Tag: SL News

Premium Wilderness: a new experience

Posted on by Inara Pey

So, I’m browsing the Destination Guide, looking for a suitable place to cover in my “Virtual Destinations” series, when I come across a new set of premium-only regions labelled “Premium Wilderness”.

First look – the Destination Guide

The regions appear aimed at another Premium membership promotion, and to showcase some of the new pathfinding capabilities coming to SL. At the time I started my explorations, the blog post had yet to appear, so intrigued by what I’d seen in the Destination Guide, I read the byline in the Destination Guide Jump into the adventure that is the Premium Wilderness and set sail for adventure in this new experience – and jumped.

My first stop was Tapir – although as the six regions are all grouped together and have a common theme, you can start in any one of them.

I arrived on a small pier on the edge of a river. A click me sign provided me with the following information:

Welcome to the Jungle! Feel free to explore at your leisure.

Boat Ride:
Take a boat ride and enjoy the scenery. Just click on the boat when it arrives at the dock and enjoy the ride!

Explore:
Follow the paths, you never know where they might lead!

Interact:
Click on the things you see, you never know what you will find!

Sitting on the dock of the jungle: arriving at Tapir

There is a lot to click and play with – touch a multi-hued frog and it will hop around you and then lead you away from the pier…then disappear into the reeds at the edge of the river. There’s a boat that swings by which you can catch for a cruise along the river, or there are inner tubes you can paddle and diving kit for the really adventurous.

How you get about is up to you – walk, ride, swim – and there is plenty to see along the way, with the 6 sims forming a dense jungle-type environment complete with ancient ruins,  brought together in a very atmospheric mix – moreso if you can run with shadows enabled.

Ancient ruins

The experiences within the regions vary widely in content and use. You can, for example, meet a jaguar and play “fetch” with it, or wrestle with a crocodile, or play round-up with a herd of capybaras and corral them. There are also places where you need to watch your step.

Interestingly, when encountering things you can touch, you’ll often get a chat message, such as:

Acoustic Guitar – po: Look in your inventory for Guitar. It should be in your Object folder. Or click on the Recent Items tab at the top to locate it. Right click and select Wear. Right click and select Detatch to take it off.

One assumes this is for the benefit of those new users who have chosen to take the plunge and sign-up directly for Premium membership as a part of the promo offer.

Playing fetch with a jaguar

The regions appear to be intended as a social experience as well – there are numerous places for getting together and chatting / sharing. Some of the experiences are also geared towards sharing – the boat rides through the sims, the  Tahr racing on the beach or Tahr rides through the jungle, using, I assume, the pathfinding capabilities.

Thoughts

While visiting the regions, I was surprised to see comments start popping-up in Group chats that were somewhat negative – including one that suggested the regions are a means for the Lab to “recycle” abandoned land, which strikes me as cynical.

In terms of presentation, the regions are very atmospheric – and I recommend a visit with shadows enabled if you can, especially if you are using Exodus with HDR  / Gamma Correction or Niran’s with its advanced rendering options.

In terms of experience, I have to admit it’s a mixed bag. The regions are immersive, and offer a lot to see and do – but there were some oddities. While accepting that this might be another example of the “publish-test-polish” approach seemingly beloved of Rod Humble – but it does seem odd that other new capabilities coming to SL are seemingly ignored. The game of fetch with the jaguar, for example, requires you accept a stick into your inventory each time you touch the jaguar – and one wonders why the capability to attach the stick to your avatar, bypassing inventory altogether wasn’t used. Particularly as you are repeatedly prompted to accept the stick from the jaguar after each throw, leading to a possible small accumulation of sticks. But this is a minor niggle in the scheme of things.

Overall, the regions offer an interesting diversion for those with a Premium account who might like to spent time exploring something a little different. So why not give it a try?

Parcel encroachment live across the grid

Posted on by Inara Pey

It appears that parcel encroachment is now active across the grid (with thanks to Nalates Urriah).

The feature, which allows objects encroaching on one parcel from another to be returned, has been rolling-out across the grid for a while, and was turned-on last Thursday.

The feature has some guiding parameters to help manage / control the return of objects, which should provide a reasonable level of control, including:

  • For private regions, the feature must be turned on at a per region basis
  • Return is based on an object’s physical shape, not its visible shape, so while an object may appear to encroach on a region boundary, it may not actually be returned orthat it may not appear to encroach, but is still returned. LL currently list the objects most likely to suffer such mismatches as:
    • Trees and grass
    • Sculpt and flexiprims (and, one assumes, mesh)
    • static objects using the llTargetOmega() feature — they appear to be spinning but are not spinning in the physics engine
  • “Estate content” and public works content (Mainland) is protected against return (so, for example, items on a parcel that are owned by an Estate Manager / owner will not be returned)

Phantom and Volume Detect objects will still collide for encroachment. At the time the feature was first documented (January 2011), cross-region encroachment was under development. Whether this is still the case is unclear.

