New World Notes

Linden Lab Announces Log-In Fix Affecting Third Party SL Viewers

I haven't heard back from Linden Lab about users of the Lumiya mobile app having trouble logging in, but this announcement from Alex Linden is probably apropos:

Monday we had login issues preventing certain viewers from logging in to agni. We now have a fix deployed to aditi. If you observed login issues with an affected TPV please take a moment to see if you can login to aditi.

So if you own Lumiya or for that matter any other third party viewer that was experiencing log-in troubles earlier this week, try logging in now and report back here!

Lumiya, Popular Android App for Mobile Second Life Access, Reportedly Unable to Access Second Life

I've received multiple user reports that Lumiya, the very popular Android app for accessing Second Life on mobile, has not been able to access Second Life in recent days, with users failing to get past the login process (see pic at right).

I'm reaching out to Linden Lab now for an update. The third party viewer, solely created by Alina Lyvette, a developer based in Russia, is quite popular, selling well over 100,000 copies. (I.E. roughly 1 in 5 of Second Life's active user base.) In recent years, however, Alina has gone AWOL from SL and Lumiya is no longer being updated. And with Linden Lab's official mobile project recently suspended, this means there's currently no mobile access to Second Life.

As to why this is happening, I'll wait on updates from the company. Readers in this /SecondLife thread may have some clues, with one pointing to a recent security update:

Second Life, The Limits of OpenGL, and the Alchemy Viewer (Comment of the Week)

"Won't be going to Fortnite if there's no custom [avatars]," writes Juliette Jones in a post on that topic, "but frankly SL's performance issues cannot be 'solved' without expending an immense amount of money on Linden Lab's part to transfer Second Life completely off of OpenGL framework."

Here's why, as she sees it:

OpenGL has a lot of difficulty using GPU resources effectively since it was originally made as a competitor to Microsoft's DirectX programming which relied on GPU. At the time, CPUs were far more powerful than most graphics cards and especially moreso than the onboard graphics of that generation's motherboards. OpenGL was built to run on those systems. No one was sure dedicated graphics cards would take off the way they did.

As a stopgap solution for Second Life users, Juliette suggests trying the Alchemy viewer over the highly popular Firestorm:

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.