BURN2 Skin Burn 2019 Starts Saturday 26th October

The Burn2 Skin Burn event takes place tomorrow on Saturday 26th October 2019 in Second Life. The first burn starts at 1pm SLT and the second burn starts at 6pm SLT.

The check in opens two hours before each burn. Everyone is welcome to participate and have fun.

The Man will be burning again but this time everyone will be in their best low lag form to see it. It’s a low lag burn!.

WHY DO WE DO THIS?
We recognise that some of us may have had difficulty seeing the Man burn last Saturday – lag is a fact of life with all the partying and the range of lag generated in the sims.

Thus, we become more radically inclusive by expending a bit of communal effort and “slimming down” to just skins and system layers, It helps reduce sim lag (BURN2 sims) and also client lag (your computer’s resources and those of avatars around you).

The location will be given out via the BurningMan 2.0 group notices tomorrow and on the Burn2 blog.

Here are the full details.

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Tenth Annual OpenSim Grid Survey Now Available

Tenth Annual OpenSim Grid Survey Open 

Maria Korolov has opened up the Tenth Annual OpenSim Grid Survey where everyone can vote for their favourite OpenSim grid. The survey includes the top 15 most popular OpenSim grids from the latest monthly stats report. This helps “the community improve, and help give newcomers to OpenSim some ideas for places to explore!”.

It’s strongly recommended to vote once for the OpenSim grid that you spend the most time on during the week. If you have any feedback for any OpenSim grid then this is a great opportunity to put something down. The deadline for submissions is midnight (SLT) on Sunday 27th October 2019. The results will be published on Monday 28th October 2019.

• Sacrarium received the highest overall scores from last year’s 2018 OpenSim Grid Survey
• Littlefield received the highest overall scores for 2017 OpenSim Grid Survey
• AllCity received the highest overall scores for 2016 OpenSim Grid Survey
• InWorldz received the largest number of responses for the 2015 OpenSim Grid Survey

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Latest OpenSim News – October 2019

OpenSim Land Area Increased This Month – Link

• Went up by 3, 300 regions this month
• Largest growth recorded on OSgrid which gained more than 1, 500 regions
• Total OpenSim land area this month was the equivalent of 81, 866 standard regions.
• The public grids also reported a total of 394, 885 registered users and 35, 716 active users.

Sixth Annual Tangle Grid Halloween Expo (continues until 19th November) – Link

• The expo is fully accessible to hypergrid visitors at tanglegrid.net:8002:expo isle.
• Learn how to hypergrid here

Tag Marketplace Gaining Fast On Kitely’s – Link

• Tag Grid merchants added 4, 058 new item listings, while Kitely merchants added 2, 289. 
• Kitely is still in the lead with a total of 32, 449 different items, compared to Tag’s 21, 566.

2019 OpenSim Conference Seeks Presenters – Link 

• Visit the OSCC’s Call for Proposals page and fill out the form
• This year’s conference will focus on visions of the future and the evolution of the platform.
• It will take place on December 14 and 15 and will include presentations about creative, educational, technical, and experiential topics.
• Each speaker session will be 20 minutes long.
• The conference will also feature community-sponsored tours, an Expo, content give-aways and hypergrid exploration.

OSCC19 Conference Key Dates

• November 3, 2019 – Proposals are due by 11:59 PM PST (Pacific Standard Time).
• November 10, 2019 – Proposal acceptance emails and with conference information.
• November 17, 2019 – Accepted speakers must register for the conference to create an entry in the conference schedule and the program.
• November 23, 2019 – Speaker Orientation & Training sessions and Presenter Booth Setup to prepare speakers for the conference.
• December 3, 2019 – Deadline for stage props and audio-visuals (beyond textures) for the conference program.
• December 14-15, 2019 – OSCC19 Conference dates!

Lab Gab Episode 5 – Halloween Special!

Here is the Halloween special episode. 

Lab Gab Episode 5 airs today from 3pm SLT/PDT over on the official Second Life YouTube channel hosted by Xiola Linden and Strawberry Linden. They will be exploring some “de-frightful spots” around Second Life and sharing top Halloween themed things with some scary stories. 

Here is the full blog announcement on episode 5…

Scary movie rules state that no matter what – there must always be a sequel! Xiola and Strawberry are back this week for another chilling and thrilling episode of Lab Gab – with more frightening fun and spirited excitement!

We have some de-frightful spots to explore and need your help to make sure we survive the trials of our adventures in – The Spooky Side of Second Life Returns! 

We’ll also be sharing some of our top Halloween themed things and scary stories – there’s a ghost story in there somewhere! 

