When Second Life users download either the official or Firestorm Windows viewers, they have a choice of either the 32 bit viewer or the 64 bit viewer. The reason for this is older computers often being better at handling the 32 bit one. But this choice will soon be coming to an end, at least for the official viewer. Late last month in the Tools and Technology blog, Linden Lab announced they were ending support for the 32 bit viewer. They were also changing the minimum requirements for Apple computers.
As of July 1st, 2023, we will be ending support for the Second Life
32-bit Windows Viewer and updating the minimum system requirements for
MacOS to 10.13. This decision is made to align with the evolving
technology landscape and to ensure the best performance and security for
our residents.
This does not mean that 32 bit Linden viewers will not be able to log in, as the Lab would state, "After July 1st, we will continue to allow the last supported version of the Second Life 32-bit Windows viewer to log in indefinitely."
As of the writing of this article, there has been no similar announcement from Team Firestorm concerning their viewer, which is used more often than the Linden viewer.
A few days ago in the Tools and Technology blog, Linden Lab stated they were working on a new and experimental feature for moving Second Life avatars, which they called "Pupetry."
We have been working on this feature for some time and now we are ready to open it up to the Second Life community for further development and to find out what amazing things our creators will do with this new technology.
The codebase is alpha level and does contain its share of rough edges that need refinement, however the project is functionally complete and it is possible for the scriptors and creators of Second Life to start to try it out.
The Lab explained some how it works.
Puppetry accepts target transforms for avatar skeleton bones and uses inverse kinematics (IK) to place the connecting bones in order for the specified bones to reach their targets. For example the position and orientation “goal” of the hand could be specified and IK would be used to compute how the forearm, elbow, upper arm, and shoulder should be positioned to achieve it. The IK calculation can be tricky to get right and is a work in progress.
The target data is supplied by a plug-in that runs as a separate process and communicates with the viewer through the LLSD Event API Plug-in (LEAP) system. This is a lesser known functionality of the Viewer which has been around for a while but has, until now, only been used for automated test and update purposes.
The Viewer transmits the Puppetry data to the region server, which broadcasts it to other Puppetry capable Viewers nearby. The receiving Viewers use the same IK calculations to animate avatars in view.
People can find more information in "Puppetry : How it Works" in the Knowledge Base. There are some known limitations and issues such as avatars needing to be Bento technology and the project viewer occasionally crashing.
To be able to use this technology, go to the Alternate Viewers page and download the Puppetry Viewer. The regions that support it are all in the Preview Grid, which is separate from the main one, and are Bunraku, Marionette, and Castelet. With the viewer, you should be able to see others use it. To use it yourself, the Lab says you need, "a working Python3 installation, a plug-in script to run, and any Python modules it requires." One can get more instructions at the Puppetry Development page on the wiki.
Also at Bunraku, Marionette, and Castelet on the Preview Grid, the Lab will be having a discussion at Thursday Sept 8 at 1PM SL time, "We're also happy to talk about this at the upcoming Server User Group or Content Creator meetings. Come by, let us know what you think, and hear about our future plans!"
Last week on April 4, Patch and Grumpity Linden spoke at the VWBPE. Then answered some questions from the event host, Phelan Corrimal, as well as a few from the audience. Grumpity was in her stick-figure avatar. Patch had on mouse ears and a tail.
Of summarizing what Linden Lab has accomplished in the past twelve months, Grumpity commented there has "so much going on, it's hard to think back a full year." She touted general improvement in Second Life's infstructure, a fair amount of content and feature development, the introduction of animesh, the new Linden homes, new estate tools (still ongoing), parcel and estate management, and helping educators with their courses. Patch brought up Linden Lab's involvement in SL15B, "lots of gift stuff happening," and things coming up beyond Linden homes.
Of moving Second Life from current data centers to cloud-based servers, Grumpity stated the Lab was "very carefully moving things and not disturbing the way things are set up. ... with a 15 year old infrastructure, there's some complexity there." She hoped it would eventually lead to lower prices for residents, but "the migration from the data center to the cloud is quite expensive for us, taking a lot of resources and additional costs." So if there is an effect on what residents are charged, it will be "a few years into the future"
Work on a mobile client for Second Life was going on, Grumpity saying, "I'm looking forward to seeing how that impacts Second Life usage in education. ... There's not a lot to report yet. ... SL wasn't designed to go on a mobile." She stated the Lab was going in the direction of an IOS style viewer for now, "a robust text-based viewer."
