Second Living Bay Sweetwater @ home

Update April 28, 2013. Woot-woot! Firestorm has enabled shadows for the Intel HD 4000 graphics chip in their latest Second Life 4.4.0 viewer release!
(but not yet on the standard Linden viewer)

My 2012 Macbook Air went a little shadow-crazy when she got the news, as you can see below. lol  Thank you, Jessica Lyon, Whirly Fizzle, Tankmaster Finesmith — all of you wonderful developers at Firestorm! I can now see shadows on my Macbook Air — and so can all the other retina 2012 Macbooks with that chip. I named my little Macbook Air “Shadow” when I first got her 8 months ago, and now she can finally see her namesake!

Original March 3, 2013 post:
Do you know that half of the latest retina-display Macbooks – and all of the current Macbook Airs – can’t run shadows using the current Second Life viewers because of a software bug that’s already been fixed? Yeah, I’m talking about that icon of the coffee shop, “the highest-resolution notebook ever.”

And what’s more, the only way to activate shadows on these state-of-the-art machines is to dig deep into the dusty Firestorm archives for an old version of an alternate SL viewer. It’s a sad & desperate tale …

The undeserving villain

The villain in the tale, everyone says, is the Intel HD 4000 graphics chip. It’s integrated, they say, rolling their eyes; low-end; not for serious gamers. But this chip is used on all current Mac laptops – including dear “Shadow,” my 2012 Macbook Air. And yet this graphics chip has yet to be added to the list of “approved” graphic cards for Second Life. Isn’t it sad that many of these stunning machines don’t have shadows on the current viewers! Don’t blame Apple.

Note: The one exception is the 15-inch Macbook Pro, which can run shadows in SL with the latest viewers – but only because it actually has 2 GPUs: the Intel HD 4000 and the NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M chip. When you switch to the NVIDIA chip for higher performance, you get shadows, but not when you use the lower setting that utilizes the Intel HD 4000 graphics chip. The 13-inch model has no switching capability; it has only the one Intel HD 4000 chip.

My plea to Second Life viewer developers

This blog post is my plea to the Linden and Firestorm Second Life viewer developers to please enable shadows for the Intel HD 4000 graphics chip. I know I said in my JIRA that it crashed on Ultra, but it doesn’t anymore! Linden Lab fixed the problem on the server side. You can let the light shine down on Second Life …  with shadows.  

The Tale Begins …

In late 2012, both the Firestorm and Linden viewers determined that the Intel HD 4000 chip crashed on Ultra graphic settings. But they didn’t fix the problem; they fixed the symptom: they stopped the crashing by disabling shadows on the Intel HD 4000 macs. I imagine the reason they did this is that they looked high and low for the problem in their viewer code and couldn’t find it. And now I know why: The problem wasn’t in their viewer code! It turns out the problem was server-side, and it’s now been fixed! Yay!

But neither Firestorm nor Linden has acted on this development yet. Shadows remain disabled for the Intel HD 4000 chip, and they don’t need to be. I’ve tried telling both Firestorm and Linden with JIRAs, e-mails, even IMs, but there are still no shadows for this chip in the current viewers. I’m hoping this blog post will get the message through.

The back story …

To understand this rather complex scenario, it helps to know that when you have a problem in Second Life, it can come from one of three places (1) your viewer; (2) your computer, especially your graphics capability – the shorthand for this is “user” side;  or (3) the information Linden Lab passes along to your viewer about how to render – the shorthand for this is “server side.”

In this case, the problem was NOT in the viewer; it was NOT in the graphics chip; it WAS server-side. And now that Linden has fixed the bug, there is no reason for shadows to be disabled in Second Life for this chip on either viewer.

I’m Not the Only One

I am not the only one with this problem. Here is a plaintive cry from the SL Forum from a user who bought a brand-new 13-inch retina-display Macbook Pro! State-of-the-art technology, and he can’t run shadows because of a misunderstanding!

This whole misunderstanding is partially my fault I suspect, because I submitted a JIRA about the Ultra crashes in late 2012 on the (now old) 4.0.1 Firestorm viewer running the Intel HD 4000 chip. All the other graphics settings on that viewer ran fine, including shadows. The crash only happened when I moved the graphics slider to Ultra. (The Linden viewer, meanwhile, had already completely disabled shadows for the Intel HD 4000.)

