SecondLife : The Need For Tear Off Screen Menu's

By Avatar JayR Cela

    A few day's back I was rambling on about 32x ~vs~ 64x SecondLife compatible viewers, and got a bit side tracked with the Tear Off Menu capabilities that were first being introduced back in the Project SnowGlobe days.

    It basically boils down to this, SL as a platform in a multi monitor set-up configuration for one reason or another does not or never has officially had a in built tear off menu function. I have no idea why, but the other day one of this blogs regular reader's : Lord posted in the comment sections about this exact issue being discussed years ago, LOL a lot of years ago, another great idea just swept under the proverbial invisible carpet by The Lab.

     I have been involved with SL for 8 years now, and have watched all sort's of changes happen. Some of this stuff is really funny, I recall going to those meetings back with the SnowGlobe project lead Matthew Linden, and the ongoing server project headed up by Zero Linden, he is a genius and was the driving force behind the Rolling Restart's capability SL now enjoys, making the overall SL experience more enjoyable for everyone. Years ago LL would routinely shut the Entire Grid down once a week. So count your blessing's I guess / LOL :_)


    At that point a new CEO Mark Kingdon had just taken the reigns, and was steering the over-all SL environment towards a real life advertising based platform, any long time Second Lifer knows the back story to that fiasco. As a result the SecondLife Viewer itself made a dramatic architectural change. The amount of bugs both during and ongoing can easily be explained any way you choose, I choose the word Painful.

 
   One way or another Multi Screen Tear Off menu's was never officially built into the newer SnowStorm code base, and that was tied into the then current server side changes being worked out between  then Zero Linden and IBM ~ prehaps ~ Sun Micro / Who knows ? I don't really remember now. It was however an interesting and turbulent time for SecondLife, and a lot of fun too. I managed to dig up 2 old photo's from Zero Linden's meeting place. Just thought I would share these with ya. I believe these are from sometime in late 2007, give or take a bit :_)

    That point is totally irrelevant now. The V3.x viewer architecture and the seemingly dwindling current TPV variants are all very stable. So why don't we have Tear Off Screen Menu's ?

    I'm going to repost Lord's comment and the link that he gave describing this much needed feature to the SL viewer.

 Hi JayR ! Your idea of the Tear Off Menus was actually implemented a long time ago by a viewer called MonoVida Studio / MonoVida Communicator...and was proposed for adoption by Dzonatos Sol (aka Jonathan Ballard )to LL in the Jira entry SNOW-375. Somehow, when Snowglobe 2.0 was ditched for the new moniker Snowstorm 2.0, they lost this project as well. According to Jonathan Ballard it wouldn't be all that hard to implement it, but that due to upcoming changes in internet protocols he suggests waiting till they have been implemented to develop such a viewer. If you would like to read more about it, try here: http://icyspherical.blogspot.com/2010/07/overview-snow-375-is-api-to-snowglobe.html

Monday, November 25, 2013 at 1:05:00 PM EST

 

http://icyspherical.blogspot.com/2010/07/overview-snow-375-is-api-to-snowglobe.html

    Ya really gotta read this.

JayR Cela :_)

P.S. @Lord / thanks :_)

Real Life : U.S.A : Harry Reed Finally Miraculously Grows A Pair

By Avatar JayR Cela

     Yes, I am so happy that the speaker of the Senate finally said enough is enough.

JayR Cela

SecondLife : Should You Be Using 64 Bit ? / NO !! Not Yet !

By Avatar JayR Cela

    OK all the 64-bit gear-heads  out there, It's a firm MAYBE !! / LOL :_)

    The SL source code is still 32-bit !!!!

    Until that changes, all this 64-bit madness is meaningless.

     One thing I would really like to see introduced into the SL viewer would be the ability to Tear Off Menus onto a second or 3rd Monitor screen. This is not a 32 or 64-bit issue, the fact that the SL Viewer-2-3 architecture currently does not allow this is a real shame on the the Lab's part, and until that happens SL will be regulated to a has been.

    So if you are thinking of downloading a 64-bit viewer, don't waste your time.

    Just my opinion.

JayR Cela

Have You Ever Used A Mac-Mini ?

By Avatar JayR Cela

   I've been using and building desktop computers for as long as I care to remember, and I absolutely loathe something I can not take apart to upgrade or fix when it breaks. But recently with numerous advancements in the micro chip technology area comes change.

    Two years ago I would have said, no if I can not take it apart, I don't want it.

    However, I just had a recent experience with a new Macintosh Mini computer pumped up with 8-GB Ram and a 2 Terabyte HD and WOW !!

    You couple that with the Thunderbolt connection and OMG !!

I guess I changed my mind.

Now I want one !

JayR Cela :_)

SecondLife : XB1 & PS4 : Should Linden Lab Make The Move ?

By Avatar JayR Cela

    This is something I have been thinking about quite a bit lately, and the biggest problem I can see is the choice of AMD / ATI for the graphics on both respective platforms.

    Now don't get me wrong here on this one, there is nothing wrong with AMD / ATI and the Radeon architecture when it comes to being more than capable of producing stunning graphic's on a multitude of different games.

    However for one reason or another SL has never really seemed to work all that well with AMD graphic processors. I seriously doubt that this is the fault of anyone besides LL for not figuring out what the heck is wrong !

