This is another topic for the LUC, really, but I thought I'd post it here, in case there are people who'd like to comment who can't post there.
I think that I've mentioned to someone in the community that in another lifetime, or lifeplace, I did lots of work on virtual environments... first, before simulators existed (in the 1990s), for videos, and then later for "other" simulators. It was a huge topic of interest for me. When I came to SL in 2004 it was hugely discouraging... because while SL has the incredible benefits of being able to shape (almost) EVERYTHING, our control over our environments, meaning skies and water, is utterly the worst I had ever dealt with. When Windlight arrived I remembered I had high hopes, because clearly the programmers had the right ideas... but it was really a disaster. A terrible implementation of a logical interface. I've made a rainy/snowy environment for my New England sims... but left it at that.
Now finally comes along the Environmental Enhancement Project... the EEP. LL has installed the code on its servers, which has muddied up the standard skies we are used to (black stars, etc), but so far they have only released an experimental beta-version viewer that supports EEP. In typical resident-ignoring LL mode, they have not breathed a word of this, leaving it to the outside organization Firestorm to try and explain to everyone why their skies are looking so weird. They do, however, have a somewhat new thread in the SL community forums, https://community.secondlife.com/forums ... ck-thread/ which I urge you to have a look at if you're interested. There are a TON of idiot questions there, but Rider Linden and Whirly Fizzle (who I THINK is connected to Firestorm) are doing their best to sort through all the complaining and provide useful info.
Of course, I've installed the EEP viewer and begun to fuss around. To the extent of what I've discovered so far, the EEP really is the SL environment development that I've been praying for. Of course, I can't even find my nose in an SL viewer... I've been using Firestorm for so long... but I CAN make new environments, store them, apply them, save them... with some real logic. And the sophistication of the controls, at least in skies and day cycles (haven't fussed with water yet... and water is REALLY important too) is really impressive. I am VERY hopeful that we have a real breakthrough here! And I must say... what I have seen in the EEP viewer, is visually stunning.
AND... for our community... some real choices to think about!
Here are a couple of LUC policy issues that the new EEP will cause us to want to think about.
1) We are six sims. Do we want the same environment on all six? It frequently annoys me that I cross one of our sim lines and the environment changes. That seems very artificial... I've always wished we kept all 6 the same. But now, in thinking about this hopefully GREAT new ability... maybe we don't. Maybe we DO want to emphasize the bizarre realities of SL in our own estate and maintain 6 different environments.
2) Days. Days in SL have always been 4 RL hours long. But they have not been even.... the standard SL day is 3 hours of sunshine followed by 1 hour of night. With the EEP, we can have our day length be anywheres from an hour (I THINK thats the lower limit) to a month! And within that "day-cycle" we could have our sunshine be 95% of the time and our night be 5% of the time... or even no night (or no day!) at all! If we really wanted, we could have the sun and moon chase each other around the zenith all the time... totally weird stuff.
I REALLY hope that we keep the sun coming up in the east and going down in the west... but that's my opinion. We easily could, if we wanted, have it come up in the northeast in the summer (as in RL northern hemisphere) and go down in the northwest. And southeast to southwest in the winter, again like RL. Or anything... really. But we do have to decide... because now we'll be able to!
Anyway... I wanted to introduce people to this new excitement. In that thread, Whirly claims that Firestorm has already loaded the EEP code, and is just making some final choices on how it will be implemented... so it sounds like it will be available soon. I suspect that the main SL viewer will also come equipped with it soon. Let's start thinking about our skies and water!
Sudane.................