Linden Lab – Page 149

April 9, 2013

Materials Viewer May Bring New Land Impact Accounting System

Yesterday Linden Lab announced that the materials project viewer is now available. This is something that will add some oomph to textures in Second Life and has the added advantage of meaning that people can do things with textures that they may otherwise be tempted to do with Mesh.

Now this is the sort of thing that you need to see for yourself to understand why it adds oomph. There’s a healthy discussion over at SLUniverse where a post from Imnotgoing Sideways gives an idea of what can be achieved with this viewer. Another post from Laverne Unit has a YouTube video comparing two chairs, one with the new materials system applied and the other without, you may need to watch the video at a higher resolution to see the benefits of the new system, but they are there in that video.

There’s also a post from Seven Paragorn demonstrating toadstools, with and without materials applied. In another post Orc posts an animated gif of a Damien Fate dress which exemplifies the system in action too.

The project viewer is available for download and you can get it from here. There are also release notes, which you can read here. The release notes are well worth reading because this is a project viewer, it has bugs, it’s an alpha release and you should most definitely not play around with anything you value whilst playing about with materials. I recommend you only play around with new items you don’t mind losing. The release notes also point you to the material data page, which is also important to understand.

I will emphasise again, do not try this with anything you value, indeed after reading Qie Niangao’s post about the possibility of increasing Land Impact costs, it’s probably best to play with this in a sandbox. Indeed Qie’s post raises a very interesting issue.

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April 6, 2013

No Booze In General!

Last night, whilst reading the Second Life forums I noticed an advert for Stella Artois appear on the adsense adverts. This was quite a surreal moment as at the time I was drinking a can of Stella Artois! Now as it wasn’t my first, the mind goes into the realms of fantasy and imagines a Google Adsense solution based on my eating and drinking habits that Google detect upon a person … one day maybe, horrid thought but I’m sure they’d love to do that.

However far from the Stella Artois advert appearing because I was drinking it, the more likely explanation is that the Stella Artois advert appeared because there are a few miffed and bemused merchants having their items unlisted from the General rating category on The SL Marketplace because they promote cigarettes and alcohol.

There are a few threads on the forums that discuss this issue:

Alcohol & Tobacco Police On The Prowl?

Marking Everything Mature

SL’s Maturity Rating System

The thing to bear in mind is that alcohol and tobacco are not supposed to be listed in the general category and this is not a new rule. The listing guidelines cite as examples of moderate content:

Depictions of or references to alcohol or tobacco use.

So if your item has been moved to moderate when it used to be in General, then it’s a fair cop guv’nor, but that brings us to the next question, who is instigating the crackdown?

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April 4, 2013

CHUI Hits The Main Viewer

Linden Lab have announced that CHUI is now part of the main viewer and will appear either by automatic update or when people update to the latest release of the main viewer. This is likely to be a Marmite issue for many, with people loving or hating it, although for me, I sort of like it, unlike Marmite, which should be illegal.

CHUI (Communication Hub User Interface) has pro’s and cons, one of the cons is that it takes up a lot of screen real estate. This is fine when you’re chatting away but when you’re roleplaying or getting immersive, it gets in the way and when you minimise it, you can easily lose track of what messages are arriving, although over time you’ll get used to it.

I’ve been using CHUI for quite some time, first in the form of the project viewer and then in the form of it being incorporated in the beta viewer. Over that time it has undoubtedly been improved, the issue with local chat not staying undocked being one major improvement, but there are issues with it that I still find irksome.

There are some good pro’s with it, the way you can view chat history being a really big improvement, no longer do you need to search through your hard drive for those old chat logs, once you’ve im’d someone, the viewer allows you to view a chat history. I’m not sure why you need to im someone for this to work, once im’d the setting sticks, you don’t need to im them again to view chat history.

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April 3, 2013

Direct Delivery Migration – Demos Disappear

With the clock ticking on Direct Delivery, one area where merchants may have been taken by surprise is in the category of demos, which will have been unlisted today if you haven’t migrated. Linden Lab did warn merchants about the need to migrate, so why would demos have caught merchants by surprise? Well it’s more than likely to do with how some busy merchants think.

Demos are not an item merchants consider they are selling, they are there to demonstrate an item, so when a merchant gets an email telling them items they sell that are priced lower than ten linden dollars need to be migrated, quite a few merchants would be thinking that they don’t sell any items in that range, as they don’t consider a demo an item that they sell.

This issue harks back to the days when The SL Marketplace was first acquired by Linden Lab and people were asking for demos to be included in the item listing, something that still hasn’t been achieved.

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April 2, 2013

Direct Delivery Migration Clock Ticking On Items Priced Ten Lindens Or Lower

The end of magic boxes is nigh, sort of, as the clock ticks on deadlines for people who haven’t yet migrated unlimited items. Today is the end of the road for listing new items in magic boxes for items priced at ten Linden Dollars or lower, which would not be a smart move anyway as the item would be unlisted tomorrow!

Commerce Team Linden has updated a forum post with the latest information:

April 2, 2013 has arrived, and we have begun the first phase of Magic Box Shutdown. As of today, Merchants are no longer able to list unlimited-quantity items for L$10 or less using Magic Boxes. By noon PT tomorrow,

April 3, 2013, any active, unlimited-quantity listings for L$10 or less using Magic Boxes will be unlisted. Note that the following will still be allowed:

Magic Box listings priced at L$11 or higher.

All Magic Box listings with limited quantity items, regardless of price.

Note that the second deadline is fast approaching. On April 16th, 2013:

Merchants will no longer be able to list unlimited-quantity items using Magic Boxes, regardless of price.

Any remaining active, unlimited-quantity listings using Magic Boxes will be unlisted, regardless of price.

For the time being, limited-quantity items can continue to use Magic Boxes and will not be affected. “Limited-quantity” refers to items that the Merchant does not have rights to copy (such as breedable animals that are “no copy” for the seller).

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