Second Life

Land mass grew over 44% in Second Life in Q2

Zyuu — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 21:47:42 GMT

Linden Lab has released Second Life’s results for the second Quarter. If we are to believe the information that Linden Lab has relayed, then the land mass grew over 44%. Furthermore, the total number of regions owned by residents increased 44.2% over Q1 to just over 1.5 billion square meters.

The main reason for the growth was due to the popularity of the newly launched product called “Openspace” which is a land product. Along with this, changes in pricing were made to make it easier and more accessible to purchase lands for first time buyers. More features such as a new Land Store was added as well.

Second Life coming soon to the world of mobile phones

Zyuu — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 04:24:32 GMT

Second Life will soon be fully playable on your mobile phone!

Demanding a better-than-average processor, a 1024x768 screen resolution, a boatload of RAM, and a strong video card just to take part, it's hard to believe that Second Life, the virtual world developed by Linden Lab (download for Windows and Mac), could ever survive on a mobile phone.

Yet on Tuesday, Vollee, a 3G streaming services provider, began offering the free, open beta version of Second Life for 40 Wi-Fi-enabled and 3G cell phones with more handset compatibility coming soon. That means you, iPhone.

'Second Life' avatars can fly and teleport from 40 mobile phones. (Credit: Vollee)

In Second Life Mobile, users will be able to fly and teleport all over the virtual world, and chat when other friends are online.

Child-like intelligence created in Second Life

meteo — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 13:21:58 GMT

Four-year-old Eddie might behave like a typical young boy. Outside of the Second Life virtual world, however, he is anything but.

The child is a product of logic-based artificial intelligence and complex modelling techniques, and operates on what has been said to be the most powerful university-based supercomputing system in the world.

A creation of researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Eddie has his own set of beliefs, and the ability to reason about his beliefs to draw conclusions in a manner that matches human children his age.

This includes a partially-developed "Theory of Mind", which allows him to understand, predict and manipulate the behaviour of other agents and of even human players, with whom researchers expect the technology to be able to one day interact with in the real, physical world.

"Second Life is remarkably easy to work with, and is very popular," said Selmer Bringsjord, head of Rensselaer's Cognitive Science Department and leader of the research project.

"But our technologies can be applied to any digital environment, and indeed we are specifically aiming, with IBM, at environments in which the physical and the virtual directly interact."

Eddie is only the first step of what Bringsjord called a "divide-and-conquer" strategy of prudent engineering.

Eventually, more advanced versions of the artificial intelligence technology will be put to use in entertainment and gaming, as well as immersive training and education scenarios.

"The apps, frankly, are endless," Bringsjord said. "Imagine being able to step into a simulation environment in which you interact with synthetic characters as sophisticated as those seen in Star Trek's holodeck."

"It's one thing to read about trauma scenarios as a first responder; it would be quite another if you could enter a simulation in which, courtesy of synthetic characters at the level we seek, you could strive to get a disaster under control, with the look and feel of the real world."

"Or imagine a hostage situation: How do you prepare for negotiating with a terrorist holding a hostage? Now, it's textbook and playacting. But what if you could enter the holodeck and match wits with a synthetic character that has the ability to reason in earnest about your mind, and about what you're trying to do? This is actually a demo we're considering trying to engineer," he said.

Currently, the team is grappling with computational tractability issues to do with the sorting of growing amounts of knowledge that is collected as a artificially intelligent character matures.

As Eddie operates entirely on formal logic and well-defined theorems, reasoning is not automatically fast, Bringsjord said, explaining the need for clever engineering and high-performance hardware.

This research is supported by IBM and other outside sponsors, and requires the use of Rensselaer's Computational Center for Nanotechnology Innovations (CCNI), which provides more than 100 teraflops of computing power through massively parallel Blue Gene supercomputers, POWER-based Linux clusters, and AMD Opteron processor-based clusters.

Second Life, New Release Candidate: 1.19.0 RC0

Zyuu — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 12:27:31 GMT

It's now possible to download a new version (1.19.0) of Second Life by going here. Seems like a lot of things have been fixed.

Today’s Release Candidate Viewer (1.19.0 RC0) contains a ton of bug fixes and re-introduces some functionality that was previewed in our 1.18.6 RC viewer series. As mentioned in our final 1.18.6 RC post, we reverted back to the same XUI-based login code used in Second Life Viewer Release 1.18.5.3. This release also addresses the QuickTime security issue identified back in December (which were originally slated for the 1.18.6 viewer as well) and updates the required version of QuickTime to 7.4.

