With all the excitement over the new UI reaching the Development Viewer code, it’s been easy to overlook the fact that the last few days saw the latest release of the Viewer, which includes the new mesh uploader floater, and sees prim counts and prim equivalency replaced with Land Capacity and Land Impact.
The new uploader floater provides improved capabilities for adjusting and optimising mesh objects prior to upload.
Mesh uploader floater – note Land Impact towards the bottom
Land Impact is introduced alongside the more familiar upload weights (Download, Physics, Server) in a new blog post from the Lab.
Land Impact itself can be seen in the Build floater, as shown in the image below, which compares how objects are now displayed (right) compared to how we’ve seen them in the past (left).
Land Impact (right) Replacing the Prim and PE values with a single figure
Similarly, the Land Capacity can now be seen under OBJECTS in the About Land floater, with the old (left) and new (right) shown below.
Land Capcity in ABOUT LAND (right) – replacing prim counts (left)
I’ve got a more extensive post on these changes, which includes a look at other options as well. With the changes now firmly in the Viewer release code, expect to start seeing Capacity and Land Impact in the About Land and Build floaters of your preferred V3-based TPV in the very near future.
In the meantime, for those trying out the latest Viewer release, be aware that there are upload issues with it that some people are experiencing, and a JIRA has been opened (SH-2595).
Tateru Nino carries some news relating to the initial changes to the official Viewer UI, obtained courtesy of Rhett Linden.
Rhett’s revelations, while interesting reading, are not entirely earth-shattering, and don’t actually go that much beyond what Rod Humble himself has already said concerning the Viewer, and what some of us were speculating as a result.
In a nutshell, Rhett has confirmed:
The Sidebar is to go. This is something that wasn’t hard to guess at, given Rod himself said as much at SLCC 2011
There is to be a more flexible approach to the UI in general, that will allow users to, “Arrange the UI to fit the way they use Second Life. This is important because it moves us toward a model more like most creative software“
This latter point more than likely refers to things like the “Customise Toolbars” and the “FUI” (which people have taken to mean “Flexible User Interface”), both of which are mentioned in passing / hinted at in the SL Helpfile wiki pages (although no specific information is available on either right now). Certainly, the release notes for the merge (see below) point in this direction as well.
What is worthy of note is that Rhett confirms that the initial code for the UI changes, which should also see the arrival of things like click-to-move and the new camera palette (again as revealed by Rod Humble, this time talking on the SL Universe forum), was merged into the Development Viewer code today – although TPV developers had been expecting as much, going on comments passed elsewhere during the day.
For those planning on trying out the latest development Viewer, be aware that the release notes state:
The Viewer floater camera views and presets do not work
The Nearby Voice panel does not update to a new call or from nearby voice info once opened
Viewer crashes when updating UI size in preferences
The Speak button is activated when dragging and dropping between toolbars and/or moving back to the toolbox
Viewer crash when moving the speak button from one toolbar to another when there is an active call request
Teleport history doesn’t display visited locations
Viewer crash when double-clicking the mini-map in People > Nearby
Notification and conversation chiclets overlap
WASD controls don’t move avatar while move floater is in focus
Closing voice controls while a group or p2p call also closes the group call / IM window
Viewer crash after teleport
Hitting back in the ‘Create Group’ panel or ‘Blocked’ panel requires multiple clicks for action to occur.
On Friday October 14th, Linden Lab released their Q3 economic figures. The data presented is a mixed bag.
On the plus side:
Completed registrations remain strong – LL put it at around an average of 16K per day; the graph suggests the average might be slightly higher
Average number of monthly users logged-on rose very slightly (by just under 0.4%)
The number of economic participants rose by around 12,000 and the Linden dollar appreciated very fractionally
Web Marketplace sales grew by 2.78%
On the minus side:
User hours have declined by a touch under 2%
LindeX trading suffered a slight drop
The overall growth in Web Marketplace sales has slowed significantly
A total of around 20sq km of land was lost to the grid.
So, the downward slide in user concurrency has reversed itself very slightly; but the flipside to this is that people are still appearing to spend less time in-world per head than previously. This is something that LL have been trying to get their heads around for several months, and which Rod Humble mentioned it as a point of interest when speaking at SLCC 2011, when he pointed out the demographic for new sign-ups is somewhat younger than has traditionally been the case of SL.
