Celebrate a Decade of Second Life!

by Linden Lab ‎06-03-2013 10:21 AM – edited ‎06-03-2013 01:24 PM

This month marks ten years since Second Life first opened to the public in June of 2003! We’re incredibly proud of Second Life’s success and longevity and we hope that all of you are too – it’s thanks to everyone who has made Second Life part of their lives over the past decade that we’ve reached this major milestone.

We’ve planned some special things to celebrate SL10B that we’ll be rolling out throughout the month – be sure to keep an eye on this blog to be kept up-to-date with the latest!

Commemorative SL10B Avatar

Starting today, you can get a free, special-edition SL10B avatar on the Marketplace. This avatar is made with some of the new Materials features and will look even better once that Materials Viewer launches (you can also check it out with the Materials Beta Viewer). Visit the SL10B Marketplace and get your commemorative avatar today – they’ll only be available until the end of June!

Snapshot Contest

We’re also kicking off an SL10B Snapshot Contest! Start snapping your celebratory images and get ready to share. Top prize is free use of a homestead for four months, and second and third prizes are free use of a homestead for two months.  Check out the rules and submit your entries here.

Watch Rodvik Linden on The Drax Files

On the occasion of Second Life’s tenth birthday, machinimist extraordinaire Draxtor Despres interviewed Linden Lab CEO Rod Humble (aka Rodvik Linden), for a special episode of the great video series The Drax Files: World Makers. Check out the episode here.

Join the Parties Inworld

Throughout June, there will be celebrations for Second Life’s tenth birthday (SL10B) all over the grid – thrown by DJs and event planners inworld. So that you can keep track of where the parties are at, we’ve launched an SL10B Category in the Destination Guide. If you have an SL10B event planned – there is still plenty of time to submit your entry; and check back frequently – we’ll be continually updating the Destination Guide as always.

From June 16 – 29, there will be a large community-organized celebration inworld as well. As with past Second Life birthday celebrations, you can expect great exhibits, music, and events. For more info, check out the SL10B  Community Celebration website.

More to Come

Later this month, we’ll be kicking off a special grid-wide hunt with unique prizes, exclusively for Premium members. We’ll blog with more details soon, but if you want to get in on the fun, be sure that your Premium membership is up-to-date.

We’ll also be releasing some limited-edition gifts on the Marketplace and inworld. Some will be limited quantity – so stay tuned to find out when and where to get them!

There’s more coming to celebrate Second Life’s tenth birthday, so be sure to keep an eye on this blog for the latest.

Thanks again to everyone who has been a part of the last ten years in Second Life – we look forward to what is still to come!

We are proud to announce that ZoHa Islands became today an Authorized Reseller of Linden Dollars.

To give Second Life users more options to purchase Linden dollars for use in Second Life, Linden Lab is piloting an Authorized Reseller Program. This program authorizes third parties to resell L$ (that they purchase on the LindeX) to Second Life users, using a variety of international currencies and payment methods.

Participants in the Authorized Reseller Program have been approved by Linden Lab and have agreed to the Program’s Terms and Conditions.

Reselling L$ outside of this Program and/or purchasing L$ from unauthorized resellers is a violation of Second Life’s Terms of Service.

For the terms that govern the operation of the Authorized Reseller Program, please see the Linden Dollar Reseller Terms and Conditions

Click here to BUY your Linden Dollars from ZoHa Islands.

Hello ZoHa Islands –

Server Side Baking or SSB as commonly referred to –  renders clothing layers, avatar’s skin, tattoos, alpha from the client side to the server much faster.

The major benefit to SSB is no more cloud avatars. This is because the baking [rendering] of your avatar is moving to the Region Server  your Avatar is standing in. This new method of baking eliminates delays in passing rendered information to all viewing your avatar.

Currently your avatar is rendered on your PC with information then transmitted to the server to distributed to others viewing you. Avatar rendering performance in the past was tied to the quality of the Internet Connection to and the speed of the the Client PC.

Those who delay upgrading to a modern viewer will still see avatars as before with the exception that the textures rendered by the SSB code may be missing from them leaving a white mask on the prim/layer shape. In addition to the SSB code upgrades, several other updates will also be rolled out at this same time.

The good folks at Linden Lab are testing server side baking for official Second Life Viewers which is projected for release within the next 2-4 weeks.

Supported Viewers as of April 25th – 2013

• Firestorm Viewer 4.4.0.33720 has added support for Server Side Baking
• Catznip Viewer R8 has server side baking support (SSB)
• Nirans Viewer 2.2.0 Alpha (2656) contains the update SSB (Server Side Baking)
• Singularity Viewer 1.8.0 has added support for Server Side Baking
• Kokua Vewer latest build includes experimental code
• Cool VL viewer supports Server Side Baking

You can read more about SSB here or on our blog or on Firestorm’s Blog

Please check back for updates!