Don’t forget that Release Candidate viewers are optional updates that contain the latest round of bug fixes and/or soon-to-be-released new features. Please visit the test software page to download the Second Life 1.19.0 (RC0) Release Candidate viewer. Source code will be available for download shortly, too.

Go here to see the full patch notes.

Banks in Second Life are collapsing; real money lost

meteo — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 15:43:55 GMT

In the Make-Believe World Of 'Second Life,' Banks Are Really Collapsing, By ROBIN SIDEL January 23, 2008; Page A1

In the real world, banks are reeling from the subprime-mortgage mess. In the online game Second Life, a shutdown of the make-believe banking system is causing real-life havoc for thousands of people. [banklife] Robin Sidel At BCX Bank, a sign said it was "not currently accepting deposits or paying interest."

Yesterday, the San Francisco company that runs the popular fantasy game pulled the plug on about a dozen pretend financial institutions that were funded with actual money from some of the 12 million registered users of Second Life. Linden Lab said the move was triggered by complaints that some of the virtual banks had reneged on promises to pay high returns on customer deposits.

Second Life is an elaborate online world where players create new identities for themselves -- images called avatars. These avatars can own land, run businesses and build homes. And there's a link to the real economy: To buy things, players use credit cards or eBay Inc.'s alternative payment service PayPal to convert actual U.S. currency into "Linden dollars," which can be deposited using pretend ATMs into Second Life's virtual banks.

The banks of Second Life were operated by other players, who enticed deposits by offering interest rates. While some banks paid interest as promised, others used depositors' money for unsuccessful Second Life land and gambling deals. Under its new banking rules, Second Life says only chartered banks will be allowed -- though it isn't clear any real chartered banks will operate in the virtual play world.

The shutdown has caused a real-life bank run by Second Life depositors. Though some players managed to get their Linden dollars out, others are finding that they can no longer make withdrawals from the make-believe ATMs. As a result, they can't exchange their Linden-dollar deposits back into real dollars. Linden officials won't say how much money has been lost, but a run on another virtual bank in August may have cost Second Life depositors an estimated $750,000 in actual money.

Play Money to Real Money

"Everyone thinks that because you're losing play money, it excuses everything, but it's convertible to real money," says a Second Life player whose avatar is named UpMe Beam. On Sunday night, the female character was wandering topless through the virtual lobby of a Second Life bank called BCX Bank, where a sign said it was "not currently accepting deposits or paying interest."

In real life, UpMe Beam is a man who says that he is a certified public accountant who has audited banks. He wouldn't disclose his name, but says he has been unable to withdraw $5 he deposited in November to see how a Second Life bank works.

Steve Smith, who runs BCX bank under the avatar name Travis Ristow, yesterday said depositors -- who are owed a total of $20,000 -- will be able to get their money back next week. The bank, which had promised to pay depositors more than 200% in annual interest, is now allowing only small withdrawals. INDEPENDENT STREET BLOG

[Wendy Bounds] Should make-believe business be more regulated?Read Wendy Bounds's latest post and share your thoughts.

"This won't affect us long term. It's just a short-term difficulty," said Mr. Smith, 40 years old, who also has significant land and real-estate interests in Second Life. He said he retired from the real-life mortgage business to devote his time exclusively to his Second Life enterprises.

"There is not a whole lot that is fake about this," says Robert Bloomfield, a professor at Cornell University's Johnson School of Management. Mr. Bloomfield's own Second Life avatar, named Beyers Sellers, hosts a pretend television show in the online game about virtual economics.

Plans for Shutdown [Banklife]

Linden announced plans for yesterday's shutdown two weeks ago, and since then Second Life players have been streaming into the fantasy banks to withdraw their deposits, which are convertible into U.S. dollars at a floating rate. Yesterday, one U.S. dollar was worth an average of 269 Linden dollars, its typical exchange rate.

On Monday, avatars strode past empty seating areas and potted plants in the spacious, modern lobby of JT Financial, a mostly deserted virtual bank located in Second Life's CapEx mall. "Due to an extreme surplus [of withdrawals] since the announcement of the Linden Labs new policy regarding inworld banks, we have temporarily disabled the withdraw feature on ATMs until further notice," read a big sign.

