Some good news for those who like to get the most of what their Second Life land can hold. Yesterday, Tuesday April 2, Linden Lab announced it had lowered the "download weight" of mesh items by fifteen percent, which indirectly increases the Land Impact allowance of sims.
As promised in our PBR Materials announcement
last year -- as of this morning’s Second Life server grid roll, we have
increased the allowance of Land Impact by lowering mesh Download Weight
by 15% for all of Second Life! Since much of Second Life today consists
of mesh content, anyone who owns or rents land will see more land
impact available on their parcels.
To see if an item's weight has changed, right click and select "Edit" on it, then check the "More Info" link on the popup (illustration on left).
For members of the Relay for Life in Second Life, tomorrow is a big day. Saturday February 20 marks the start of the 2021 Relay season here in the virtual world. The the first event will be the Kickoff at the American Cancer Society and American Cancer Society2 sims. It's set to start at 10AM SL time.
The theme this year, "A Cure for a Happy Ending. It's sure to be a big event with people from many teams, large and small. For those already in the Relay, it's an event not to be missed. For those not yet part of the Relay but wanting to know more, this is a good chance to find people to talk to about it and maybe join a team.
On a similar note, there's a call for screenshots, and other items for the Relay museum. They're looking for those from the 2016 to 2020 Relay seasons. While they've gotten the permission from the Newser to use any of it's pictures, well, we weren't everywhere at once. So by all means consider sharing any you have. The one to contact is Museumstorage Resident. The museum can be reached at American Cancer Society (78/104/23).
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.
Although most of you probably know this already, I'd like to remind all: DO NOT ACCEPT GIFTS OR ITEMS FROM AVATARS YOU DON'T KNOW. There have been many scams going around the last few weeks where stranger avatars try to give seemingly attractive items away -- these are dangerous objects! They can often ask you for permissions to take lindens, or give control of your avatar to another. Others are griefing objects that will disrupt sims.
Last weekend, Second Life artist Gracie Kendel closed her "Binge and Purge" exhibit, inviting people to drop by before deleting virtually everything from her inventory. With so many of us having quite a bit of junk on us, the exhibit was a reminder of that. But with Linden Lab's recent change in the Terms of Service, the exhibit had taken on new meaning.
"Change something in your environment and watch how much that
single change will uplift your personal vibration, boost your energy and
improve your mood.We don’t
realize how much that overflowing Inventory that holds our possessions can
block our ability to enjoy a Second Life existence without frustration, lag and
system crashes.Possessing an
excessive inventory is the contributing reason to all of the above complaints. "
Gemma Cleanslate has been busy at the Playa, the main site of the preparations for the Burn2 event next month. She recently took a little time to take a few pictures of some small items that had been set up while their owners worked on larger exhibits.
