New World Notes

More Tips on Running Second Life on an Oculus Quest 2

Reader David Cheney recently tried out these detailed instructions for running Second Life on an Oculus Quest 2 via Firestorm ("This is a lot of fun and works pretty well!"), and added some further tips in Comments:

On my cabled Quest 2 I had to take a couple of steps I found at the VR Firestorm viewer page:

- To fix a black HMD display I created a profile for the viewer in your graphic card settings and enable FXAA. Other types of Anti-aliasing can be disabled.
- To get the stereo images to align I followed these directions using F5, F6, and F7: Set IPD to 0 (zero), adjust Texture Shift until image is sharp and focused (I ended up with 15.0 on a 4k display and 30.0 on a 1k display); adjust IPD to get a good 3D effect.
- On a 4k display the visuals are gorgeous but the mouse/hand controller/pointers are not aligned and so operation is really tough; on a 1k display the visuals are lower rez and aliased but the mouse/hand controller/pointers are aligned and operation is practical.

Kudos to the developers!

Kudos indeed. I'd love to see more VR videos of Second Life beyond the one I posted above(from Redditor "IDontUseAnimeAvatars", who helped get the VR/SL ball rolling)--if you've seen any or are shooting some of your own, please post links in Comments below!

The Black Dragon SL Viewer Has a New Update So Watch This Photography & In-Game Poser Tutorial For Adjusting Your Avatar's 130+ Bones

There's a new update to Black Dragon, the SL viewer with a cult following for making Second Life look like a AAA game and for giving users great features for virtual photography and machinima.

Speaking of which, here's a new Black Dragon photography tutorial from SL YouTuber and apparent Fleabag cast member Boston Blaisdale. It comes to me via NiranV, the tireless sole creator of Black Dragon who has a Patreon for developing the viewer that could seriously use more patronage for all the work he does on it. Niran recently added a $10/month Patreon level for store owners who want a link to their shop -- an extremely good deal, seeing as Black Dragon has roughly 5000 active users.

Niran gives this tutorial a thumbs-up, especially the part around 4:00 minutes in, when Blaisdale gets into using Black Dragon's highly valuable in-game poser:

Fun Second Life User Tutorial by Top Gaming YouTuber Recommends Community-Made Firestorm & Black Dragon Viewers Over Official Software

Here's the latest video by Carmen King, a top gaming YouTuber and with nearly 1 million subscribers, easily the most popular SL Youtuber by far, and it's a handy one (along with having her trademark hilarious sass): A basic tutorial for using Second Life. Ms. King has far, far more viewers than Linden Lab's official YouTube channel (less than 40,000 subscribers), so I have to think anyone at Linden Lab who watches would wince at one of her first tips:

By the way I'm using Firestorm. Do not use the [official] Second Life viewer, nobody uses it. So pick between Firestorm or Black Dragon [which is ] mainly for picture taking and machinima if you want really HD stuff. But I use Firestorm for gameplay because I feel like it's less laggy and easier to use.

Yes: One of the first tips for using Second Life is to not use the software created by the actual company which publishes Second Life. And she's basically right: A Linden Lab developer once acknowledged, 25% or less of the userbase actually uses its software.

As for why Carmen is not using the official viewer herself, her answer to me is pretty simple:

Looking for Lumiya, the Android App for SL? It's Still Available on SlideME

Lumiya, the popular and impressive SL viewer for Android devices, was removed from Google Play last year, apparently due to a change in Google's policy around apps' use of SMS messages, but it's still available on SlideME, a curated market for Android apps. Since I haven't heard from Lumiya creator Alina Lyvette in many years (despite many attempts to reach her), I checked with SlideME that the app is still indeed available in their store. A rep with the company just confirmed with me that Lumiya is currently "active with downloads" on the platform.

You can buy it here, but as with any app, buyer beware. It was last updated in 2017 so that Lumiya supports Bento-based technology and its complex, highly articulated avatars for Second Life.

Official trailer below. And if you do know Alina, let her know that we'd love to hear from her, at least to know she's OK -- and to make sure she knows that she's still making money from her app on SlideMe.

Black Dragon SL Viewer Gets UI Upgrade, New Feature for Avatar Animations

Black Dragon, the third party Second Life viewer with a cult following among hardcore graphics fans, has a new update that should improve its usability --  "Fancy new tooltips, some UI improvements," creator NiranV tells me -- and comes with a new feature with a lot of potential for screenshots and machinima:

Watch: Will Second Life's New AWS Cloud Deployment Improve Performance?