Of the new Linden Homes, Patch stated didn't want to reveal too much. He called them a "complete redesign,' from the original ones. The "structure of the regions themselves designed more organically, less repetition, more choices," and more options to modify the homes. People will also be able to modify them from inside the homes themselves instead of "web-based tools" as they are now. Already, the land for the new homes was being placed, "The continent will grow as we continue to roll these things out ... it will get much bigger. We will .. expand continent connections, water pathways" for sailboats and flying.
When asked if they were improving existing tools for users, Patch stated they haven't gotten new ideas or requests from the residents, going on to say his team doesn't make the tools regular users of Second Life put to use, but use them as well. Grumpity called it "eating our our dog food," commenting one can only put so much on a prim.
Of Sansar, Grumpity stated she and Patch have been "rooting for the success of Sansar" but they've been mostly looking from the sidelines with their attention on Second Life.
After a while, questions came from the audience. One was if the Lab was trying to improve Second Life's Search function. Grumpity answered that there was a project ongoing about that, adding a few years ago there was another for Marketplace search, calling it "painful and complex."
It was asked if having an app to get on Second Life via mobiles would affect age restrictions. Grumpity stated the introductions of mobile clients would have "zero effect on that." They were also asked if there were any plans for a new grid that didn't allow for adult content so educators could more easily use it to teach younger students. Patch stated that would require a policy change by the Lab, "the idea of a second grid isn't foreign, but it's not on the roadmap." He would go on to say Sansar pretty much handles that function and there's been much improvement there lately.
When asked about plans for artist development, Patch responded that the Linden Endowment for the Arts was in "hiatus." But people have come forward to the Lab to offer ideas to move things forward, so he told the audience to watch for developments.
Asked about why the number of groups residents can be in is limited due to a design issue, it was answered that the Lindens were able increase the number of groups after some infrastructure work, notably for Premium residents.
One question was how can Linden Lab overcome the impression that Second Life is a "seedy world." Patch Linden didn't think that was the case, and if so not as much today as yesterday. Grumpity went on to say the Lab welcomed Second Life's different communities with their different interests.
The last question to the Lindens was how would they like to see more interaction with the education community in Second Life? Grumpity wanted a more open forum for conversation, "We can highlight your work, and you can influence ours." Before leaving, the Lindens asked the audience to spread word about the educational resources of Second Life.
SEPT. 5 -- The official fundraising tools for 2016 Making Strides Against Breast Cancer (MSABC) Across Second Life season are now available at American Cancer Society Island.
If you have an old kiosk or other tools, please delete them and use the new ones.
If you have any questions, feel free to contact Leala Spire or Sandie Loxingly. For tech support, please contact RyleighReign.
Making Strides Against Breast Cancer Across Second Life raises money for The American Cancer Society..
Some key dates for Strides:
Oct. 23: Opening of the Blossoms of Hope Showcase
Oct. 29: Strides Walk starts at 10 a.m. SLT
Oct. 30: Honor Ball for Survivors & Caregivers
Nov. 4: All donations due from walk
Nov. 5: Wrap-up on Relay dAlliez sim
About Making Strides Against Breast Cancer:
Making Strides Against Breast Cancer or MSABC is the largest network of breast cancer awareness events in the nation, uniting more than 300 communities to finish the fight. Every breast cancer walk and event is an incredible and inspiring opportunity to honor those who have battled breast cancer, raise awareness about what we can do to reduce our breast cancer risk, and race money to help the American Cancer Society fight the disease with research, information, services, and access to mammograms for women who need them.
About The American Cancer Society:
For more than 100 years, the American Cancer Society (ACS) has worked relentlessly to save lives and create a world with less cancer and more birthdays. Together with millions of our supporters worldwide, we help people stay well, help people get well, find cures, and fight back against cancer.
