Year: 2013

SL projects update 25 (3): Nyx Linden announces SSB/A “imminent”

Posted on by Inara Pey

A note card containing a message from Nyx Linden is doing the rounds in-world concerning Server-side Baking / Appearance. The note card reads in full:

Greetings all,

Nyx Linden (stock)
Nyx Linden (stock)

Wanted to give everyone a quick update on the status of Server Side Appearance. First of all, thanks to all who helped participate in last week’s pile-on test, and a special thanks to those viewers who are already integrating the RegionHandshakeReply flag posted recently. We’ll likely be doing one more pile-on next week, targeting a smaller set of users (to avoid inventory limits that have caused attachments not to load, etc) next week. Let me know if you’d like to participate.

We currently are not aware of any major release-blocking bugs and are starting to look at scheduling the roll-out process. We have a number of QA passes and tests to run through before we can get the final greenlight to do so, so we are currently targeting July 9th as the earliest date at which we will enable SSA for a significant portion of the grid (a server RC channel). Please note that if we find additional bugs in the meantime, or run into other scheduling difficulties this date could be pushed back. We will not be going to RC before this date however.

Please consider this an official warning that this is imminent – We’ve been saying for a while that we’re getting ready for release. We hope with a solid date in mind, all viewers can start messaging to their users that they will need to update or they will start to see issues. There are a few methods by which we will be messaging to the SL community as a whole about this, but we highly encourage you to use your judgement in the best way to reach out to your users and transition them to SSA-compatible viewers.

As always, if you have any questions, or see any issues that could be worrisome if they are not fixed before release, please do not hesitate to reach out to me and/or file a JIRA. Thanks for all your work in preparing for this release!

Nyx Linden

[link and all emphasis mine]

If you want to avoid seeing increasing numbers of grey avatars and / or avoid people telling you, "you're a cloud" when you appear perfectly fine to yourself, update to a version of a viewer supporting SSB/A
If you want to avoid seeing increasing numbers of grey avatars and / or avoid people telling you, “you’re a cloud” when you appear perfectly fine to yourself, update to a version of a viewer supporting SSB/A

As previously noted in this blog, the plan from the Lab has been to deploy SSB/A gradually. Speaking on this at the TPV Developer meeting on Friday June 14th, Nyx indicated the deployment would be a small group of regions prior to moving to a Release Candidate channel (either in whole or in part) and then progress from there.

However, with the preliminary date for this work to commence, and given that almost all maintained SL viewers are now SSB/A-ready (Dolphin and Exodus are the only exceptions at the time of writing), there really is no excuse for people not to update their viewer. The choices are arleady available:

  • Those who prefer the v1-style of UI have the choice of Cool VL Viewer and Singularity
  • Those who prefer the V3-style have the choise of the SL viewer, Catznip, Firestorm, Kokua, Niran’s, and RLV.

In addition, the Lumiya, Meltabolt and Radegast clients are also SSB/A ready.

With thanks to mona Eberhardt

SL10BCC: My picks of the day – Friday June 21st

Posted on by Inara Pey

Apologies to anyone receiving an earlier notification of this piece being published. A mis-click on my part.

SL10BCC is well underway, with lots to see and do. Given the size of the event, trying to review everything on offer simply isn’t feasible, and some hardware issues at my end mean that I’m not in a position to do the kind of “region round-ups” I did last year.

So instead, I’m offering some personal picks from what’s on display by way of suggestions as possible stop-off points in your explorations.

Main Installations – the Cake Stage

Straddling the four regions of SL10B Astound, Enchant, Fascinate and Pizzazz, the SL10BCC cake stage is, as is the tradition, huge. A very organic design by Donpatchy Dagostino, it offers wealth od detail which has already kept photographers across SL very busy – as can be witnessed via the SL10BCC Flickr group.

The SL10BCC Cake Stage
The SL10BCC Cake Stage

If I’m completely honest, I much prefer this year’s design over that of SL9B; it is attractive and draws one in to it in a very natural way. As such, it forms an eye-catching centrepiece to the celebration regions which forms the perfect backdrop for photos of other exhibits or for shots across the sims themselves.

Inside the build is a wealth of detail, including the dance floor itself and, suspended above it, a very delicious-looking birthday cake!

