SecondLife "JIRA Storm-941" "IM Log Naming should go by SL name, not DN ! "

By Avatar JayR Cela

    Ok I been complaining about this issue for month's, ever since V2.4 and the Display Name feature was introduced into SL. The problem is how your IM and Chat Log Files are handled. Old style ( SL name ) Firstname_Lastname.txt was replaced by ( DN name ) Firstname.Lastname.txt

    Why the hell this was done is beyond me, and it should have been a trivial mater to maintain backward compatibility with the old format. Sadly this was not the case. Ok so you scratch your head and say, so what ? What difference could that possibly make. Well it makes a Big Difference to a lot of people, especially those of us that have been in SL for years, ( September 2005 in my case ) I depend on my Log File's and Chat Log's to keep track of past conversation's, transaction's, friendship's etc...

    Now in my particular case, the computer is set as follows
Hard Drive A is for Windows : C:\ Bootloader & Swap File | D:\ Data | E:\ Windows
Hard Drive B is for Linux : and set up as Swap File then Root

  






  
     Most of my important data, backup's and such are on an external drive. My SL Log files however are stored on my Windows D:\ Data partition, this way I can easily switch between various SL Clients, or from Linux to Windows, always confident that my precious Log files are readily available in the D:\SLLogg  folder.  All I should have to do is point the client software to the correct folder during initial setup.

    And this has always been the case up until Viewer 2.4 and Display Names. And then suddenly POOF !!!! Nothing ! Zip ! Zang ! Zing ! Gone into thin air ! Oh they are still there, just the freaking Viewer can't find them.

    Now when I first started squawking about this issue, I was literally told during a meeting that. "Hey it's no Big Deal" "Just open a Text Editor"

    Now what the F*&% Kinda dimwitted  statement is that supposed to be ? I'll tell ya what it is. It's an INSULT ! to myself and any other long time SL residents.

   In other word's, we don't care about all you old timers. Can't you see we are trying to attract new customers with this wonderful new Mess, "Viewer 2" ? You Long Time Loyal Customers No Longer Concern Us. WE ARE AFTER FRESH MEAT !

    Well I'm gonna tell ya something LL, before falling ill in 2005, I ran my own successful small business for 18 years. Your long time customers are your base, your backbone, your everything. When times get tuff, your gonna wish ya still had them, and they should be treated like Gold, very precious indeed.

    So let's take a quick look to see what I am actually talking about here. Yesterday Viewer 2.6 was introduced ( Remember this problem first appeared in V2.4.x and continued through several iterations of said, and during multiple 2.5.x releases as well )

    On the Left is Viewer 2.6 on your Right is Phoenix FireStorm Preview 2. Enlarge the pics and you will notice both clients are pointed to my D:\SLLogg folder or
( /media/22A42E5CA42E32A9/SLLogg ) in Linux Speak.

  

     So here is the Million $ Question. Why is it that FireStorm Preview 2, which is based on V2.4 code is able to read my Log and Chat file's, and V2.6 still is not capable of such a Herculean feat ? The answer is a very easy one. The Phoenix FireStorm Team Get's It. They have heard the people speak. And guess what ? They actually listen too ! Boy what a unique and new concept that is.

     Yes the pursuit of a new, and wider customer base is a good thing and a wise practice to remain constantly active in. But new customer's are fickle, they have yet to establish a long term relationship with you, or feel a sense of loyalty towards your product and or services. Something new and shiny comes along tomorrow, you may as well kiss them goodbye.

JayR Cela :_(

P.S.
 I was at the  SnowStorm meeting today after I had started composing this post, and as I understand it. This issue was just handed over to Seth Productengine as of yesterday. So Seth, with all due respect, may I offer a bit of advice sir. It's all open source, perhaps you might consider just borrowing a few snippets of code from Phoenix FireStorm.

If you have further interest in this topic, here is a link to the Jira page.
https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/STORM-941?

Virtual World Client~Imprudence~&~"The InWorldz Grid" "Part 3(b)"

By Avatar JayR Cela

    Welcome back, I figured on waiting a few hours to see how IW's servers were doing. Hopefully better than they were this morning. But before I do that let me give you my test beds stat's first. My ISP connection tops out at 1.3mbps ( rather slow ) A 6 year old P4 capable of dual thread operation, 3 Gig Ram, SATA Hard Drive, and PCIE 512mb Nvidia 8400GS ( By no means State of the Art ) in other words, my rig gets the job done, nothing more, nothing less.

    So here we are, back at the IW Coffee Station, with 138 users currently logged in and 3 or 4  avatars within my general vicinity. I'm getting decent FPS so I guess I'll stick around for a bit. I meet one of the IW mentors, who promptly offers assistance. I think you will find most people in IW are extremely friendly. After all it is a relatively small community compared to SL, for that matter it is not uncommon to find that  quite a few people here are resident's of SL also.

      But





                        "First Thing's First, a trip to the Handy Dandy Free-Bee Shop"

  



 Ok, now that I am loaded up with all sorts of new goodies, shape, skin, hair, shoes, eyes, and clothing, it's off to my sand box I go. / LOL :_)

 

 
    Apply new shape and skin, hair, top and do some serious tweaking to the shape ( so I don't look like a cookie cutter noob ) and Wha-Laa ! Is like starting over in 2005 SL again. / LOL :_)

    But ya know what ? I have given this some serious thought today, and there is no way I can do a serious review of IW in 2 short day's. There for I am extending this series through the weekend. I intend to visit some clubs, beach's, scenic area's and various builds. So for the next 3 or 4 days I will be popping in and out of InWorldz, bringing you more picture's, and my opinion's.

