invisible illnesses and Virtual Ability launch the Freedom Project
- The Portuguese Way – LEA
Events
- Firestorm celebrates its third anniversary
- BURN2 announces selected artists for 2013
- Virtual ability announce the 3rd annual international disability rights affirmation conference and panelists from around the world
- Grendel’s 7th Element Hunt
- The Michael J. Fox Premiere Party for Parkinson’s Disease set to be held in SL the event raises L$425,000 ($1700) in just three hours
Pey’s Travelogue
- Biminist
- Honah Lee Islands
- Deadpool
- Toru
- Artists Garden
- Pangloss
- Collins Land (2)
- Savoir Faire / Serenity Gardens
- The Looking Glass
- Cyprian Garden
- Moonlight Teahouse
Personal Notes
- Blake Sea became my playground (again) while flying my lovely Spitfire
- I move to Blake Sea and take-up residence in a themed estate there
- It is confirmed that Voyager has left the Solar System and that, surprisingly, Mars may have far less methane than might have been thought
October
Second Life and the Lab
- Patterns gets a website overhaul and the dev team hold live streams with users
- Western Digital (Asia) launch a short film competition with a special machinima section suitable for SL film makers
- LL announces it’ll be offering all IndieCade nominees & official selections a Desura distribution deal
- World’s End Garden announces closure
- LL seek to re-vamp Desura client open-source project after the SL viewer open-source model
- The LL ToS changes continue to rumble on:
- Machinimatix refocus terminology in their products & Bryn Oh resigns from the LEA
- I point out that (unfortunately) the wording in the ToS is very common
- An in-world legal panel is announced to address concerns and answer questions
- Qarl Fizz quits SL
- I provide audio recordings and also transcripts from the in-world legal discussion
- Designing Worlds plans a special programme on the subject
- Lab runs a Halloween photo contest with L16K in prizes
- CastAR gets immersive capability to place it on a par with Oculus Rift and $500,000 in first 3 days of modest kickstarter
- The Lab announces a “mobile beta” programme for accessing SL using OnLive streaming
- The CtrlAltStudio viewer has an unofficial first pass at including SL viewer UI elements when using Oculus Rift
- Firestorm discuss their upcoming 64-bit Windows release with me prior to launching their 4.5.1 beta update and Windows Alpha 64-bit versions
Platform News
- Week 40: Andrew and Maestro Linden continue to try to pin-down the cause of recent region crossing issues; Baker starts working through the viewer-side code for his group ban list work; render weights and their associated calculations are tweaked. Additional bug-fixes are announced
- AIS v3 officially pointed-to as coming soon
- Week 42: upcoming viewer-side interest list changes are previewed, and viewer-side code is made available to TPVs for testing purposes; Monty Linden starts into HTTP work directly related to HTTP pipelining
- Unfortunately, the interest list viewer proves itself determined not to make in through LL’s QA, delaying the release
Art Reviews
- Overto Omonto – Per4mance MetaLES
- Colour Key – LEA
- Moving Rafts and Gaia Theory Project – LEA
- Mixed Pixels – Art India
Events
Pey’s Travelogue
- Alki
- Harrowdale
- World’s End Garden
- Avedon Park
- Calas Halloween special at SilverMyst
- Nagare
- Tudor Rose
Other Worlds
- InWorldz launches a unique means of RL exercise while spending time in-world
- Cloud Party jumps on the Oculus Rift bandwagon
November
Second Life and the Lab
- The Drax Files features the Fran Seranade and her daughter, Barbi
- Drax offers some thoughts on Leap Motion
- In the long-running Evans et Al vs. linden Lab case, Judge Ryu gives the OK for the settlement to proceed
- CasperTech launch PrimBay, an on-line Marketplace for SL & other VWs
- The Lab moves to improve SL Marketplace security
- Singularity updates with support for materials and particles and with a 64-bit Windows version
- Firestorm commences blocking older versions from SL
- The Machinima Expo6 sees a film from SL win the Grand Prize
- The Lab announces the Fitted Mesh project, I get to preview the viewer