Linden officials won't confirm the number of players affected by the shutdown, how much in deposits is likely to be lost, or whether any real action will be taken against operators of the virtual banks now facing a run from depositors. The losses clearly are tiny compared with the more than $100 billion in recent write-offs by actual banks and securities firms.

'Libertarian Dreams'

"When virtual environments first started, they were viewed as libertarian dreams with no interference," says Behnam Dayanim, a lawyer who specializes in Internet law at Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker LLP in Washington. "As companies that sponsor these environments become more accountable to investors or regulators, they are starting to encounter real-world limitations."

Second Life has attracted many actual companies, including Adidas AG, Coca-Cola Co. and the Ben & Jerry's unit of Unilever, which see virtual environments as a promising haven for marketing and advertising. Real banks have steered clear of the make-believe world so far, partly out of concerns that interacting with avatars could cause them to run afoul of federal "know your customer" rules, which are meant to prevent money laundering.

The banking crisis at Second Life surfaced during the summer, when Linden banned gambling on the site, citing "conflicting gambling regulations around the world." That caused a run on Ginko Financial, a Second Life bank that had invested heavily in the virtual world's gambling operations. Ginko capped withdrawals, and ultimately issued bonds to customers instead. The bank went out of business in August.

The collapse led to an outcry from depositors at Second Life banks. Linden responded on Jan. 8 by announcing the broader shutdown, claiming it would "protect our residents and the integrity of our economy."

Linden essentially acknowledges that the financial services being offered in its virtual society have evolved to the point that they need to be regulated in the real world.

From now on, "proof of an applicable government registration statement or financial institution charter" will be required of anyone collecting deposits in Second Life, according to Linden. The company insists it "isn't, and can't start acting as, a banking regulator."

"If this is real money, there is an argument that you need to follow real law," says Benjamin Duranske, a lawyer who runs the Second Life Bar Association and is writing a book on virtual law.

Some players think the shutdown might not prevent future losses, because a shady real-life bank operating outside the U.S. still can set up a virtual branch in Second Life. Other players see the crackdown as diluting the game's free spirit.

Returning Real Money

Joshua Zarwel, a 29-year-old graduate student at New York University, has spent the past few weeks returning real money to depositors in his virtual bank, called SL Bank. Launched in 2006, SL Bank had been paying an annual interest rate of 24% to 30%, compared with less than 5% for savings accounts at most actual U.S. banks.

Mr. Zarwel's avatar, named Teufel Hauptmann, used the deposits -- averaging $25 per user -- to buy and sell Linden dollars on the Second Life currency exchange, known as the LindeX. He says he parlayed his currency arbitrage into about $15,000 in actual profit. "It started as a hobby and grew into something more," he says.

Unregistered Banks get the Boot

Indelible — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 16:31:08 GMT

Lindon Labs, the creators of the Real Life Simulation MMOG, Second Life, have announced that any unregistered banks offering interest on investments of any form of resident-to-resident transaction involving L$ or other currencies will be closed down due to complaints received by customers.

Please read this if you operate, or have transferred L$ to, an in-world “bank” or financial company.

As of January 22, 2008, it will be prohibited to offer interest or any direct return on an investment (whether in L$ or other currency) from any object, such as an ATM, located in Second Life, without proof of an applicable government registration statement or financial institution charter. We’re implementing this policy after reviewing Resident complaints, banking activities, and the law, and we’re doing it to protect our Residents and the integrity of our economy.

Since the collapse of Ginko Financial in August 2007, Linden Lab has received complaints about several in-world “banks” defaulting on their promises. These banks often promise unusually high rates of L$ return, reaching 20, 40, or even 60 percent annualized.

Usually, we don’t step in the middle of Resident-to-Resident conduct – letting Residents decide how to act, live, or play in Second Life.

But these “banks” have brought unique and substantial risks to Second Life, and we feel it’s our duty to step in. Offering unsustainably high interest rates, they are in most cases doomed to collapse – leaving upset “depositors” with nothing to show for their investments. As these activities grow, they become more likely to lead to destabilization of the virtual economy. At least as important, the legal and regulatory framework of these non-chartered, unregistered banks is unclear, i.e., what their duties are when they offer “interest” or “investments.”

