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Happy December! We have lots in store for you this holiday season!
Winter Wonderland
Winter Wonderland opens on December 4th with a new look! Here’s what you can expect:
- Completely new Region Design
- Full PBR Region & Objects
- New and improved Snowball Fight
- New Mini Game: Sled Rides
- Reworked Ice Skates & Location
- Snowflake Hunt with Boopies as prizesLinden & Resident Snowball Fight
‘Tis the season for some snow-slinging shenanigans at the NEW Winter Wonderland Snowball Fight Arena!
Get your warm clothes and throwing arms ready - it’s time for a Lindens and Residents snowball fight! This snowball showdown means you're free to pelt your fellow Second Life Residents and Lindens with a bevy of sparkling snowballs - launched fresh from the snow-arsenal available at the arena.
The battles take place on Friday, December 15th from 8am to 9am PT and then again from 12pm to 1pm PT. Spots are limited, so be sure to get there early to grab your free snow-launching weaponry from the vendors around the arena.
Mark your calendars, assemble your dream squad, and be there!
2023 Holiday Shop & Hop
The 2023 Holiday Shop & Hop returns with 320 participating Merchants across 16 shopping regions, bringing you loads of festive fun! Every store will have at least a 20% discount on all items and a free (non-group) gift for shoppers or a gift certificate valued at L$300 or above! Check the Shop & Hop blog post for a full list of all 320 merchants with slurls!
Winter Last Names 2023
To celebrate the winter holiday season, we have released some festive new last names!
The following winter-themed names are only available for a limited time:
Snowfox
Icicle
Evergreen
Candycane
Frostypaws
Yulepurr
Jollyfluff
Tidings
Tinsel
FelizThese names for winter are seasonal and may come back around this time next year, for a limited time.
We will continue to make additional updates to the available last name pool, so if these options aren’t for you, stay tuned for future updates. You can also suggest your favorite name on our suggestion form, the new names were chosen from there!
For more information about the costs and how-tos involved in name changes, read the Changing your username FAQ. Click to change your name now!
New Winter Premium Gift
Premium members - we have a special surprise for you - a limited and exclusive Premium and Premium Plus gift that’s sure to delight and add a little extra holiday charm to your inworld adventures. Drop by one of the Premium Gift kiosks and pick up your exclusive holiday gift starting December 4th!
Winter in Motown
Starting December 4th the Motown region will transform into a snowy paradise, offering a festive twist to your favorite classic and contemporary Motown hits. Dance and socialize with new friends amid the enchanting snow-covered setting, while enjoying a multi-station radio streaming both classic and modern Motown tunes.
The 13th Annual SL Christmas Expo to Benefit the American Cancer Society
This year’s SL Christmas Expo brings more than 125 merchants, Breedables, Auctions and Raffles, Special Events, and more than 150 hours of entertainment at 2 venues - all for the mission of the American Cancer Society to End Pediatric Cancers. The event covers 11 regions and will run from December 1st through the 10th.
Read more about the Linden Lab activities at the expo:
- Pose with Santa Patch and his Molelves on Friday, December 8th from 12pm to 3pm PT. There will also be an exclusive Patch Winter 2023 Bear available for donations during this event!
- Vote (by donation to a special ACS Christmas Expo Kiosk) for your favorite decorated Linden Home at the 6th Annual Lights of Hope Home Decorating Contest.
- Attend the Linden & Mole Neighborhood Christmas Party on Wednesday, December 6 from 1pm to 3pm PT at the Lights of Hope Linden region.
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Teleport to the auction area to bid on different packages that include Premium and Premium subscriptions, Homestead, Free Name Change, and even a hang-out with Patch Linden!
Donate and pick up your very own Penguin Boopie and add to your collection of boopies! - We are also unveiling the Next Premium Plus Linden Homes Theme at Christmas Expo! Read all about it in Patch Linden’s Forum Post!
Head over to discover the magic of the holiday season and the joy of giving!
Winter Attractions on the Destination Guide
If you’re looking for even more winter activities, there are already almost 100 snow-covered locations in the Winter Attractions category on the Destination Guide. We’re adding new regions daily, so if you have a spot you’d like to invite other Residents to explore, make sure to check out the submission guidelines and submit yours today!