We might need to take a trip to a lovely autumnal experience after the bone-chilling venture – good thing there are so many scenic spots for us to lighten the mood and recover after our journey into maniacal madness.

Tune in to our Official YouTube Channel (or check us out on our new Mixer channel or Facebook Live! Via our Official Facebook page) to watch on Wednesday, October 23rd at 3 pm PT/SLT. 

Please spread the word about this. Thanks very much. 

The Man & The Temple Burns Weekend Schedule 2019

Event now closed!

This weekend marks the big burns of The Man and The Temple on the playa at BURN2 2019 Metamorphoses in Second Life. The event ends late on Sunday 20th October. This weekend is your last chance to visit the regions before they go for another year. 

Here is the weekend events schedule

The Man Burns

• 12pm SLT/PDT
• 6pm SLT/PDT

> Location: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Burn2-%20Chrysalis/211/59/24

The Temple Burns

• 12pm SLT/PDT
• 6pm SLT/PDT

> Location: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Burn2-%20Alchemy/229/48/24

It’s recommend to arrive early of these times (above) to get a good viewing point and it’s expected there may be lag due to the high volume of avatars.

Sansar reaches new all-time player peak of 221

According to the Steam Charts webpage that tracks ongoing analysis of Steam’s concurrent players it looks Sansar reached another high peak last month.

On Monday 23rd September 2019 Sansar reached 221 players on the platform which is the highest peak so far I think. The second highest peak was 167 players on Monday 1st July 2019.

Linden Lab don’t publish statistics for Sansar and these player numbers could be much higher or lower. I do think Steam Charts gives a good picture at the moment. I strongly think Linden Lab should publish player statistics for Sansar at least once or twice every year. It would be very useful to know and keep track of it.

Sansar – Steam Charts Data

Here is the breakdown of average players and peak players by month. It looks like Sansar gained more players during the summer from July 2019 onwards I think. September 2019 was a good month for the average amount of players (20.0 average). The stats were higher a little bit during the launch of Sansar on Steam back in early December 2018 with the average being (22.1).

At the bottom of the Sansar charts page it does say all data is powered by Steam.

Sansar – Steam Charts Data

There have been many noticeable gains in players during 2019 for Sansar from live events/shows and from newer releases. I agree the concurrent player numbers are low at the moment and more needs to be done by the lab to increase the active userbase for Sansar. In some ways its peaking more than most OpenSim grids get.

On 26th September 2019 the Sansar official team said this response relating to sansar player numbers via reddit..

We have a strong community helping every day to make Sansar awesome.

Your point, though, is a valid one: Sansar has not had explosive growth yet. That’s ok, we’re in this for the long haul. Building the metaverse was never going to be easy.

Our plan is the same: continue to make Sansar ever better and easier to use, make Sansar more accessible, make Sansar ever more fun. Sansar is a place where people can go wherever they want to go, do whatever they want to do, and be whoever they want to be.

That is the most powerful place in the world. People will come for that.

The interesting part from this response was this part “Sansar has not had explosive growth yet. That’s ok, we’re in this for the long haul“. The lab are expecting explosive growth to happen (probably early-mid 2020s) and they confirm Sansar is here to stay for many more years to come. 

The Sansar team wants to keep on top of competition and be in a good position to grow Sansar over the long term. 

21 days ago

Lacie + team

To work on a new platform gave us a huge opportunity to build a new world, and Sansar is built rather different than the way SL works pretty fundamentally. Keep in mind how long SL has been around (SL Celebrated it’s 16th Birthday Recently— it could get it’s drivers license in the US!) and how overall technology advancements have been made in nearly every field.

Had we designed a new product that was targeted to be able to bring over content from SL, it would have overly constrained our options and it would be more efficient to continue to iterate on SL to make it better. (Which we’re also doing in parallel with working on Sansar!)

But fundamentally Sansar is structured in a different way that there isn’t going to be an easy way to import content from SL and have it work effectively. If creators have their meshes, textures, etc from when they uploaded them to SL then it should be relatively easy to pull in their 3d content to Sansar!

But scripts and other pieces of dynamic content would have to be re-made. That being said if you’re familiar with the way we make APIs in LSL, it should be a relatively short learning curve to being able to do a lot of similar things in our C# scripting engine for Sansar!

As for how we’re planning on retaining our competitive advantage: we’re leveraging all the lessons we’ve learned from building and evolving SL over the years in our design and production of Sansar. We have a lot of hard-won knowledge around how to design our products for communities that scale, support our users who want to create and sell their creations, manage communities and provide a thriving marketplace. That will help us keep on top of the competition and be in a good position to grow Sansar over the long term!

