Ciaran Laval

November 23, 2012November 23, 2012

Ok What Have They Done To The Graphics?

Yesterday, I loaded up Second Life using the beta viewer, which is not at all unusual. However there was a required update, which downloaded and installed. When the client started again, up popped a message along the lines of; improvements to the graphics subsystem have introduced a change to your graphics preferences.

Hmmm thought I, what’s this all about? So I took a look at my preferences and found that my graphics preferences have been changed from hight to ultra … wait a minute? What’s this all about? I don’t want to overwork my graphics card, so I went back to the standard release of the viewer, fired it up and found my graphics were set to high, which is what I expected. Pressing reset in my graphics preferences, which sets your settings back to the reccomended position depending upon your detected hardware, kept my settings at high.

So now I’m confused, I uninstall the beta viewer completely, download it again and hit install. This time I just get a message informing me that if I’m new, I need to create an account. I continue and start, no message about changing my graphics preferences, which it seems was due to it being a new install and therefore not being required to inform me of a change in my preferences, as there were no old preferences to change in the beta viewer. However my graphics preferences were ultra, I pressed reset, my graphics preferences remained ultra.

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November 20, 2012

Even With Mesh Prim Physics Shape Can Come Out On Top

An Image Should Be Here — A New Mesh Path

So I decided it was time to engage in some building and set myself out a new Mesh path, a Mesh path is something that is very straight forward to build in a program such as Blender, it’s also very straight forward to UV Map, so if you’re thinking Mesh is just too complicated, I advise you to start with something straight forward like this. I’m not going to go through the process here, but I am going to go through why making a Mesh object have a physics shape of prim, rather than Convex Hull, can help things work nicely.

Now by default, Mesh will take on the physics shape of Convex Hull. There are many good reason for this, which I’m not going to discuss. However as we can see, my Mesh path is currently Convex Hull:

However there’s a problem, when I walk along my new funky Mesh path, I sink into the ground at the edges. At one end of my path are some steps, I actually end up falling down behind them, on the main path, you just sink slightly at the edges. Am I doing something wrong? Maybe, but after delving into the murky world of the official forums, being pointed at the Jira and getting some assistance from the ever helpful Drongle McMahon, I decided to change the physics shape to Prim and suddenly, it all works as expected!

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November 20, 2012

Machinima Expo Films Available Until November 26th

The Machinima Expo is over for this year, however, if you missed it, don’t panic. The films that were selected for screening are available until November 26th and can be viewed at the Machinima Expo Website. Warning, these are films, so they’re art, so there maybe some nudity involved, pixel nudity but still nudity. Some of the content is therefore likely to be NSFW, just so you know.

The films aren’t long in length and I very much like the fact that the movies will be available for a while longer yet as it gives me a chance to view some of them! A list of the films that were screened can be seen here. As I said in my previous post on this expo, I’m not really into Machinima and this is purely a time issue, I’ve had a brief look at some of the films and I really need to find time to give it a go. Hopefully some of you will recognise some of the names on the list, I really only recognise Chantal Harvey, Draxtor Despres and Pooky Amsterdam .. oh and Bryn Oh … oh and Miso Susanowa! More than I realised, but as I said, Machinima hasn’t been my thing.

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November 18, 2012

DMCA Is Far From Ideal But It Remains An Option

So there you are, you’ve created your new item, taken the photos, unleashed it inworld and are sitting back watching the Linden Dollars flow in when you get the nod that someone has copied your content, not only that, they’re also selling it.

Now after cursing, banging your head on the desk and swearing to rip someone a new backside, there are things you need to consider. The first thing to consider is that unless you inform Linden Lab of the situation, nothing is likely to happen. The second thing to consider is that Linden Lab do not adjudicate on these issues, they ask you to file a DMCA. Linden Lab have a page on DMCA, which you can read here. The big thing to bear in mind is that DMCA is not a Second Life policy, it’s a legal policy, this therefore goes beyond the terms of service, as noted on the DMCA page:

Please note that these notifications and counter-notifications are real-world legal notices provided outside of the Second Life environment. Linden Lab may provide copies of such notices to the participants in the dispute or third parties, at our discretion and as required by law – the privacy policy for Second Life does not protect information provided in these notices.

For some people, DMCA is discouraging, they don’t like it, they don’t want to provide the information required and they get frustrated, but unfortunately, the option to use it depends upon following the process.

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