Wishing a safe and happy holiday season to everyone in our virtual community!
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"You can find our massive spreadsheet with all the slurls, descriptions and photo previews…." read more on the blog
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Today's Second Life Pic of the Day by Dacio Holgado reminds us that no matter where we are in the world, we can find joy in the simple pleasures of companionship and a shared virtual table. Wishing you a day filled with love and laughter. Happy Thanksgiving to all who celebrate, and warm wishes to everyone! 🦃 ❤️
For a chance to have your image featured as the Second Life pic of the day, submit your work to the Official Second Life Flickr Group.
For a chance to be featured in our #SLFeature Instagram stories, follow and tag us on Instagram.Connect with Second Life on Social Media.
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Greetings Residents!
Over the next several weeks PBR Materials will be rolling out across the grid. For those who do not know what PBR Materials are already, this post will explain what they are, how to use them and the benefits they bring. This announcement is particularly of interest to residents who create inworld objects and avatar attachments.
PBR stands for Physically Based Rendering. PBR is a richer way of specifying the surface of an object that better simulates how objects appear in real life. PBR allows for realistic lighting for metals, plastics, leather, fabric, and more, including realistic reflections and bounce lighting. The Second Life Viewer will now be able to display these more realistic-appearing objects in world, as well as allow creators to include this more advanced information in the object texturing.
GLTF stands for Graphics Library Transmission Format. This is a standard file format, common in computer graphics, that allows storage of PBR information. GLTF files can be used by many 3D content authoring tools. Second Life will now support the import and export of GLTF files that contain PBR information. Note that at this time only PBR Materials will be imported. Full GLTF support will be available at a later date.
Important note: Until PBR server support is released across the entire Second Life grid, there is a risk of damaging content to which PBR Materials are applied, if rezzed or worn in a region that is not PBR-capable.
At present, you will need to use the latest Second Life release candidate viewer with PBR support 7.0.1.6658224456 and be on PBR capable regions running on BlueSteel and Le Tigre channels with build (2023-10-11.6488746491). To confirm you are using the correct viewer and server, while running Second Life open Help > About Second Life.
What are PBR Materials? Why would I use them in my creations?
The goal behind PBR Materials is Increased visual realism. One method of enhancing realism is to create scenes with real reflections which mimic how our eyes have learned to identify that a surface is metal versus plastic. The Viewer has always been open source and so we sought an open source solution, GLTF, to achieve this realism. GLTF was created by the Khronos Group https://www.khronos.org/, a standards body responsible for open standards such as OpenGL, OpenXR, Vulkan, and others.
With this new Viewer feature, PBR Materials will automatically generate real reflections when applied to new or existing content. While we cannot go back and add PBR Materials to no-mod content -- only the original content creator can -- every effort has been made to preserve or improve all object appearances in world. The team has been working with content creators for many months, and we thank them all for their dedication to making Second Life the benchmark for beautiful inworld content.
What if you do not create content?
If you do not create inworld content or avatar attachments, you do not need to do anything as a result of these changes. You will begin to see more realistic reflections and lighting on objects inworld and for sale as creators adopt this new feature.
New Features
The key additions and changes for PBR Materials are:
- GLTF support for PBR Materials
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HDR Environments
- Auto exposure and tonemapping
- The default environment of Second Life has always been a sunny day with blue skies and this will be more apparent now.
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Reflection Probes (automatic and manual)
- Automatically generated by the PBR Viewer
- Manually generated by content creators for interior spaces (requires lighting)
- Materials system folder
Benefits
- GLTF standards are widely accepted and utilized for content creation across many applications
- PBR Materials objectively and subjectively look better
- Real reflections automatically generated by the Viewer
- Increased compatibility with content creation tools e.g. Substance Painter, Blender
There is a wonderful video from Second Life University on our Youtube channel. We encourage anyone wishing to learn more to take a look: How to Create PBR Materials
The Second Life Wiki has more technical information about GLTF PBR Materials and how to use them in the content you create.
