On Wednesday, February 11th, the Lab published a brief blog post seeking help from users in helping to pin-down issues related to inventory loss.
The post reads in full:
As we continue to improve Second Life, we’re looking into the issue of inventory loss. If you have experienced some form of inventory loss in the past 12 months – whether partial (such as a single object or subfolder), or full – please take a moment to share your answers via this quick survey.
Your answers will help provide our engineering team with information that will assist them as they make improvements to Second Life.
We greatly appreciate your time and want to thank you for responding to the survey.
The link will take respondents to a set of 7 questions covering when and how they might have suffered the loss of one or more items from their inventory, the kind of loss experienced (from single item through to their entire inventory, or the loss of a specific folder or items across multiple folders, etc.), details on their preferred viewer, etc.
These are then followed by an opportunity for users to supply any additional information related to their experiences with inventory they feel might be useful to the Lab, and an optional section which can be completed if users have no objection to the Lab contacting them for further information.
If you have suffered from inventory loss over the course of the last year, please do consider completing the survey.
An artist’s impression of ESA’s IXV lifting body attached to its upper sage booster during its first sub-orbital flight
On Wednesday, February 11th, the European Space Agency (ESA) launched a Vega rocket from their Guiana Space Centre in French Guiana, South America. The rocket has been Europe’s launch system for lightweight payloads since 2012, and in this capacity it has generally been used to lift Earth observation mission payloads into polar orbits, where they can see as much of the Earth’s surface as the planet rotates beneath them.
The February 11th mission was different, however. This was launched due west, out over the Atlantic and directly towards Africa. And, rather than carrying a satellite, the rocket carried a new, experimental spaceplane, very unglamorously called IXV, for Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle.
Dubbed a “mini-shuttle” by some in the media, IXV is more correctly a lifting body design. That is, it has no wings of any description. Instead, it uses its own aerodynamic shape to generate lift and stability during re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere. This particular principle of flight isn’t new. Lifting body designs have been used for a number of experimental purposes over the years, including in the 1960s and 1970s as NASA investigated potential designs for a reusable space vehicle (although the evolving mission requirements for the space shuttle meant that a lifting body design was eventually rejected in favour of a delta wing configuration).
The IXV mission
In popular culture, and for those old enough to remember, footage of the crash and disintegration of a lifting body piloted by Bruce Peterson, was used in the opening titles of the TV series The Six Million Dollar Man. Unlike the fictional Steve Austin, however, Peterson survived his crash without the aid of bionics, although he did lose his sight in one eye … courtesy of an infection which occurred while he was in hospital after the crash. More recently, the use of a lifting body approach has been been demonstrated by Sierra Nevada’s Dream Chaser vehicle, which had been intended to fly crews to and from the International Space Station.
Europe’s IXV is an uncrewed vehicle, weighing just under 2 tonnes. It’s primary objective is to research the re-entry and flight characteristics of such a vehicle shape and to test the re-entry shielding technologies that ESA are developing. All of this is with a view to developing a new generation of reusable space vehicles that could be employed for both crewed and uncrewed missions. The first of these is likely to be PRIDE – the Programme for Reusable In-orbit Demonstrator in Europe – a genuine spaceplane using a combination lifting body / winged design.
ESA’s PRIDE aims to demonstrate the use of a reusable spaceplane in satellite launch operations
PRIDE is designed to be launched atop a rocket and, once in orbit, deploy satellite payloads prior to returning to Earth for a conventional runway landing, refurbishment and reuse. In this, it would be somewhat similar to the US Air Force’s uncrewed and classified X-37B spaceplane, which is capable of long duration orbital flights, notching-up some 1,367 days in space in just 3 missions between 2010 and 2014. However, unlike the X-37 programme, which is believed to be both an advanced technologies test vehicle and potentially capable of undertaking reconnaissance activities when in orbit, PRIDE would be a purely civilian operation.
Another potential use for the technologies seen in IXV is in providing the means to operate reusable boosters as a part of Europe’s next generation of launch vehicles, which would be capable of flying themselves back to a safe landing after use. Lifting body technologies and the re-entry systems used on IXV might also be used in missions to returns samples from Mars and the asteroids to Earth, and spaceplane technologies in general might one day form a part of ESA’s strategy for ferrying crews to / from orbital space facilities in the future.
The technologies being tested by IXV may one day be used in reusable boosters forming a part of ESA’s next generation of launchers
IXV’s maiden flight was relatively short – just under 2 hours in duration – and sub-orbital in nature. Boosted to an altitude of around 450 kilometres (281 miles), the vehicle cruised over Africa prior to initiating re-entry through the Earth’s atmosphere at a speed of some 7.5 kilometres per second (just under 16,800 miles per hour), using its shape to generate lift and stability, and two tail-mounted “paddles” for steering. Once through the heat of re-entry and slowed to hypersonic speeds, a special parachute deployed to slow the vehicle to subsonic speeds. This allowed the main parachute system could be deployed, which brought the car-sized vehicle to a relatively “soft” splashdown at just 7 metres a second (12.5 mph), so it could be recovered by the vessel Nos Aries.