In the middle of my long, complex JIRA with Firestorm, the top Firestorm developer gave a directive to disable shadows on the Intel HD 4000 chip. I begged her in the JIRA not to do so. I wrote her a personal IM plea. This is not the way to fix software, I said. Find the problem; don’t just hide the symptom.  All to no avail. The next Firestorm viewer came out and, you guessed it: shadows were disabled for machines using the Intel HD 4000 chip.

The Twist in the Tale …

If you’re still with me, here comes the twist to this tale. To get shadows, I continued to use the old Firestorm viewer 4.0.1 with High settings – with beautiful shadows. (See my pic above, which was taken with the OLD Firestorm viewer.) One fine day, I noticed the Firestorm viewer no longer crashed on Ultra. I was thunderstruck when I realized the problem all along had been server side, and now it was fixed!

I excitedly sent a JIRA to Firestorm telling them! Yay! Now they could enable shadows for the Intel HD 4000. I filed a Linden JIRA in the Bug Tracker, too.

Sadly, nothing came of either JIRA. Shadows are still disabled for this chip everywhere except that grand old Firestorm 4.0.1 viewer, which I cling to, desperately hoping that Firestorm doesn’t axe support for it.

Old ideas die hard, I guess. Everyone got it in their heads that the Intel HD 4000 GPU was a low-perormance integrated chip that couldn’t handle gaming. When SL developers decided it couldn’t handle shadows, they disabled that wonderful feature for any machine using that chip. But it ain’t true. The Intel HD 4000 may not be the best chip around, but it doesn’t deserve its bad rep. I have been seeing shadows in Second Life almost every day of my life using this chip on the OLD Firestorm viewer 4.0.1. I even named my Macbook Air “Shadow” for just that reason.

I’ll repeat: the crashing problem was NOT with the graphics chip; the problem was NOT with the viewer code; the problem WAS server side – and now it’s been fixed!

Come out to the light of day … and see the shadows!

Please come out of the cave. There’s gorgeous sun – and shadows! – out here. Please, please, please enable shadows for the Intel HD 4000 chip machines on the current Firestorm and Linden viewers. I am clinging to the old Firestorm 4.0.1 viewer, but I feel like I’m in the Stone Ages.

Macs have never had the same iconic status in Second Life that they enjoy in the real world. They have always been looked at sideways, with a rolling of the eyes, and the explanation of most of their problems: “Well, it’s a Mac.”

But still, I find it unacceptable that both major SL viewer developers have effectively disabled a stunning feature like shadows – that bring so much life to Second Life – in more than half of the most advanced Mac laptops ever made. All the more untenable when you consider that it’s unnecessary.

And if you still believe that the Intel HD 4000 chip is some sub-standard chip that can’t handle shadows without crashing , here’s a video I made (1) using the OLD Firestorm 4.0.1 viewer, and (2) on my Macbook Air with the Intel 4000 HD chip.

Online games are not immune from copyright infringement claims. Zynga just laid off 100 and discontinued The Ville, mostly because of a copyright suit from EA.
Take warning, machinimists … copyright infringement is serious and expensive stuff.

When The Ville came out in June, everybody thought it looked shockingly like Sims Social, but Zynga went ahead anyway. Now they’re head-to-head with EA and a whole gaggle of lawyers. Continue Reading “Playing online games with copyright is not a good idea”

The funniest thing about  Wired Magazine’s report of some lost Google servers that mysteriously turned up in an office in Shelby, Iowa (pop. 641) is the nickname Wired gave the report : “Secret Servers” rofl

The second-funniest thing is that the guys who found the servers returned them in exchange for Google’s offer of some “shirts the public can’t buy.” Can we safely assume thee were not the shirts off Google’s back?

You know those horrible pop-up ads that seem suddenly to be on every single video you click to watch? These are the result of Youtube video monetization. A Youtube user somewhere has agreed to let Youtube run an ad on his video in return for a little money.  These ads are suddenly everywhere because in April of this year, Google dumbed down its partner program to include almost any Youtube user who is willing to monetize his or her video. To become a Youtube partner now, all you have to do is monetize one video and abide by the Youtube Terms of Service and Community Guidelines. The Gold Rush is on. Continue Reading “Monetize a Youtube video? Careful …”

In a discussion over at Wagner Au’s corner of the blogosphere yesterday, the fascinating question of “What is Steam?” came up. This topic always gets my attention because … I’ll go out on a limb here … I think Steam is going to become, very soon, one of the biggest software distributors around. I also think it will become, through its Workshop and Greenlight programs, the mentors of the best new indie developers, as well as the distribution channel for the best new indie work.

