RSS SL

1. The LL viewer is getting better and better

   I think you are partly correct here. Rye Mutt, the head dev for the Alchemy viewer, is also working on the LL betas that exist for Linux. This is the latest beta of the Linux viewer, available here as one of the Lua editor releases but can be used as a standard viewer, I rather like it, but it's missing my beloved Dutch angle buttons and Alchemy/FS fixes: https://github.com/secondlife/viewer/releases?q=Linux&expanded=true

2. There must be something in SL that DOESN'T Peeve us

   It is hard for me to think of things that actually peeve me enough to post about it when it is regarding Second Life, overall I enjoy the platform tremendously. The latest thing that pleased me, was how the mobile viewer now highlights objects you touch, which can be interacted with. It is fantastic that they continue to work on this viewer, and I look forward to more updates in the near future. I haven't been logging in as much as I usually do, as I have been visiting far away virtual lands, otherwise, I would likely be praising something or another I discovered I can do in Second Life 🙃

3. Copperfield Heights

   Could be getting ready to release some more homes I've seen 1-2 1024sqms on the homes page.

4. The LL viewer is getting better and better

   As far as I know, all viewers have pretty much the same basic camera controls, with slightly different layouts, but Firestorm has extra stuff like rotating the cam. Because I avoid taking pics or recording videos, so far I haven't been motivated to use the phototool in Firestorm nor the machinima sidebar in Black Dragon. They look very powerful, but also intimidating. And that raises a broader question to the point of this thread: Do we think the Linden viewer should add complex, specialized features with long learning curves? I'm not sure more is always better when one of the main objectives is to get new users to login a few times. It also makes me wonder about viewer architecture. Ideally, there would be feature bundles, like viewer extensions, you could choose to add when you're preparing to do a specific task (perhaps advanced building, taking pics beyond a basic snapshot or shooting machinima more elaborate than a screen grab, maybe combat, or advanced vehicle naviagation, etc). I'm no viewer dev but I bet none of them made modular extendibility by users a prime design criterion.

5. Distance Deformation?

   Hi It is not the triangle count that effects the LoD switching distance but the overall size, Bounding Box (BB) X, Y, Z dimensions. The larger the Bounding Box the greater the distance will be between LoD switching. If you are using the Firestorm viewer you can see the approximate LoD switching distance for the selected object in the build floater > Object panel. see images in link below. So if you want your object (Alice) to switch from High LoD to Medium LoD etc at a greater distance then you will have to increase its BB dimesions. One way to do this is to add a degenerate triangle in such a way that it increase the BB. A degenerate triangle is a triangle where all three vertices lie on a straight line. the triangle will have zero area. In Blender, after adding the triangle select one vertex and with snapping enable, snap it to a second vertex. Do not merge the vertices, the the "edge" (degenerate triangle) must still be three vertices. This degenerate "edge" will not be visible when the model is rezzed in world. See this thread in the mesh forums for how a chess piece’s BB is increased using a degenerate triangle. Note how before the High to Medium LoD switch was at 0.4m (firestorm viewer) and afterwards was increased to 0.7m. Increasing the BB dimensions will increase the Download cost ! For small objects it is the Low and Lowest LoD models that effect the Download cost. See the last image in the linked thread to get an idea of how to reduce the download cost..............