Second Life, Linden Lab & OpenSim News
There is a underwater sunken houseboat in Millers Pond on the new Bellisseria continent in Second Life. The only way to access it is by using a space suit or divers suit because of the high pressure that builds up.
Tansee Resident and Riannah Avora have started a new interesting movement recently to try and keep the LEA alive in Second Life. They have formed a new group in Second Life called LEA 2.0 The New Future – Save LEA ! which is worth joining. The group was formed to find positive people who are willing to share hopeful suggestions.
120 members have already joined the new LEA 2.0 group which is a good start and hopefully hundreds more will join in the weeks ahead.
Join the group today (free) and help save LEA!
Join Group to SAVE The LEA Sandbox, AIR grants, Core grants and the future of SL Virtual Art and Creativity. Be Proactive . This is an opportunity for “Positive” voices to be heard and be a part of the continuing growth and innovation of virtual art and creativity at LEA with dignified and equal respect to all concerned artists.
Please Be specific with your suggestions . Offer reasonalbe solutions
Send Notecards to Rianna Avora Baron or Tansee
On 25th July Tansee Resident and Riannah Avora apparently sent an email to Patch Linden and Derrik Linden about the new group effort to save LEA. Suggestions and ideas will be sent to Linden Lab next week.
The hope now is for the lab to respond back with an agreement which would be amazing news for the Second Life community and most importantly the LEA community. A new committee with fresh eyes and abilities will likely be formed soon if the lab accepts. If Linden Lab don’t reach an agreement then this will be deeply sad news indeed.
In LEA2 its now showing a message saying support LEA 2.0 on the map. Yes I totally agree everyone needs to come together and save LEA from closing down next month.
Please spread the word and lets make a positive difference as a community.
On Thursday 18th July the Linden Endowment for the Arts Committee announced that the LEA regions in Second Life will be officially closing down at the end of August 2019. The LEA Land Grant was closed by Linden Lab back in January 2019. Just a small number of the committee stayed on to administer the LEA Core regions for the remaining grant commitments apparently. Those grants are now coming to an end and the decision has been made to shut down at the end of next month.
The Committee of the Linden Endowment for the Arts regrets to inform residents of Second Life that the LEA regions will be closing at the end of August 2019.In November 2018, the Committee decided that the best way forward was for the members to step down, and allow Linden Lab to revamp or re-organise the program, with new members if they wished.At that time, the bi-annual Land Grant (the AIR regions) were shuttered. A small number of the Committee stayed on to administer the Core Regions until the remaining grant commitments ran their course. Those grants are now coming to an end, and therefore the LEA will be closed at the end of August 2019
Today the Firestorm team announced a brand new version (6.2.4.57588) of the well known Firestorm Viewer. This latest version is fully merged up to the 6.2.3 Linden code-base. See the full release notes here.
There are many new features including the EAM (Estate Access Management) tools, LMR (Love Me Render) containing rendering bug fixes, improvements to communications, inventory, appearance and much more. This new update means that version 5.0.11.53634 will be blocked from logging in to the Second Life grid in 3 weeks time.
New Change For SL & OpenSim Users
Second Life and OpenSim versions of the Firestorm viewer are no longer going to be joined together going forward starting in Firestorm 6.2.4.57588 which is now for Second Life only.
The Firestorm team will now issue updates for Second Life and OpenSim independently, There will be no need to worry about backwards compatibility in future versions.
We have reached a milestone in how we handle Open Simulator and Second Life binaries. In the past we have provided SL-only builds AND OpenSim-and-SL builds. This has always caused much confusion to our users, and for that reason—among many others—we have forked our code into two repositories. This means we can now issue updates for Second Life and updates for OpenSim independently of each other. It also makes it a lot easier for us to develop for Second Life without worrying about backwards compatibility with OpenSim, and to develop for OpenSim without concern about SL compatibility. Everyone wins!
No longer will the two be tied by release date or version numbers. Firestorm developer Beq Janus has been communicating with OpenSim developers and grid owners and has been working hard on OpenSim-specific issues for a future OpenSim Firestorm viewer update.
After the future OpenSim update:
- There will be TWO install directories if you wish to install both binaries and log into both SL and OpenSim.
- These will install independently from one another, will not share settings or cache, and therefore will not conflict with each other.
- The Second Life dedicated viewer’s grid manager will only offer Agni and Aditi (SL main and beta grids).
- The OpenSim dedicated viewer’s grid manager will NOT offer Second Life grids.
This is great news for both Second Life users and OpenSim users, and we are excited about the way we are moving forward.