    So if you are at all interested in IW, or a resident. By all means keep reading here, or even better yet perhaps we will meet on in other while I'm there. Thank's for reading.

JayR Cela :_)

P.S. As always, your comment's are welcome.

Virtual World Client~Imprudence~ & "The InWorldz Grid" "Part 3(a)"

By Avatar JayR Cela

    Today I plan on using the Imprudence Viewer to just do a little sight seeing on the Open Sim based Virtual World, InWorldz. I don't really expect to run into very many residents this morning, it's 5:00am SLT ~or~ Pacific Mountain Time, and from the opening stat sheet, there are only 85 residents currently logged in. So let's get started.

 


  Yesterday I mentioned the problem encountered while building and rezzing prims, that don't always appear where you expect them to. Here is another reason I have seldom visited the InWorldz Grid. A total lack of consistency with FPS performance.

    Sometimes it is downright unusable, barely able to squeak out 2 Frames Per Second, other times I have easily been able to achieve 15 to 20 FPS. Now I'm not the only person this happens to, it seems to be a common complaint. I have 1 SL friend ( a very accomplished content creator, builder ) who jumped on the IW bandwagon 2 years ago, lured in by low setup fee and the heavily discounted tier prices. He purchased several islands, but eventually left in disgust. After all, without consistency, you have a whole lot of Virtual Nothing !

    Anyways while I waiting to un-cloud, I going to turn on run Multiple Threads, and Fast Alpha via the Imprudence Advanced Menu.











         This is the main first time log in area for IW, the InWorldz Coffee Station, and general gathering area for socializing residents. A quick look at the Mini-Map shows 3 people in my vicinity.

    However my Statistic's readout still shows a dismal 2 FPS making this session unusable. This give's me a thought, I am going to log in and out of IW during the course of today. And break this Part 3 review into several sections Part 3 (a) (b) (c) etc. Ya'll come back now, hear ? :_)

JayR Cela

Virtual World Client~Imprudence~ & "The InWorldz Grid" "Part 2"

By Avatar JayR Cela

    Welcome back for part 2 of this 3 part series concerning the Imprudence Viewer, and the OS based InWorldz Virtual World Grid. Today we will visit my InWorldz sandbox and do a few random test performed using Imprudence. To be quite honest with you, I am not very familiar with either the viewer or the grid it's self. That being said, this should prove interesting.

    After a little bit of playing around, it is easy to see why The Imprudence viewer is becoming the client of choice for OS based VW's, there are literally tons of built in features designed to assist content creation. I found a number of them to be a bit awkward at first. But as with any complex piece of software, familiarity breeds excellence of one's usage abilities. As you can see from the opening screen shot, I am using the last stable build 1.3.1

    I highly recommend you enlarge each screen shot, in order to fully grasp how versatile this viewer actually is.

    One thing I found to be quite annoying, and this has nothing to do with Imprudence. Is that for some reason unbeknown to me, rezzing new objects while building does not allways place them where you would expect, as can be see here. I rezzed 2 simple building types, a cube and a cone. Oddly enough they managed to rezz themselves underneath my structure. No big deal for an experienced builder, but for a newcomer, this is one serious flaw that needs to be addressed, and one of the major reason's I never really took InWorldz seriously in the past.

    That being said, I think you be be thrilled to find out that the ridiculous 10m x 10m build parameter limitations imposed while creating structures when using SL, do not exist here in, InWorldz. Yayy !!! :_)

    There are so many building goodies packed into this viewer, as to be almost mind boggling. But very well documented, to say the least.

  
     In closing, If you are already an Open Sim user, I would Imagine that your viewer of choice is currently Imprudence. If your thinking of exploring the OS universe and have been investigating the various viewer options. The Imprudence Viewer is an excellent place to stop looking, and start building.

JayR Cela :_)

P.S. Stop by tomorrow for Part 3. When I go InWorldz, and start exploring the places and people.
       Hope to see you then :_)

Virtual World Client ~ Imprudence ~ & "The InWorldz Grid" "Part 1"

By Avatar JayR Cela

    Several months ago the team that develops the Imprudence Viewer announced a shift away from SL based development in order to place a greater focus on Open Sim based Virtual Worlds. Inworldz happens to be one of them.

    Although they are not HyperGrid enabled at this time, I already have an established account there, opened sometime back in 2009. At that time the place was novel, and quite frankly very boring. Things seem to be changing though. I regularly get E-Mail notices, almost once a day for some sort of special event taking place on InWorldz. This coupled together with a sudden resurgence of development activities of the Imprudence viewer, has prompted me to veer off my usual course today, and take a look around at somewhere besides SL.

    I have used Imprudence, on various occasion's, but found that it just did not appeal to my liking very much. Weither this will change over a period of time is hard to say. One thing is for certain though. The Imprudence Viewer is gaining market share in the rapidly expanding Open Sim universe. As you can see from the following screen shots, it is based on SL Viewer 1.x code, with some added feaures that seem to be geared specifically towards OS and grid hopping in general. ( Multiple pre-configured OS grid selections )

                                                             Pretty standard fare here.
                                            Nothing fancy, just ease of setup.

  
      Another thing that seems to be certain is, InWorldz is growing, and at a rather rapid clip. 1 year ago they were barley a blip on the radar screen. The on line magazine Hypergrid Business http://www.hypergridbusiness.com/ recently ranked them as # 3 in OpenSim growth for the forth quarter of 2010.

http://www.inworldz.com/


    I'm running out of time for the moment. Stop back later today for Part 2.


JayR Cela :_)