Alongside this is the thorny issue of user retention. Sign-ups, overall concurrent users and user hours online don’t actually equate to this – and we’re not getting any kind of indication at all as to what is happening. How many new sign-ups are translating over time to retained users? Part of the problem here, of course, is actually defining what we all mean as being “user retention”.
Within the Lab, retention is clearly tied closely to engagement. As such, the Lab have indicated they are working on a number of initiatives aimed towards people engaging more directly with the platform in shorter time periods than might currently be the case. Again, at SLCC 2011 a number of Linden Lab employees spoke to this, including:
Colossus Linden, who indicated that currently, it might be several weeks between someone joining SL and actually engaging with the economy in terms of buying L$ – and that LL are looking to reduce this to a matter of days
Durian Linden pointed towards LL developing more in the way of “directed experiences” in order to get incoming users to more rapidly engage in aspects of SL such as building and creativity.
Certainly, it’s hard to argue against these approaches. At the end of the day, obviously, the more a user is actively engaged in the platform, the more they are likely to stick around and grow within it.
So there is work to be done, to be sure. However, taken as a whole, the Q3 economic figures as presented do suggest that SL continues to be relatively stable. Obviously, it would be nice to see more some definitive signs of growth, and the fact that these figures fail to demonstrate this might explain why they were slipped quietly out late on Friday afternoon…
Linden Lab, again with little or notification, have added a new feature to my.secondlife.com – Direct Messaging.
The new feature allows you to send personal messages to your friends via your and their Web Profiles. These messages do not appear on your own Feed or that of the friend you are messaging.
Here’s how it works.
Sending a Direct Message
Log-in to your Web Profile at my.secondlife.com and click on your Inbox (/mail) tab and click on the MESSAGES tab at the top of your inbox (if necessary) to display your direct messages.
Web Profiles Messages tab
Now click on the NEW MESSAGE button – this will open a page requesting the name of the person(s) to whom you wish to send a direct message (they must be on your Friends list). Enter the name in the format first.last – or simply click on the desired name from the list that is displayed as you type. Finally, enter the message itself in the box provided and click SEND.
Note that you can also use the People tab on your Web Profile and then scroll through your list of friends, select the person you wish to DM then select Send a Message from the “Pen” button on their Web Profile page. However, the above option is somewhat quicker.
Receiving a Direct Message
Web Profile Inbox notifications
How you receive a DM depends on whether or not you are in-world.
If you are not logged-in to SL at the time a DM is sent, notification is only received by your Web Profile in the form of a numbered icon appearing in the Inbox tab (see right).
Note that this is the same icon that is displayed when receiving other notifications via your Web Profile as well, so it may not always be indicative that you have received a DM.
To view any new DMs you have received, click on the Inbox tab to open it. New DMs will be displayed directly on your Messages Tab with the text in bold (see below). Note that if you have received multiple DMs from a single person, only the last DM they have sent will be displayed on the Messages tab.
Incoming DMs – displayed in bold; click on sender’s name to view
To view and reply to a message, click on the name of the sender. This will open a further page. Note that the DM may be displayed on its own (if it is the first you have received from the sender), or as a part of an ongoing exchange, in which case the entire exchange will be displayed, with the most recent DM at the bottom, together with the option for you to reply (below).
A DM Exchange
Tip: If you are exchanging a number of DMs with a friend, click on the page refresh option of your browser each time the Inbox notification appears – this will refresh the message list & display the new incoming message on your screen (clicking the Inbox tab itself will take up back to your Messages tab, requiring you to click on the sender’s name yet again to open the DM exchange and view their most recent comment).
In-world notification
DM in-world pop-up notification
If you are in-world when a DM is sent to you, an additional notification will be displayed in your Viewer (see right).
In-world, notifications appear as a pop-up with a link to the message itself. Clicking on the link will open your Web Profile in either your Viewer’s browser or your default web browser (depending on your Preferences) and display the message and reply option as shown above.
Notes:
When viewing a Direct Message from in-world, you may have to additionally log-in to your Web Profile – once you have done so, the message page will automatically be displayed
Some V1.x Viewers garble the incoming notification, for example: “xxxx sends you a messagehttps://my.secondlife.com/inbox/messages/4e948648ab2a18000100d6” – note the lack of any space between “messages” and the url. This causes the link to fail when clicked. If this happens, delete the extraneous “message” in front of the “https” in the browser’s address bar.