Some of the things I like…
IMPROVEMENT Advanced region info on the world map has been moved to a new row below the region name
To enable/disable showing of the advanced map information: Preferences → Move & View → Map & Minimap → Show additional region information on World Map.
When enabled, this option displays avatar count and maturity level for the region.
Ansarirl Hiller
EAM improves the state of Estate Access Management!
New features include:
More Estate Managers! We’ve upped the number from 10 to 15. Remember, with great power comes great responsibility.
AndreyL ProductEngine, Maxim ProductEngine, AndreyK ProductEngine
This update from Linden Lab adds retina display support on Mac, and has a variety of graphics-related fixes.
Note: For Mac displays with HiDPI support, retina display mode is disabled by default on Firestorm.
Enabling HiDPI support will generally give you a sharper display but a lower frame rate.If you want to enable HiDPI display, go to the preference settings page: Avatar → Preferences → Graphics → Hardware Settings, and tick the box
Enable support for HiDPI displays (Mac OSX only, requires restart), then restart the viewer.Graham Linden, Ruslan ProductEngine
Tonya Souther – Firestorm implementation of HiDPI support for Mac
See the full release notes here.
Mr bunny jumped into a huge hot air balloon last week and decided to travel along the new water ways of the recently opened area on the Bellisseria continent.
Starting in Welby Corner Mr bunny went down the SSPE200 – SSPE203 waterway over to the coastline far east then went up north. The area is still under construction and will be finished very soon.
Here are some of my snapshots during my hot air balloon adventures.
It’s great to travel around in the hot air balloon taking snapshots of the new area and I strongly recommend everyone doing it.
Within the past hour Patch Linden has posted a new update on the Linden Homes section on the Second Life Forums saying that for all those continuously refreshing to get a new Linden home you will now start seeing an error page. The land section page is still working and apparently it may get a revamp later this year.
Here is the full update by Patch Linden
Hi folks! We are all beyond excited that the new Linden Homes parcels in the Bellisseria continent have been so well received. The Moles and various Lindens are hard at work creating more, and those will be made available just as soon as possible. But …. with all the attention you are all giving the new homes it’s making our web servers sad. We know that some people are using a plug-in or a browser feature to reload the home selection page, and as much as we admire the tenacity, we need to pump the brakes a bit on that traffic. Pretty soon you will start to see an error page if you have your browser set to continuously refresh those pages. No need to fear! The website is still functional. It’s just to give our servers a little breather. You will be able to resume activity again after the timeout period is over. Additionally, we are actively looking at ways of making the Linden Homes selection process a little more streamlined. Look for these changes to be coming to a Linden Homes selection page near you in the future.
The lab knows that many people are either using a browser feature or plug-in to reload the land selection page every day and this is putting a lot of strain on the Linden servers apparently. The lab have now put the brakes on the traffic. New Linden Homes are being released every week along with a whole bunch of new regions. The new continent is expanding more quickly now.
New area opens up!
Stay tuned for futher updates soon.
On Monday 8th July the new theme was officially announced for the 2020 Relay For Life of Second Life season. With 70% of the vote (166 votes) here it is…
GAME ON, CANCER!
The Cure Starts Here!
The 2019 Relay For Life of Second Life season was amazing with $238,900 being raised. Well done for all those that participated and supported the 2019 season.
Linden Lab today announced there will be a special Second Life Town Hall Event happening on Friday 12th July starting at 1pm SLT/PDT. This town hall event will be held on the Town Hall regions in Second Life.
This is a great opportunity to learn about Tilia which “will soon be handling certain aspects of the Second Life service that will help us comply with U.S. laws and regulations via enhanced regulatory compliance protocols”.
Grumpity Linden (Senior Director of Product) and Patch Linden (Senior Director of Product Operations) will be answering questions about Tilia.
Today is the last day to visit the SL16B regions before they disappear for another year. It’s been another great birthday celebration organised by Linden Lab and the Moles. The exhibits have been awesome and the live events have been great once again.
The meet the linden live sessions were very popular this year. I loved the free gifts area, the preview of the new camper van park, the new Linden homes and the love heart shaped area. I enjoyed greeting visitors at various points around the birthday regions and giving out useful information.
The countdown will start tomorrow for SL17B. I can’t wait to see what will happen for next year.
What did you enjoy about SL16B this year ?
On Saturday 6th July marked JulyFest from 12pm to 6pm SLT over at the new Bellisseria Fairgrounds. There was a large audience for this event with a variety of live music throughout the day. Here are some of my snapshots I took at the weekend.
Daniel Voyager 