SLers and Paying Attention to Updates

Location: SL Marketplace

As I prepare my swan-song teaching in SL (at least for the foreseeable future) I made some changes to the setting and dangers of the virtual House of Usher.

My last students to use it, in 2011, wanted some real chances of mayhem. I've obliged by adding a roleplayer's HUD to all of the premade avatars, and I set out to spend a few thousand Linden Dollars to add some traps, tricks, and mayhem.

The problem has been that items from Marketplace I ordered have not been delivered. Repeatedly. I think I know why.

Linden Lab recently updated its system for merchants, so they do not use a "Magic Box" server in-world, a remant of the time when the Lab purchased the retailers XstreetSL and Onrez. Now merchants who have read the notices use a direct delivery method. Note those words "who have read the notices" from Linden Lab.

Debates about Marketplace or the coming of direct delivery killing in-world real estate rage, but my concern is elsewhere. Never before have I had a Marketplace delivery to me fail.

Never.

Now both items I've purchased for the Usher avatars failed. I'm guessing that the creators have them in a Magic Box that is now useless.  How many other hundreds of small merchants, no longer active in SL, have had this occur because they were not paying any heed?

I'll send the Usher avatars shopping in-world to buy what they need, but the situation brings up a larger question. With the approach of server-side baking what will happen to tens of thousands of SL users who did not get the rather obscure blog post by the Lab, some time back? Firestorm's team has warned us to be ready. Linden Lab, however, has been all wine and roses and one blog post.

Yet even with Firestorm's good advice, I would hazard a guess that many of us don't read the text on our log-in screens.

If what I see at Marketplace, among folks who could be making money, is any indicator, hold onto your prim hats.

Chaos is coming to a metaverse near you. Wait for it.

Jessica Lyon of Firestorm Discusses Changes to Viewer Software

Location: VWER Meeting

Just over 40 educators and guests at VWER listened to Jessica Lyon discuss upcoming changes that all third-party viewers must make to work with server-side baking and other innovations that Linden Lab will soon roll out.

How soon? No idea, but "soon," as Jessica herself does not know. I'd say "not a moment too soon," as we soon crashed the simulator where the meeting occurred. After a restart, ten of the group never returned.

Thus the current state of SL. If the coming changes mean less lag and more stability, so be it.

The complete transcript of Jessica's Q&A can be found here.

A Round of Applause for the Phoenix Developers

Location: VWER meeting

I was dreading our meeting today. Just the other day, the four officers of VWER tried to hold a voice-chat meeting and it required two relogs and 20 minutes just so we could all hear and speak.

When we do voice interviews, we always have a couple of voice-to-text transcribers who capture the essence of the spoken remarks. This helps hearing-impaired members and maintains a transcript for later reference.

Logging in today, when we'd have about 20 guests and two speakers, I was nervous. A laptop melt-down left our other transcriber out of Second Life. So I had to be the sole typist for a technical topic about research methods and virtual worlds. This too on a day after Linden Lab began a few major upgrades.

The developers at Phoenix had just released a new version of the Firestorm viewer I like so much, and it promised real performance improvements.

And so it did. Second Life became useable again on my rig, and no chat-lag or other bugs cropped up during our meeting.

Second Life Browser 2.6 & Other Viewers

Location: Two Grids at Once!

Today, I tested both the SL viewer 1.23 and the latest version of Imprudence Viewer on the machine where I installed the new SL 2.6 viewer. Both worked.

There was a moment of concern on the SLED list that the new viewer might disable access to other viewers on one's computer. Clearly that has not been the case for me.

I logged on again, with SL 2.6 and Imprudence simultaneously. This was the acid test, shown: at right, Imprudence running for Jokaydia Grid; at left, SL 2.6 for SL's grid. I did have to wait for the viewer to auto-download an update.  I also noticed that point-and-click movement has stopped working after the update--or is it just me?

So far, I've really enjoyed the SL viewer and think Linden Lab addressed issues that bothered me about earlier versions of Viewer 2, namely, that I could not build as easily using the new viewer.

Over the summer, time will tell as I use the new Viewer on my primary machine and with my primary avatar.

Second Life's Beta Viewer: Advanced Mode

Location: On My Way to Svarga

As my time permits, I'll be doing multiple posts about my impression of the Beta viewer. I'm liking what I see so far.

In this installment of "Adventures With a New Viewer," Roderick Reanimator had to find his inventory, met a pretty woman riding her horse, teleported to Svarga, and conducted a few experiments without making too much of a fool of himself.

Roderick rezzed, on the same machine that I'd used for testing the basic version of the Beta, but he appeared as the premade avatar he'd switched using Basic Mode's pick-a-look options. I had, after that, put him back into his usual outfit from another computer, but those changes did not "take" when I logged on today.

I'm happy to say that nothing in his inventory has vanished, but then I'm still using the Beta Viewer on a different machine from my usual SL rig.

The Client AS a Web Browser

I can see myself liking this client a lot. Linden Lab turned the call for a browser-based client into a client that looks a lot like a browser, back buttons and all.

