On Tuesday 20th October Linden Lab published a blog post about Second Life Improvements – What’s New & What’s Coming Soon!. Here are the improvements announced in the blog post with updates on other projects going on…
Project Valhalla
The Project Valhalla viewer now comes with the new Chromium Embedded Framework (CEF) that supports modern web technologies like HTML5, CSS3 and WebGL. This new framework replaces the outdated QTWebkit framework and makes sure for a better experience.
The lab points out that standard HTML5 is now the way forward and I think this is a good step forward. Flash content and Quicktime may still work however the lab have said they can’t promise support.
- Check out the Second Life Project Valhalla viewer here
Rendering Complexity
The lab have announced a new Avatar Maximum Complexity control which lets you prevent expensive to render avatars from lagging you. There is a default limit which is based on the rending performance of the user’s system. There will be a notice when rending complexity changes apparently that will give you an indication when you are over the limit of too many avatars around you.
Another update is that you can now create different saved presets for your graphics settings and quickly switch them using a new top bar pull down menu. This sounds like fun and I’m sure it will be very useful indeed.
- Try out the Release Candidate Viewer
Notifications
Incoming notifications are now sorted into categories providing a better way to view, prioritize and manage notices. Each notification in the list can be now be expanded or collapsed too.
- Try out the RC Viewer
Second Life Website
The lab have said in the blog post that Flash has now been removed from the Second Life website due to recent security problems.
Mesh Importer
The lab have said that they have recently shipped the Mesh Importer Viewer which performs name based LOD association and handles models with a variety of materials.
Inventory Loss
The lab are still working on the complicated problem and improvements are in the pipeline. The lab mentioned this too..”A recent simulator change now prevents loss of no-copy items due to a failed rez”.
HTTP Project
In the new RC Viewer the lab have upgraded all the rest of the HTTP uses in the viewer. Features will now perform better and more reliably in the new RC viewer.
Summary
Back in February 2015 the lab did publish some huge improvements for Second Life including Hover Height, Notifications, Mesh Import, Viewer Managed Marketplace and updates to the graphics settings.
It’s really good to know that Second Life is still being worked on and that exciting improvements are coming soon. Yay! 🙂
Daniel Voyager 