I will post another Sansar stats update in December 2019 then another around April/May 2020. 

Press Release: Ebbe Linden Bear To Debut 2019 SL Christmas Expo

Ebbe Linden CEO of Linden Lab will be unveiling his brand new special Ebbe Linden bear during the upcoming Second Life Christmas Expo 2019 for a L$250 donation to the American Cancer Society. The design of the new Linden bear will be shown to the public on Thursday 5th December 2019 during the opening of the SL Christmas Expo.

Linden Lab will be revealing their 4th edition of the Linden Homes and taking part in the Lights Of Hope Holiday Home Decorating Contest.

Here is the full press release today…

PRESS RELEASE
For Immediate Release
October 15, 2019
For more Information contact: Nuala Maracas slchristmasexpo.com@gmail.com

Ebbe Linden Bear To Debut @ 2019 SL Christmas Expo

Linden Lab is doing its part to add to the Magic Of Christmas in Second Life, and help the American Cancer Society fight Childhood Cancer. Already a partner in the fight against cancer, the Lab is joining in the Expo goal to provide at least $20,000 for VR Headsets for kids in treatment.

As already announced, Linden Lab will be revealing their 4th Edition of the coveted Linden Homes and taking part in the Lights Of Hope Holiday Home Decorating Contest.

And Now Even Bigger News! Since becoming CEO in 2014 Ebbe Linden is the lone Linden without his own bear… until now! A Very Special EBBE LINDEN BEAR will be available during the EXPO for a L$250 donation to the American Cancer Society. Linden Bear collectors take note! The design of the bear will be revealed on Dec 5th at the opening of the Expo so do not miss out on this opportunity!

More Than 150 Merchants! Breedables! Entertainment! Linden Home Reveal! Don’t miss The All I Want For Christmas Kids Fashion Runway Show, Lights of Hope Christmas Decoration Show and HUGE Raffles, The 2019 SL Christmas Expo is the place to be!

Mark Your Calendars for Dec 5 – 15 and Believe in The Magic of Christmas!

The SL Christmas Expo is in support of the American Cancer Society and its Childhood Cancer programs. For More Information visit http://slchristmasexpo.com or the ACS Campus in Second Life 􀀁http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/American%20Cancer%20Society/128/96/22

BURN2 2019 Metamorphoses Now Open

BURN2 2019 Metamorphoses

BURN2 2019 Metamorphoses is now officially open in Second Life. The event will be open until midnight (SLT) on Sunday 20th October 2019. This is one of the biggest events on the calendar in Second Life and it’s free to attend. There is six sims of the playa to visit this year full of amazing performers and outstanding art installations. 

The best way to find out about live events is through the Events Calendar. There will be friendly and helpful greeters at the gates ready to help out and ensure that everyone has a nice welcoming experience. Don’t forget to pick up the latest new freebies and information along the way. There is a caterpillar coach and a hot air balloon worth going on.

• The Lamplighters Daily Procession takes place at 12pm SLT and 6pm SLT on weekdays.
• The Man burns at 12pm SLT / 6pm SLT on Saturday 19th October.
• The Temple burns at 12pm SLT / 6pm SLT on Sunday 20th October

Main Attractions (SLURLS)

• Landing Point
• Centre Stage
• DJ Stage
• The Man
• The Temple
• The Lamplighters

First Preview

The Gates

The Man

The Temple

The Lamplighters

Center Camp

BURN2 DMV Sandbox

Please spread the word about this amazing annual BURN2 2019 event in Second Life!

Patch Linden Is Now The Vice President of Product Operations

On Monday 7th October Patch Linden announced on the Second Life Forums that he has now moved position at Linden Lab. Patch Linden new title is the Vice President of Product Operations. 

Thanks everyone for the congrats and well wishes!  My new title is Vice President of Product Operations.

It has been an honor and pleasure in serving the community over the past 12+ years. 

Patch has worked in many departments over the years at the lab from Concierge, to being the Operations Support Manager, working on the Product team to Land Operations which includes the Linden Department of Public Works (LDPW). 

Patch recently was the Senior Director of Product Operations and this week (starting 7th October) he has become the Vice President of Product Operations. Wooot!!

Congratulations Patch and well done. Thanks for everything you have done to make Second Life more amazing over the years.

• 

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BURN2 2019: Metamorphoses starts next week

BURN2 2019: Metamorphoses starts Friday 11th October from 5pm SLT/PDT over at the Burning Man regions in Second Life. This year there are six regions to visit. There will be many exciting events and interesting art installations on the virtual playa to enjoy. 