- Lab issue cautionary reminder over L$ purchases
- A request for tax information from some users causes confusion; Desmond Shang gets additional clarification via e-mail
- CtrlAltStudio offers Kinect support for the viewer
- Lab offers Leap Motion integration for SL, but looks to TPVs to handle the work
- Qarl considers the Fitted Mesh solution to be “mostly good”
- The Lab issues a password security reminder in the wake of the Adobe security breach
- The Drax Files Radio Hour is announced
Platform News
- Week 44: Lab starts pushing TPVs to ready AIS v3-ready test versions of their viewers so that further testing can get underway; viewer issues means that some types of crash are not being reported; Monty starts updating third-party libraries used in the building of viewers while also digging deeper into server-side HTTP capabilities / pipelining requirements
- CHUI updates see viewer FPS adversely impacted
- Black dragon continues to progress very nicely
- Week 45: dealing with “Trojan objects” and upcoming code contributions for the viewer, and a tidy update on group ban lists
- The interest list updates finally make it to a project viewer release
- Week 46: recent server-side changes to combat griefing see rezzing systems hitting the grey goo fence
- Week 48: bug fixes are the order of the week, with region crossings camera distance issues and a weird region restart issue in focus
Art Reviews
- Give the Numbers! and Arithmos – LEA
- The Machine – LEA
- Lost Second Life – Dryland
- Oceania Planetary Park – LEA
- Invisible People – Lost City
Events
Pey’s Travelogue
- Cupcakes
- Imagination
- Noble New England – Isle of Myrth
- Caprice and Easy-A
- Asalia House
- Small Town Green
- L2 Studio
- Taka no Sakura
- Jomo
- One Christmas Night
- Dawn of Radiance
Personal Notes
- It’s that time when everyone is trying to get to Mars, although Curiosity has a slight hiccup
- I finally get the menu tweaks to this blog finished and then realise I’ve passed the 2,000 posts milestone
December
Second Life and the Lab
- Season 2 of the acclaimed The Blackened Mirror premieres
- A unique RL / SL cross-over sees A Christmas Carol performed before audiences in both
- UWA launch “What Makes Us Human?” in SL
- The Romeo + Juliet winter season announced
- Documents obtained from Edward Snowden and sifted by The Guardian (and others) reveal that both the NSA and GCHQ had a fine old time in SL (and elsewhere)
- Firestorm hold their last Q&A of the year
- Andrew Linden announces he’s leaving the Lab
- Lab asks users to complete a survey on SL Marketplace search
- LL offers a review of 2013
- Tutsy Navarathna wins the WD Sci-fi challenge machinima section
- It appears profile feed direct messaging is discontinued
- Saffia spots an issue affecting SL users using Gmail
Platform News
- There is an announcement that Oculus Rift support will be “soon”, but quite possibly not quite-so-soon as anticipated
- Week 49: Problems continue with the Interest List project viewer and the Fitted Mesh project viewer continues to be tweaked
- As a final treat for the year, Andrew Linden announces uniform scaling of prims and linksets via LSL
- Week 50: Fitted Mesh gets a viewer update, code contributions move closer to a release
- Lab issues a “last call” for feedback on Fitted Mesh, with the project set to head towards RC release in early 2014
- Group Bans progress, Dwarfins and other breedables start poofing
Art Reviews
- Red Shoes – MIC Imagin@rium
- We Annihilate Remotely – Artemis Gallerie
- Sleepy Snail – MetaLES
- Asterion Coen – LEA
- Fisicofollia – LEA
- Plankton – LEA
- 35 Elephants – LEA
- Faces – Art India
- Roots and War – Song Bird
- Sun to Moon: Transmigration Between Day and Night – Myhns Land
Events
Pey’s Travelogue
Other Worlds
Personal Notes
- I reach 7 years in SL with this avatar
- My new Nexus 7 means I can really enjoy SL with Lumiya
- Impressed by others, I revamp my little corner of SL
- Saffia bravely asks me to write another piece for Prim Perfect
- I offer a little review of Morgan Garret’s brilliant birds
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 
2 thoughts on “2013: a year in review (3): September – December”
Comments are closed.