    The XBox-1 and PlayStation-4 will both be a huge leap forward in the Home Entertainment field of consumer electronics as a whole. The problem with porting SL to either of these platforms will be rest upon the shoulders of the Lab's ability to figure out why SecondLife and ATI just don't get along.

JayR Cela

Hardware Requirements for SecondLife : On The Increase ~ Or Not ?

By Avatar JayR Cela

    Hmmmm, this depends upon a number of variables, one thing to be sure of, is that so far the Lab has been extremely busy with a lot of back-end server improvements.

    Viewer side, I have been using FireStorm since the original Beta release, so that's not going to change, I'm just set in my way's now I guess :_)

    Anyways, the Lab's Viewer team headed up by Oz Linden,  and I believe it may be Nynx Linden on the Server side, really seem to have gotten a tremendous amount of  Server Load Balancing issues finally cleared up. And that is wonderful news for folks that like to go exploring via a vehicle of some sort. A whole lot less crashing your Plane or ending up with a sunken boat, on a No-Build area :(

     I should also mention the newest project involving prediction of what objects and textures should be given preference is a great idea ( concept ) My god I can just imagine the Math Involved with coming up and debugging the correct logarithms.

    So getting back to my original thought about SL and your hardware requirements, will you need to increase them, or remain the same ?

    My experience has been that most desktop computers manufactured within the past 6 years or so / give a take or bit, you should be Kool enough with that hardware to log into SL. It's really going to depend quite a bit on your Video Card, or integrated chip-set and how much RAM ya got laying around your MotherBoard , 3 or 4 Gig should be just fine with all 32bit systems, as far as 64bit systems go, 4, or  6 to 8 gig and you should be all set too.

     And it seems that with over 40,000 Servers running the show for the backend.  at Linden Lab
I'm thinking your system requirement's will remain fairly constant for at least several years.

    Back in 2005 I was logging into SecondLife on a Pentium 3 and a Nvidia Gforce4, at the time it worked well enough for me to figure out I was gonna stick around a while. Today that's not going to happen, you are going to require a relatively, moderate price'd machine of a about $350 to $450 US  that should do it. / Plus Monitor - Keyboard - Mouse

    The main thing to consider either stick to good reliable Brand Name product you have prior experience with or plain old fashioned word of mouth recommendations, or my self I tend to usually configure and build my own, and that entails finding and getting to know a Mom & Pop kinda local computer store that you can trust. I'm telling ya they are out there, ya just gotta find them, usually word of mouth is your best bet.

    The ironic thing I see happening here is that LindenLab has actually been lowering the initial requirements in order to log in and have an enjoyable experience. And that is a direct result of all these crazy Server Madness changes recently. But it is paying off, I always said if ya toss a shit load of crap against the wall eventually something is bound to stick, and the Lab seems to have finally figured whatever it was they were trying for.

    So in closing I will have to say, A Resounding No - recent improvements to the labs back end architecture  will only require a small percentage of SL residents to upgrade their hardware.

JayR Cela

P.S. Just my opinion :_)

SecondLife : Depending On Who You Talk To ?

By Avatar JayR Cela

    I have been talking to several SL content creators recently, one thing that really gave me pause to think twice, is that a number of them don't care. They have been around in SL for years, and tend to see it winding down, so to speak. It's loosing it's Mo-Joe !!

    That's pretty sad.

    Let's see what happen's

JayR Cela

Virtual Worlds : FireStorm : My Thoughts On The New Beta 32bit and Alpha 64bit VW Viewers

By Avatar JayR Cela

    I was really pleased to see the FireStorm viewer team take the initiative and move forward with it's FS V.4.5.1.x release of the 32bit flavor earlier that I had anticipated. Although it will be an Open Beta, my biggest thrill was that FS is damming the torpedo's ( pretty much saying to LL - Hey Folks we are tired of waiting ) and moving full steam ahead with the Open-Sim version.

    Let's face it LL most recently blew it big time by choosing 3 negative paths to follow. #1 No Open Hyper Grid participation ( Of Any Kind Whatsoever ) , #2 Not promoting the L$ more heavily as a possible Virtual World  Currency Standard and furthering the SL Marketplace extension into the Hyper Grid world(s). And #3 The recent TOS changes, basically screwing any and all of the Content Creators.

    So I'm my opinion, ( and my opinion only ) The team said a big F+&* we don't really care as much about SL as we once did. Open Sim is where it's all gonna be happening in the very near future, so we are shifting focus. At least that's the way I'm looking at it.

    Another screw you LL, that I see, is HEY ! there Lab People, we are getting mighty tired of your bizarre outlook on the future of Virtual Worlds in general, and are adding some really great Export ( My-Yours ? ) Stuff ! features built into this new version that will finally allow a content creator to save their original creations to HD , Cloud, Tape, Pen Drive, etc...  ( Big Yayy !! for OpenSim Hyper Grid users )

    Make no doubt about it folk's the people at Linden Lab are really breaking away from the pack in more ways than one right now.

    I plan on testing both the 32bit versions on Win7 it will be FS for SL, and Linux FS for OS, and perhaps vice~a~verse at a later date.

    As far as the 64 bit version(s) that is a total wait and see situation, after all the SecondLife Client is in itself  a 32 bit application.

You can DL your copies and check out the FireStorm blog here.
http://www.firestormviewer.org/downloads/       
http://www.firestormviewer.org/

JayR Cela :_)