thomas mcgreevy

On Tuesday, June 20th, the Firestorm team released Firestorm 5.0.7.52912.

This is something of a maintenance update than a major feature release, covering as it does the more recent updates from Linden Lab – the improved region and parcel access controls, updated Trash behaviour to try to help control risks of inventory loss, custom folders for uploads, the avatar complexity updates, and a host of smaller fixes and tweaks.

Most of these have been adopted directly from the Lab’s code, others  – such as the avatar complexity updates – have been folded-in to existing capabilities in Firestorm. There are also numerous updates and improvements from the Firestorm team as well.

In keeping with my usual approach to Firestorm releases, what follows is  not an in-depth review of everything new  / updated in version 5.0.7.52912, but rather an overview, highlighting some of the more significant / interesting changes, updates and  fixes…

As I recently reported, Linden Lab are starting on a set of Second Life environmental enhancements, including the ability to define the environment (sky, sun, moon, clouds) at the  parcel level. These changes to the environment controls are quite extensive, and wrap a number of ideas together into a single project.

On Tuesday, June 13th, Rider Linden, who is leading the work made a preliminary document on what is being considered available via the Simulator User Group meeting. In it, several enhancements to the windlight environment capabilities are outlined, and are summarised below – please read Rider’s document for the full details.

Environment Inventory Asset

A new asset type that can be stored, managed and traded through the Second Life inventory and the Marketplace. This asset type will:

• Comprise a Sky asset for adjusting atmospheric effects, clouds, the sun,moon and stars; and a Water asset for controlling the environment…

Solo Arte – Mistero Hifeng

Solo Arte, the open-air gallery space for art and culture designed by TerryGold, and originally operating as the Melania Gallery, has a new home in Second Life. To mark its re-opening, it is featuring a dual display of 2D art and sculptures by Terrygold and Mistero Hifeng respectively.

The gallery design is very pleasing to the eye, presenting a natural environment well suited to display art both indoors and outdoors, with an emphasis on the latter. A central canal dissects the setting with open-air park spaces, courtyards, and cobbled streets on either side, together with a gallery building on one side of the canal, and a salsa dance club and a bar on the other, all offering indoor spaces where art can be displayed. Bridges span the waters of the canal to link things together, and the exhibition spaces are surrounded by the low…