The entire mission, from launch to splashdown, occurred almost precisely on schedule. Only a slight delay prior to lift-off causing the schedule to be adjusted. Ironically, recovery of the vehicle following splashdown took almost as along as the mission itself, and an overcast sky in the recovery zone presented images being captured of the vehicle’s descent by parachute.
Nevertheless, the mission was a great success. Now begins a long trawl through the data gathered by some 300 instruments and sensors spread throughout and over the little spaceplane.
All images and video, courtesy of the European Space Agency
On Monday, February 9th, the Lab issued a blog post outlining some of the upcoming improvements to Second Life.
In all six improvements are listed, five of which are user-facing, while the sixth should also yield benefits, although these may not be in terms of observable differences in how SL operates for most people. Further of the six listed, four have project viewer associated with them, three of which relate to visible viewer-side changes in terms of improved or new functionality. The remaining two updates should be appearing as either project or release candidate viewers in the very near future.
Regular readers of my weekly SL project updates will likely already be familiar with these improvements, at list in principle, but I’ll run through them here as well.
The first of the improvements which is already available for testing is the new Avatar Hover Height (AHH) feature. For those who remember it, this effectively sees the return of the old “z-offset height adjustment” found in many TPVs, which allowed users to adjust their avatar’s height relative to the ground, whether standing, sitting or kneeling, or when using poseballs, etc., to ensure they were correctly positioned relative to whatever they were standing / sitting / kneeling upon.
Now in a project viewer (and soon to be a release candidate: Avatar Hover Height provides a means of adjusting your avatar’s graphical height above the ground / floor / objects, as seen by yourself and others
I’ve provided a complete overview of the new functionality, which does not replace the existing Appearance panel Hover slider), and server-side support for it is now available grid-wide. So, if you want to try-out the feature for yourself, you can do so by downloading the Avatar Hover Height project viewer. I’ll continue to provide updates on this feature under the Avatar Hover Height tag in this blog.
The Marketplace listing panel is the viewer-side hub of the new VMM functionality
The second of the improvements currently undergoing testing is the Viewer-managed Marketplace (VMM). This is more specifically aimed at people selling goods on the SL Marketplace, and provides them with the means to manage their Marketplace inventory and carry out an number of Marketplace operations from directly within the viewer.
Server-side support for this functionality is only available on Aditi, the beta grid at this point in time, and I’ve also provided an overview of how it works, complete with a look of the viewer-side changes and how to use the test regions on Aditi for those interested. Testing of VMM on the main grid should be commencing some time in the next month (but not until after February 14th), and I’ll continue to carry news about it under the Viewer-managed Marketplace tag in this blog.
The third improvement that is available for testing and mentioned in the blog post is that of the new Mesh Importer (upload) project viewer. As the name suggests, this provides a modified mesh uploader with optional debug output, performs name-based LOD association, and handle models with many materials, allowing models with more than 8 unique faces to be imported.
A number of bug reports have already been filed for this viewer – see the JIRA filter list for details.
The remaining two updates which will be visible to users should be appearing in project or release candidate viewers in the near future are:
An improved means to control and organize the many notices users receive: inventory offers, group notices, event invites, and money transactions, which will offer a new floater for such messages, rather than simply having them arrive in the same pop-up / chiclet formats which make them indistinguishable to one another at first glance
A means for users to save one or more sets of graphics settings on a per-account basis, allowing them to quickly switch between different sets of graphics options to assist with performance as they move around the grid (so, for example, you might have a set of “low” graphic settings you could switch-on in order to maintain performance in busy regions, and a set of “high” graphics settings, with as many bells and whistles turned on as you like and in accordance with your GPUs capabilities,, for use in quieter regions). It will also provide controls for defining how other avatars are rendered in your field of view, by allowing you to define a limit above which the viewer will cease rendering avatars fully, and instead will render them as a sold colour imposter.
The last update mentioned by the blog post is that of the Lab’s extensive tool chain update and changes to the viewer autobuild process. While this won’t bring any noticeable changes to the viewer UI, etc., it should, as the blog post notes, “improve stability, performance, and the productivity of developers so that we can more quickly bring you an even better Second Life.”
As added benefit in this work is that it should in time allow TPVs to build their viewers using the same packages as the Lab a lot more easily. And, as a side note, it also potentially smooths the way for the Lab to produce 64-bit versions of the official viewer, although there are currently no plans in the pipeline for them to start doing so, due to the 32-bit versions of the official viewer being very stable on 64-bit operating systems.
An initial project viewer built using the new tools is already available, but note that this does not contain any functional changes compared to the current release viewer.
In addition, as the Lab’s blog post notes, a similar operation has been under way to update a number of the tools used to build the server-side simulator software as well.
On Wednesday, February 4th, Linden Lab announced the return of the Linden Lab Snowball Fight, together with the official announcement on the Fun Booth Fun Contest I’ve also blogged about under separate cover.
