Holy %^#@!! Linden Labs finally added region environment controls!

For a while, many of us have wanted Linden Labs to make it feasible for landowners to establish a particular Windlight setting on their land. Not long ago the people who gave us Phoenix made this possible at least for Phoenix and I think Firestorm viewers. Well, in today's announcements from Linden Labs, after all the silly stuff is this:

You’ll also notice some changes relating to Region Environment Settings. These give region managers the ability to customize environment settings — like atmosphere, sun, time of day, and cloud coverage. Visiting Residents will automatically see those settings, unless they’ve already chosen to use a personal override. For example: a Gothic castle might have a gloomy, spooky environment — and a tropical island might be bright and sunny. This feature is sometimes referred to by its previous moniker, Windlight Environment Settings. Check out the Knowledge Base for more info.

This is great news! Yes, it took them long enough; and it's region-based rather than parcel-based, which creates limitations that Phoenix still surpasses (and Phoenix can have different Windlights depending on altitude, too). On the other hand, it doesn't require giving people a Windlight file. So on balance, definitely something for the SL art world to cheer about!

There's also an item about enabling parcels to have hidden avatars. Nice for people having sex, yeah. But somehow I suspect that people like Bryn Oh and Oberon Onmura (who's recently been trying things with bots) will find ways to make use of this feature....