Virtual Worlds – Page 300

February 11, 2011February 11, 2011

The Jira Voting Charade

The blog post on improved communications, also had information regarding the Jira , they encourage people to use the Jira, they’re removing voting from the Jira. Encouraging people to use the Jira is good, although I remain unconvinced that it’s an easy to use customer facing tool, as an internal bug tracking tool it’s bloody useful, externally, not so good but it’s better than nothing.

However removing votes? This appears more and more to be a PR exercise to remove visible interest in long standing bugs or feature requests, none of the arguments in favour of removing voting stand up to much scrutiny, especially in light of Linden Lab representatives advising people that watching an issue will be a measure of interest…. which means people will watch an issue in future instead of voting, which achieves what exactly? Well the watch feature has a defence mechanism, it emails folk everytime there’s an update, even if that update is someone correcting a typo, beyond that, it’s not really that much different to voting and already people are posting threads on forums asking for people to watch an issue (rather than vote).

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February 10, 2011February 10, 2011

Rod Humble in Villa Fan Shocker

There’s a rather spiffing interview with Rod Humble over at Rock, Paper, Shotgun. However, before you head over, a word of warning, it’s a general gaming site, they’re very cynical about Second Life and the comments are particularly cynical, but that cynical nature actually makes the interview somewhat interesting as you get questions from a different perspective to that of the average Second Life user.

There’s the shocking revelation that Rod Humble is an Aston Villa fan, so that’s Rod Humble, Prad Prathivi and me… of course, I’m more suave, sophisitcated, better looking, wittier and conceited than those two, they may have a headstart in the success stakes though, but you can’t have everything! Where was I? Oh yes, the Rock Paper, Shotgun interview, this gives a good sense of Rod being enthusiastic about Second Life.

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February 8, 2011February 8, 2011

Penny Patton’s Guide to Better Camera Placement

Penny Patton, long time advocate of better scaling and camera positions, has posted in the blogrum a guide to improving your Second Life view, via better camera placement. Penny has also granted me permission to reprint the post here, which I will do shortly.

Why is camera placement important you may wonder, well it simply is, it’s one of the most important features of any video game because it gives us perspective, and the problem with the default settings for the camera in Second Life, according to Penny, is that the camera view not only isn’t very good, it has distorted perceptions so that pretty much everything we build, from our avatar to our homes and stores, is oversized. The problem with everything being oversized is that we use more space than we need to on our sims, meaning we have less room for landscaping and features.

This is quite a compelling argument and after altering my camera as Penny suggests, I can see where she’s coming from. However not everyone will agree with this or feel the advantages, that’s down to personal choice of course but knowing about features like this can improve your view of Second Life. Continue reading “Penny Patton’s Guide to Better Camera Placement”

February 7, 2011February 7, 2011

Battlestar Galactica Sims given green light?

Back in November 2010 I reported on reports that Battlestar Galactica content was being removed from Second Life after allegations that Universal City Studios Inc. had complained to Linden Lab about Intellectual Property issues, the post is here.

Today, thanks to a ginger bird who eats too much cheese .. Suella Ember updating a blogrum post about the issue with updated information, news is being circulated that a deal has been struck to allow Battlestar Galactica roleplay within Second Life. Suella links to this story here at the Harrisburg Second Life Examiner, who were instrumental in breaking the original news about the takedown, so seem to be a trustworthy source on this issue.

The crux of the matter is that an agreement has been struck to allow roleplay to continue, as long as it doesn’t involve the creation and sales of real or virtual items related to Battlestar Galactica.

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