Exodus The New SL Viewer

March 19, 2012 by Leave a comment

Exodus is a new third-party viewer to join the Second Life downloadable viewer family. It is the first in a new generation of viewers which is modelled after the default viewer 3. While it is similar there are a few differences that make this viewer unique in its own rights.

Exodus Viewer Beta first look.

Similarities to the vanilla viewer are cosmetic, the bottom bar, has all the same thumbnails that makes it easy to use for residents who are familiar with the Lindens default V3. The left bar is a lot longer, with the seven original main thumbnails and six added extras including Raid Advisor, Exodus Preferences, the original Preferences, Redraw, and Tools. Along with its many new features, this beta includes a function that informs users when a new resident has entered a region. This is a push beyond the already popular Radar function in other viewers such as Phoenix, Firestorm and Singularity. It seems unclear how long this new viewer will be able to keep these functions in due to the new Linden Labs Policy that puts restrictions on third-party viewers. Since Exodus is still in its beta state, maybe it will not give into the policy just yet.

For more information on Exodus visit the website. A full review will be coming soon.

Filed under News, Technology, Viewer Reviews Tagged with , , , ,

Relay For Life 2012

March 10, 2012 by 1 Comment

Everyone is familiar with the American Cancer Society (ACS), since its creation in 1913, its members have spent countless hours raising money to finance cancer research and products. Relay For Life is the main volunteer event of ACS and in Second Life the residents of RFL do their best to raise money every year to help ACS. This year is  The Torch SL Guide will take part in Relay For Life 2012.

Snapshot_002

If you are interested in joining the Torch SLG team, please get in touch with Morphman Resident  or KennieM Resident in world or send an email with the Subject: ‘RFL: Time For A Cure’ stating your interest to The Torch SL Guide at imslsg@googlemail.com.  By joining the team you will help to set up fund raising events every month.

If you are interested in Donating to ACS or Relay For Life You can do that in two ways:

1) Clicking the Link beside this article near the Time for A Cure Logo. This will take you to the Relay For Life Donation page.

2) In world you can go to the Torch SL Guide Centre where there are Relay For Life Kiosks. Here you can pay in either Lindens or real money ( Just click on it and it will take you to the donation page).

If you would like to get involved in RFL, without joining Team Torch, get in touch with a RFL Mentor through the Relay For Life Volunteer group ( Copy & Paste in Local Chat in Second Life): secondlife:///app/group/7f1cc591-7968-9204-4082-98c7e544c371/about

Let’s help any way we can. It is Time For A Cure.

Filed under Helping Hand, News Tagged with , , , , , ,

The March Military Expo

February 29, 2012 by Leave a comment

Another part of Second Life Culture is honouring the heroes who fought for us during the wars. An article was written for the Torch SLG which showcased  the SL US Military Veterans group. Now we are proud to say, for immediate release  the World War 2 Memorial Park will be hosting the March Military Expo:

MARCH MILITARY EXPO

DATES:  March 25-March 30, 2012

LOCATION:  WW2 Memorial Park

PURPOSE:  The March Military Expo will feature a Merchants fair, where we are inviting all military, weapons, aviation, and similar merchants of SL to set up a small merchant tent in the WW2 Memorial park area for 5 days.  You will be able to bring your creations and services to a wide variety of people in SL!.  This event is in SL Destinations as a featured SL Destinations event!  To bring even larger crowds, we will hold all of Amelia’s events that week near the military expo.  So guests will have contests, music, live DJs, as well as other contests.  We will promote the event as much as possible, giving you and your business free advertising.

*There will be limited space available for military affiliated groups who wish to exhibit**

Cost:  This expo is free of charge to all approved creators and merchants.

If you are a merchant who is interested in taking part in the Expo, get in touch with Jessii Warhol2009 in world and she still provide you with a signup notecard.

In the mean time why not pop over to the WW2 Park and have a look around.

Filed under Culture in Second Life, News, SL Experiences Tagged with , ,

Third Party Viewer policy change from LL puts third party viewers at risk

February 25, 2012 by 5 Comments

At 2pm PST yesterday (friday 2/24) Linden Labs announced that they will change the policy for third party viewers. This change brings a lot of discussion material to the table, as they seem to want to eliminate all third party viewers without actually ban them.

The most discussed change is section 2.k, that states that third party viewers will not be allowed to have any features that the latest version of the Linden Labs viewer doesn’t have. This affects things like Firestorms built in video recorder and avatar radar and the Phoenix object radar.