There is no workable alternative. The so-called banks are not operated, overseen or insured by Linden Lab, nor can we predict which will fail or when. And Linden Lab isn’t, and can’t start acting as, a banking regulator.

Some may argue that Residents who deposit L$ with these “banks” must know they’re assuming a big risk – the high interest rates promised aren’t guaranteed, and the banks aren’t overseen by Linden Lab or anyone else. That may be true. But for all of the other reasons we’ve set out above, we can’t let this activity continue.

Thus, as we did in the past with gambling, as of January 22, 2008 we will begin removing any virtual ATMs or other objects that facilitate the operation or facilitation of in-world “banking,” i.e., the offering of interest or a rate of return on L$ invested or deposited. We ask that between now and then, those who operate these “banks” settle up on any promises they have made to other Residents and, of course, honor valid withdrawals. After that date, we may sanction those who continue to offer these services with suspension, termination of accounts, and loss of land.

We will not apply this policy to companies who submit a registration statement, charter, or other applicable license from a governing regulatory authority, or who are merely conducting marketing or education, but not accepting payments.

If you are running a bank, you better get registered as the axe is going to fall and this represents one of very few mass incursions by Lindon Lab's so they must be serious.

CNN sets up shop in Second Life

Kody — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 05:49:14 GMT

While Second Life has been in the news recently for things extremely disturbing and sickening, the game's developer, Linden Lab, obviously doesn't condone such actions.

Today, however, the game is in the news for a positive reason. CNN has opened up an in-world news hub that will allow users to report news directly to this specialized CNN hub called SL I-Reports. CNN will then review the content submitted and select news to air to the Second Life population, within the game.

There's even a possibility that news reports will be selected to be covered in CNN.com's SL I-Report Blog, a new blog created specifically to merge Second Life's in-world with the world wide web.

Citizens of Second Life will be able to attend special in-world weekly editorial discussions, held by CNN producers at the Second Life CNN I-Report hub. CNN's first in-world training session will take place Tuesday, November 13th, at 5 PM ET at their I-Report Hub, so what are you waiting for? Grab your clipboard and ready your filming or reporting skills; it's your time to bring news to the Second Life community.

Future of mmorpg? "Matrix" maybe sooner than you think

meteo — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 10:24:08 GMT

TOKYO (AFP) - Japanese researchers say they have found a way to let people stroll through the virtual world of Second Life using their own imagination, in a development that could help paralysis patients.

Previous studies have shown people can move computer cursors through brain waves, but the Japanese team says it is the first to apply the technology to an Internet virtual world.

The technology "would enable people suffering paralysis to communicate with others or do business through chatting and shopping in a virtual world," said Junichi Ushiba, associate professor at Keio Univesity's rehabilitation centre.

Second Life is an increasingly popular virtual world in which people -- and animals -- are represented by animated avatars and can do everything from social activities to shopping.

Ushiba said Second Life could motivate patients with severe paralysis, who are often too depressed to undergo rehabilitation.

"If they can see with their own eyes their characters moving around, it could reinvigorate their brain activity and restore some functions," he said.

Under the technology, a person wearing head gear embedded with electrodes, which analyse brain waves in the cerebral motor cortex, would be able to move a Second Life character forward by thinking he or she is walking.

Imagining movement with the right or left hand would make the character turn accordingly in the same direction.

Researchers have previously put similar technology to work to scan brain waves to control objects such as computer cursors and electrical gears.

In the Keio University laboratory, the team has designed artificial arms that operate by reading brain waves, although none is known to be commercially available yet.

Ushiba said the technology could help people undergoing neuro-rehabilitation by stimulating brain activity.

Traditionally, "if a stroke leaves a man's right hand paralysed, he has been encouraged to use his left hand instead," Ushiba said.

"More recently, however, it has come to light that the paralysed hand would start moving better if you try to use it," Ushiba said, noting that attempts to use a numb hand increase brain activity.

The team next plans to test the technology on actual paralysis patients to see how they respond to the virtual world.

