Second Life – Page 228

February 25, 2012February 25, 2012

New TPV Policy Raises Innovation Concerns

Changes to the Third Party Viewer Policy have been announced and they are contentious. Crap Mariner has a post with links to other blogs with good discussion on the issue. The most startling issue for me is whether this will hit innovation, as @SecondLife so well puts it:

“BREAKING NEWS: Linden Lab changes Third Party Viewer Policy to ensure that all viewers suck as much as their own.”

The part of the policy that leads to these concerns is :

2.k : You must not provide any feature that alters the shared experience of the virtual world in any way not provided by or accessible to users of the latest released Linden Lab viewer.

Exactly what this means is where matters get vague, however in the recorded meeting, which is long but you can listen to here, Oz suggested that Parcel Windlight settings and avatar physics, which were initially exclusive to third party viewers, would be forbidden under the new policy.

Continue reading “New TPV Policy Raises Innovation Concerns”

February 23, 2012February 23, 2012

Blender 2.62 Now With Second Life Compatibility Option For Exporting Armatures

Back in January I reported that there was talk of Blender dropping support for Collada. This was a tad concerning but as I pointed out at the time, not the end of the world. Collada is the format used to get Mesh into Second Life, so in Second Life terms it was important but you can happily use older versions of Blender to create content. Blender 2.62 hasn’t ended this discussion, but Collada support is not only still there, there’s now a mention of Second Life with the addition of a compatibility option for exporting armatures, which you can read about here.

There is also a mention of the issues with Collada and Blender there too:

“There has been much discussion about the state of the Collada integration, it’s not currently working very reliable yet, and this needs to be solved somehow. A new team now started working to improve Collada support to get it more useful for integration with external tools and game engines, improving the existing OpenCollada based I/O module.”

Continue reading “Blender 2.62 Now With Second Life Compatibility Option For Exporting Armatures”

February 23, 2012February 23, 2012

Angus is Free!

In my last post I highlighted the plight of AngusGraham Ceawlin, unable to login without crashing, but the good news is that Angus is free! Amanda Dallin made a comment on my previous post that Angus is free so I went and checked out Jira SVC-7653 where Angus shared the good news!

“This just in today A comment has been added to your Case..

Angus is FREE to roam the main grid!!!!!!

Case: 01298190 Avatar: AngusGraham Ceawlin Type: Inventory (un-rezzed) Issues Status: Waiting for Customer Acceptance Hello AngusGraham,

Thank you for your patience, I have been told that we are ready to proceed and have run a script on your account that will require you to please log in with this resident, clear cache and then relog.

Please do this and then let me know if any problems persist.

Thank you,

Izzy Linden

Thank you to the Linden that finished the job to get me on the main grid after 63 days

Thank you to Whirly and Nicky who got me on the Beta grid and Pointed the way to my fix in 3 days

Thank you to Pasplund resident who worked the system and got this big wheel turning

Thank you to everyone who watched this issue and supported its being fixed and assisting in getting the atteniton

I am ever Greatful

AngusGraham Ceawlin”

Continue reading “Angus is Free!”

February 20, 2012February 20, 2012

Free Angus!

This is a tale of woe, a story of amazing patience, a tale to warm the cockles of your heart, well except that there is of yet no happy ending. This is the story of AngusGraham Ceawlin and his adventures of trying to get his account restored to working order, which is allegedly now a two month long tale. The story can be largely tracked via Jira SVC-7653 where Angus informs us:

“Complete Show Stopper.Tried Several different viewers on several different computers. Can only log into SL for a seconds. Crashes at near the end of world loading, at that point I get a program not responding error. Izzy Linden said I should post on here in hopes that some dev. will pick up my project. I was told that this is a result of jira(CHOP-839) which is confidential. If someone is interested in this please contact AngusGraham Ceawlin (hopefully i will recieve email)or CliveMcroy Resident (also me) inworld. thank you.”

Continue reading “Free Angus!”

February 18, 2012February 18, 2012

Love Will Tier Us Apart Again

Crap Mariner has a good blog post about Circle Brooms Laurel Arts Isle succumbing to the tier conundrum and having to close down. What’s good about Crap’s post is that it delves into why places are special for people.

Daniel Voyager on the other hand has a post about The Cartoonimals sim not closing down after it was purchased by Ima Flanagan.

Hamlet Au, in his disappointingly named Sim Deathwatch series has recently been talking about the International Space Flight Museum Sim closing down, but now being saved, for a while at least, which you can read about here. Betterverse Non profits has more information on this, in this blog post, which links to the International Space Flight Museum’s official blog, where there’s a post on the subject, and where they point to how you can help to fund them via donations.

Prior to this we had news that Bryn Oh’s Immersiva was closing, but a crowdfunder on indiegogo appears to have saved that for now. All of these issues highlight the problems of keeping experiences alive in Second Life, but the big issue, the issue that needs to be addressed by Linden Lab, is that of Tier.

Continue reading “Love Will Tier Us Apart Again”