Around The Grid News
Around The Grid News
Around The Grid News Week 3
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This is ATG Grid News, I am Zack Haiku.
Introduction
This is ATG Grid News.
I am Zack Haiku.
Our top stories:
– New Firestorm update brings multiple changes and features for creators
– Linden Lab looks to enhance inventory system
– New website tracks genuine Second Life activity
Hello and welcome to ATG Grid News
Firestorm Viewer
Firestorm Viewer has received a brand new update on January 17th, on what seems it will be a busy year for viewer updates.
This new release is intended to keep Firestorm up to date with the current official viewer code base, as well as focus on bug fixes.
However, this new version of Firestorm brought with it some significant updates, both by Linden Lab and also the Firestorm Team.
Most notable on the new changes are the formal transition to Legacy profiles, brought by Linden Lab in 2022, and now infcorporated into the Firestorm viewer. This change brings renamed tabs to the profile floater, a revised aspect ratio to the profile picture, renamed buttons and new options in your 2nd Life tab.
Another big change brought on by the Firestorm Team is the addition of Local Mesh, still on a beta phase.
The primary aim of Local Mesh is to allow creators to check their mesh creations without having to go through the access to Aditi, the Beta Grid, for tests, as well as presenting real-time viewing of edits to the .DAE file.
this functionality works for unrigged mesh, worn rigged mesh and Animesh, and once rendered, the object can have textures and materials applied for testing, as required.
Local Mesh follows the same basic principles as Local Textures, as meshes are only visible to you through the viewer instance, and only during the current log-in session.
Local Mesh can be accessed via the Build menu, in Build > Local Mesh.
Apart from these two main functionalities, Firestorm has had some UI update in the appearance context menu, changes to the Third Person Perspective Camera preset default, as well as inventory updates, like the Reload Folder option, restoring any missing content to that folder, or the Create/Ungroup Folder, which has been relocated on the inventory righ-click context menu, in order to avoid issues of this option being clicked on in error.
Many other updates have been made, and these can all be seen on the Firestorm blog or at Inara Pey’s blog, Modemworld.me.
Second Life Living Expo
Second Life Living Expo, a re-imagined Home and Garden Expo Mega Event, part of Relay for Life in Second Life, is expanding the concept of home and garden to also include the way we live, work and play in Second Life. This includes aviation, maritime, equestrian, farming, leisure activities, travel, food and much more.
in this spirit, Living Expo is looking for media partners for their event, offering a Media Partner booth at the event, a free 30 second radio ad, promotion on their website and logo placement on posters. Any possible partners interested should reach out via the form provided in the description, and contact Roxy Christenson or Cody Chronotis for any questions.
Linden Lab Inventory Enhancements
The latest visit of Inara to the Content Creator User Group meeting brought us some more information on future Linden Lab projects and focus, this time with the Inventory Enhancement Project.
Linden Lab is looking to enhance the Inventory system, first of all by adding a fixed-resolution thumbnail preview capability, allowing users to see a small image of a given object, when this feature makes sense. This of course means items like notecards will not have a preview.
The work on this feature has now started, but there will be some time before there is a user-facing feature to present.
There may very well be a code contribution from Kitty Barnett, from Catznip, for an inventory texture tool tip or preview being folded in to this work.
We will bring you further updates in the future.
BonnieBots
A new website popped up on the web tracking genuine Second Life activity.
BonnieBots is a new website providing a useful guide for finding sims with real active users, as opposed to trafic bots.
The site makes use itself of bots, roaming the Second Life grid, counting the number of avatars on each sim. That data then gets collected by Bonnie to register daily activity trends.
Apart from this kind of information, Bonniebots provides additional information on popular attachments on the grid, abandoned land, sandboxes, available linden homes, marketplace sales history, and more.
Palomma Casanova
Sad news for the second life community, as the founder of Free Dove, Palomma Casanova, passed away earlier this month, on January 14th.
Our correspondent, Katheryn Llewellyn, was familiar with Palomma and her work, and has created the following excerpt.
Thank you, Katheryn. Second Life is a bit less with the loss of Palomma.
This has been ATG Grid News, you can find me at twitter, @HaikuZack.
Enjoy the grid!
