Category Archives: VR

Check Your L$ Balance Goes Live

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On Second Life Mobile Alpha

Daniel Voyager

The Second Life Mobile App team have now added your current L$ balance on the Second Life Mobile Alpha app. To view your L$ balance go to the Menu > Settings > Developer Tools then press on the Check L$ Balance button.

This is very exciting indeed to see this finally added. The mobile app team are now “testing the basic functionality of WebRTC voice on both desktop and mobile”. Soon it will go live on Second Life Mobile Beta.

To see what’s new please see below…

What’s New – As of 22nd July 2024.

Dear Alpha Testers,

We are excited to announce several new updates and features for the Second Life mobile app! Your feedback has been invaluable, and we’re committed to improving your experience. Here’s what’s new:

WebRTC Voice Integration:
We are testing the basic functionality of WebRTC voice on both desktop and mobile.

To test this feature, find the settings in the developer tools. Enable voice settings and follow the steps to verify audio between desktop and mobile in WebRTC-enabled regions.

Typing Progress Messages:

Typing animations are now available in Nearby, DM, and group chats to enhance communication visibility.

Check L$ Balance:

You can now check your L$ balance directly within the app.

Navigate to Menu > Settings > Developer Tools and hit the “Check L$ Balance” button to verify your balance.

Fix Push Notification Settings:

We’ve addressed bugs with push notifications. Friend and non-friend IM settings should now be saved consistently.

Direct Message Option in Multi-User Chats:

The “…” icon above chat messages now includes a “Chat” option in Nearby Chat or group chats, allowing for easier navigation to direct messages with participants.

Custom Dropdown Components:

We’ve replaced browser-native dropdowns on the login screen with custom react components for a consistent look across devices.

 

Feedback

Your participation in testing these features is crucial. Please provide feedback on any issues or suggestions you encounter. If you experience any difficulties or need assistance, don’t hesitate to reach out to our support team at support.secondlife.com.

Thank you for your continued support and patience as we work to improve the Second Life mobile app!

Have a Great Week From All Of Us At Zoha Islands/ Fruit Islands

How to Optimize PBR Era Firestorm

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How to Optimize PBR Era Firestorm: Notes & Tips from the Lead Dev

Firestorm viewer SL PBR update

As noted yesterday, quite a few SLers are having a poor experience with the new PBR upgrade to Firestorm, by far the most popular viewer for Second Life. Fortunately, as Firestorm project lead Beq recently detailed for me, there are a number of fixes and perspective shifts available. The starting point is understanding how the new viewer works with some WindLight/EEP modes, and (as Beq puts it),  first “[getting] past the denial and screaming stage.”

Heavy technical details ahead — in fact, if you’re not highly familiar with the terms mentioned, I’d highly recommend reading them with a friend who does before tinkering with your viewer/worlds settings:

Getting through to people that ‘OMG it is too light’ and ‘OMG it is too dark’ is not a fault in the viewer, it is a fundamental change in the lighting model. Many people live their lives with a flat toned WindLight/EEP, something like CalWL.

CalWL lives right on the edge in the old model, it is deliberately intended to flatten contrast and leave things featureless. Needless to say something that dependent on the prevailing light algorithm is going to look different in a new algorithm.

Sadly people are throwing up their hands in despair and running back to the previous version without trying to fix it. For now that works, in the long term it won’t.

That said, having reached a wider audience it opens the marketplace for people to start to create new EEPs that can become the new CalWL. However, as these are assets there is no way that anyone can wave a magic wand and say your CalWL preset is not PBR ready, you (user) need a new one, you have to change it.

As these are part of the library we can all take a copy and modify them, but many will balk at that idea, and I get it. I do hope to have time soon to give some guidance on how those that are willing to learn can do it for themselves. But we need to get past the denial and screaming stage first.

I put a number of tips into my release blog, covering how we can deal with certain performance issues. Firestorm has (of course) some settings that the default viewer does not; most useful for the low RAM people is probably the ability to restrict max texture size to 512 or 1024.

People who were previously running without ALM are now having to load more textures even for regular assets that have legacy materials. This will push up the demands on RAM and VRAM and sacrificing quality (resolution) may be the best short term option.

