More On ABC's Downfall

 

So what's new in the story of the troubles at Awesome Breed Creations?  Various bits and pieces. One was an invitation from another breedable company. The other were further signs that the downfall of ABC isn't going to have a happy ending.

 

Read the story in Extra. 

Announcement: This Saturday at The Science Circle - "Recent Developments in Materials Science"

 

"Recent Developments in Materials Science"

Saturday October 31 

10 AM to 11:30 AM

Join Matt Burr and Mike Shaw for a discussion about materials. What new materials such as graphene and nanotubes hold promises for new technologies? What are the prospects for advanced batteries? What can we look forward to with breakthroughs and novel materials?    

Guests: Dr. Michael J. Shaw, Dr. Kurt Winkelmann

For more information, Click Here. 

 http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/The%20Science%20Circle/67/129/32

 

Announcement: This Saturday at The Science Circle - "Recent Developments in Medicine"

"Recent Developments in Medicine"

Saturday, February 29
10 AM SLT

Host: Matthew Burr
Guests: Robert Hendrix, MD, Dr. Stephen Gasior

To read more, Click Here

https://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/The%20Science%20Circle/67/129/32

Eye on the Blog: Linden Lab Reports About Recent Developments

Earlier this week, Linden Lab announced on the official Second Life Blog updates on developments on some projects, in addition to announcements on some new ones, as well as new areas.

Project Bento was the first of the topics mentioned, but the Lab didn't go into specifics, saying only that "resident testers continue to improve this project," and that they were "very close" to making a release viewer (an early access viewer with a certain feature that hasn't quite had all the bugs worked out yet) with Bento as part of it. But there's no estimate yet as to when this will be made part of the official Second Life viewer. They did suggest those interested could join their "Bento User Group" which meets time to time. Inara Pey has a record of the meetings she has attended (here). Loki Elliot, a noted builder, says he has no plans to make anything with Bento until next year at least.

Next up for discussion was a feature useful for residents with lots of outfits: the Visual Outfits Browser, which has been made into a release viewer. Inara Pey described it as "this viewer allows you to use the Appearance floater to capture / upload / select images of your outfits and save them against the outfits in a new Outfit Gallery tab within the floater."

We realize Second Life Residents have dozens and dozens of outfits and looking at a list can be boring and uninspiring, not to mention difficult to remember what is what (imagine that you couldn't look at the clothes in your own closet at home, but instead could only see a list of their names!). With the new Visual Outfit Browser, you’ll be able to see your outfits via an all new gallery-style display, making selecting outfits a snap. You provide the images that are displayed for each outfit or try out VOB’s new snapshot utility. Playing dress-up has never been so easy and fun!

Third was Quicktime Replacement

Apple recently withdrew support for the Quicktime player for Windows, which has in any event been a steady source of security vulnerabilities over the years. This project replaces that plugin for the Windows Viewer with newer and more robust media support (the Mac Viewer will also get this new tech soon). It will play some media that Quicktime would not, but will not play some older Quicktime-only media. Content creators that incorporate media should be testing with this Viewer to see if the media they use is supported. In general, we recommend upgrading any shared media to mp3, mp4, or any HTML5 compatible format for best performance and stability.

As it turned out, Inara Pey earlier this summer wrote about both the Visual Outfit Browser and the VLC Plugin Viewer.

Also brought up were some new Learning and Social Island locations, which the Lab says were introduced in March. They called these, "the first to utilize Experience Tools as part of the new user experience." They also had a new location: Gaming Island.

A new Linden Lab region dedicated to educating Residents about skill games in Second Life.  On this region, anyone can learn how to play all available games of skill in a free-to-play setting. If you want to then go play the games for Linden dollars, the Portal Park makes it easy to find them.

"Skill gaming" is something of a controversial subject, some saying the difference between it and outright gambling are technical and legal loopholes. The place is  likely to be the subject of a number of discussions as word reaches the residents.

There was "Group Chat and Bans,"  the ability of group moderators to ban individual residents and keep them from returning. They also released the "Jellydoll Viewer," "which allows Residents to set limits on the amount of avatar complexity they render in their viewer." They stated they improved security for Linden transactions and email security. They stated they replaced the viewer's core HTTP infrastructure, "this has resulted in fewer problems with high volume operations like loading inventory, and has significantly reduced certain kinds of load on the simulator hosts." The Lab stated they've continued to improve the new Marketplace search they introduced last November.And they've continued to clean up bugs in the system, "we do try to introduce fewer than we fix! "

Do you the readers have anything to say about these improvements and developments? Please leave your comments below.