Linden Lab is starting to test a new deployment of Second Life running on the Amazon Web Services cloud, beginning with a copy of Blake Sea on the Second Life Preview Grid (known as Aditi)  -- and virtual world explorer Nodoka Hanamura just arrived from the sea with this video, putting the cloud through its paces in many vehicles. (Action starts at around 1:30 in.)

The most notable result? Near-seamless sim crossing, a much-desired but near-elusive goal. As you'll see in the video, there's a split-second pause when traveling from one sim to another, resembling what it looks like in many open world games -- as opposed to the several seconds or more rubber band-ing mess it's usually like in SL.

Frame rate, Nodoka tells me, what's fairly decent: 

Amazing Untouched Environmental Photos Shot in SL With Black Dragon

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

It’s been a while since Loverdag has been featured here. Because her work is so distinctive, I thought I must have already done a post about her. She is one of my favorite SL artists. But I so loved this unedited photo “Dream Village” that I decided to search to see if it’s been over a year, and tadah! I haven’t written about her at all. So what makes me love this? It’s probably not intentional but she captures the lighting before a hailstorm. The clouds are cirrus, the fair weather clouds, but the dark sky with the light so intense and slightly yellow is a sign of hail. With the high winds, the leaning telephone pole, and the precarious buildings that could be dismantled by high winds and it gave me that exhilarating feeling I would sometimes get right before a storm. I can almost smell the freshness of the air. 

More stunning landscapes below -- as with the one above, taken with the Black Dragon viewer without post-processing.

Readers Review the Alchemy Viewer for SL

Demo video by Pepe Kuno, who notes: "Finally smooth. Firestorm was killing me with the lag.

Last week's most socially shared post by far is this one on the third party SL viewer known as Alchemy, which suggests to me that many are looking for an alternative to the popular Firestorm viewer. Readers weigh in on the pros and cons:

I decided to give the Alchemy beta release a try-out after watching Luca's [demo] video. (I'm on a 2017 iMac 27".) It is definitely more responsive in large areas, as texture loading seems to be handled better compared to Firestorm. And my FPS have been higher in the areas I usually visit. While it doesn't have all the bells and whistles of Firestorm - and is missing some Firestorm features like parcel-level WindLights and the built-in pose stand - overall I've had no problems using it as my primary viewer for Second Life. Sadly, there are fewer options for Mac users these days, with Kokua being the only other relatively up-to-date option besides Firestorm and the official SL Viewer. - Posted by: Spiffy Voxel 

Contrary to that, a reader named "Lemmy" reports: "I tried using my recent MacBook Pro, and I’m getting half the framerate I would using Firestorm." So apparently Mac mileage may vary.

Another reader has some tips on using Alchemy on a PC:

Alchemy Viewer Reportedly Improves SL Performance 2-3X Over Firestorm

I'm not too familiar with Alchemy, a third party SL viewer registered on the official Wiki, but YouTuber Luca says (and shows, above) how well it performs versus Firestorm (the most popular SL viewer) -- assuming you have a powerful GPU.

"I get about 2-3x the performance," Luca tells me. "But generally from people who reported that they got improvement from it, they usually got like 2x the performance! Some people said they didn't get any at all, though."

So the difference seems to vary widely from PC to PC. As Luca goes on:

The Problem With a 12,000 x 12,000 Second Life Display -- And With Asking for It From an Unpaid Third Party Viewer Developer (Comment of the Week)

Last week's most popular post by far is this one about how the Black Dragon viewer now has a setting to take 12,000 by 12,000 images of Second Life. So clearly many were interested in that option. However, this also provoked reader comments like "4K is generally good enough for screenshots" and, of course, "Why?" (The obvious answer to the latter being, of course, Why the hell not?)

Black Dragon creator NiranV posted a comment going deep into his own sense of Why:

I did it because people wanted it and it was literally a 10 second number change that doesn't impact the Viewer in any way and doesn't add any bloat and fits into what the Viewer is aimed at.

I told people that it's quite pointless but some peeps were like, "but more pixels!"

But what do you need to pixels for?

"More pixels!"

Yea well that's fine and all but what for, 4K + FXAA is perfectly fine.

"But i already run the Viewer at 4K natively, it looks like trash."

NiranV proceeds to unleash a hilarious rant that's also an insight into a day in the life of a third party viewer developer attempting to serve the needs of their user community