TriloByte Zanzibar

Your stated deadline for XMPP rollout has come and gone. I understand that it takes time to do things right, but can you give us an update on status and a new ETA for rollout?

We've put together a demo for Avatar Physics as well. The feature will be in Viewer 2.6.3 when it's released. A beta version may be released soon, in the meantime if you want a sneak peek, you can check out the latest development viewer from the alternative viewers download page.

Hopefully it's more reliable and has more accurate reporting than the old one, and maybe takes the concept of seasonality into consideration. However, given things like relatively poor performance and poor customer service, I can't say when the next time I'll be using it. I want for it to work, and I'd like to give Linden Lab my money for promoting my products and my business, but the system (especially when combined with the site's missing functionality) doesn't serve my needs.

Notification emails were yet another issue that was to have been resolved prior to the closure of XStreet, got sidetracked because of the problems the Marketplace team encountered with data migration last summer, and never got back to. While Brooke was not a part of Linden Lab at that time, surely she had access to a copy of the Marketplace backlog at the time, and I can only assume that she's chosen to ignore it.

I'm a bit confused. You stated that growth was down for general and overall gross merchandise volume in your first point, but then later say that the Marketplace is on track to exceed last month. Those two statements seem to be at odds with each other, can you please clarify? It's extremely disappointing that, while you at least acknowledge the importance of reporting and having some visibility on what's happening, you have no intentions of giving merchants that functionality (either the basic functionality that was lost when the old site was closed, or the expanded reporting capabilities that we were promised just under a year ago) for several more months. I understand the importance and value of newer post-launch functionality like DIrect Delivery, but it's unfair and unprofessional to put it and 'slash-and-burn' sales programs like Dash Deal ahead of providing merchants with basic reporting and functionality.

Google Sketchup or Blender.

I'd be curious as to how many hours are being spent, and how the time can be justified to be working on the Dash Deal program ahead of all the other priorities that were summarized in last month's meeting. That's fantastic that there's a commitment to getting accurate/complete data in the downloadable CSV files, but that STILL falls far short of what we were promised that the Marketplace would offer and what we have had for many years on the old XStreet site that the Marketplace replaced. If you want to increase revenues give merchants the tools we need to measure the success of our listings and enhancements (accurate web-based traffic and sales reporting), and work on improving and fixing the system, don't force merchants to trade at least 75% of the gross on best-selling items (minimum 50% discount plus a 50/50 commission split) in order to get an unspecified (and ironically, unmeasurable) amount of additional traffic from email, facebook, and twitter promotional activity. It would also make more sense for you to post your monthly update (via blog, as other Lindens do with relevant news/updates) before soliciting feedback on your agenda. By providing merchants (and customers alike) with real/tangible data and progress reports, you could save a lot of wasted time and effort and make the meeting a lot more productive than the sessions held so far. TriloByte Zanzibar

For me it's been the opposite. With 2.5's updated KDU libraries and then improvements in how rezzing is handled in 2.5.1, I've noticed that textures start rezzing much more quickly. This week's server release has increased the rate that objects are rezzed as well. As Shakira mentioned, try cleaning out your cache and relogging. From there, open up your inventory window and click the Recent' tab and then back to 'My Inventory' - that sort of 'jiggles the handle' and gets the viewer to reload your inventory from the asset server a little more quickly. Hopefully things improve for you - good luck!

Someone's written up a request to make this removable on the JIRA (site for bug reports & feature requests), click here to go check it out and vote it you like.

Nice work, thanks for sharing!

A lot of folks are more than willing to spend more money on the better machine and better computing experience. Computers are like tools. And as with tools, there are a lot of brands offering a wide range of quality. For every pro out there swearing by the good stuff, there are a few out there convinced of the value of the low end stuff. However, I don't want to get into any platform debates, use whatever tool you like. As for the 9400m, it's not a bad entry level integrated GPU (and certainly better than the plague of Intel GMA graphics that a lot of entry level machines come with. On the MacBooks that came with it, SL can manage 15-20fps on an average build at ground level. You can get better frame rates at altitude, or if you turn down the graphics settings, but that's not bad (and certainly better than what most SL residents are logging in with). It also supports shadows, though expect single-digit frame rates with them enabled (still worthwhile for shooting still pictures). It's a moot point, though, since anyone out there shopping for a new system today isn't going to see it in a Mac, the GT320m and Intel HD 3000 are the bottom end GPU's. Neither would be my personal choice (I prefer the higher end machines), but objectively speaking they're not bad.

Alpha masks are the way to go - no script lag and no glitching like you get with invisiprims. If you got the boots/shoes recently and they didn't come with them, ask the creator (the feature's been in SL for nearly a year), otherwise just grab an alpha 'sock' from another pair of boots that are the same length, and you should be good to go.

