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  1. Happy Spring! It’s time to catch you all up on recent product developments! Continue reading for mobile updates, scripting news, new feedback portal (and end-of-life for JIRA), and Viewer releases.

    📱 Mobile Private Alpha Update

    Big and small updates! This is a reminder that Premium Plus members can apply to participate in our Mobile Private Alpha. If you are a Premium Plus subscriber, and you’re ready to try the app and help us make it better, find out more.

    We recently updated the Second Life Mobile Alpha to support streaming audio! You can enjoy music in Second Life on your mobile device while hanging out with friends inworld. Streaming audio is off by default. To turn it on, go to Settings > Developer tools > Enable Streaming Audio.

    We have brought you a couple of new Chat UI features:

    • Start a new chat from any chat screen
    • On the Nearby Chat screen, see how many people are nearby.

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    Next up - teleport and avatar display improvements. We think we’ve got avatar shapes figured out…and the real challenge - skeleton deformers - are also in the works!

    🐛 JIRA end-of-life

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    Yes, the king is dead, long live the king! While we have said goodbye to Jira as the platform for collaboration with our residents as well as for internal issue tracking, we believe this has allowed us to improve visibility and collaboration. 

    The new Second Life Feedback Portal is a great place for any new bug reports or feature requests, while the public Second Life Viewer project on GitHub is where we continue our open-source work. 

    Speaking of the Second Life Feedback Portal, it has already received 672 posts, 2635 comments, and 6426 votes! We thank you for your enthusiastic participation. We have made many updates since we first introduced it in January including a whole new UI and dark mode (based on your system settings). We will continue to improve the feedback portal and, most importantly, review all the incoming reports and requests!

    Although Jira is dead, the archive remains. As mentioned in our Pt. 2 blog post, the Jira archive of the Second Life BUG project on GitHub is now available. You can find the public BUG archive at https://github.com/secondlife/jira-archive/issues. The archive currently contains most of the previously public Jira tickets from the original BUG project. However, there are a few that we are still moving over. It does NOT include tickets that previously had restricted access.

    👩‍💻 Scripting changes

    Out now: Increased sensor result limit

    We've increased the maximum number of results returned by llSensor and llSensorRepeat from 16 to 32. This will reduce the need for workarounds such as repeatedly scanning small slices of space.

    Coming soon: llSetLinkSitFlags, llGetLinkSitFlags, SIT_FLAG_NO_COLLIDE

    In an upcoming server release we will be allowing scripts to set and get the sit flags of linkset sit targets via llSetLinkSitFlags and llGetLinkSitFlags. In addition, scripts will be able to set the SIT_FLAG_NO_COLLIDE flag to disable the avatar's collision volume when they are seated. This will be useful for clown cars and other creations.

    Scripting roadmap

    Status of these upcoming changes and more are visible on Second Life's new public roadmap at feedback.secondlife.com. If you have ideas or feedback on the scripting system check out the Scripting Features and Scripting Bugs boards.

    🪀 Creator news

    Coming soon: 15% reduction to mesh download impact

    Download weight is one parameter used as part of calculating an object’s Land Impact (LI).  We will be reducing this by 15%, decreasing the land impact of many mesh assets.

    LI for mesh-based objects is either download weight, physics or server cost, whichever is greatest. This change will not impact animesh or mesh upload fees.

    Coming soon: Scheduling automatic daily region restarts

    This feature has been on people's wish lists for many years. Estate managers will soon be able to schedule automatic region restarts via the region console:

    > help region_schedule
    region_schedule
        Display or modify scheduled region events.
        An empty parameter list will display the current schedule.
        unset <event>:  Removes the scheduled event.
        set <event> daily HH::MM::SS will set the event to occur daily at the scheduled time.
        set <event> weekly days HH::MM::SS will set the event to occur on the indicated days at the scheduled time.
           S=Sun, M=Mon, T=Tue, W=Wed, R=Thurs, F=Fri, A=Sat
        Note: Times are in GMT

    While most regions do not need to be restarted more frequently than weekly, which is automatically scheduled, some regions with high traffic may benefit from more frequent restarts. When you restart a region, keep in mind that everyone on the region will be kicked out.

    💻 Viewers

    Maintenance Viewer

    GLTF PBR Maint 2 contains another round of fixes and refinements to PBR rendering, including a preview of Materials from Inventory while editing objects. Download version 7.1.3.7821226606 and check out the release notes.

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    Default Viewer

    😀 Emoji

    This viewer was finally promoted to default release and is based on a contribution by Kitty Barnett, adding emoji support to text chat.

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    Featurettes sneak peek!

    Our Post Materials Featurette Package is sharing early access to:

    • Mirrors
    • PBR Terrain
    • 2k textures

    Initially this will only be available on our Beta Grid (Aditi). Please keep your eye on our blog as we will post more details in the coming days.

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    Catch more Second Life news on Thursday, March 14th at 12pm PT at the VWBPE Above the Book interview with Grumpity, Signal, and Kali Linden

    Follow our Featured News Blog and connect with us on Social Media for future Second Life News!

