Second Life – Page 202

December 21, 2012

Linden Lab’s Lack Of Communication Means They Even Miss Their Own Progress

Linden Lab have blogged about improvements to Second Life during 2012 and a look forward to improvements to Second Life in 2013. As a long term critic of Linden Lab’s every increasing ability to imitate a Harpo Marx convention when it comes to communicating with the community, I welcome this blog post. However the post itself highlights why Linden Lab’s lack of communicating is in itself a bad thing, because there are things within the blog post itself that haven’t exactly been highlighted well during the year.

They talk about new premium perks, which is something they have at least made some effort to communicate about. They talk about the advanced creator tools and pathfinding. These are two areas where I don’t feel there has been anywhere near enough discussion, these issues should be being blogged about.

They talk about the Good Building Practices Wiki, which is something I found out about from Nalates Urriah’s blog, not Linden Lab’s! Seriously, this should be something they promote, it’s a nice resource getting built there.

There’s talk of how 1,200 new and original entries have been added to the destination guide, but where was the push for what averages out at 100 a month new entries during the year?

Continue reading “Linden Lab’s Lack Of Communication Means They Even Miss Their Own Progress”

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.

Continue reading “Threaded Region Pile On Testing”

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.

Continue reading “Forum Ranks Alive And Well”

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.

Continue reading “Beta Viewer Introduces More default Graphics Levels”

December 17, 2012

Project Sunshine – Don’t Panic!

Some dots have started to be joined that are giving some folk the heebie jeebies about their future fun in Second Life. Nalates Urriah has been covering the Phoenix Viewer issues, with Phoenix announcing at an office hour that support for the old Phoenix client will be ended. The viewer will still connect but going forward there will be no further support, meaning eventually it will become obsolete as Linden Lab introduce new features.

One of those new features has been covered by Inara Pey: Avatar Baking: “and the clock has started!”. This is important people! This is a new project, codenamed Project Sunshine-Server Side Appearance, if you want to read a bit about this, there’s a page on the official Second Life Wiki, which you can read here.

Basically this means that more of the work on baking textures when you change outfits will be performed server side, rather than viewer side, which should help improve performance. Here’s an example, I’m changing outfit on a normal region and everything goes a bit blurry:

Eventually the outfit is changed:

Continue reading “Project Sunshine – Don’t Panic!”