Torley Linden narrates this video of the first of the "advanced creator tools" from Linden Lab for Second Life: teleport agents and temporary attachments. The video seems to be aimed at store owners and gaming area makers, though the blog post also suggested the teleport agents would be useful for scavenger hunts.
Earlier this month, Linden Labs posted about an "Advanced Experience Tools Prevew"
Teleport Agent The first tool we added was Teleport Agent, a new LSL call that allows scripts to teleport agents to a particular SLURL or local position. A clear application of this call is to replace the “teleport” workarounds that many of you have had to implement over the years for your directories and “teleport pads.” In Linden Realms, we also used this call to handle “death” for our rock monsters, poison lakes, rock falls, and other hazards.
Temporary Attachment One of the difficulties we faced when making our HUD was that llAttach creates a copy of an object in your inventory once it’s attached. This led to the creation of a number of copies of a HUD that cluttered your inventory, and thus the need for Temporary Attachment. This call works just like llAttach, but does not create the inventory for the user. This will allow you to create temporary objects like demo attachments or “region specific” gear, without creating unnecessary inventory. It’s important to note that Temporary Attachment is NOT forced attachment. We accomplish forced attachment through our Experience Permissions system.
Experience Permissions The Experience Permissions system is an expanded and simplified version of our current permissions system. Once a user grants permission to an experience, any object associated with that experience has the permission to control that user. More importantly, these permissions span multiple regions, scripts, and objects. This will allow you to create cross-Second Life experiences with one simple request. We have produced a number of other tools and prototypes to support more rich content creation that we look forward to releasing. In parallel to the rollout of these tools, we will be launching a Professional Creators Program. This program will provide members with helpful resources, such as tutorials and exclusive closed betas. More information will become available in the next few months.
In the Official Second Life Blog earlier this week, Linden Labs offered a "sneak peek" of their experiments with "Pathfinding."
Pathfinding is a new set of LSL calls and Viewer tools that allow for smoother and smarter movement for non-player characters and objects in Second Life. These new tools will allow Residents to create objects that move around corners, climb inclines and cross region boundaries. Newly created functions such as “pursue,” “patrol,” “wander,” “evade,” and go to a specified point — all of which are particularly useful for pet, NPC and enemy behavior — will allow for non player movements and behaviors never before possible in Second Life.
Pathfinding is efficient because it allows creators to place a much larger number of moving objects in a particular area without affecting server performance. Because the algorithmic complexity is on the server side, Residents can easily script with short and intuitive LSL functions that make creating a pet that follows you around as simple as rezzing a box.
As part of the pathfinding project, Linden Lab will also introduce new Viewer-side tools that will allow Residents to more efficiently create, visualize, test and debug Pathfinding-enabled characters. These tools are not required to create pathfinding behaviors but are particularly useful to builders and experience creators in second life.
Additional pathfinding tools, and the ability to generate your own pathing data, will be put in Beta in the coming weeks. Linden Lab will begin releasing these tools to all Residents in the next several months. You can try out the new LSL functionality in select regions for which we have prepared pathfinding data.
A video done by Lorca and Stinson Linden showed some details of Pathfinding. In the film, Lorca razzed a cube, inserted a bit of pathfinding code, and the prim proceeded to follow him around. That is until he put an obstacle between it and himself on a path up in the air. The Pathfinding-enabled cube promptly changed course and took an alternate route to get to him. Stinson Linden talked some about how Pathfinding works. Which routes a Pathfinding-enabled object travels depends on the "navigation mesh." How wide or the size of steps in a stairway alters the mesh, and determines whether or not Pathfinding takes that route to get to someone or an object, or not. Controls can put "holes" in the navigation mesh, making areas inaccessible to Pathfinder objects, or mark some objects as "dynamic obstacles."
Among the comments after the video was one referencing the changing path after the obstacle was placed in the Pathfinding object's way, "this is a gaming technique not even the most popular MMORPGs seem to know how to get right, and you guys managed to pull it off flawlessly. In games like WoW if you shoot a mob from a rooftop, it walks up the wall after you, rather then trying to find a logical path."
