Eye On The Blog: "What's Next For Linden Lab?"

Earlier this week, Linden Lab posted on the official blog "What's Next For Linden Lab," which was a rundown of improvements and changes to Second Life, and Sansar, in addition to some upcoming developments.



The Lab touted their success with Animesh mentioning there were over 1300 animesh items in Marketplace (I found almost 1600). They also mentioned Bakes On Mesh, with a youtube to learn more about it.



The Lab went on to say they were getting their Environmental Enhancement Viewer "into shape." For those who don't know what the EEP is, it's "a series of new customizations in the environment rendering system that will allow for the creation and sharing of advanced environment settings, including up to four different sky layers which can be set independently. " (link to video)

Of the migration of Second Life's data to cloud servers, the Lab stated progress was continuing, saying they were trying to make the move as "invisible" as they could, "Your inventory data has been in the cloud for quite some time, and the maps website moved a little while ago."

The Lab told readers to, "Stay tuned for updates on when to expect the return of Last Names, availability of a new mobile app beta, changes to Premium options, improvements to Events, Search, the Destination Guide, and much more." 

Something else the Lab discussed were "New Growth and Community Initiatives." Among them was an upcoming "Second Life Blogger Network." "This new initiative will promote high-quality independent blog content to the Second Life community." The Lab stated there would be more details on it soon.

The Lab also told residents to expect some Halloween fun in October, "Residents can expect a mix of new events, freebies and other spooky surprises." Among the events, a Halloween-themed Swaginator hunt.

Also mentioned were the "New Video and Ad Campaigns." These included the Second Life Destinations Youtubes, the "Made in Second Life" videos, and the "Lab Gab" show by Strawberry and Xiola Linden. 

And the Lab has been doing new video tutorials, featuring Strawberry Linden. These include "How to Get Started in Second Life,"  "Shopping and Buying Linden Dollars," and "Customizing Your Avatar Shape." 

And of course, Linden Lab had a few things to say about their other virtual world, Sansar.

"Sansar introduces new features including improved avatar editing, experience points and titles, and new core worlds. We also have first-of-their-kind partnerships with several established music and entertainment companies. Now with a rich backstory and new quests, Sansar has come a long way since it debuted in beta in 2017 and is worth a second look!" 

A press release mentioned musical performances in Sansar on Wednesday September 25 and Thursday September 26.  

For more information, click on the blog post here.

Bixyl Shuftan

Animesh Arrives in Second Life

On Wednesday, Linden Lab announced that their "Project Animesh" was now part of the main Grid. For those whom are unfamiliar with Animesh, it offers content creators to allow "independent objects," or NPC creatures that are not "bots" or accounts left along by their owners and controlled by scripts, to be fitted with mesh and animations.

Animesh, first announced a year ago (!), allows independent objects to use rigged mesh and animations, just as you see today with mesh avatars. This means that you can now have wild animals, pets, vehicles, hair, zombies …. The possibilities are in your hands! We’ve created a Wiki which outlines how you can begin playing with Animesh. If you are a Premium Account, you will be able to attach two Animesh attachments instead of one.  Note: You will need to be on an Animesh Enabled Viewer to see Animesh objects work correctly; if you are using a third party viewer they can let you know when support will be available.

Linden Lab does have a User Guide page for Animesh. It also mentions five locations where you see and test it, four Moderate sims, Animesh1, Animesh2, Animesh3and Animesh4, and one adult sim, Animesh Adult. They have an "Animesh Freebie Package," with three moving characters (with pathfinder scripts), a human named "Aditya," a teddy bear, and a raptor. When rezzed on the sims, they will move about, sometimes heading back to where they were rezzed. If someone wears the "raptor steak hat" included in the package, any raptors nearby may become curious and try to pounce.

There's also a new category on Marketplace intended for Animesh objects, though not limited to them: Animated Objects.

Comments in VirtualVerse (the successor to SL Universe) are somewhat light, at least at the time of the writing of this article. In the SL forums, there's nothing in the General Discussion threads yet (though that  may soon change), but there is an Animesh category with several threads.

Inara Pey stated one advantage of Animesh was for the ability to make moving objects without "alpha flipping," or a series of objects combined and scripted so only one is visible at a time to give the appearance of movement, "like a set of flip book drawings." As alpha flipping "can be render intensive, impacting viewer performance," it is hoped that Animesh objects will be a way to make objects that will be less laggy for residents.



Hamlet Au found this video by Medue about animesh in action. He commented that he'd been told by builders that they haven't been selling as much as they've been in the past and thought "Animesh is just the thing to boost the virtual world marketplace." He also commented on what it would likely lead to, "Multiplayer FPS games in SL where enemies no longer look like herky jerky puppets, mini-RPGs with highly detailed character interactions.... and, of course, inevitably, much virtual sex with NPCs."

What do you the readers think Animesh will lead to? Feel free to leave comments.

Source: Linden Lab, Modem World, New World Notes

Bixyl Shuftan

News in Brief : Possible Viewer Trouble, Updated Linden Game, Google Plus Shut Down

 Once again, there's a lot more news than there is time to go over it in detail. So here's more brief descriptions of several things that have been going on.

Is Animesh Update Causing Viewer Trouble? - Has your viewer been having problems lately? A couple people have come to me, saying they've been crashing a lot lately. My attention was directed to JIRA BUG-225584 done by the creator of the Black Dragon viewer, saying ever since the Animesh update to Second Life, his viewer has had "massive performance loss" with frame rate. The problem isn't limited to Black Dragon, but could hit any Second Life Viewer. Linden Lab is investigating the issue, and people with problems, are encouraged to discuss it on this thread in the official forums.

Source: New World Notes

New Linden Realms - On the Linden Blog, there was an announcement that one of the older Linden games has been given a new twist. Linden Realms is now "Linden Realms: The Search For Magellan."

New Sunweaver Halloween Attractions - The Sunweaver community has two new Halloween-themed attractions. These are Shockwave's Haunted Maze at Sunweaver Eclipse (102/39/2201) and the Happy Vixen Haunted Manor.

Google Plus Shut Down After Data Breach Exposed - Google announced on Monday October 8 that it would be shutting down it's social network Google Plus. This announcement came shortly after a Wall Street Journal article that there had been a data leak affecting a half million users, and Google made the decision not to warn people fearing disclosure might mean bad press and possibly increased regulation as a result.

Source: Ars Technica 

Dysphoria to Euphoria. The Newser was alerted to a sim that had been recreated by it's fans. Dysphoria was an Alice-in-Wonderland style sim that it's owner announced would be closing due to her changing real life. When an attempt to save it failed, fans made the decision to rebuild it, under the new name Euphoria.

Source: Euphoria Wonderland

More on these stories, and others, when time permits.

Bixyl Shuftan