Month: May 2014

Fantasy Faire 2014: Capture a Dream of a Lifetime and be immortalised in print

Posted on by Inara Pey

The 2014 Fantasy Faire photo contest has been launched, the proceeds of which will go to Relay for Life in a very special way.

This year, the theme of the competition is Dream of a Lifetime, and entrants are being asked to submit photos which capture the spirit of each of the eleven sims.

fantasy_photo_contest-1Entries must be submitted between May 1st and midnight SLT on May 11th, 2014, and must comply with the following rules:

  • Photographs are to be taken at your choice of eleven individually themed Sims for this year’s Fantasy Faire   (Read sim information note card for more details).
  • Pictures must be posted in the Fantasy Fiare Photo Contest Flickr group.
  • Twelve entries are allowed per person.
  • Photos may be edited with any photo software of your choosing.
  • Photos must be PG!  We will immediately disqualify any nude or distasteful photo(s).
  • Reminder, no text on photos.
  • Fantasy Faire & Relay for Life reserve the rights to use photograph submissions for event advertisement and publication.
  • Deadline for submission of photos is May 11th, 2014, midnight SLT.
  • Enjoy the Fantasy Faire Sims and have FUN!
  • In addition, contest winners will be required to provide their winning photography with the following dimensions: minimum  1800 pixels high by 2300 pixels wide  at 200dpi.

The Prize

This year the prize is very special: winning entries will appear in a special commemorative calendar which will be produced via Cafe Press and sold in RL to raise money for Relay for Life. All photographs used will be fully credited to the people taking them.

But wait – eleven sims for a 12-month calendar? What of the twelfth? The twelfth photo will be the one the judges of the competition feel best encapsulates the spirit of the Faire, and thus judged to be the overall winner. Not only will this appear in the calendar, it will also appear on the cover as well.

So, good luck to all who enter, and happy snapping!

Keeping up with Fantasy Faire

You can keep-up with Fantasy Faire preparations and activities a number of ways:

Kokua 3.7.6: Breakpad, Merchant Outbox and Voice

Posted on by Inara Pey

kokua-logoThe Kokua team released version 3.7.6.32681 on Wednesday April 30th, keeping to a roughly monthly release run for the last three experimental and full releases.

As always, please refer to the Kokua release notes for the full accreditation of any updates mentioned below.

The new version sees Kokua maintains parity with the Lab’s 3.7.5 and 3.7.6 code base releases, and sees the viewer gain the recent Google Breakpad changes (and fixes for the same from the Lab), as well as the Merchant Outbox fixes and the remaining voice updates for windows and Mac (these libraries ere merged into an earlier release of Kokua, so this release sees the final updates.

Together, the Voice and Merchant Outbox changes comprise the use of Vivox 4.6.x libraries for improved stability & to address Mac Mavericks issues and fixes for accurately detecting Merchant status & improving Merchant Outbox error recovery.

Kokua can now display Received Items as a regular inventory folder, allow the pull-up option is also still displayed
Kokua can now display Received Items as a regular inventory folder, allow the pull-up option is also still displayed

In addition, the release sees a number of TPV and Kokua team updates, the former notably coming from Firestorm. These comprise:

  • An option to display the Received Items section of the inventory floater as a regular folder
  • Hide empty system folders

Check boxes for both options can be found in Preferences > Kokua > Inventory. Note that when the Received Items folder is active, the slide-up Received Items bar at the foot of the inventory panel will remain visible, rather than being hidden (as is the case with the likes of Firestorm).

In addition, the release includes the following updates from the Kokua team:

  • Fixes for several merge regressions from RLVa affecting Kokua functionally
  • Windows: returned functionally of local chat right-click menu music stream title display. This was removed when FmodEx was installed
  • Macintosh: streaming music is now using the FmodEx library and streams appear more reliable than with previously used Quicktime
  • UI enhancements:
    • Fix for the parcel name not changing unless “Show region coordinates” was switched on
    • “Report Abuse” added to right-click context menus for objects and avatars.

This release doesn’t contain the SSA / AIS v3 updates (which are still only at RC status in the LL viewer). The reason given for this is that there are currently no public RLV / RLVa repositories containing a working merge of sunshine-external the SSA / AISv3 code, and Nicky Perian, the Kokua lead, doesn’t feel he is familiar enough with RLV code to go ahead with his own merge. So expect to see SSA / AIS v3 appear in Kokua in a future release.

There is a test version of Kokua which is running SSA / AIS v3, but which does not have RLVa, for those who wish to test the SSA / AIS v3 functionality, which is currently running on the three RC channels in Second Life.

RLV or RLVa?

Up until now, Kokua has used the RLVa API. However, Nicky P is considering swapping to using Marine Kelley’s original RLV API, on the grounds that it maintains a closer parity with the LL viewer. To this end, he has asked anyone who is aware of anyone of performance differences between RLV and RLVa, to please comment in the Kokua 3.7.6 release notes.

 

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