The Cake Stage
The Cake Stage

Even if you’re not into shaking various parts of your anatomy in time to music, the cake stage is still very much worth a visit and a look around. Use the official SLurls:

Kirstinlee Cinquetti – Bobbekins Back and Forward Game

I’ve covered Bobbekins a couple of time in this blog, and it is great to see them participating in SL10BCC.

For those not in the know, Bobbekins World is a series of children’s e-books which use advanced animation and combine video, music and still images of cute little characters called Bobbekins, which are created using a range of media – including Second Life.

The bobbekins Back and Forward Game
The Bobbekins Back and Forward Game

The Bobbekins Game is a fun piece which helps promote the project (which is something worthy of this kind of promotion) in an interactive and entertaining way.

Definitely not one to be missed when exploring SL10BCC in a small group. Just grab a space hopper, click “roll dice” and off you go! Don’t forget to click the info givers as well to discover more about Bobbekins World.

Gravie Garzo – Avatar Evolution

Garvie Garzo - Avatar Evolution
Garvie Garzo – Avatar Evolution

While we’re all out celebrating Second Life, parting, looking back over the past and looking forward to the future, it’s easy to overlook the very thing which, next to the viewer itself, really allows us to enjoy SL in all its forms and which gives us the real power of personal self-expression in-world: our avatar.

Gravie Garzo fixes that with a clean, easy-on-the-eye exhibit which takes us right from the beginning of things (a pre-animate blob!) to the Primitar, and then steps us through the various stages of SL avatar evolution to the modern full-body mesh avatars of today, now complete with added materials chewiness!

It’s a light-hearted but clever piece which serves to remind us, all grumblings aside as to the underlying faults with the basic design, just how our avatar has actually evolved, and how it has tended to keep pace with other aspects of SL’s evolution.

Gravie Garzo - Avatar Evolution
Gravie Garzo – Avatar Evolution

Th exhibit also offers you the chance to take part in the avatar parade, and complete three little polls about SL and the avatar, and collect a boxes of goodies which includes your own Primitar action figure (yes, I’m aware the real thing can be obtained elsewhere in SL but – it’s an action figure collectible! who could pass-up on that? :D).

Continue reading “SL10BCC: My picks of the day – Friday June 21st” →

SL projects update 25 (2): server, materials

Posted on by Inara Pey

Update June 21st: A new Materials Support and Tips thread has been started by Creator Linden in the Building and Texturing Forum (with thanks to Daniel Voyage for the poke).

Server Deployments – Week 25

As always, please refer to the week’s forum deployment thread for news, updates and feedback.

Second Life Server (Main) Channel

On Tuesday June 18th, the SLS main channel received the interest list improvement project which have been previously deployed to Magnum (week 22) and BlueSteel and LeTigre (week 24).

Release Candidate (RC) Channels

On Wednesday 19th June, all three RC channels (Magnum, BlueSteel and LeTigre) received the same server maintenance package, designed to fix a number of crash modes and address an issue with neighbouring region visibility. In addition this package:

  • Contains the new LSL pathfinding property CHARACTER_STAY_WITHIN_PARCEL, and the new LSL object return functions designed to assist land owners with the return of objects under controlled conditions
  • Provides fixes for A fix for an issue in which LSL HTTP-in scripts would sometimes see the incorrect URL (BUG-2833) and for Bug 2850 (Cannot rez objects in Bluesteel and LeTigre parcels which disallow object entry).

The neighbour region visibility issue fixed by the deployment is for SVC-8019, which is related to issues with regions failing to communicate with their neighbours for up to an hour are a restart, causing communications issues (e.g. LSL chat) across region borders, rather than being related to the issue of diagonally adjacent regions not being visible to one another (SVC-8130), which is still an issue on the main grid.

The fix deployed to the Release Candidates does not address issues of diagonally-adjacent regions failing to render to one and/or the other
The fix deployed to the Release Candidates does not address issues of diagonally adjacent regions failing to render to one and/or the other

Commenting on the latter issue while testing it with an alt during the Server Beta meeting on Thursday May 20th, Maestro Linden said, “It looks like some kind of false communications timeout in the remote region, where it disconnects your viewer.” Currently, there is no proposed fix for the issue, although the Lab keep poking at it.