A Word From The Editor: Aiming To Put "Food On The Table"

Yours truly has made a name for himself, under his pseudonym, writing about Second Life for about eight years now, five and a half under this newsletter. What most of you don't know is that before Second Life, I was writing under my real-life name, Murray M. Lee, self-publishing several science-fiction stories in the website "A Writers Block." The website is no longer online as something went wrong and it vanished from the web. While yours truly still does a little story-writing on the side, progress has been slow, as my first priority has been here.

Partially due to real-life developments, friends and family have been suggesting I make more of a push to use my writing talents to make a real-life income, "Second Life is fine and dandy, but it has not been putting food on your table," I've been more or less told. Actually it has been helping to put food on the tables of others, but that's another story. While I have made money here, I've been donating what I make to the American Cancer Society via Relay for Life, and Veterans charities.

So at their suggestion, I'm going to do a little experiment. I'm going back to writing some things under my real-life name. About once a week on a new website, I'll upload a little something. Sometimes an essay, sometimes just a joke, maybe short stories. Things are only just beginning there, the only two guidelines are "writings about other than Second Life" and "make real money" by getting people to want to advertise there.

The name of the website, since the aim is to help "put food on the table," that's what the working title will be: "Food on the Table." Right now, it's very much a work in progress. Only the basics are set up. Only one writing has been uploaded there. But there will be more to come.

This does *not* meant I'll be cutting back on my writing here. It simply means I am looking an additional market. As long as Gemma, Becky, and the others on the team keep writing a steady stream of stories, this newsletter will keep on going strong, especially if we get some sponsors to replace Podex and Steelhead, of which the losses of (due to Linden Lab and the founder's real-life problems respectively) were a big hit to our bottom line.

But if you're curious to see other writings of mine, please check out "Food on the Table."

https://foodonthetablesite.wordpress.com/ .

Bixyl Shuftan aka Murray M. Lee

Eye on the Blog: "Second Life Improvements"

On October 20 on the official Second Life blog, Linden Lab announced some details about some upcoming planned changes to the grid, as well as one current change to it's website, "There’s a lot going on with Second Life these days, and we wanted to talk about a few of the projects that are either out or in the works!"

The first thing on their list was "Project Valhalla," which replaces the old Internet viewing framework with one that supports more recent technologies.

A new age of modern HTML5 content is upon us, and we're overhauling the way shared media (aka "media on a prim") works so that you can enjoy all kinds of modern web content within Second Life. Chromium Embedded Framework (CEF) is coming to replace the aging QTWebkit framework. What you can now see in a Project Viewer is the latest released version of Chrome - so it will render all modern web technologies - like HTML5, CSS3, WebGL; has the latest security patches; and will be easy to keep updated to a recent version. What does this mean for your Flash content? What about Quicktime? They may still work, but because both can only be viewed if the user has correctly installed a 3rd party plugin, we can't  promise support and you shouldn’t expect that it will work for everyone. Standard HTML5 is the way of the future and this Viewer will enable it for anyone. There are still bugs to squash, and we’re iterating quickly to bring you a smooth inworld media and browsing experience.

On the official forums, Linden Lab invited residents to leave comments on a thread on the topic. Among those posting was AI Austin, "An initial test of the Project Valhalla viewer on my Windows 10 setup did have the media texture screens showing a quicktime server .sdp stream and a looping MPEG-4 video on the screens (as shown in the image above), but I am not sure if that is because of other elements I already have installed or if its included by default in the Valhalla viewer."

One can read more about, and download, the Valhalla Viewer Here.

 Next was an "Avatar Rendering Complexity" feature.

A new *Avatar Maximum Complexity* control lets you prevent expensive-to-render avatars from lagging you; any avatar over the limit is displayed as a solid color rather than rendering in full detail. A default limit is set based on the rendering performance of your system. You'll also get a notice when your own rendering complexity changes, and an indication when you're over the limit of too many of the avatars around you. Bundled together in this Viewer is a change that allows you to create and quickly change presets of your graphics settings, so as you go from a club to an art gallery, to the beach, or to your home, you can quickly adjust your settings to fit the scene.

Apparently if an avatar goes over the limit you set, it's displayed as a simple, single color, mannequin-like shape.

