My Second Life has been non-existent now for almost two years. In the real world there has been a great deal of change lately.

For one thing, I’m about to move to the other side of Canada – that’s about 5,600 kilometres away from my life for the past 20 years.

I’ve been told that I’ll have satellite internet when I get there – um, that could definitely postpone any return to the virtual world.

I want to thank all of you who have followed and encouraged me. If you’re curious about my real life adventures (and whether or not I ever learn to take photos in the physical world) you can read about them at This Fundy Migrant’s Tale.

I hope all of your lives are bountiful and kind. Take care!

Magical Farm on Maleo Isle (moderate)

I felt like visiting another pretty place today and saw this photo by Berry↑ of her and Prad (and yes, their cuteness is off the scale). However, my visit turned into a viewer test run. :)

Some days when I land on a sim I have to wait a looooooong time for textures to rez. This was one of those days and, because sculpties are textures, some of the trees would not do their thing.

Magical Farm on Maleo Isle (moderate)

I remembered that Ciaran Laval↑ had posted that the new Beta has changes to the graphics system that are supposed to improve texture downloads. It seemed like a good time to try it out.

The post mentioned that his graphics settings had been moved from High to Ultra, so I was prepared for that. I actually have my sliders in a hybrid state, some of them are medium and some as far right as they’ll go (well except for physics which is placed firmly at the lowest possible).

Magical Farm on Maleo Isle (moderate)

When I logged on my settings did show the move to Ultra – BUT, when I looked at them in detail there really hadn’t been much change. Just the $*(@&^%$ physics of course.

The choices I had been using seemed to have remained, so I think one can assume there will be no frying of graphics cards. At least not because the viewer says you’ve been moved up to the next level.

Magical Farm on Maleo Isle (moderate)

You’ll have to go to Ciaran’s post↑, and the comments beneath it, to get an explanation of what they’ve done (or at least a partial one, that JIRA change seems to mean we’ll never know all the details we’d like).

What I can tell you is that the textures loaded very fast and everything rezzed quickly. There was no crashing, no issues with saving the images, and I’m happy. I don’t understand the changes, but then I don’t understand plumbing either. It’s enough that it works. :p

Update: OK I have one gripe so far. Mesh objects, within say 96 m (in this case my fence), disappear even when the view distance is set way up. I’ve adjusted the meshbytesPertriangle setting to 256 and that’s solved it. 128 works fine at lower view distance on the regular viewer though. As long as I can tweak things to get what I want I won’t complain. I’ll just fuss with debug.

Update 2: um, I should have added that it is necessary (at least for me) to change those other mesh settings I’ve mentioned before. Go see Berry’s list↑ for the details.

Magical Farm on Maleo Isle (moderate)

Welcome to WordPress.com. After you read this, you should delete and write your own post, with a new title above. Or hit Add New on the left (of the admin dashboard) to start a fresh post.

Here are some suggestions for your first post.

1. You can find new ideas for what to blog about by reading the Daily Post.
2. Add PressThis to your browser. It creates a new blog post for you about any interesting  page you read on the web.
3. Make some changes to this page, and then hit preview on the right. You can alway preview any post or edit you before you share it to the world.