This year’s theme is Metamorphoses and this presents amazing opportunities within the framework of the Ten Principles of Burning Man and build guidelines. Please read the FAQ here.

Times & Events Schedule 

• Opening 5:00pm SLT – Friday 11th October 2019
• Ending Midnight SLT – Sunday 20th October 2019
• Here is the full schedule for the events

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> Lamplighters Daily Procession (12pm to 1pm SLT)

> Lamplighters Nightly Procession (6pm to 7pm SLT)

> The Man Burns at 12pm SLT and 6pm SLT on Saturday 19th October 

> The Temple Burns at 12pm SLT and 6pm SLT on Sunday 20th October

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Get your own plot

The plot sale is open. The build period ends on Wednesday 9th October 2019. The location you need to visit is here and remember to tab the sign for the URL to the Plot Owner Questionnaire. which helps the BURN2 team find the best possible placement for your camp

Volunteering

If you feel like helping out with the annual BURN2 2019 event next week the volunteers position is still open I believe. Just fill out the form and one of the volunteer coordinators will contact you to get started. 

• Burn2 Volunteer Application

About BURN2 

BURN2 is an extension of the Burning Man culture and community into the world of Second Life. It is an officially sanctioned Burning Man Regional, the only virtual world Regional out of more than 100 Regional groups worldwide, and the only Regional to burn the Man!

Useful BURN2 2019 Links

• BURN2 homepage
• BURN2 on Flickr
• BURN2 on Twitter
• BURN2 on Facebook
• BURN2 Facebook group

Please spread the word about this annual event. Thanks 🙂

Firestorm 6.3.2.58052 Released

On 1st October the Firestorm team announced the Bakes on Mesh viewer (6.3.2.58052) release which is a major update and it’s important all users upgrade to it. Firestorm 6.3.2.58052 is now fully merged up to the 6.3.1 Linden code-base.

This new release includes rendering-related changes from Linden Lab, bug fixes, improvements and tweaks.

This build is not offered to OpenSim users for the moment. 

In my previous blog post I said we would provide an “as-is” download of this release for Opensim. However, I have been informed that this update will actually cause Opensim regions to crash upon login. Unfortunately, by the time we made the decision to reverse the split we were too far into our QA process to test or make changes & fixes. This is why the “as-is” was mentioned. Because of the severity of the issue (crashing regions is about as bad as it gets) and having no time to fix it, I am forced to go back on my word on this one.

We will continue to host Firestorm 6.0.2.56680 on our downloads page in the Opensim section until we are able to remedy the major issues. The SL version of this update will install separately, so you can use the 6.3.2 update for SL and continue to run 6.0.2 for Opensim.

Major updates from LL in this update include:

– Bakes on Mesh! See the primer from Inara, the announcement from Linden Lab, and the LL Knowledge Base.
– Love Me Render! See the post from Linden Lab on these rendering updates.
– Umeshu, a group of bug fixes, tweaks and improvements.
– Edit notecards from an external editor.
– Ability to duplicate group roles.

There are Firestorm goodies…

There are a few new FS-specific features in this release as well like ability to sit on objects from Area search, New Discord Rich Presence, Ghosted attachments now automatically fix themselves after tp, but as usual there are too many to list here.

Bakes On Mesh

BOM – Bakes On Mesh

Bakes on Mesh is a new feature to allow system avatar baked textures to be shown on mesh attachments.

Basic features

• Any face of a mesh object can be textured using one of the server baked textures.
• The corresponding region of the system avatar is hidden if an attached mesh is using a baked texture.
• 5 new bake channels – leftarm, leftleg, aux1, aux2, aux3. You can use the new bake channels on the face of a mesh.
• A universal wearable type.

• New tattoos for universal wearable type –
  • HEAD_TATTOO, → baked to head
  • UPPER_TATTOO → baked to upper
  • LOWER_TATTOO, → baked to lower
  • SKIRT_TATTOO, → baked to skirt
  • HAIR_TATTOO, → baked to hair
  • EYES_TATTOO, → baked to eyes
  • LEFT_ARM_TATTOO, → baked to left arm
  • LEFT_LEG_TATTOO, → baked to left leg
  • AUX1_TATTOO, → baked to aux1
  • AUX2_TATTOO, → baked to aux2
  • AUX3_TATTOO, → baked to aux3

Benefits

• Avoid the need for texture appliers → easier customization workflow.
• Avoid the need for onion avatars → fewer meshes, fewer textures at display time.
• Avoid the need to sell full-perm meshes. You can customize any mesh you have modify permissions for simply by setting the flags and equipping the appropriate wearables.