On the Linden-created forum thread on the topic, one resident expressed concern, calling it "giving avatar makers just another migraine to now deal with." Another felt it would encourage them to be more efficient. In New World Notes, Hamlet Au commented, "If it's implemented well, this could be an important feature to improve overall performance. At the same time, the very fact that it's necessary makes me sadly smile, because it reflects a paradox with user creativity in Second Life that's existed from the beginning: By making Second Life as open a creative platform as possible, Linden Lab unleashed incredible amounts of inventiveness that continues to be impressive (if overwhelming). At the same time, because it is so open, there's also abundant opportunities for creativity which is overly complex and laggy."

For now, one can try out the feature on the Release Candidate Viewer.

A few other details were briefly mentioned. Sorting notifications into categories, removing Flash from the secondlife.com website due to security concerns, a change that "now prevents loss of no-copy items due to a failed rez," and continuing the HTTP Project for improved texture loading.

For the blog post in full: Click Here. Besides Hamlet Au, Inara Pey and Daniel Voyager also wrote on the topic.

Bright Canopy Resumes Service

Earlier this month in an inworld conference, the Bright Canopy team explained their new viewer aimed at allowing Second Life to be accessed normally through tablets, as well as older computers, had been hit with technical difficulties. A few days ago, they announced they were back in business.

Bright Canopy has been down now for almost a month. We have done our best to be transparent and communicative during the downtime. ...
We have been working with Frame on a new pricing plan that will allow us to offer the service immediately. We will continue working on options that will improve our costs on the backend and allow more  flexibility in the future.

Their pricing plan is $17 a month for 20 hours of use, with additional time at two cents a minute with a "30 minute minimum for sessions," or 60 cents minimum. For those using "10 hours or more of additional minutes, that will be charged immediately, otherwise additional minutes are charged at the beginning of the next month."

So if you use 5 additional hours during the month, you would spend $6 more . This would mean your credit card would be charged $21 at the beginning of the next month.

If you use 10 additional hours, you would be charged $12 now and $17 for your monthly subscription at the beginning of the next month.

Bright Canopy calls this a "fresh start," so everyone has to re-register at brightcanopy.com , even if they already have.

One can read more at their blog here, or email then at support@brightcanopy.com .

Hat tip: Daniel Voyager 

Discussion About The Bright Canopy Viewer

On September 5, the Bright Canopy service, which offers a viewer designed to allow tablet users to go inworld and about in Second Life, held a conference inworld at their sim. They discussed some of the recent developments concerning their viewer, followed by a Q&A session.

Read about the conference in Design.

Eye on the Blog: "Project Interesting ... Now ... Part of the Default Second Life Viewer"

Earlier this week, there was an announcement on the Linden blog about their "Project Interesting," saying it was now part of the official viewer.

we’re promoting a much-anticipated Viewer update called Project Interesting. Previously, available only in limited release, Project Interesting is now available gridwide as part of the default Second Life Viewer! This update reduces the load and time it takes to draw objects in regions, meaning scenes appear more quickly and smoothly as you move throughout Second Life.

It's unclear whether or not the trouble on the Grid last week, resulting in people unable to log on at times (article by Daniel Voyager), had anything to do with the instillation of Project Interesting, though it is an interesting coincidence.

Eye on the Blog: "Project Interesting" Promises Better Rezzing Priorities

Recently on the official Second Life blog, Linden Lab announced the latest step of their "Project Shinning." This development now available in the new official viewer, promises a more sensible, or "interesting," way for objects to rezz. Hence the name "Project Interesting." What it promises to do is replace the seemingly random pattern of objects rezzing to a more prioritized one where those which are larger and closer to your avatar appear first.

... this project will greatly reduce the load and time it takes to draw objects in regions. Put simply, this means scenes will appear more quickly and smoothly as you move throughout Second Life. ...
We’ve already made the server smarter about sending the important, "interesting" stuff first, and today we’re launching a release candidate for a new Viewer that does a much better job of storing and managing the scene data on your computer. This will not only improve the speed at which a location loads, it will also help with overall Viewer performance.

It's a problem most of us can relate to, how often the objects most important to us are about the last ones to rezz, such as a door that remains invisible and can't be opened to let one through. So a development like this sounds good. But recalling what Server-Side baking did to the Second Life experience of residents with older computers, some can be pardoned for asking "what's the catch?"  And indeed, resident Bay Sweetwater suggested Project Interesting doesn't quite work well with Mac computers.


For the complete blog post, Click Here. Or Click Here if you're having trouble seeing the video.

