Recent Comments:
SLS 1.24: Second Life rolling update, rolling out now
Massively
Aug 21st 2008 8:58AM Good tip with CONTROL SHIFT G, works perfectly using the Windows beta viewer, gives you the drop-down grid selection.
The sandbox in Morris, just south of Ahern, is also already on the 1.24 server, so anybody can go there to play with Mono if they're feeling itchy to get started.
As expected, scripted objects compiled with Mono checked, when taken back to the old server then fail and will set to not-running.
Second Life daily news
Massively
Jul 28th 2008 10:43AM my condolences to Tateru, Moo, Akela(?you still out there?) and the others. hope things work out better for you somewhere, someday. Tateru, you always seemed to have the best news a couple days before the others, hope to see you more active at Dwell On It again.
so then, where to now for SL news? NWN, NPIRL and SLNN are already on my reader, but please don't make me go back to SLH...
Jay, it surely would be nice to see SL Insider resurrected, but don't forget it too was AOL-owned and that's why it got folded into Massively in the first place during the last round of blogger budget cuts.
High-end graphics features planned for Second Life
Massively
May 30th 2008 7:49AM Katharine, this is a wonderful set of pics and really shows what a difference shadows make in creating a convincing environment.
Looks as though alpha textures such as trees and the sandbox sign cast proper shadows as one would expect, although it seems like the edges are courser, maybe similar to the 64x64 low detail we saw in dynamic reflections on shiny surfaces in the past? (via the Debug menu)
A couple questions: can shadows be cast by local lights, or is this limited to just the sun and the moon? And have you tried rezzing more local lights than just the six we're normally limited to having active?
Could you use local lights to create an indoor space lit with plain white lights that would override some wild Windlight preset colored the sky outside (thus fixing some peoples' complaints about Windlight)?
(heh heh, i think i just need to figure out how to compile one of these for myself)
High-end graphics features planned for Second Life
Massively
May 29th 2008 6:40AM Re screenshots, didn't Dave himself post a few early glimpses a few weeks ago?
http://picasaweb.google.com/Runitai/DeferredRendering
As far as stability vs feature development, I would agree with Tateru about the need for balance. Any software team that entirely halts development of new features is going to find it harder to restart that work once some mythical point of stability is deemed to have been achieved, and be much later delivering new features than if they'd continued to work on them all along.
Just when can it be said SL has reached stability? When the last five hysterically screaming multi-posters on the blog are finally silenced?
Mad Patcher provides megaprims
Massively
May 12th 2008 3:11PM EC-f: works like a charm. It will be interesting to see what happens this week as the Lindens find the inventory database flooded with new megaprims - will they try to plug the gap or maybe finally give their blessings?
Megaprims on the loose again
Massively
May 10th 2008 4:26PM I just spent the last hour playing with the 0L pack by Day Oh that you linked to at SLExchange, as well as another 0L pack there by Zwagoth Klaar, and I can confirm that all the prims within are definitely true new megaprim sizes. They allow hollow, cuts, profiles, shape changes (cube to sphere, torus, etc) all without "collapsing", i.e. they behave just like the old batch of megaprims. On Havok 4 at least, they all fuction as proper solids when you turn off "phantom" so that you can walk around inside them, along curves and so on.
Day Oh's pack is all flat, with a huge variety of X,Y sizes but all with a Z value of 0.5m, in total I think it's 2048 prims added to your inventory. But Zwagoth Klaar's pack is the Big Golden Prize in my eyes. It features about 70 megaprims of varying sizes, including true cubes (aka spheres! tori!) ranging from 11m to 32m, as well as some creative X sizes with more torus-friendly matching Y,Z values. Although I'd of course be happier being able to create such sizes myself, this pack will definitely open up a new wave of megaprim-based building that encompasses more than just "what can I do with a 40m sphere?"
I wonder if this little back-door opening is a sign in the code of things to become official at some point in the future? Gee it sure would be nice...
1.20: Changing your mind about avatar lag
Massively
Apr 15th 2008 10:13AM Hmmm muted avatars do indeed go grey but their ARC doesn't change. I wonder if you still get the performance improvement though, since their prims and textures clearly aren't being visibly rendered.
Second Life daily news
Massively
Mar 22nd 2008 4:50PM never mind, i just saw the line about the link >blush
Second Life daily news
Massively
Mar 22nd 2008 4:49PM where ARE YOU in that picture!? i want to go there tooooooo!
Yesterday in Second Life: Second Life Daily News
Massively
Jan 21st 2008 7:50AM I may be mistaken, but that also seems to be a record low for the Grid Stability Index - all the more impressive for a Sunday with a record setting peak concurrency.