Avatar wearables are baked into eleven different textures (BAKE_HEAD, BAKE_UPPER, BAKE_LOWER, BAKE_EYES, BAKE_SKIRT, BAKE_HAIR, BAKE_LEFTARM, BAKE_LEFTLEG, BAKE_AUX1, BAKE_AUX2, BAKE_AUX3) by the baking service.
You can now apply these textures to your avatar’s object attachments’ diffuse texture slot.
Right-click on the attachment, click edit and from the edit face menu select textures.
Click the diffuse texture icon to open up the texture picker.
The texture picker has an extra radio button mode called ‘bake’ for selecting server bakes.
The ‘bake’ radio button mode has a dropdown for selecting BAKE_HEAD, BAKE_UPPER, BAKE_LOWER, BAKE_EYES, BAKE_SKIRT, BAKE_HAIR, BAKE_LEFTARM, BAKE_LEFTLEG, BAKE_AUX1, BAKE_AUX2, BAKE_AUX3 server bake textures.
When an attachment is using a baked texture, the corresponding base mesh region of the system avatar is hidden.

If a mesh face is set to show a baked texture but is not attached to an avatar, you will see a default baked texture.
If you are using an older viewer without bakes on mesh support, then faces set to show baked textures will also display as the default baked texture, and base mesh regions will not be hidden.

For more detailed documentation, please see:

• SL Knowledge Base – Bakes on Mesh
• Linden Lab Bakes On Mesh release notes – includes a list of known issues.
• Firestorm Wiki – Bakes on Mesh
• Inara Pey – Modem World, Bakes on Mesh – A Basic Primer – Numerous embedded links of interest.
• Slink Redux and Bakes on Mesh FAQ – Slink brand specific and general Bakes on Mesh FAQ.
• Maitreya Bakes on Mesh – How to use BOM with the Maitrya Lara mesh body.
• Second Life Forums – Bakes on Mesh – Assorted forum threads of information and resources.
• Get Baked – A Quick Beginners’ Guide to Using Bakes on Mesh – Virtual Bloke.
• List of creators producing BoM-Compliant Goods – Unofficial.

  Anchor Linden, Vir Linden, AndreyK ProductEngine

The things I like from this release…

• NEW Added Discord rich presence support
  This feature allows you to connect your SL account with your Discord account.
  Once connected, Discord will show your SL online status & session length, and optionally, your username and location in SL.
  For further details, see the Firestom Discord wiki page.
  Comm → Discord
  Liny Odell, Ansariel Hiller, Nicky Dasmijn
• NEW Added the ability to edit notecards in an external editor
  For Firestorm, to set the external notecard editor, go to Preferences → Firestorm → Build 1 → External Editor → Browse to the program or application and select then press OK.
  When a notecard is open, you will see a new “Edit” button bottom left.
  Clicking the Edit button opens the Notecard in the external editor.
  Making changes in the external editor & then saving the file in the external editor will upload the changes into the notecard in Second Life.
  If no external editor is selected in Preferences, the viewer will try to use the external editor that you have set to open txt files.
  NOTE: There is a known bug with this feature that causes the order of embedded content to break – see BUG-227626 for details
  Maxim ProductEngine
• NEW Added the ability to duplicate a group role
  The feature allows you to duplicate a group role so that the copied role has the same permissions and you can just give the copied role a different title.
  This feature was requested in BUG-226986
  Open the group profile → Members & Roles → Roles → Left click on a role to select it → Click the “Copy Role” button.
  AndreyK ProductEngine
• NEW Increased the allowed sound clip length from 10s to 30s
  This adds support to the viewer to upload & play sound clips up to 30 seconds in length.
  Currently, sound uploads over 10 seconds are not possible, but will be soon when the server-side support is added by Linden Lab.
  Firestorm 6.3.2 is ready to support this feature as soon as the required server-side changes are made
  AndreyL ProductEngine
• NEW Attachments now auto-refresh if they are ghosted on teleport
  Added timer for refreshing attachments if attachments were attempted to get killed after the actual teleport finished
  This feature should mostly solve the problem where attachments are invisible to observers after a teleport or region change
  It provides the same function as “Refresh Attachments” under Avatar → Avatar Health, but the refresh is triggered automatically when needed
  This feature is enabled by default
  Optionally, if the debug setting FSExperimentalLostAttachmentsFixReport is set to TRUE, Firestorm reports attachments that were attempted to get detached during a teleport or region crossing to nearby chat, followed by reporting “Refreshing attachments…” to nearby chat when the auto-refresh starts
  This should hopefully workaround FIRE-12004 and BUG-7761 until there is a server-side fix from Linden Lab.
  Ansariel Hiller

The full release notes can be read here.