Second Life Viewer

This is another one of those "Mmm subtle" kinda tips. You may already know that with Viewer 2.x, we've superbly integrated SLurls (web-compatible links that teleport you to a specific Second Life place, as used in the Destination Guide), and that ... [More] pasting a SLurl into chat shows it in brief.Side tip: Pasting a SLurl can be a quicker way of broadcasting it to nearby friends while traveling as a group, instead of having to drag a landmark on each person or send individual teleport requests.Did you also know that SLurl-pasting works the same way in your profile? Watch this video to see how you can easily include a favorite SLurl or more in your profile, so others can come visit. What's your fave creative use for SLurls that more Residents should know about? [Less]

If you ever mess up your avatar appearance, don't worry. You can easily reset your avatar to a default one, including the avatars available when you first signed up for Second Life.This video shows you how: For text steps and more details, go to the wiki help page counterpart.

It's time to celebrate the winter holiday with friends -- both old and new -- in Second Life. The Internet's largest, community-created virtual world is filled with cool attractions, events and themed parties that capture the true spirit of the ... [More] season.  We're rounding up some of this year's holiday highlights for a new Winter-themed category in the Destination Guide, set to debut later this month. You'll find plenty of places for snow-filled fun (think ice skating, snow sledding, and skiing), as well as holiday-specific attractions and events (such as parties and live performances). In addition, December is filled with numerous grid-wide scavenger hunts, where you can join others on massive quests to seek and find free holiday-themed virtual goodies.  There's also the annual Winterfest, a week-long, snow-filled celebration with live music performances, winter sports activities and even snowball fights, hosted on the Global Online Hockey Association's wintry venues. Look for highlights of this year's event, which begins Dec. 10, to be included in the new Destination Guide category. A full schedule of activities will also be published on the Secondlife.com Blog soon -- so stay tuned for more info!    You can help us round up this year's hottest (or should we say "coolest") spots. We'll be monitoring our official Facebook page for suggestions from Residents about their favorite places, but venue owners can submit their own locations or events for consideration using the Destination Guide Suggestion Submission Form. Our editorial team will review all entries for possible inclusion in this category. [Less]

Howdy everyone. Here's the lineup for this week:Second Life Server channel: BlueSteel (an internal tools project) will be promoted to Agni this week.2010-11-09 6:00am: Main channel rolling restart (release notes)Second Life RC LeTigre: Last week we ... [More] deployed the "Threaded Rez" project to LeTigre, but  with the threaded rezzing part disabled in the configuration. We're  going to enable that feature this week to see what kind of difference it  makes when objects are rezzed. What you should look for is lag (or lack  thereof) when really complex items are rezzed in a region. We also need  to integrate the BlueSteel project since it was promoted, and roll that  update.2010-11-08 11:00am: Threaded Rez feature enabled on LeTigre (this is not a rolling restart)2010-11-10 9:00am: LeTigre rolling restart with BlueSteel project integrated (release notes)Second Life RC Magnum: The new Inventory API will remain on Magnum this week while we make  some adjustments to the backend services that support it. We will also  need to integrate the BlueSteel project here and re-roll.2010-11-10 10:00am: Magnum rolling restart with BlueSteel project integrated (release notes)Second Life RC BlueSteel: As of right now, we don't have anything to put on BlueSteel. It gets a break from the rolls.Join the converstaion over in the forums. [Less]

The Second Life Discussion Guidelines have moved here.^ As a friendly reminder, please read the guidelines before commenting on the blogs or posting in the forums so you can be awesome! ^_^This change was done by Torley Linden as part of making help ... [More] easier to find... because the previous version couldn't be read by non-logged-in Residents and contained numerous formatting glitches and old references (for example, "Xstreet" instead of "Marketplace"). The meat and spirit of the Discussion Guidelines' content remains the same, and been cleaned up on the wiki help pages, where future versions can be updated easier. Please let Torley know if there are further errors to correct. [Less]