Here's the BlakOpal Youtube Channel. It's got clips of our designs in motion, as well as tutorials, previews, event footage, and other bits from Second Life.

Consider meeting more people, perhaps. Adoption has increased pretty steadily since last summer (when the way the viewer is developed was changed, and has had a lot more community involvement). I know plenty of folks using and enjoying 2x, as well as a lot of 1x holdouts and bashers, the majority of which either haven't used 2.x since the early days of 2.0 or 2.0.1, or are just ignorant on where the 2x viewers (from LL or third parties) are today. Give yourself a little time to figure it out, you'll get the hang of it. Anybody clever enough to have figured out nested pie menus can figure out a sidebar. The current 2x viewer is faster, has more features/functions (multi-wearables alone is a must-have feature), and lets you customize a lot of stuff.

This page has some tips and tricks that can help you get better performance. Take a look, hopefully something there will help.

The one on the Nearby tab isn't removable. But you can also zoom in/out (scrolling on it works the same as it does on the mini-map floater). And even on low rez/small size screens, you can see quite a few names in the nearby list (I think the map eats up the space 7 names would on the list). It was a weird feature to get used to during testing, but now I kind of like having it for events & stuff.

Added a second clip, which features a different outfit. One small annoyance was the necklace worn on the purple outfit - only half the chain rezzed. Despite having plenty of system resources and settings turned way up (the debug setting RenderVolumeLODFactor was set to 6.0), half of the necklace sculpt refused to rez. I've seen the same necklace (from Golden Thorn, by the way) worn on other avatars and it looks phenomenal, there only seems to be an issue when it's a crowded venue and more than a few meters from my avatar. I'll guess it has something to do with how the viewer allocates resources to rezzing avatars.

Here's a quick clip from last weekend's Virtual London Fashion Week show... Shot on a Mac using 3D Connexion's Space Navigator controller, using Telestream ScreenFlow to capture and Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 to edit. ScreenFlow has great editing tools, I'm just already a PPro user and am more familiar with that interface. Track is a remix of a song from my friend's forthcoming album "7 Deadly Sins". The music I use in videos comes from friends or people I've worked with, which not only takes care of the issue of clearing rights but also helps give a little bit more exposure to their wonderful work. Cheers! Trilo

The first time you run the Second Life app on a Mac, it can take some machines a LONG time to start. So long, in fact, that the bouncing icon will stop. That's because it's setting itself up, creating the additional support folders and files it needs. It should bring up the login screen after no more than two minutes. if not, you can check to see if it's hung up by pressing cmd-option-esc. If the SL application shows up on that list as not responding, you can force it to quit from that box, and then double-click to run the application again. Fortunately, it only takes that long the one time - whenever you start the program in the future it should get going quickly. Hope that helps!

Seems great so far. I believe that creating a compelling 2D portal is an essential part of building the SL community. I saw that kudos are currently not working, but suspect you guys are already on that one. I'd also like to see the profiles here leverage the new SL web profiles, make things one big happy portal for SL residents. It might be a pipe dream, but it would also be great to have resident blogs/comments at some point. Either as a feature for premium members or open to the masses, it would be a great way for people to stay connected and engaged with other residents, even when they're not able to get in-world. Thanks, and keep up the good work!

Excellent. Though I think it would be a mistake to think that action was only taken because it had received a lot of votes. Once the issue was raised and had been reviewed/triaged by someone at LL, that ball was in motion regardless of the number of votes or the vitriol of some of the commenters.

Great tip, Brooke, thanks.

Comments work, and as you mentioned you can edit your post. As with any kind of online community forum, I'm sure that things can evolve and change over time.

Your landlord/estate manager would need to contact Linden Lab or file a ticket. Normally, new sims or sim transfers take a few business days, though I've seen requests get processed in as little as 24 hours.

Yes - both to what Marianne said (about rigged mesh avatars) and to what you said, about a new avatar system. When mesh eventually comes to the Second Life grid (probably sometime later this year), it will allow for rigged avatar meshes. Simply put, that means some really cool/clever 3D modeled avatars that have their 'bones' rigged to the SL avatar 'bone' structure. If you work with 3D modeling programs and are interested in participating in the Mesh beta, you can test it out now on the beta grid. "Avatar 2.0" is a project that's been talked about for quite some time. It was pushed to the back burner sometime last year (other projects took priority), and continues to sit there simmering away. As I understood it, the Avatar 2.0 project will allow for a wider range of sizes and even some non-human avatar bases. Stay tuned to the list of SL User Group meetings, when "Avatar 2.0" gets back into active development again, you'll likely see meetings for it show up on the schedule.