It also means that V1 and V2-based viewers are at risk, since some of those features have been removed in the LL V3.

Another big change is 2.i and 2.j that states that no system information is allowed to be transmitted to other viewers, and both Firestorm and Phoenix tag system is based on the fact that they can show what viewer others are on. This will affect those viewers ability to show other peoples viewers and also, due to some system specific coding, the ability to change color of the tags.

The complete change, and the LL response is shown bellow.

2.a.iii : You must not provide any feature that circumvents any privacy protection option made available through a Linden Lab viewer or any Second Life service.

2.i : You must not display any information regarding the computer system, software, or network connection of any other Second Life user.

2.j : You must not include any information regarding the computer system, software, or network connection of the user in any messages sent to other viewers, except when explicitly elected by the user of your viewer.

2.k : You must not provide any feature that alters the shared experience of the virtual world in any way not provided by or accessible to users of the latest released Linden Lab viewer

We encourage Third Party Developers to continue innovating with unique user interfaces, niche features, and ways of interacting with the virtual world, and we look forward to working in partnership with developers on ideas they have for new or improved shared experiences for all of Second Life. We want to incorporate more innovative new features into Second Life to improve the experience for all users, and we encourage TPV developers to submit proposals through our standard process.

Will this mark the end of SL, or is it something that the third party developers will work around? Who knows, but my bet is that LL will someday realize that the users wants more than they are willing to deliver.

Filed under News Tagged with , , , , , ,

Third Party Viewers updated

January 20, 2012 by Leave a comment

According to Modem World, some of the third party viewers have been updated to the new SL API and are now fully supporting SL again.

Three viewers are mainly affected by this, these are Restrained Love Viewer, Niran and Dolphin.

Among other things, RLV have patched the inventory bug to accept the new LL features, which is fixing the bug where you ended up nude sometimes and removed the ability for your master to force you to TP while you’re on busy mode, Niran have a revised Builders floater with a logical structure, making it a lot easier for builders and Dolphin have revised their snapshot features to make it easier for photographers.

These. and a lot more features can be found on their respective websites, RLV, Dolphin and Niran.

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My Trip InWorldz

January 14, 2012 by 3 Comments

With such an amazing place as Second Life you never thought that there would be another one! For months now I’ve heard about another virtual world called InWorldz and decided today to give into my curiosity and check  this out. I have to say that InWorldz is a sister Virtual World to Second Life. It being that Second Life is its more popular and more beautiful older sister. It seems to be that IW is what Second Life was a few years ago.

There are several similarities which seems to be quite shocking, it almost as if you can step into InWorldz and when you’re ready you

Desert Island Welcome Area (InWorldz)

can step on a bus and travel across town to Second Life. In IW when you are “born” you land directly into an open welcome area which can be compared to Second Life’s Orientation Island and not it’s highly polished Welcome Island. InWorldz throws you into the mix and  to find your way you must enlist the help of InWorldz Mentors. Friendly people who help you to get settled by directing you to the various freebie stores that are located around the landing spot.

Like Second Life,You are able to use a Marketplace and use virtual currency called OS /I’z compared to SL’s Lindens (L$). Even the way you upload images is different ( Second Life requires you pay 10L$ to upload to images you have taken, while InWorldz is free).

InWorldz has opened a new door for us to explore and we at the Torch SL Guide will happy step through it.

Izzie Morgan (Second Life)

Izzie Morgan (InWorldz)

Filed under Technology, News Tagged with , , , ,

Phoenix Viewer: Now With Mesh Option

December 12, 2011 by 1 Comment

A couple of months ago we reported a rumor that stated that the Phoenix Viewer would have mesh. They explained that Phoenix could not have mesh because of the codes that were used to make Mesh available in viewer 1.5. According to the Phoenix Blog, that is now   made possible. The Phoenix Crew gave thanks to the creator of Cool VL Henri Beauchamp, who shared the information of how to get Mesh working in viewer 1.5 (Cool VL was one of the first viewer 1 that became compatible with mesh, when it was said that viewer would not function with the new mesh upgrade.)  According to the Phoenix Blog:

Firstly I want to make it clear that the only reason the phoenix viewer has mesh now is because of the tireless and determined efforts of Henri Beauchamp of the Cool VL Viewer. I would encourage those of you who appreciate these efforts to thank him personally. Credits and Kudos! Thank you Henri!

