Linden Lab – Page 170

December 18, 2012December 18, 2012

Threaded Region Pile On Testing

When I was a lad there were a few things likely to leave you bruised, bumps for your birthday, scramble when someone would throw sweets into the air and you’d all scramble for them, the chicken run where you had to run through a corridor of people who were trying to punch and kick you and a pile on, where the unlucky sod at the bottom of the heap was likely to be gasping for air.

So imagine my surprise when I discovered Linden Lab were inviting people to a pile on, of course being a virtual world the unlucky sod at the bottom is unlikely to be battered and bruised. However on further reading from Inara Pey I can see that this is not the sort of pile on I’m familiar with!

Caleb Linden, whom is not a breedable as far as I am aware, announced the details in the official forum:

In an upcoming server build, Linden Lab has changed the way agents and their attachments get carried over in the event of a region crossing. And we need your help to test region crossing in a pile-on fashion.

On Wednesday, December 19th at 16:00 PDT (Pacific Daylight Time) please join IRC (EFNET -> #sltest) to launch Second Life and join us via the following SLurl GC Test 9

The details of the tests are here

https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Threaded_Region_Crossing_Beta_Tests

In the meantime, please let us know if you need access the the test regions mentioned on the wiki or have additional questions.

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December 18, 2012

Forum Ranks Alive And Well

I logged into the Second Life Forums today to find a private message from Representative Linden informing me my forum rank has been increased, although honoured should have a u in it, I’ll forgive them for that. I’d forgotten all about forum ranks, but there’s a link to a handy guide in the message, which you can read here.

Now I’ve never been a fan of forum ranks, I’ve always felt that people should contribute how they best see fit and be thanked or criticised for their contributions by other contributors. However now that I’ve been promoted and can lord it over others I’ve changed my mind, I think they’re ace! Oh wait a minute, I’m already a Lord, scrub that then, I still think they’re a little bit off. I’ve always felt you could give people extra permissions without the need for a public rank.

I have no idea what I’ll do with my newly inherited super powers, I shall have to ponder this, after unblocking my sink in the kitchen this evening I’m not exactly feeling honoured, although unblocking the sink was an achievement!

Ranks started with Lexie Linden, who along with Amanda tried to put some buzz into community gatherings. The ranks weren’t well received but I don’t think anyone really cares about them anymore.

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December 17, 2012December 17, 2012

Beta Viewer Introduces More default Graphics Levels

Previously, in “What the bloody hell are they doing to the graphics“, I asked Ok what have they done to the graphics?, followed by Some Information On What They’ve Done To The Graphics! Basically, for those who missed the enthralling first two episodes of this series, I discovered that the beta viewer had moved my graphics preferences from High to Ultra but that performance still seemed whizzier.

I was somewhat perturbed about my graphics card being overworked, in episode three of this series I can reveal that the latest beta viewer has by default turned my graphics down a few notches, but has also introduced new notches to the default graphics slider.

An Image Should Be Here — Beta Viewer Prefs

So now, rather than being ultra, my graphics preferences are now at the new default notch point of between Medium and High. Now you may think this is a bad thing, but to be honest, I’m not noticing much of a difference … actually I’m not noticing any difference but then again my eye for artistry is not exactly top of the range.

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December 14, 2012December 14, 2012

The Second Life Forums Could Do With A Rejig

The Second Life forums have over the years taken on various forms, each time they change a group of people pine for the older forum. Personally I don’t think they’ve ever recovered from the day that the forums running on forum software were replaced with the all singing, all dancing, extremely frustrating Jive, which in turn has been replaced by Lithium.

The not so secret but still private, merchants roundtable is currently as dead as a dodo, although there are older posts there from Darrius Gothly, which may soon become a collector’s item as Darrius is currently banned from the forums apparently, for crimes unknown to anyone other than the forum moderators. Darrius is a rather lively and informative contributor, so it’s a shame he can’t contribute right now, hopefully that will change soon.

However the current forums are a strange beast, you click on sections and see forums you never knew existed. I clicked on the creation forum link this evening, to find there’s a Building And Texturing Forum Knowledgebase Forum, which actually seems to be part of the knowledgebase section of the main site. The plot thickens though because the Building And Texturing Knowledgebase Forum is empty, completely blank, it’s sitting there all lonely and neglected.

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December 13, 2012December 13, 2012

Indiana University Northwest Takes Teaching To Second Life

Sometimes I read an article and have to check the date, then check it again. This was the case this evening when I was reading about Indiana University Northwest University Professors Taking Classrooms Into the Virtual World. The reason I needed to check the date was due to some of the terminology in the article:

On the surface, Second Life appears to be nothing more than a gamer’s paradise, but educators say it is also what’s next in distance learning.

The article really was published on December 13th 2012, even though that sort of talk sounds like something I may have read in December 2006, then there’s this:

As with any new technology, Second Life brings inherent technical challenges and a steep learning curve.

…. mm yes Second Life has a steep learning curve but not many people would call it new technology in 2012. However the article is interesting to read, it talks of good use cases for Second Life in terms of collaboration between students in a distance learning environment and how well it worked, Dorothy Ige, Ph.D., Professor of Communication is quoted as saying:

Since this is the first time trying the Second Life approach, I was not sure that students could bond interpersonally at a distance through technology,” Ige said. “I was pleasantly surprised that they not only bonded, but took interpersonal communication to another level.

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