TV Station Island is opened in Second Life

Isil_star — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 11:58:11 GMT

TV Station Island launched in Second Life by the TRANS COSMOS group. "Trial Event" is offered to the companies that aim to participate in Second Life. ~“SL NEWS", News program broadcasts special news only in Second Life. ~

TRANS COSMOS Inc. offers a place for “Trial Event” to the companies aiming to participate in Second Life. We support all channels that connect customers and companies through Internet and the real world by an IT outsourcing service (Headquarters: Shibuya, Tokyo, the President and Representative Director and COO: Okuda Takashi, TRANS COSMOS). We focus on “Trial Event” arranged in TV Station Island where Webstar Japan, the group enterprise, has opened the support service as part of the collaboration in Second Life(R). Now we provide Second Life’s event management service that supports all processes from the project planning to the management. TV Station Island created by Webstar Japan is the unique TV station in Second Life. For companies, we provide a place for arranging events. Moreover, we distribute free TV to all users so that they can watch various programs especially “SLNEWS”, News program providing only news in Second Life.

Details of each service are as following:

• Event Management Service Even though your company doesn’t have an Island in Second life, you can try our service!

The strong point of our TV Station Island is that we provide Event Management Service for any companies interested in joining Second Life.

In case that some companies would like to participate in Second Life, but they don’t have areas to arrange campaigns or events, our company, TRANS COSMOS, can manage events and provide spaces for them from the basic step, planning events in Second Life, to the management level.

Another prominent point of TV Station Island is that it has TV Tower (2000 Meters), one of the most impressive building in Second Life. This TV Tower is seen as the tourist attraction for all customers visiting in Second Life.

• TV Station Island provides large LCD widescreen TV displaying “SLNEWS”and also distributes “FREE” TV for all users!

TV Station Island has set up huge TV and broadcasted “SLNEWS”, News program provide information within Second Life including interesting contents such as interviewing Avatar from many places all over Second Life. Besides, we also distribute Free TV, SL Television, for users to watch various entertaining Machinima anywhere even in their own islands. For companies that would like to arrange events, they can use the Commercial in SLNEWS as the effective way to promote their business in Second Life.

Furthermore, we have launched SL News.tv website (http://slnews.tv/index.html）to attract users to be part of Second Life community. We always update website’s contents and SLNEWS in Second Life at the same time. Users can visit website and it is the best way to lead them to Second Life World. From now on, TRANS COSMOS group will support various kinds of services in Second Life more and more.

About “Second Life” of Linden Lab company Since American Linden Lab Company operated and developed “Second Life” as the 3D virtual world on the Internet, users from 100 countries worldwide has registered in Second Life. Inside this virtual world, users themselves can build house, vehicle, night club, shop, landscape, cloth, game etc. They can have a real experience in the new formal way to share pattern of 3D via developed platform (Second Life Grid) of the frontier. Philip Rosedale established Linden Lab company in 1999. Rosedale, the previous CTO in RealNetworks company, has real video etc., also a character directing the current streaming technology development. In April of the year 2003, MITCH CAPO who was a famous software developer and an establisher of Lotus Development Corporation assumed a chairperson of Linden Lab company.

In the year 2006, Philip Rosedale and Linden Lab company, won the prize “RaveAward for Innovation in Business” of Wired magazine. Linden Lab’s headquarter located in San Francisco has excellent experience in the field of Physics, 3D graphic and networking supporting by a great team. （URL：http://secondlife.com/world/jp/）

Linden Lab, Second Life is a registered trademark of Linden Lab company in America.
Additionally, the company name and the product name that has been described are

the registered trademarks or trademarks of each company.

About Trans-Cosmos Company Limited

Trans-Cosmos was founded in 1996 as an pioneer of outsourcing business administering database section. Since then, the technology is united with people as it is created the mechanism and converted into the outsourcing service with a high additional value or more. Now, it is the competitive age which every companies would like to give the best service to customers’ enterprise as much as possible. Since June 2002, the relationship between business sections and consumers have increasingly developed due to the widespread of broadband and VoIP. The big revolution has occurred to business marketing activity. According to the reputation of this age, “Marketing Chain Management Company” is created to be a business slogan driving the enterprise force not only in Japan, but also in foreign countries. Currently, communication via telephone, website, e-mail and animated cartoon is united as the axis of Internet protocol. New complete communication channel is happening. This means Internet Know-How is essential in call center service. Now, while we apply the latest Internet technology, we make use the strength of independent Trans-Cosmos developing outsourcing service. We have an idea to develop outsourcing service in order to provide the improvement of customer's satisfaction degree, speed, sale expansion, and cost reduction for customers’ business globally. (URL： http://www.trans-cosmos.co.jp)