Some of the details as to how the feature works – and how to enable it – may change when the wiki page on the feature is updated.

No blog post / forum post appears to be on the horizon to announce the change. However, those wishing to find out more may want to keep an eye on the wiki page for updates.

Code change impacts RLV functionality

Posted on by Inara Pey

Update 12th March: As can be seen from the comment from Trinity below, Brooke Linden has responded to concerns over this issue, and has confirmed that the code causing it will be rolled-back from LeTigre and BlueSteel this Wednesday (RC channel release window) and won’t be re-deployed until the problem is fixed.

Kitty Barnett reports via JIRA SVC-7748, that functionality related to the InventoryAPI maintenance project adversely impacts the widely used RLV / RLVa functionality within Second Life.

RLV provides a means by which, and under controlled conditions (the user “opts-in” to the process by clicking an acceptance button), a folder is created within the #RLV folder under MY INVENTORY. Items are then delivered into the new folder, wherein a script runs to attach the items to the recipient avatar.

While this functionality does have a direct use within the BDSM community, it can have uses elsewhere as well.  However, changes rolled-out to the BlueSteel and LeTigre RC channels this week as a part of the InventoryAPI maintenance project, have inadvertently broken the functionality – the required redirection to use #RLV doesn’t occur and the associated script fails – hence JIRA SVC-7748.

The degree of impact on RLV is debatable. As Marine Kelley states within the JIRA:

On a positive note, if LL decides not to do anything and leave things as is (i.e. in a broken state), the RLV could simply check what’s coming into the “Received Items” folder and move it automatically under #RLV if the name matches. This would be transparent to the user and would overcome this breakage. 

Nevertheless, it would be preferable for LL to ensure the functionality isn’t broken in the first place (as Marine herself goes on to state).

A potential problem here is that, despite Kitty’s own efforts to point out that Received Items itself is not the problem per se, many of the comments appearing on the JIRA are further critiques of Received Items rather than a discussion of the problem as identified by the JIRA itself.

As strong as feelings are around the subject of Received Items, what is more important here is that functionality that is key to a range of user expectations / desired experiences has been inadvertently broken within LeTigre and BlueSteel, and there is a risk that this could become more widespread if the fix is rolled-out beyond these two RC channels. As such, it is important that LL hear, read and understand the core issue itself (i.e. via use-cases where the update breaks things), in order for them to try to correct the matter.

Given it is the weekend, it will likely be a while longer before any response on this matter is heard from LL – which also gives people more time to submit specific examples on the issue that outline the problem. It’s also worthwhile pointing out that LL are prepared to reconsider proposed actions – as has been demonstrated around the concern relating to llGetAgentStatus (which Oz has indicated is on-hold as a result of the number of clear-cut use-cases received), and have shown a willingness to re-think elements of Received Items based on constructive feedback from users.

Oz discusses TPV Policy changes

Posted on by Inara Pey

On Wednesday March 7th, Jessica Lyon of the Firestorm team sat down with Oz Linden to discuss the recent TPV Policy (TPVP) changes. Originally Oz had asked to appear with Jessica on the last Phoenix Hour, which is normally co-presented by Jessica and Phaylen Fairchild, but it was decided to hold-off on any appearance for a more focused presentation.

That Oz made the offer again speaks highly of his desire to engage openly with the community on what has become something of a sensitive (and in some cases incorrectly viewed, given the way it has been wrongly portrayed as stopping “any” innovation within TPVs) issue, and his willingness to try to provide further clarification on the changes and the reasoning behind them.

I’ve included a summary of the discussion on the following pages. As it is somewhat lengthy and potentially subject to “tl;dr” (shame on you!), I felt it better to provide my own thoughts on the discussion up-front.

Oz in conversation

While listening to the discussion I was also seeing Twitter comments appear on my screen relating to the posting of the interview video and was – to be honest – surprised at the negative tone of some of the comments being made. Overall, I felt the Oz was open and direct in dealing with the questions and statements directed at him, and he did much to fill-in the blanks. And before anyone starts on the, “But he’s only an employee” tack, I very much doubt that he was in any way speaking in isolation or sans the support for his management. As such, this is precisely the kind of engagement we should be applauding, even if the message may not be entirely what we want to hear,  and which LL should be seeking to undertake more regularly.