Known Issues
While our GLTF PBR Materials project is closer than ever to full release, there are some known issues and we know with broader release, more issues will be uncovered. If you see something, please say something, by filing a BUG report in Jira.
- PBR material information may be lost from content on non-PBR aware regions
- Underwater reflections are weird. We hope to fix this in a future release
- Materials set to alpha mode Blend cannot be changed back to Opaque
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MacOS performance issues
- Poor performance on Apple Silicon when “Reflection Coverage” not set to “None”
- Poor performance on Intel Macbooks when shadows are enabled
- PBR Material limited permissions issues
- Transition lines between overlapping manual probes
- Semi-transparent fullbright objects slightly more opaque
- Non-PBR enabled Viewers will show high packet loss on PBR aware regions due to the introduction of a new message.
There are inworld Content User Group Meetings we encourage you to attend to discuss your questions and give feedback. For more information see Content User Group
IMPORTANT: If content looks good in the Khronos GLTF Sample Viewer or Adobe Substance Painter but looks wrong when you import it into Second Life, please stop and file a bug immediately. Our goal is to adhere to the GLTF specification. Please do not modify content in Second Life to work around situations where the Viewer does not adhere completely to the GLTF spec.
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The Concierge and Land User Group meeting is a monthly, public meeting for discussion and education on Second Life, useful to both Mainland Residents and Estate owners.
Topics include any issues relating to Customer Relations/Support or concerning Land in general (mainland, islands, Linden Homes, estates, auctions, etc.).
Join Wendi, Vix, and members of the Land team, on Wednesday at 12pm PT at Linden Estate Services. All are welcome.
Keep up to date with all of our user group meetings on our wiki and public calendar.
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Happy Wednesday!
We’re writing to remind everyone that we’ll be holding our monthly Web User Group meeting today at 14:00 SLT in our usual meeting place, where we’ll be discussing our status with ongoing projects and our near future plans for our web properties. As always, we’ll leave plenty of time for Q&A from the community. This meeting is conducted using voice. We're happy for you to contribute in voice or in text, but you'll need to have your voice settings activated. We look forward to seeing you there.
Keep up to date with all of our user group meetings on our wiki and public calendar.
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Hi Everybody!
I would like to introduce a new member of the Linden Support team, Boxy 5000.
Boxy 5000 is a virtual assistant/support bot trainee.
But wait, wasn’t there already a chatbot who answered questions for premium users? Indeed there was! Boxy 3000 was the earlier model of the trainee chatbot.
We are learning from some design flaws and moving forward with a more advanced bot. Boxy 3000 has been re-invented and given an extra 2000!
But wait a second time! Won’t this bring about the machine apocalypse? Not just yet–Boxy 5000 is more advanced and learns as they go but Skynet is still a few upgrades away.
The upgraded bot will be a 24/7 support option for both premium and non-premium residents! (Previously only available for premium customers.)
Boxy will have the ability to answer commonly asked questions, keep you up to date on current issues, help with ticket submission and in some cases handle a support request.
Boxy has uses for all residents, from early adopters to fresh new faces.
For new and more casual residents Boxy is available to help them find the support they need.
For our seasoned veterans Boxy can offer support options for some specific requests. Specifically, Boxy will be able to submit an abuse report on your behalf and in some cases help with the restart of a region!
Boxy will continue to learn as we go. Boxy might not have all the answers currently, but we will continue to review questions posed and help the bot to better answer your support queries.
We realize that a chat bot is not a substitute for a customer support representative, and this bot is not meant to be. It is however meant to help when we are unavailable or may be experiencing higher call volumes.For premium residents Boxy will only be the first point of contact before being passed to a support representative during office hours. Utilize Boxy to help better explain your issue once you are transferred to a support representative. Outside of office hours Boxy can help or create a ticket for when we are back in the office.
The ability to get an answer to your question or to get your issue resolved without having to wait until our Support Lindens are available is Boxy’s primary directive.
Anyone interested in saying hello to Boxy can access it by logging into our support portal. The Boxy 5000 chat widget should appear in the bottom right hand corner of your screen.
Boxy 5000, it’s advanced…
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