2011 Reviewed

This will be a rather long post as it’s a review of the year, this is the fourth in a series of annual posts, the other three look at different years… I think you’ll have worked that out already! This post isn’t made any easier by Linden Lab messing around with their blog, meaning links that were working at the time, no longer working. However that just means I get to read them again and catch up, so there is a plus side to that.

2011 brought us viewer improvements, Mesh, lot of bug fixes by Oz Linden and his team as well as new scripting functions. On the downside, Linden Lab’s use of the blog to inform us of new features and tools was pretty poor to say the least. I’ll miss plenty out in this review, I’ll also include trivial aspects, so let’s get this rolling.

January

Blue Mars reversed several gears and announced it would become an app for the iPhone and iPad, as is the way with these things, links in the linked article no longer work.

The Grid merger between adult and teen grids was in operation, this doesn’t seem to have caused many complications at all, with the exception of over zealous word filters but we’ll come to that later.

FJ Linden blogged about improvements, including talk of a new group chat system, improved region crossings, web based profiles and announced that the group limit was being raised from twenty five slots to forty two.

I moved my blog back here, after three and a bit years of being a guest blogger on Nobody Fugazi’s Your2ndPlace. Nobody Fugazi had generously allowed a few of us, including Marx Dudek, Arthur Fermi, Sarah Nerd, Jezebel Bailey and Konner McDonnell to blog on his site but as he no longer had a Second Life account and he was pondering what to do with the site, I suggested that he should concentrate on his own projects, none of the others threw anything at me over the suggestion!

New CEO and Aston Villa fan Rod Humble blogged about how he had been getting immersed in Second Life, exploring, building and scripting in his first few weeks and wearing a Toga too! I noted how he had a warm welcome, and also suggested Second Life would benefit from a better system for implementing NPC’s.

SL Marketplace changed its ratings system to match the three inworld maturity ratings of General, Moderate and Adult and promptly annoyed merchants because of how over zealous the word filter for automatically changing the maturity rating of a listing was, this one runs and runs.

Inara Pey reported that Esbee Linden was leaving, courtesy of Daniel Voyager reporting it! Daniel changed his blog during the year so old links don’t work.

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Traffic Shaping Causing Mesh Woes?

MaxTut Wonder has created a rather interesting Jira:

Very slow rezzing for Mesh – highest lod does not rez at all – cause traffic shaping by internet provider

ISP Traffic Shaping can be a pain, I’ve experienced woes before when World of Warcraft traffic wasn’t being identified correctly. My ISP is supposed to give priority to games and live video streaming, but during the WoW woes, WoW traffic wasn’t getting a priority.

However with regards to Second Life, I’ve never noticed anything untoward that would make me think traffic shaping was an issue and as I’m on a better package these days, I wouldn’t expect it to be an issue but MaxTut Wonder is claiming there is an issue for him when it comes to Mesh items rezzing and he’s convinced it’s due to traffic shaping, as he states within the Jira comments.

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Mesh Adoption Will Come

I was going to blog about the year of 2011, or maybe search, but instead I’ll go for Mesh, which is in theme as shortly I’ll be logging off to go and watch part 2 of the BBC’s latest television version of Great Expectations, which is what many of us have of Mesh.

However not everyone is embracing Mesh, some even strictly forbid, even the 1920s Berlin Project, whom along with a list of rules, have a no mesh sign:

Mesh not yet allowed in 1920s Berlin

Poor old Mesh. The thing is that there are valid reasons for not wanting Mesh to be on display, but at the same time those valid reasons stifle the adoption of Mesh. Wear and create Mesh and be damned I say. The 1920s Berlin project explain their no Mesh stance in a blog post, which you can read here.

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Creators Program Divides Opinion

There seems to be a fair degree of divided opinion over the forthcoming tools for content creators, based largely around Rodvik’s statement on the official blog:

One of the key goals of Linden Realms was to learn more about what tools Residents could use to develop richer experiences in Second Life — and boy, did we learn a lot! In Q1 2012 , we will be releasing new tools used to develop Linden Realms, which will allow Residents to create even richer original experiences in Second Life. To prevent abuse of these tools, we will introduce a “creators” program in which verified members will be given access to these very powerful capabilities.”

There are arguments for and against such a program, there have long been arguments for and against such ideas. I’m currently very firmly on the fence about this as I believe the devil will be in the detail and some of Rodvik’s tweets have suggested it won’t be too painful, first this one:

“@AmaliaIllios Whats the dejavu? Curious I want to avoid anything bad. We are thinking some kind of minimal sign up program….”

Followed by this one:

“@AmaliaIllios ..basically so we can ban greifers who might abuse the tools (needed because they are really powerful). Hope that makes sense.”

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Rodvik Speaks – Part 2

Are you waiting for the family to arrive?

Are you sure you’ve got the room to spare room inside?

Does your granny always yell ya, that the old songs are the best?

Then she’s up and rock ‘n rollin’ with the rest!

Oh wait .. wrong post, that’s for the Karaoke Christmas special. There’s only so much Slade one can take, forty years old next year so I’m sure Noddy Holder and co. will be getting a windfall next year. However after spending half an hour driving around Morrissons car park at 9am this morning looking for a parking space,  I’m not sure how much Christmas spirit I’ve got left, I only wanted to get some beers! The shops are only closed for one fecking day, good grief people what is it with this bunker mentality at Christmas … wait wait wait Ciaran, this has nothing to do with Rodvik, Second Life or Linden Lab! ok agreed, so where was I? Oh yes, Rodvik’s blog post. In my previous blog post I talked about the policy and direction, now I want to talk about NPC’s!

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