More tips here on the Firestorm blog, including:

  1. Limit FPS – The viewer can limit the frames per second. Some people want to see the highest number possible in the FPS counter, but in practical terms, the benefit is limited, and your machine is working hard for no real benefit. Use the limit-FPS function to set the maximum number of frames per second. This is far better the the similar “VSync” option that many suggest, because it can be set to any arbitrary number and does not have to correlate with your monitor refresh rate.
  2. Override VRAM – By default the viewer will try to make the best/most use of the resources of your PC. This includes the “VRAM”, the memory on your graphics card. Letting the viewer use all of this is fine while you are using the viewer, but is not so useful if you are watching Netflix or YouTube in the background. By using the VRAM override capability, you can tell the viewer to use only a part of the VRAM. This option is likely to change considerably in future updates to give you more control, for now this coarse control is a starting point. There are a number of problems that this setting can help address, but we’ll cover those in future blogs or support pages.

  3. Max Texture Size – This viewer introduces a new large texture size. Moreover, PBR is generally more texture intensive. You can now select the maximum size of textures that you wish to see, alleviating additional memory pressure, especially on those of our users with smaller amounts of RAM and VRAM, at the cost of texture details.         Have a great week from all of us at Zoha Islands / Fruit Islands

Many Second Life Merchants

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Many Second Life Merchants Say the Virtual World Economy Seems Oligopolistic; How Should Linden Lab Intercede?

SL oligopoly 2024 survey

We should explore a key finding from my recent Patreon report, that nearly half the Second Life merchants surveyed believe the virtual world economy is dominated by oligopolies (see above). A solid plurality of merchants believe some SL brands have oligopolistic power over the virtual economy, while 37% are open to that possibility.

Anonymous comments by the surveyed merchants highlight their specific concerns:

There is a lot of gatekeeping in the SL creator’s world, especially when starting from zero. They limit too much the access to certain body devkits like [top brand A] or [top brand B] or to certain events so it is hard to grow as a creator when you are just starting with the brand, even if you have the knowledge or potential, it relies too much on followers rather than quality or original content.

All you have to do is look at the clothes market and how many bodies have come and gone and how much stuff is unusable without the outdated bodies. Folks have to keep up with what the body makers are doing, as well as making things fit multiple bodies, often with intentionally obfuscated devkits, it’s a mess.

Devkit gatekeeping is a huge hurdle to the health of the SL third party content creation ecosystem… you know what i’m talking about.

It’s so dependent on event companies, other creators, and ultimately… whether the audience has money to spend at all let alone log on, not just our work.

I think some of the negative trends occurring in the SL creator economy fall on the shoulders of choices made by other brands. The body brands really seriously impact how our market works, and the amount of brands and bodies and mods on the market has negatively affected the market in as many ways as it has positively. It’s turned customers at odds with creators more than ever.

Faced with growing oligopolies, real world governments tend to impose regulations or taxes on these powerful companies/coalitions, even breaking them up into smaller companies. As Second Life’s effective government, Linden Lab can’t exactly do anything like that.

I do see some potential in offering “carrots” that lessen the feeling of oligopoly power. Here’s three suggestions:

Publicize/highlight highly-optimized mesh body options. We’ve already written at length about how many (most?) of the top mesh bodies are way too triangle heavy. This creates an opportunity for Linden Lab to highlight — perhaps in a Top Optimized Body contest? — mesh bodies which are beautiful and streamlined to cause minimal lag. Good for the economy, good for the overall performance of the virtual world.

Hire a third party company to host shopping events on Linden land. The Linden-hosted events in-world tend to be highly non-profit, which is great; shopping events, however, would bring in a lot of fun traffic to the mainland. They could even be stretched out over many multiple sims to (somewhat) lessen lag. Trouble is, this would be difficult to pull off if it was managed by Linden Lab itself (drama, accusations of favoritism, etc.) So one solution is to hire a third party virtual world event studio — there’s many of these, doing events and marketing projects across many metaverse platforms — to pull it off. This would be a chance to present new brands as curated by people outside the main SL community.

Of course, the main way to lessen oligopoly is grow the economy, i.e. grow the active user base. With Second Life’s active shopping market so small — roughly 300,000 to 400,000 users are active shoppers — it’s inevitable that some brands will take on outsize power. An active user base that grows into the millions, however,  could create new markets and new niche categories.

No bad ideas in a brainstorm, like they say! What would you suggest, NWN reader?

 

Please support posts like these by buying Making a Metaverse That Matters and joining my Patreon!

Wagner James Au

 Have A Great Week From All Of Us At Zoha Islands/Fruit Islands

New Updates!