The Delete Button
The Direct Message option includes a button to delete exchanges. This is useful for removing old conversations, but should be used with care.
If you delete an ongoing exchange, the other side is not informed of this by default. They will only find out you have left the conversation when they:
Either refresh the page, which will display a message that informing them you have left the conversation
Or they return to their Messages tab, where they will see your name now has a strike-through, indicating you have deleted the exchange.
Similarly, if the other side of your exchange deletes it, you will not be informed until you either refresh your page, or return to the Messages tab.
Note that in either case, messages can still be sent by the party who has not deleted the conversation. However, the messages will not be delivered or any notifications given.
Once a conversation has been deleted, the NEW MESSAGE button on the Message Tab must be used to start a new exchange.
Useful Addition
While this feature doesn’t (yet?) allow for direct DM-IM-DM exchanges to take place, it nevertheless adds another layer of communications options to SL users, and could prove especially useful in enabling conversations between friends when one or other cannot easily get in-world while avoiding the lag created by e-mail. It will be interesting to see if further enhancements are added along the way.
Login2life premiers on German television at midnight CET on the 17th October, and will be streamed via the broadcaster’s – ZDF – website for one week following the premier.
Commenting on the decision to stream the film for a week, Draxtor Despres, who both wrote the music for the film and attended a talk about the film at Nonprofit Commons on Friday 7th October where he could announce the news, said, “It will premiere 10/17 midnight on ZDF & stream via their website for one week all over the planet [no geo-blocking YES YES YES].”
Login2life, directed by Daniel Moshel, follows a group of people who spend a good part of their time in virtual spaces. Notable among them are Gentle Heron, Stroker Serpentine and Jaynine Scarborough, who have all been deeply involved in Second Life. The film also profiles several World of Warcraft players.
Rather than a themed documentary with a central narrative arc, the film might best be described as a series of vignettes, moving through the lives of those involved, examining how and why they engage in virtual living, and how the virtual environment can augment and enhance their real lives in a wide variety of ways. In doing so, it steers well away from the stereotypical views on virtual worlds and particularly Second Life, and instead presents a compelling series of insights into a wide variety of subjects: dealing with disabilities, life, love and so on.
In August this year, Linden Lab announced a Request for Proposals (RFP) to run a new Adult-oriented Gateway for Zindra and Adult-related activities in Second Life.The closing date for proposals was the 12th September, with an announcement due at the Adult Content User Group meeting held on Monday 3rd October.
Only it wasn’t – the reasons given at the meeting were that Viale Linden needed some extra time to work things out and get some preparation work done.
However, some people seem unwilling to wait, as there is a note card doing the rounds that reveals that the winning proposal for the Gateway is apparently from Freedom Continent. This is a group of some 16 private island sims, all themed around adult activities and which include Thunderbird Island (Jennifer’s Jewelry), Blacksilk (The Blacksilk Academy), Damsel, Bondage Ranch, Bondage Playground and Slaver Bay among others, and which includes brand names such as Latex Station, MoDesign, and Think Kink.
The notecard itself reads in part:
“At a meeting on monday the 3rd October Linden Labs [sic] announced that a single organisation had won the contract to build, run and expand an Adult Gateway in accordance with well established principles. While it has not yet been officially announced, the organisation who obtained this contract is called ” The Freedom Continent “. This is an established complex of 16 sims, mostly adult, working together to bring a better sense of reliability to adult users in SL. They have in place a well established management system and many years of experience in dealing with adult content. The freedom team are looking for mentors who understand the problems in dealing with adult content users and work with the team to build a good sound adult mentor group who will greet and teach new users as they appear. The Mentor group, The Adult Grid Mentors, will form the backbone to the group. This mentor group will be the official mentor group for the new adult gateway and has the full support of Linden Labs [sic].”
Precisely what form the new Gateway will take remains to be seen, although four sims are on offer for actually hosting the Gateway – these being the four used to host ZExpo 2011 earlier in the year. As a part of the arrangement, the group managing the Gateway regions will also have exclusive use of the name “Zindra”. Reaction to the news of the selection – assuming it is accurate – has yet to be gauged, but is likely to be interesting.
Update: October 7th
Commenting on questions raised as a result of the note card circling in-world, Peter Gray, Linden Lab’s PR Manager stated, “There is a leading candidate, but we’ve not yet finalised any agreement or announced our selection. We hope to be able to do so soon.”
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 