  2. Happy Wednesday!

    We’re writing to remind everyone that we’ll be holding our monthly Web User Group meeting today at 14:00 SLT in our usual meeting place, where we’ll be discussing our status with ongoing projects and our near future plans for our web properties. As always, we’ll leave plenty of time for Q&A from the community. This meeting is conducted using voice. We're happy for you to contribute in voice or in text, but you'll need to have your voice settings activated. We look forward to seeing you there.

    Keep up to date with all of our user group meetings on our wiki and public calendar.

  3. Linden Lab
    Latest Entry

    By Linden Lab,

    Friendly Greetings!

    As mentioned in our Pt. 2 blog post, we are excited to announce that the process of providing an archive of the Second Life Jira BUG project on GitHub is now complete! 

    You can find the public BUG archive at https://github.com/secondlife/jira-archive/issues. The archive currently contains most of the previously public Jira tickets from the original Jira BUG project. However, there are some edge cases that we are still in the process of migrating. It does NOT include tickets that previously had restricted access.

    We encourage you to use the Second Life Feedback Portal for any new bug reports or feature requests. Your feedback is crucial to our ongoing efforts to improve Second Life, and the feedback portal provides a convenient platform for you to share your thoughts and insights.

    We appreciate your continued support and understanding as we work to enhance the Second Life experience. The migration to feedback.secondlife.com signifies our commitment to fostering a more collaborative and efficient environment for everyone in the Second Life community: providing feature request voting, a public roadmap, tighter integration into the engineering process, and more.

    Thank you and see you on the Grid!

    Second Life Team

  4. February2024.png

    February, the month of love, is just around the corner, and we're thrilled to announce a variety of Valentine-themed events and activities. Follow our Featured News blog, as we will be revealing all the delightful details later this week!

    Our vibrant community is a mosaic of stories, and each connection adds a unique hue to this kaleidoscope of emotions. Our deepest thanks go to the Second Life Residents who have opened their hearts to us - sharing their moments of joy, companionship, and images of love to the official Second Life Flickr Group.

    Featured in this collage:

    Top Row (from left to right): Kynne Llewellyn, Toppy MorenoRyanna FoxclawJoshua AzúcarGiselle ChauveauMokana Melodious

    Middle Row (from left to right): High ElfCynthiaSarulien StarchildScarlett Libido - (and we snuck in Valentine Shop & Hop, opening Feb 1st)  

    Bottom Row (from left to right): Salem Sangre Hexem, Val CloudShun, ProphetKCDVerandi Diavolo

    Thank you, Residents, for your continuous support and for making Second Life the wonderfully diverse and welcoming community it is. Here's to a month filled with love! ❤️

     

    Make sure to follow us on Social Media, and sign up for the Second Life Weekly Email Newsletter to stay informed!

    For a chance to have your image featured in our social campaigns or the Second Life pic of the day, submit your work to the Official Second Life Flickr Group
    For a chance to be featured in our #SLFeature Instagram stories, follow and tag us on Instagram.

  5. The Concierge and Land User Group meeting is a monthly, public meeting for discussion and education on Second Life, useful to both Mainland Residents and Estate owners.

    Topics include any issues relating to Customer Relations/Support or concerning Land in general (mainland, islands, Linden Homes, estates, auctions, etc.).

    Join Wendi, Vix, and members of the Land team, on Wednesday at 12pm PT at Linden Estate Services.  All are welcome.

     

    Keep up to date with all of our user group meetings on our wiki and public calendar.

  6. Hi Everybody! 

    I would like to introduce a new member of the Linden Support team, Boxy 5000. 

    Boxy 5000 is a virtual assistant/support bot trainee. 

    But wait, wasn’t there already a chatbot who answered questions for premium users? Indeed there was! Boxy 3000 was the earlier model of the trainee chatbot. 

    We are learning from some design flaws and moving forward with a more advanced bot. Boxy 3000 has been re-invented and given an extra 2000! 

    But wait a second time! Won’t this bring about the machine apocalypse? Not just yet–Boxy 5000 is more advanced and learns as they go but Skynet is still a few upgrades away. 

    The upgraded bot will be a 24/7 support option for both premium and non-premium residents! (Previously only available for premium customers.)

    Boxy will have the ability to answer commonly asked questions, keep you up to date on current issues, help with ticket submission and in some cases handle a support request. 

    Boxy has uses for all residents, from early adopters to fresh new faces. 

    For new and more casual residents Boxy is available to help them find the support they need. 

    For our seasoned veterans Boxy can offer support options for some specific requests. Specifically, Boxy will be able to submit an abuse report on your behalf and in some cases help with the restart of a region!

    Boxy will continue to learn as we go. Boxy might not have all the answers currently, but we will continue to review questions posed and help the bot to better answer your support queries. 


    We realize that a chat bot is not a substitute for a customer support representative, and this bot is not meant to be. It is however meant to help when we are unavailable or may be experiencing higher call volumes. 

    For premium residents Boxy will only be the first point of contact before being passed to a support representative during office hours. Utilize Boxy to help better explain your issue once you are transferred to a support representative. Outside of office hours Boxy can help or create a ticket for when we are back in the office.

    The ability to get an answer to your question or to get your issue resolved without having to wait until our Support Lindens are available is Boxy’s primary directive.

    Anyone interested in saying hello to Boxy can access it by logging into our support portal. The Boxy 5000 chat widget should appear in the bottom right hand corner of your screen.  

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    Boxy 5000, it’s advanced… 

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