Some have complained that we “don’t know” any more following the discussion than we knew at the start. To them I’d actually ask, “What more do you want to know?” The boundaries of the TPVP changes have been given better definition – indeed, Oz has provided clearer definitions here, and prior to this meeting. Unless LL produces a set of stone tablets detailing every case, it’s hard to see what more can be said – and it should be remembered that tablets of stone can be as dangerous as having a broad definition. Things do cut both ways.

Sure, what has been said previously, and is said in this discussion, doesn’t provide any safeguards against any fear of how LL might at some point in the future choose to interpret the TPVP – but really, this is an unreasonable expectation. No-one can predict what tomorrow may bring much less a time eighteen months or two years hence, and it is unreasonable to expect any company to give guarantees where the security and growth of their business is concerned. At the end of the day, SL is LL’s business first and foremost – and I applaud Oz for being so frank on the matter of the business / platform relationship – and as such they can change the rules howsoever they like; as such the hammer could be dropped on TPV activities with or without the use of such a policy.

However, I think it fair to say Oz is being sincere both on a personal level and as a representative of the company when he says that LL is not looking to end TPVs, but wants to enhance and grow their working relationship with TPV developers. While it is clear from the phrasing of some of his answers that LL would like to see their effective market-share of users increase in terms of Viewer use, it would be a mistake to attribute the TPVP changes to purely that motivation. It’s fair to say that if that was the goal, LL could conceivably achieve it simply by removing the majority of their Viewer development back behind the curtain, leaving TPVs forever in a catch-up situation.

Nevertheless, the risk of stifling innovation is still there, howsoever small a part the “shared experience” has played in TPV development, simply because of the concerns TPV developers have around the whole aspect of having ideas and proposals accepted by LL as Jessica expresses in the video. This is something that LL need to remain attuned to and seek to demonstrate they will help and support TPV developers when and where they do see an opportunity for developing a shared experience capability that isn’t on LL’s radar or to-do list.

Some will most likely remain dissatisfied with the results of the discussion, which is a shame. While the proof of LL’s commitment to developing and evolving the TPV / LL relationship can only be judged on whatever occurs going forward, there is currently no reason to take what has been said at anything less than face value.

For my part, I would say that Oz’s openness and his candour in dealing with the questions and concerns relating to the TPVP changes is to be welcomed. I hope he does take Jessica up on her suggestion of future discussions of this kind, and that we may yet see LL encouraged to participate in other such opportunities to address user concerns on various matters as openly and directly in the future.

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New experience tools: details starting to emerge

Posted on by Inara Pey

LL have started releasing more information on the Advanced Experience Tools developed during the creation of Linden Realms and its predecessor game demonstrated at SLCC-2011.

The blog post (yay! BLOG post!) provides an overview of the new tools and permissions, with the video providing further information. Bear in mind when reading and watching that this is only an initial announcement and that as such, further information will be forthcoming…

The video delves a little deeper into the creation of the tools themselves and which includes some interesting factoids and tidbits of information.

One of the tidbits demonstrates the popularity of the Linden Realms game, which has 5,000 unique visits per day, for a total of 249,000 unique visits since the game opened in (I presume) Beta. Had the game relied upon a “traditional” means of HUD attachment via people’s inventories, the game would be generating 4 million new inventory items per month!

The tools discussed by both blog post and video are:

Teleport agent: this is a new LSL function that enables an agent (avatar) to be teleported automatically to a given location / destination. Within Linden Realms, this is used when people are “killed” by the various threats to their safety; within the video, the LL spokesperson suggests a further interesting use for the capability: the teleport “gun”…

The function supports both local and remote teleports and also respects teleport and access permissions.

Temporary Attachment: this functions is a similar manner to llAtach, but avoids the creation of an item within a user’s inventory. This has two benefits, the most obvious being that people’s inventories don’t get cluttered with items each time they visit a region where the function is in active use and the second, as an extension of this, the asset database itself isn’t overloaded with millions of requests (again, Linden Realms would be generating an estimated 4 million items a month if using llAttach). Attachments for both avatar and screen (HUD) are supported.

The blog and video indicate that temporary attachment is not  forced attachment, but a part of the overall Experience Permissions system.

LR Portal: a means of enabling the enhanced permissions system

Experience Permissions: this is a simplified version of the existing permissions system currently in use across the grid. Under the current system, permissions to control your avatar would need to be handled on a case-by-case basis. In something like the Linden Realms game, this means that rather than “dying” and being teleported on contact with a rock monster, the player would get a pop-up asking them if they wish to “die”.

Allowing these permissions to be granted requires action on the user’s part – such as walking through the Portals in the Linden Realms game, but they only need to be granted once, and can be applied across multiple regions (again, as with Linden Realms), allowing for large, continuous experiences to be built.