Team Firestorm Holds Public Meeting

By Bixyl Shuftan

On Saturday August 10 at Noon SL time, Jessica Lyon and others of Team Firestorm held a public meeting concerning developments with their viewer. Staff included, the meeting was attended by close to 80 residents. Jessica talked about the CHat User Interface or CHUI, and that putting it into the Firestorm Viewer was taking some work, "Linden Lab put a lot of stuff in" with code that conflicts some with Firestorm's own programing. Fixing it was proving to be something of a "nightmare" with "broken" codes.

Of Linden Lab's Project Sunshine, Jessica thought it was going smoother than she believed it would. She had earlier predicted that it would take three rollouts before the first part of it could get going, and the Lab had gotten it right on the first try. She told the audience Project Sunshine and it's server-side baking currently covered about 20% of the Grid.

Jessica and others in the staff, such as Tonya Souther, talked about other issues, such as the "chiclets," or mini pictures on the Linden and Firestorm viewers, Jessica commenting, "We've been trying to kill chiclets for ages." Whirly Fizzle stated in chat, "we have chiclets as optional for the next release." Of the next Firestorm update, Jessica promised it would be a major one.

For those who were more than a little critical of Team Firestorm's work, and it's discontinuing work on the old Phoenix Viewer, Jessica reminded that they were a group of volunteers working for free, and telling them what to do was a bit like "herding cats." This got some chuckles as Jessica'a avatar is a neck catgirl with ears and a tail, and teammate Tonya Souther a furry tigergirl. There were also reminders about filing JIRAs, "seriously, file a JIRA issue and explain as concisely as you can what the problem is and what you want to see changed and if we need more clarification, you'll be asked."

Someone also brought up the old Emerald Viewer, and there was a short explanation to newcomers that Jessica and others on Team Firestorm were once part of the team behind that old popular 3rd party viewer before some "drama" with Linden Lab, and they left to form Team Phoenix.

The Firestorm Viewer is the most popular among supported third party viewers. Except possibly for the old Phoenix Viewer which it developed but no longer supports, no other Second Life viewer is as popular.

The Phoenix blog is on http://www.firestormviewer.org/. Tonya Souther, who leads the Mac development team, has her own blog at: http://secondden.blogspot.com/.


Bixyl Shuftan

Eye on the Blog: “CEO Rodvik Humble Shares What's New in Second Life”

On Monday, Linden Lab’s CEO Rod Humble/Rodvik Linden personally posted on the official blog, “It’s been a little while since I last updated folks on Second Life. Earlier this year, I noted several areas we would be focusing on. Let me update you on each area and share with you our plans for the remainder of the year. But first, we’d like to give a warm welcome to our newbies! August was the biggest growth month for Second Life in nearly four years! I hope you all take the time to try out the many different activities in Second Life — there’s everything from clubbing to boating. You might even to want to try your hand at making something new. As a side note, one of the easiest ways to find new things is to check out the Destination Guide in the log-in screen of the viewer.”

Rod then brought up Viewer 2’s Basic mode, which he called really helpful in “getting newbies up and running.“ But recognizing its limits, such as being unable to buy & sell and build, stated the Lab would soon “merge the Basic and Advanced modes.” He also stated there would be “continued investment and focus” in response times to problems including more support staffing.

Rod also mentioned “over the next few months,” there would be new advanced features that would allow for easier and better “creation of artificial life and artificial people.” Among other things, the creatures and beings would be able to navigate about more intelligently, “Imagine being able to create advanced pets, creatures or even a living town where non-player characters are walking about. Combined with the experience tools I mentioned above, it should soon be possible to create more advanced MMORPG’s or interactive experiences which use AI right within Second Life.”

Hamlet Au wrote some about the last set of improvements. He felt they would soon lead to “upheavals” in the virtual pet industry as old scripting systems are taken offline and the companies rush to keep their creatures and other goods updated. He also predicted Second Life’s gaming areas, or “mini MMOs” ae he called them, would both become more advanced and more popular. Finally, he called these upcoming developments a solution to the Grid’s “crowded empty” problem, lots of residents inworld, but most sims empty or nearly so, “Adding NPC features will be an easy way to fix that problem, giving land owners easy tools to make their place seem less empty.”

Checking the thread on the forums, many people posting were looking forward to these developments. This included Jo Yardley of “The 1920’s Berlin Project,” who felt the use of these “robots” would make a lot of difference in making her sim more lifelike, “Yes I'd rather have 100 real avatars running around my city 24 hours a day, but it won't happen and if it did the server would blow up with lag overdose.” There were however some dissenting opinions, “So one CEO gets rid of the bots, numbers plummet, lag doesn't get any better, and the next CEO decides to bring the things back.”

Sources: Linden Blog, New World Notes

Bixyl Shuftan