- Phoenix Blog

It also states that the RLVa function of Phoenix will not be updated, according to the Phoenix Blog:

RLVa has not been updated in this Phoenix viewer release. This was my decision, not that of Kitty Barnett. Although I said some time back we would update RLVa in Phoenix it became obvious that the work/time commitment involved in doing so was simply not reasonable or responsible. Kitty is a very valuable asset to this team and I refuse to take her away from the ground breaking work she does in Firestorm and v2/v3 to put a large time commitment into a dying viewer code base. She is worth far more than that. If you want updated RLVa I would suggest using the Firestorm Viewer or Kitty’s own Viewer Catznip. I offer you my sincerest apologies for going back on my word in regards to RLVa update in Phoenix, however I believe it was the right decision.

- The Phoenix Blog

More information can be found on the blog entry for Phoenix and  to download the new Phoenix viewer .

Filed under News, Technology Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

Phoenix Firestorm 3.2 is OUT!

November 28, 2011 by 1 Comment

Love Mesh? Love Phoenix? Love Firestorm? Well Phoenix Firestorm 3.2 has been released, following  a few weeks after Linden Labs’ own Viewer 3.2, which got rid of the Basic and Advance Menus (Thank GOD!).

While the previous Phoenix Firestorm Viewer Mesh was a beta, this is, according the Phoenix Viewer Blog, is the official release. They comment:

“We realize this release has been long overdue and we appreciate your patience while we have been very very busy over here in Phoenix Project land working hard to be able to offer you an official release of the Firestorm viewer. It was very important to us to ensure that Firestorm was as bug free and feature complete as possible before calling it an ‘official release’. We did not want to disappoint or insult you by giving you something that isn’t ready and still calling it an official. Although this release isn’t entirely bug free (no viewer ever is of course) or 100% feature complete it sure is damn close! So with that said, we are very proud and excited to offer you the Official Phoenix Firestorm Viewer Release! “

- Phoenix Viewer Team

Enjoy Phoenix Firestorm 3.2  

Filed under News, Technology Tagged with , , ,

USMC files DMCA on SLCC’s

September 28, 2011 by Leave a comment

DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) has been sent to several SL creators… by the U.S. Marine Core!

According to the U.S. Marine Corps Trademark Licensing Office, the use of the USMC logo, the names USMC, U.S. Marine Corp or any likeness thereof is a violation of copyright law. This means that the creators in SL that have been using this logo or this name have since 2000 been commiting copyright fraud, IF they have earned over 15 000USD per year from the products. Knowing the Linden Rate, I doubt many creators have reached anywhere near those sums, however USMC Trademark Licensing Office decided that they had and filed DMCA’s on all creators that used these.

What baffles most is that they only went for the things available on the Marketplace, not the things available inworld and they never gave any warning to any of the creators. The logo and names in question is also available in US surplus stores, wich according to US law makes it fair use.

What effects will this have on the ones who wears these uniforms, logos and names in SL? Only time will tell, but I know there are a lot of ex-marines out there that are sad about these news, as the mark they wore with pride is taken away from them.

According to one creator, in the article called Hoorah to protect his identity, many ex-marines have praised the 13 items that was taken off the Marketplace, as they have been injured or in other ways been unable to continue their duty in the USMC. One of them even asked Hoorah to recreate the Bronze Star as he had sent his to the iraqui girl who found him and rescued him in the event that lead to the loss of his legs.

Copyright issues is a hard case, as most people are on both sides at the same time and it is hard to know what is a copyright infringement and what isn’t, but as a rule of thumb, if you aren’t the creator of the logo or the name, consider changing it before you sell it.

Filed under News Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

Imprudence Releases New 1.4 Beta

September 25, 2011 by Leave a comment

Imprudence has just released their 1.4 Beta to the world. Imprudence is one of many open source viewers out there is based once again on the ever popular Linden Labs viewer 1.x.

According to the Kokua/Imprudence Blog, this is the second beta to be released and there are a few bugs that still need to be fixed. Another thing they note is that this will not have Mesh Support since they will not be using Henri Beacuchamp’s mesh for viewer 1 patches, and that they are working toward achieving that with Kokua which is their V2/3 based viewer,  though this is yet to be made public.

So Fans of Imprudence never fear for a mesh supporting Imp Based viewer will soon be here! For now, however check out Imp Beta 1.4

Filed under News, Technology Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

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