Materials Processing

matbug-715-a
Objects using transparencies as rendered with ALM off in the materials viewer (click to enlarge)
matbug-175-b
The same items rendered with ALM active in the materials viewer (click to enlarge)

The Materials Processing project reached a release status on Wednesday June 19th, with the release of Second Life viewer 3.6.0.277516.

However, problems continue to be reported with transparencies rendering as black when using the viewer, (see MATBUG-175, MATBUG-193 and a similar bug, MATBUG-186).

Two possible workarounds for these problems have been suggested, which may work, depending on the precise nature of the issue, if you’re experiencing it:

  • Going into Preferences > Graphics and unchecking Advanced Lighting Model (ALM) before click OK to apply, then going back into Preferences > Graphics and enabling ALM once more
  • If you have water reflections set to Minimum in Preferences > Graphics, try setting them to a higher value and then unchecking / rechecking ALM.

Some of these issues were known well in advance of the viewer reaching a release status, which promoted comments of surprise during the Open-source Developer meeting on Wednesday June 20th that the viewer had been released. Commenting on this, Oz Linden responded:

I’m not at all surprised that people found combinations of visual attributes we hadn’t tested that were busted, really. There are a staggering number of combinations – after you factor in all the possible settings changes on top of them, the number is absolutely not even close to something we could test. The “black issue” makes it sound simple…. we probably had a dozen bugs during development that had that same symptom for different reasons. I’m sure we’ll get it sorted out.

Continue reading “SL projects update 25 (2): server, materials” →

LL say, “celebrate SL10B and win a laptop (but only if you’re a US resident)”

Posted on by Inara Pey

SL10BThe Lab has launched the latest step in their campaign to celebrate SL’s tenth anniversary – and it is an offer certain to delight and frustrate.

“Celebrate SL10B With a Chance to Win a New Alienware 14 Laptop!” reads the headline of a new blog post, which goes on to read in part:

To help celebrate Second Life’s tenth birthday, we’re running a co-promotion with Alienware , the pioneer in specialty high-performance PC gaming systems!

From now until July 17, 2013, Second Life users can enter to win a brand new Alienware 14 laptop! For contest details and to enter today, visit here.

The Alienware 14 has some impressive specs: Intel i7QM processor, 8 or 16Gb of memory, either an NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 750M with 1GB GDDR5 or NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 765M with 2GB GDDR5, Windows 7 or 8 64-bit, etc. Exactly which model is up for grabs as a prize is unclear from the promotion, but I’d suspect the entry-level model might be a safe bet.

alienware

HOWEVER, before you start rubbing your hands in glee at the prospect of winning a new laptop, be advised that if you’re outside the US, you’re stuffed. You’re not eligible to enter.

There are potentially some very good reasons why the offer is limited to US residents only. For one thing, running a truly international competition with such an attractive prize with a third-party is going to be something of a logistical load to carry, even allowing for any legal / technical issues involved. It’s also likely that Alienware / Dell themselves limited the scope of the competition so that they are not hit with and headache in running it (and lets face it, “country specific” competitions aren’t actually that unusual for multi-nationals to run). But, the fact remains that in going this route, rather than attempting to develop a competition which is inclusive of all their users, the Lab is again going to be perceived as thumbing its nose at its overseas users.

Even so, the fact remains that, with the number of recent “US-only” promotions the Lab has run in recent months (and remembering that ant “US-only” limitations placed on them may not be LL’s fault, but rather stipulations placed on the offers due to technical or other reasons), it would be nice to see if the Lab could come up with opportunities to win “valuable” prizes and participate promotional offers which are both reflective of and inclusive of their international user base.

Linden Lab issue press release celebrating 10 years of SL

Posted on by Inara Pey

LL logoThursday June 20th. Linden Lab has issued a press release ahead of the official 10th Anniversary of Second Life (June 23rd, 2013).