We now have some more railway goodies available -- for free -- at the Mole Mart in the Leafminer Region:the standard SLRR switchthe standard SLRR grade crossing, andthe standard SLRR signal.All come with instruction on how to install and operate ... [More] them. They've been pretty well tested by the Moles and some of the railway groups, but please comment here on any problems you have in using them. Happy railroading!  [Less]

One of the new features we've introduced with Viewer 2.3 Beta are "hints", little text bubbles that come up and tell you more about a feature when appropriate. You may be familiar with this convention in other apps. For example, if someone types to ... [More] you, you get a prompt on how to text chat. And there's one for the new display names feature too.You can click the "X" to hide a hint, but if you'd rather globally turn them off, just disable Help menu > Enable Hints [Less]

What if I told you thatyou can get less lag in seconds, with a few simple clicks?No, this ain't a scam, but like some infomercials, it's completely risk-free. Y'see, I love "smart" defaults because they help give us a better experience out of the ... [More] box, whether we're new to Second Life or doing a fresh install. But I keep coming across Resis who, despite having a fat broadband connection, feel "laggy" because they didn't know they could up their Maximum Bandwidth.GOOD GOSH. SPREAD THE WORD:One of the not-so-bright defaults, as I griped about with you guys some time ago (the Internet never forgets), is the default Maximum Bandwidth setting. It defaults to 500 kbps, which makes no sense because HELLO WE'RE NOT ON DIAL-UP ANYMORE.But srsly, like Geordi La Forge said on Reading Rainbow, you don't have to take my word for it. Try it yourself.Go to Me menu > Preferences.In PREFERENCES window, click Setup tab.Move Maximum bandwidth slider all the way to the right... yeah, crank that baby!(Supposedly years ago, setting your Max. Bandwidth too high would result in bad packet loss and overall decreased performance, but tell me if you still notice that. It may not even be true anymore.) Links to followup on:How to open the Advanced menu (so you can see the STATISTICS BAR in the video)"Default Bandwidth Setting Too Low bug - VWR-21872, which you should vote for if you care... and see my comment in there, more history [Less]

Skip if you already know this — apparently it's been around for awhile and I had no clue.You can drag an open texture preview onto any applicable surface, whether it's a prim face or a profile picture. This may be a quick shortcut if you've already ... [More] got a texture open and were under the assumption (like me) that you had to drag it from the PICK: TEXTURE window or from your inventory.What's a Second Life trick that you wish you discovered earlier, because it seems totally obvious in hindsight?(Don't be shy, there's always something new to discover in Second Life, and I encourage this curiosity! The only wrong answer is not learning.) [Less]

Hi everyone, it's gonna be a busy week:Second Life Server channel: We're going to promote the LeTigre as well as Magnum channels. This contains the TCMalloc project, Display Names, and a known issue (SVC-6399).  We have a fix for that issue, however ... [More] we were unable to get it out onto  LeTigre early enough last week to have it qualify for today's roll.  That fix will be incorporated into this week's Release Candidates for  full deployment next week.2010-11-02 6:00am: Rolling Restart on the main channel (release notes)BlueSteel RC channel: The same project will remain on here, with the addition of a fix for SVC-6399.2010-11-03 9:00am: Rolling Restart on the BlueSteel RC channel (release notes)LeTigre RC channel: A new project, "Threaded Rez," is going to be deployed here. The main  feature, as you might have guessed, is object rezzing is being moved to a  separate thread. This should reduce lag events when complex objects are  rezzed in world.2010-11-03 10:00am: Rolling Restart on the LeTigre RC channel (release notes pending)Magnum RC channel: Another new project will be debuting here, Agent Inventory Service,  or AIS. This is a new central service (it does not run on the sim hosts)  that provides a cleaner API to inventory management. The sims will be  configured to use this new service instead of the old inventory  management system. As of now, only inventory reads will be using this system, not writes. This means that failures in this system will not result in inventory loss.2010-11-03 11:00am: Rolling Restart on the Magnum RC channel (release notes) Questions & comments on the forums. [Less]