Ciaran Laval

October 22, 2015October 22, 2015

The Truth About Bats & Avies – A Charity Event For Bat World Sanctuary

SLGoth in Second Life are currently holding a charity event : The Truth About Bats & Avies. The event is designed to raise money for Bat World Sanctuary. The event lead is Marsha Warwillow, editor in chief of SL Goth Magazine, which has its HQ in part of the home of Abel Dreamscape’s Morphe Inc., which makes for a very suitable setting.

The charity event opened on October 15th and runs until October 31st and whereas this isn’t a full on busy event it has elements such as supporting merchants, a hunt, cabaret and live storytelling.

More importantly there’s information scattered around about bats, including some myths & facts and posters informing us why saving bats is important. There’s also a bat cave and who can resist a bat cave!

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October 20, 2015

Second Life Viewer Set To Move To Version 4.0.0 As HTML 5 Starts To Slay Flash

Linden Lab have blogged; Second Life Improvements – What’s New & What’s Coming Soon! In this blog post they look to Asgard for inspiration in part with a really impressively named project, which has been entitled Project Valhalla.

So what exactly is Project Valhalla you may be wondering, well in short it’s an out with the old and in with the newish move, as explained in the blog post :

A new age of modern HTML5 content is upon us, and we’re overhauling the way shared media (aka “media on a prim”) works so that you can enjoy all kinds of modern web content within Second Life. Chromium Embedded Framework (CEF) is coming to replace the aging QTWebkit framework.

This is quite a big change, indeed it’s such a big change that the release notes tell us :

This long-awaited project replaces the aging LLQTWebKit system used in the Web media plugin with a shiny new one based on the Chromium Embedded Framework (CEF) that supports modern web technologies. In fact, we think this is such a big deal that we’re cranking the Viewer version number to 4.0.0.

Just to emphasise how big a change this is, the blog post tells us :

What does this mean for your Flash content? What about Quicktime? They may still work, but because both can only be viewed if the user has correctly installed a 3rd party plugin, we can’t promise support and you shouldn’t expect that it will work for everyone. Standard HTML5 is the way of the future and this Viewer will enable it for anyone.

Flash is no longer the saviour of the universe and this is also pointed out by the fact that the Second Life website will no longer be using Flash either.

The bottom line is that this should be a good move, if you’re interested in this then you may want to take a look at the Project Viewer that moves the Second Life viewer to version 4.0.0 and above, that’s how big a change this is. However please bear in mind that this is a project viewer, as the release notes point out :

This is the first iteration of a Project Viewer – which means that while a lot of the problems facing the old MOAP implementation should now become a distant artifact of the past, we are still cranking through the many new issues with our CEF-based solution. See a bug? If you don’t see it filed already – file a Jira! We look forward to your feedback. Thanks!

However this isn’t the only area where Linden Lab are planning improvements for Second Life.

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October 20, 2015

Second Life Prepares To Get Spooky

I’m back from sunnier climes and straight into British Autumn, which today has been rather pleasant. I’ve survived the horror of learning that the Balearic Islands are planning to impose a quite frankly barmy tourist tax next year, which will only encourage another modern horror on the Islands, all inclusive holidays. Seriously, there’s no need for all inclusive holidays in the Balearics. The drunken debauchery is horrendous, and this is coming from someone who is no stranger to drunken debauchery, but there’s a thing such as moderation which all inclusive completely ignores.

I’ve also survived the horrors of the queues and prices of refreshments at Palma airport. However this was all balanced out by sun, sea, beautiful walks and very friendly locals who made my visit very enjoyable.

Now as I prepare to recover from my holiday excess I note that Second Life is preparing to get spooky. The Destination Guide has a haunted category where you can keep an eye on spooky destinations and Linden Lab are joining in the fun with a creepy crawl and a photo contest.

The creepy crawl call to arms went out on october 6th with a blog post from Xiola Linden; Second Life Creepy Crawl 2015 – Call for Venues. Alas entries had to be in before October 20th. Those who have applied to be a host venue should hear back from Linden Lab in the next few days, the plan is :

A-haunting we will go! This year we’re going to take inworld meetups and Halloween shenanigans and mix them together for a frightful mashup of mind-blowingly fun times.

The Creepy Crawl will be taking place on October 30th – more details to follow for those who just want to come along for the fun!

So keep your eyes peeled on the offical Second Life blog for more details. However don’t worry if you’re not part of the creepy crawl, there’s a photo contest that is still running and you have until November 12th to take part in this contest.

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October 5, 2015

Off In Search Of Some Sunshine

Whereas the virtual world offers some gorgeous seaside views, it doesn’t quite replicate the aroma of actually being by the seaside. There’s no sea breeze, sun traps, the feel of sand on your feet.

Therefore I’ll be off for the next fortnight or so in search of some physical world sunshine, ambience, hopefully not too many hangovers and a rather relaxing time reading books published on paper.

I’m unlikely to blog much during this period, indeed it’s highly unlikely I’ll blog at all. This is a shame in many ways as there’s a lot going on. Continue reading “Off In Search Of Some Sunshine”

October 5, 2015

Ebbe Altberg Talks To Geek Dad

Derrick Schneider over at Geek Dad has been talking to Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg about Project Sansar. There’s not really a lot new in this article, but every article seems to reveal a little bit of something that may have been missed or overlooked in other articles. These pieces are slowly starting to fit together.

For example Derrick posts :

What happens when your Second Life city gets too many people inside? Lag. And then you’re sort of stuck. In Sansar, says Altberg, a successful multiplayer experience can automatically spawn a new instance of itself when you hit some limit: Linden’s jobs website asks for experience with Amazon Web Services, so it’s easy to see where they’re going: Scale up behind the scenes so the creator doesn’t have to think about it.

I don’t think it’s any surprise that Project Sansar is looking at cloud based delivery, this has probably been mentioned before. I know instancing has been mentioned before and I know I’ve had someone post that instancing has been mentioned before when I’ve posted about instancing! So a lot of the information about Project Sansar is already out there, but it’s scattered.

However an interesting part of the Geek Dad article comes in terms of experiences. Linden Lab have invited people to alpha test Project Sansar and one point that has been mentioned is that Linden Lab are currently looking for people with Autodesk Maya experience. Now you may have thought this was to get 3D models inworld, but it appears there’s more to it than that :

The initial focus is letting people make experiences, and the authoring tools will reflect that need. “How many things in your home did you make,” asks Altberg. “But it still reflects your identity. We didn’t make the chairs in this room or the table,” he continues, gesturing around to encompass the reinforced brick walls, “but we are making an experience.”

There’s a lot more in the article, including talking of a Project Sansar downloadable client and talk of content ratings, with Ebbe suggesting that Linden Lab do not want to impose strict censorship, but it seems they do want content ratings to be there from the outset, which I think most people would agree is a sensible idea.

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