Also – and here’s where I stop gushing – I predict that Valve (owners of Steam) will wrap every single piece of that beautiful creative artistic work up in DRM chains so tight, locked with a TOS padlock so un-pickable, that none of those creative products will ever see the light of freedom again. Continue Reading “What is Steam anyway: A Second Life resident sits on Steam’s porch and looks inside”

A lot of Second Lifers are getting steamed up about Steam, now that Linden Lab has announced it will put a portal to our little backwater enclave of Second Life up on Steam, home of 40 million gamers. D-day apears to be September 5, at least that’s what Valve, the technology company creator of Steam, says here. This has a lot of SL residents worrying we will be overrun with griefers, gun-toting hulks, and general mayhem once the “Portal” opens.

One of the more thoughtful posts along these lines comes from Darrius Gothy here who predicts that the rush of gamers into SL will erode our world into a “poor reproduction of a well-crafted 3D online game” and move SL toward game play and further away from the “My World, My Imagination” ethos. The more alarmist posts like these from Prokofy Neva here and Crap Mariner here predict griefers, mayhem, and even a shooting rampage down the Destination Guide yellow-brick road (that’s from Crap, who else?)

Well, after reading all this exciting doomsday stuff, I had to head over to Steam to check it out. What is missing from these analyses, I think, is the fact that not only will Steamers be joining us, we’ll be joining them – if we want. We will have a new playground with amazing technology, distribution structure, mentoring, and 40 million new friends to play with. 40 million! Steam is just as much – in fact millions of times more – of a community as SL is. The complexity, brilliance, and technical skill of the Steam community is dazzling.

What’s a Pansy Hopper like Bay Sweetwater doing on Steam?

Now don’t get me wrong – anyone who has watched my machinima, like Twinkle’s Journey and Pieces of My Heart, knows I’m not exactly the shoot ‘em-up, mow-’em-down stereotypic gamer. In fact, when I first began talking about Valve’s new Source Filmmaker software a couple months back, one Second Lifer who shall remain nameless asked what a “pansy hopper” like Bay Sweetwater was doing on Steam. I never could figure out what a “pansy hopper” was, though I loved the name and will definitely use it for a character in a machinima someday. Even after thumbing through my urban dictionary I still don’t know what it is, but it didn’t sound complimentary. Continue Reading “Full Steam ahead for Second Life, and that’s a good thing for machinima”

OK, I was tired. And it was late at night. And maybe I wasn’t as attentive as I should have been. Still, I have not yet forgiven youtube for making it soooo easy for me to delete one of my favorite youtube videos from my Second Living video channel - forever! I had a backup of the video, Tahrir Voices, on another hard drive, so I have reposted it here – but it lost all its 4,000+ views, and its historical poignancy of being posted during the Egyptian revolution. Also, since it has a new URL, anyone who clicks a link to the old video gets this ugly, unfriendly pic.

Just so you know, it was not removed. It was deleted. By mistake. And despite my pleas, my desperate e-mails and calls, Google assures me it keeps no backups and cannot restore it by any means. Sob. How can a company that has a mountain of background info on anyone of us, who tracks our every move, who can offer me search hits based on what I looked up a year ago NOT have a backup of a video that retains its views? I can even see the views sitting in my Google Analytics laughing at me. I don’t believe you, Google. Not for a second. Sigh. Rant over.

Now I’m going to tell you exactly what I did so that you will never do it yourself.

It started when I was making a playlist. Simple enough. You click the big “Video Manager” button at the top of your channel, and then in the menu down the lefthand side, you click “Playlists.” So far so good.

But here’s where the road gets rocky. If at this point you click that big “Video Manager” button at the top – you do not, I repeat NOT – stay in your Playlists.