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New Updates Coming Soon For The Second Life Marketplace 2024/2025

Daniel Voyager

Here are some new updates on what everyone can look forward to in the coming year for the Second Life Marketplace from the Second Life web team. See the whole meeting here which runs for 1 hour and 8 minutes. These new updates are from the monthly Second Life Web User Group meeting on 3rd July 2024.

First release of Second Life Marketplace being mobile responsive…

  • Mobile experience will display better pages like the product page for reviews etc
  • Expected within weeks and this roll out will be going slowly
  • A new confirm button when clearing your shopping cart is coming soon
  • MFA will be added to the Second Life Marketplace and this will be Opt in (the lab strongly recommends this). The plan is to add it on login
  • There will be more updates coming this year as well as the ones listed here

Other things on the Second Life Marketplace roadmap for this year…

  • Additional changes to Search on the Second Life Marketplace while working on MFA.
  • The lab will be working at how it changes transactions and merchant feedback on the feedback portal
  • After Search tweaks and MFA on Marketplace the lab will work on responsive marketplace for Search/Shopping Cart (likely to happen in 2025)

There is more discussion and related questions though the meeting (watch the video above). Below are some big updates that was said by the lab from SL21B…

  • The Marketplace design and UI will be updated real soon which will make it more accessible on smaller screens & in-viewer web browser
  • Marketplace integration roadmap with CasperVend is in the works now
  • Dark Mode on Second Life Marketplace – Not on the roadmap
  • And more!

Loads of improvements will be launching soon and some towards the end of 2024/early 2025. New experiences are coming soon which sounds really exciting.

Have a good week from all of us at Zoha Islands/Fruit Islands.

Second Life Mobile Beta

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Now Available for Premium and Premium Plus Members!

 
 
 

mobile-image.jpg

We’re excited to announce the next important milestone in the availability of the all-new official Second Life Mobile app. Effective today, we’re now opening up early beta access to all active Premium and Premium Plus members!

The Second Life app brings all the richness and beauty of the virtual world to both mobile phones and tablets. Now you can stay connected and socialize with your friends and communities – anytime, anywhere. Explore a diverse universe of places while on the go and even style your avatar – all from the palm of your hand.

Learn more and download the Beta Viewer at https://www.secondlife.com/mobile.

Celebrate the Mobile Beta Launch with Parties Across the Grid!

To help us celebrate, several Second Life communities are holding beta mobile launch events over the coming weeks. Here’s a list of just a few of the participating communities (with more to come):

Are you an owner or manager of a Second Life community or experience that would like to participate in a future launch event for our new mobile app? Learn more about how you can participate in our Mobile App Promotion Partnership Program.

Have A Great Week From All Of Us At Zoha Islands / Fruit Islands

 

Launching Mirrors

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PBR Terrain and 2k Textures in Second Life!

We are thrilled to officially launch three groundbreaking updates designed to elevate your virtual experience: Mirrors, PBR Terrain, and 2K Textures.

Mirrors.jpg

Mirrors: Step into a more immersive world with real-time reflections. Our new mirror functionality uses reflection probes, providing stunning and dynamic reflections. Perfect for adding realism to your virtual environments, whether it’s for a sleek modern home or a bustling city scape. You will find the options to make a reflection probe on the Build window, under Features.

PBR Terrain.jpg

PBR Terrain: Prepare to be amazed by the next level of terrain detail. With Physically Based Rendering (PBR), you can now apply advanced GLTF materials to your landscapes. This means your terrains can have intricate normal maps and metallic-roughness maps, bringing a new depth and realism to the ground beneath your feet.

Featurettes Viewer.jpg

2K Textures: Say hello to high-definition details. We have increased the maximum texture size from 1024×1024 to 2048×2048 pixels, allowing for more detailed and efficient textures. This upgrade is perfect for creators looking to enhance the visual richness of their builds, clothing, and objects.

These updates are designed to help you create more realistic and visually stunning environments in Second Life. Whether you’re a seasoned builder or just starting, these tools offer new possibilities for creativity and innovation.

Dive into these new features today and transform your creations. For more details and to stay updated on all the latest advancements, visit the Second Life Community Blog.

Download Second Life to enjoy these three new features now.

Thanks for your continued creation of beautiful content in Second Life. We can’t wait to see what you create with these exciting new tools.

Have a Great Week!