About Web-Star Japan Company Limited Web-Star Japan Company Limited of Trans-Cosmos Group established in November of the year 2000 is 3D computer graphic design company combining 3D artworks throughout Japan and Asia. Our outsourcing service in digital field provides you with various building graphic design to use in reality. All professional 3DCG/CG animation/Web are created by local people from Thailand.（ WEB-STAR DOT COM THAILAND CO., LTD. ）and Vietnam（ WEB-STARVIETNAMCO.,LTD) (URL：http://www.webstarjapan.com/) For further information please contact... Journalist inquiries Trans-Cosmos Company Limited

Public Relation of Advertisement, contact: Tomizawa Shiroi

Ｔｅｌ：０３－４３６３－０１２３　Ｆａｘ：０３－４３６３－１１２３

Monthly Newsletter Updates

Nimloth — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 22:07:47 GMT

The montly newsletter for Second Life has been made available by the guys over ats Linden Labs. To read the latest news, changes and opinions take a trip over to their website and view the newsletter here!

Second Life 1.14.0.1 Optional Viewer Update Available

Nimloth — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 16:33:23 GMT

We've released an updated viewer, Second Life 1.14.0.1, as an optional update. The update fixes a handful of bugs - many of the fixes submitted by open source contributors.

Release Notes for Second Life 1.14.0(1) March 30, 2007

Fixes:

Fixed: When going to recent items tab in inventory, inventory contents do not download
Fixed: Crash in llvlcomposition
Fixed: VWR-200: money(); events in a linked sets fail to trigger
Fixed: VWR-109: Characters from fallback fonts donï¿½t scale properly
Fixed: VWR-100: Messages form OpenJPEG only in debug mode
Fixed: VWR-97: Several iterator bugs in llmessage
Fixed: VWR-45: trivial patch, initialize variables
Fixed: VWR-14: Inconsistancy with reading binary data in llpolymesh.cpp

Windows Vista w/ATI card bugfix

Nimloth — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 16:49:37 GMT

As some residents have discovered, Second Life will not run on Windows Vista with ATI video cards. We tracked this down to a bug in the ATI OpenGL drivers, and have just confirmed that this issue is fixed in ATI’s Catalyst 7.3 drivers for which are still in development. ATI hopes to have these available by the end of the month. Thank you for your patience.

-Steve

First Look Update: 59558

Kody — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 17:54:35 GMT

There is a new First Look Update posted here. You can view the notes below:

First off, thanks to everyone who updated to the previous First Look patch, we were able to confirm that the texture bandwidth issue has been addressed. However, we also introduced a bug that causes some textures to never load after teleporting or changing regions. (Fortunately this should have a negligible effect on total bandwidth). We have fixed this here: First Look 1.13.3.59558.

Note: we are still working on the editing notecards from within objects and messages in postcards bugs and hope to have them fixed soon!

Cheers,

-Steve

Release Notes for Second Life 1.13.4(59558) March 21, 2007

=========================

Bug Fixes:

Fixed: Textures sometimes fail to load after a teleport

Second Life login now open to all again

Nimloth — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 21:12:20 GMT

2:30pm: Second Life login has been reopened for all Residents. The inventory servers have been restored to normal operations. Thank you all for your patience.

2:00pm: In order to address an issue with an inventory server, Second Life is temporarily limiting login to staff accounts.

This outage is expected to last 30-minutes — with Second Life returning to normal operation around 2:30PM pacific time.

Invisible AVs and Failure to rez

Nimloth — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 19:04:17 GMT

We are investigating some asset problems which are causing some invisible avatars and object rezing failures. We are working to solve these issues as soon as possible. Update 8:55pm - The problems inworld seemed to have eased but we are continuing to monitor the situation overnight.

Thursday 7:20am - We are still receiving reports this morning which include invisible avatars and inventorys having problems loading. Please check back here for new news on the issues - we are continuing our investigation. Thank you.

Thursday 8:50am - There seem to be several types of invisible avatar reports coming in.

One type has been for an extended amount of time – several hours and since yesterday – please report these to support@lindenlab.com so we have a solid ticket number.

Another type has been those just recently gone invisible – please try logging back into SL directly onto another region – either by flying there and then relog at “My Last Location” at the log in window or at the log in window Preferences/General tab type in a region name at “Start Location:”