Ebbe, Get Your Gun! – my first encounter at Winter Wonderland was a snowball gun toting Ebbe Linden – now the Lab is inviting everyone to join them in some fun on Friday, February 6th!
The snowball fight announcement reads:
Come pelt some Lindens and fellow Residents with snowballs in a frozen field free-for-all at Winter Wonderland. That’s right – between 10 AM SLT and noon SLT on Friday, February 6th, we’re holding a meet-up in world at the Snowball Warzone. Get your free snow launching weapon, gather your posse, and prepare to say hello to some Linden friends for a full on flurry of snow-slinging fun.
The snowball fight, once a mainstay of wintertime fun involving the Lab and Second Life residents has been sorely missed over recent years, and the recent opening on the Lab’s new Winter Wonderland experience, which I previewed / reviewed at the end of January, brought with it renewed requests – such as this one from bizpfeffer – for the snowball fights to be re-launched.
Well, the Lab has heeded the requests!
So, don your winter woollies, get your weapons at the foot of the stairs leading to the Winter Wonderland Snowball Warzone, and then … lock’n’load with plenty of snowballs!
At 10:00 SLT on Wednesday, February 4th, 2015 the Lab launched a new photo competition with a total prize pool of L$19,000.
The Photo Booth Fun Contest challenges SL users to submit their own photo booth theme pictures – the sillier the better – for a chance to win one of the following Linden dollar prizes:
Grand Prize – 10,000 Linden Dollars (estimated value at US$40.00).
First Prize – 5,000 Linden Dollars (estimated value at US$20.00).
Second Prize – 3,000 Linden Dollars (estimated value at $12.00).
Third Prize– 1,000 Linden Dollars (estimated value at $4.00).
To help inspire people with ideas for entries, Xiola Linden has scoured the web far and wide and set-up a Pinterest page full of images showing possible ideas and the use of props to make truly memorable / silly photos. But remember – the images are for inspiration only! The judges are looking for entrants to be as creative as as silly as they can get.
To enter, simply create your snapshot and then upload it to the contest page linked-to above and at the end of this article, using the Entries tab on that page (you must be signed-in to the forums for the button to work).
For full details on the rules of entry, general conditions, eligibility for entry, prize information and so on, please refer to the contest’s official rules and conditions.
In a new move for the Lab, winner will not be decided on the basis of a popularity vote. Instead, a specially selected jury, comprising a mixed panel of Linden Lab representatives from the Lab’s marketing and community relations team and a number of Second Life residents will judge the competition.
As noted at the top of this article, the contest is now open, and entries can be submitted between now and 10:00 SLT on Wednesday, March 4th, 2015.
Just over a year after departing Linden Lab, former CEO Rod Humble has announced the release of his new game, Cults and Daggers, which will take place under the Chaphat label on February 12th, 2015.
The game, priced at US $29.99, will be made available through the Steam platform. Described as “a sprawling and complex turn-based strategy game set in the Hellenistic era between the death of Buddha and the birth of Christ”, the game will be available for PC and Mac.
In it, players are charged with creating their own religious cult / faith and engage in a secret war for the soul of the world, lest the ancient Gods, unable to rule the world, seek to destroy it. Once they have created their faith, player must travel across the Mediterranean regions, spreading the word of their faith, converting the masses and gaining the support for the nobility. They must compete not only with the ancient Gods, but also the forces of other cults, spies, occult forces and other hindrances and opposition forces. As such, you can also engage in espionage, arm the members of your cult / faith
Cults and Daggers play screen (image courtesy of Chaphat LLC)
Commenting on the game in the official press release, Humbles says of the game:
With Cults & Daggers, I sought to explore beyond the traditional strategy game model of ‘build and fight’, and offer up a more cerebral experience. At the same time, I wanted players to challenge themselves by navigating the chaotic web created by corruption, religious avarice and betrayal as rival factions vie for power.
The game spans a 400-year period of history, between the death of Buddha and the birth of Christ, and can be played as a single player against the game’s AI, with a multi-player mode for up to four players (hot seat and play-by-e-mail supported). As well as building their own faiths, players can seek to subvert their opponents’ followers, train disciples to become fighters or assassins, gain additional rewards by directly thwarting the plans of the ancient Gods, and more.
Adam Smith, writing in Rock, Paper, Shotgun, says of the game, “I’m absolutely hooked by the theme and the world is an active place, with plagues and wars interrupting my plots”, another he notes a couple of things aren’t immediately clear when playing – although he also notes these isn’t sufficient to put him off, and he’s very keen to try the multi-player options.
A trailer video for the game has also been released on You Tube, so take a look for yourself. And for those of you who like Dance / Electronic music, you might want to have a listen to Mr. Humble’s debut album Outsurge, released last Apirl.
On Wednesday, February 11th, the Lab published a brief blog post seeking help from users in helping to pin-down issues related to inventory loss.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 