The interface is as clean, in advanced mode, as the lean, mean Firefox 4 broswer. The annoying sidebar from Viewer 2 can be clicked closed or open, so that would enable a builder to have enough real-estate on the screen for useful work. My objections to it vanished when I saw that. I have since come to understand that Viewer 2 has the same open/close feature.

A right-click on the ground evokes a "build" option. There's also a "build" menu on the top of the screen.

On my Mac, Cntrl + ALT + D brought up the familiar advanced menu. I selected quiet snapshots and elected not to play the typing anim (I leave it on only in big meetings, where it helps identify a "speaker").

I also found the environment editor with its advanced settings quickly, under the "world" menu's sun option. That was very helpful for taking snapshots.

A Beta for Immersion? Augmentation?

The integration of real-life and virtual identities does not go as far as Facebook proponents might wish, but immersionists may not like how quickly the Beta client pushes you to use voice. It is enabled by default (though easily turned off). The "me" menu has a "my voice" option that includes--if one subscribes--a morphing option for roleplay and gender-switching.

Web profiles opened very slowly for me. I've not used them, so at this point I cannot comment beyond "that was slow."

Features I Use a Lot: Pretty Good So Far

I take many snapshots, so I find one aspect of the Beta a bit annoying. When one clicks the "view" button, a very nice camera control appears. It's intuitive until you click off, then it vanishes.  This means more clicks every time a photographer changes the angle for a shot.

I do like the ability to toggle between presets for the camera--front, side, or rear. These make moving a bit odd, but they add a function that I've never used in another viewer, though perhaps I was not aware of it.

Snapshots are easily done, from a camera icon at the bottom of the screen. Just as I was fiddling with the settings, Alecto Vella showed up on horseback. She notes that like Iggy, she goes out on the roads of SL exploring. I guess the horse does not cause the sim-crossing lag that my cars do, because she looked realistic trotting along the Linden highways. She agreed to pose for some snaps as Roderick learned the controls--pretty quickly in fact.

Given Iggy's work to transcribe all of the VWER meetings and publish the chat as a public record, I needed to find if logging worked. It does, from a "privacy" tab under the preferences. That is the first option of the "me" menu.

Perhaps using the word "privacy" is not only more intuitive but also a nod to those who seek to avoid giving too much first-life data away. We'll see how Linden Lab strikes that balance, but for me, it's soon back to Svarga to explore while using the new viewer.

First Forays for the Beta Viewer

Location: Stonehenge!

Reading about the Linden Lab Beta Viewer for SL, I gave it a spin on a secondary machine (an older Intel-based iMac with lots of RAM). Respondents to a thread at the SLED list noted that they had real troubles with Mac-OS installs on their primary machines.  After a log in with the Beta Viewer, they were unable to relog with the Viewer 2.

On my first trip in-world, armed with this knowledge, I used Roderick Reanimator, the primary male avatar for our House of Usher simulation. He's a Poe character so we can take whatever fate throws his way. I only used Basic Mode, given time constraints but I'll try Advanced Mode next week.

Findings & Reactions:

• The lack of landmarks or notecards in Basic Mode would hamper first-hour experiences for students, according to several SLED participants.  Hiro Pendragon disagreed, but he had a useful bit of advice about landmarks: "I wish Linden Lab would start treating them like we treat it in a browser - with a down-pointing arrow next to the back/forward buttons that pulls down history, and another pull-down menu treating landmarks like bookmarks."

• I found that the Beta Viewer does have a back button like a Web browser, so Roderick was able to return home after his adventures with the Destinations at the bottom of the viewer's window. He made a visit to Stonehenge but was unable to get the landmark provided.  With a back-button click, he returned to his home location in SL.
• Hiro also took issue with the idea that users need money or inventory in the first hour.  A few SLED members felt that the inventory and economy would be a good incentive for students to move beyond Basic Mode.
• For my orientations with students, I'd need inventory but not money for the first hour, though as Eloise Pasteur notes, "you could get people used to chatting, IMing, moving around. With the destination bar you can get them to some places to let them see tping and rezzing in a new location. With the appearance bar you can move towards ideas about how you represent yourself in world."
• When Roderick rezzed, he was in the old outfit he wore for our work with The House of Usher. I changed his appearance during his hour with the Beta Viewer, using the presets at the bottom of the screen, then logged out and switched back to my primary machine. I logged in with a standard SL client and found his inventory intact. He did, of course, have to reset himself to his old garb, hair, shape, and skin.
  
• I used screen capture for my pictures, given the lack of snapshots.
• The buttons for options are clean and uncluttered, and I found them to be intuitive.

I have not had enough experience with the new browser to provide a verdict. I don't plan to use any version of the Beta on my primary machine until I have a few more questions answered:

• Does it prevent all third-party viewers from being used on the same machine? If so, is this a bug or a design feature?
• Can the landmark feature be added? Can notecards? This little warning will not be of much use to noobs, who might decide not to log in again:

That's a short but important list. I'll share more about Advanced Mode next week.