You go into your “Uploads.” These are not a playlist. These are your actual videos that you have on your channel. See that big “Uploads” title at the top? Well, I didn’t. I thought it was a playlist. So I clicked that little box to take Tahrir Voices out of the playlist, and it became history … instantly. The ironic thing is that video was history. It has clips from a video of Asmaa Mahfouz – who later became my Facebook friend and inspires my life so much – calling the world to come down to Tahrir Square on January 23, 2011, and join demonstrations that toppled the 30-year regime of then-Egyptian President Hosni Mubarek and contributed to the domino falling of regimes across the region.But now the video itself is history. Sob. Please watch it reposted here and help it regain some of its rightful views.

Here I am on the road with my new Macbook Air – sleek, shiny, and tiny, running SL in Ultra – with shadows! It still has that new computer smell. I’m snuggled into my jammies in my hotel room, window open to a sweet night breeze, early starlight, and a chorus of singing crickets. I’m all settled down for a long summer’s night of surfing, blogging, and facebooking. When what to my wondering eyes should appear, but this horrible message from the noble defenders of my Facebook account:

“There was a suspicious login to your account. Your account was recently accessed from a device we’re not familiar with. For your protection, we’ve temporarily locked your account until you can review this activity and make sure no one is using your account without your permission.”

Eek! My Facebook account … locked.  My new computer does not consider this a very welcoming gesture. Just because he’s a newbie, Zuckerberg & Co. have locked him out! Too late I find out that this is a result of Facebook’s upgrade to its security system in May, 2011. Had I been one of the 6,677,333 people who like the “Facebook Security” page, which you can find here, I would have known that. Sigh.

Continue Reading “The Facebook dungeon of unrecognized devices”

Facebook’s new Timeline, like fb itself, is still keepin’ it real. The next chapter of social media history, embodied by Facebook’s new Timeline and Ticker, was announced earlier this week at the f8 (as in “fate” ) developers conference in San Fran — see the Zuck’s keynote here. Though negatively received at first (what isn’t?), changes will be coming to a Facebook page near you soon, in the next few weeks, with a target date of September 30 to begin rollout.

But what will it mean for those of us who are …  [sshhhhhh!] … on the pseudonymous side of reality? Will we use it at our peril? I think so. For pseudonymous avatars, the  Timeline presents an intriguing question: What exactly is our “life”? And how will we present it in the Timeline?

Continue Reading ““Timeline” keeping it real – sshhhhh!”

If you are a builder who uses a mac and viewer 2, you’ve already got two strikes against you. LOL. Or so the SL lore goes.

Using a mac is always challenging in a program that’s built for windows. And viewer 2 … well, viewer 2 is just plain challenging to use on any platform. Especially if  you’re still trying to learn where things are in viewer 2 — like me, LOL.

So today I’m going to share 2 things I learned by trial and error today.

(1) How to find Local Mode on Viewer 2 (commonly called The Ruler)

Builders often like to line up what they’re building on a grid so that measurements can be exact, and placement of, for example, a beam one one side of a house will be at exactly the same relative location on the other side.

This used to be very easy to find in viewer 1.23: In the edit menu build window, just below the icons of the build shapes, there was a small drop-down bar called “Ruler” or “Grid,” depending on the version. In any case, it was very easy to select “Local” or in later versions, the grid would appear in your building as soon as you picked that “Ruler” dropdown.

But in Viewer 2? Not so easy. It stumped three experienced builders, til we finally figured it out:

1. Get in Edit mode (that’s important)

2. Choose Build, Options, Grid Options.

3. In the Grid Options menu, select “Local” from the drop-down bar.

4. You’re done. There’s your “ruler.”

(2) How to link multiple objects at the same time.

Trick question! This is not really a viewer 2 issue or a mac issue, but because I thought it was, and so spent so long figuring it out, I thought I would include it here.

The key is to get in edit mode first. That’s the step I always forget. Then it’s pretty easy. Here are instructions, using viewer 2.

1. Get in Edit Mode

2. Choose Building, Options, then toggle:  Select by Surrounding, and Select Only My Objects.

3. Then you’ll be able to draw a little yellow box around all the objects you want to select (it’s easiest if you do this from above looking down). Each selected object will be outlined in white.

4. From the dropdown Build menu, select “Link.”

5. You’re done. Your objects are all linked. Btw, the last item selected will be your root prim, and your object will take it’s name. If you want the name of the linked object to be something different, just rename it in the General tab of the Build window.