The press release, which is accompanied by a large-format infographic, opens:

Since Second Life first opened to the public in 2003, users have spent the equivalent of more than 217,266 years in the virtual world, which has seen nearly 36 million registrations to date. To mark the tenth anniversary, Linden Lab has published an infographic highlighting these and other facts about Second Life’s history and the current state of the virtual world which is available here: http://lindenlab.com/releases/infographic-10-years-of-second-life. [see below]

Throughout the month of June, Linden Lab has been celebrating Second Life’s tenth ‘birthday’ (SL10B) with special surprises for the virtual world’s users, including limited-edition virtual gifts, contests, and inworld activities. Second Life users are also organizing a number of special events themselves, including a community celebration featuring art exhibitions, parties, and more. Users are urged to keep an eye on the official Second Life blog and the SL10B category of the Destination Guide, which highlights more than 2,400 locations and events in total for Second Life users to explore.

The piece goes on to include a quote from Rod Humble and to highlight the fact that he recently appeared on Draxtor Despres’ The Drax Files, complete with a link to the episode.

The infographic highlights some of the significant “high level” numbers relating to the platform’s first decade of use, which should hopefully make eyebrow-raising reading for the uninitiated among the press and (one would hope) those who have long since considered Second Life to have either “failed” or “dead”.

SL10B_Infographic

For those of us who use Second Life daily, some of the figure may appear to be light on substance (how many of the 400,000 monthly sign-ups are new users who become retained users, for example/). Given this, it is likely that some / all of the figures will be questioned, mulled-over, debated and questioned by users – and rightly so.

However as a tool for reaching out to the press at large and reminding them that Second Life is very much at the centre of the Lab’s thinking and is still alive, kicking and vibrant (why else would we all be here otherwise?), the infographic will hopefully act as a firm dig-in-the-ribs for those in the media who are otherwise quick to dismiss the platform as being little more than history long past.

Related Links

With thanks to Pete Linden, Linden Lab.

SL10BCC: My picks of the day – Thursday 20th June

Posted on by Inara Pey

SL10BCC is well underway, with lots to see and do. Given the size of the event, trying to review everything on offer simply isn’t feasible, and some hardware issues at my end mean that I’m not in a position to do the kind of “region round-ups” I did last year.

So instead, I’m offering some personal picks from what’s on display by way of suggestions as possible stop-off points in your explorations.

Main Installations – The Lake Stage

The Lake Stage
The Lake Stage

Kazuhiro Aridian’s mesh creation for the Lake stage has to be seen to be appreciated. A work of art unto itself, it’s a fabulous build; one which reminds me, probably due to the mushroom stage and spreading canopies of leaves above, of the equally remarkable Lake Stage from SL9B in 2012. In some respects I don’t think this is entirely coincidental – Kaz Aridian was responsible for the SL9B Lake Stage as well. So, if the echoes are intentional (and not a product of my dotty little mind), I’d say it’s a very subtle and creative way of reflecting the “looking back” part of this year’s theme.

The Lake Stage
The Lake Stage

And even if the similarity is down to my imagination working overtime, no matter. This is not one to be missed, so make sure you do stop-off on your rounds and take a good look – it’s well worth the time.

Boudicca Amat – Thank you Second Life

We all have a story to tell about our life and times in Second Life – what brought us here, what we discovered, the friends we made, the discoveries shared, why we keep logging back in (some of us daily!), and so on.

Thank You Second Life
Thank You Second Life

In this piece, Boudicca Amat tells her own story – and in doing so, looks back over SL’s past in a very personal way. It’s an intimate piece, presented in a very simple format which is perfectly suited to what she has to say and present. Work your way around the framed texts downstairs and upstairs, interspersed with pictures and some wonderful models and follow Boudica on her voyage of discovery and involvement in SL creativity and business. Her tale will be familiar to many who have been in-world for any length of time, which only increases the intimacy of her sharing it.

Serafin Galli – Safe Waters Foundation

I actually included Serafin Galli’s Safe Waters Foundation in my coverage of SL9B in 2012. Her piece then made full use of the space available both above and below the water to provide a lovely exhibit piece which admirably promoted her merfolk community without simply being a blatant ad.

Safe Waters Foundation
Safe Waters Foundation

She’s done the same this year as well. What’s more, she’s done so in a fresh and inviting way – which is why I point to her piece as worth visiting. Serafin demonstrates that with 12 months in which to plan and build, it is possible to avoid pulling out the same pieces over again, complete with the same message, and come up with something original which is going to appeal to visitors old and new.

Just don’t forget to dive in and take a look underwater as well!

Continue reading “SL10BCC: My picks of the day – Thursday 20th June” →