Permissions that can be granted (according to experience requirements) include:

  • Teleporting
  • Attaching objects to an avatar / screen
  • Control / track camera
  • Trigger animations

The permissions system is specifically geared to prevent more dangerous permissions such as inventory access, debit a user’s account and change links.

Potential Uses

The potential uses for these tools in terms of games and adventures are clear. However, there are wider applications for the tools, including:

  • Providing a means for guided tours within sims – providing avatars with HUDs that suggest directions around the sim, allow items of interest to be identified, information relating to those items to be displayed, and so on
  • Providing a means for store owners to enhance the in-world shopping experience  – including how demo items can be provisioned to users using the temporary attach option
  • The enhancement of more interactive experiences ranging across multiple regions.

Professional Creators Programme

In line with the new tools, LL will be launching a Professional Creators Program. Details on this are currently scant – the blog post simply states, “This program will provide members with helpful resources, such as tutorials and exclusive closed betas. More information will become available in the next few months”. However, Rodvik gave some pre-hints on this via Twitter a couple of months ago, and it seems likely the programme will, like mesh, require filing of some personal information with LL and perhaps taking some form or tutorial like the mesh status upload tutorial. From Rodvik’s comments, the requirements shouldn’t be that intrusive, but given the potential uses of the tools, are seen as precautionary against misuse.

For those wishing to be updated on news and information on the new tools, there is also an in-world Group  – the Advanced Creator Tools Notification Group  – which can be joined free-of-charge.

Appetites are bound to be whetted at this news (and there are already a fair few in the Advanced Creator Tools Notification Group already!) – and at the little teaser included in the blog post that LL have, “Produced a number of other tools and prototypes to support more rich content creation that we look forward to releasing”.

March Mesh Madness

Posted on by Inara Pey

March Mesh Madness kicked off on March 1st, and has caused some upset / confusion. The event “brings together unique mesh designs from 20 established Second Life”, and is open until March 15th, and has been organised by Damien Fate, himself a mesh designer, and is hosted on Fate Island.

Part of the confusion seems to be that people mistakenly took this to be an LL-sponsored event as it is currently appearing on the splash screens for those Viewers using the official splash / MotD notifications. As has been pointed out in the thread linked-to above, such MotD links aren’t that uncommon – they are pulled from the Destination Guide (wherein Mesh Madness is listed), and so seeing it linked their isn’t necessarily a sign of any LL collusion.

Anyway, I decided to jump over and take a look. The sim itself is nicely designed in a modern, minimalistic look, comprising a central arrival plaza with a display kiosk in each corner, surrounded by 16 more kiosks, four to a side to form a square, all linked by walkways over water. The majority of the build appears to be mesh (or at least partial mesh) and as such, one would expect it to be relatively low-lag.

March Mesh Madness at Fate Island

Sadly, this is far from the case. With just 12 avatars in the region, Fate Island exhibited more-or-less the same amount of lag experienced elsewhere with a similar number of avatars combined with the likes of multiple textures, vendors, etc. Rubber-banding was the order of the day.

In terms of the content on display, I’d have to say that things are – disappointing in some respects. Around twelve of the kiosks are devoted to clothing / footwear / accessories, with another three devoted to mesh hair and the remaining five offering up such items as furnishings, trees, and so on. There is little imagination shown with the various kiosks; most of which resemble mall-like slots, rather than attempts to showcase mesh. The one real exception to this is the Rustica kiosk, where Max Graf has (as ever) demonstrated his talent by producing a first-rate display of his mesh creations.

The Rustica display at Mesh Madness

Of course, one might argue that it’s easier perhaps for Max to produce such a display than others – his items are very much touch / feel, whereas clothing is more look / try. Even so, his kiosk and that of Organica, situated almost exactly opposite in the region, are the eye-catching units that tend to draw one to them.

As mentioned, the majority of the creations being displayed here are of the looks / try variety – clothing, accessories, hair, etc., and most of the vendor boards offer demo versions of items so you can try before you buy – and this is strongly recommended.

It would have been nice to see a more varied selection of mesh on offer here – whether the final selection was down to a matter of whosoever applied for a slot, or whether the event was specifically more geared towards the fashion / accessory side of things, I’ve no idea. Until Pamela Galli made mention of the event, I wasn’t even aware it existed, and only saw the MotD as I happened to fire-up Dolphin this morning while running my weekly Viewer version checks (I use Firestorm as a rule, so don’t get the MotD otherwise).

Obviously, a single-region exhibition doesn’t allow for large-scale displays such as buildings, but it would have been nice to see more in the way of furniture and perhaps vehicles, etc.

That said, if you’ve not tried mesh clothing / footwear / hair, this is a place to visit if you want to grab a handful of demos and give things a try before you plunge deeper into the world of mesh.

March Mesh Madness