Snowstorm Viewer

Most of the viewer work is still boring technical stuff… button fixed here, arrow fixed there… important stuff, just not very exciting. But, there is lots of work going on. Here are the items I think are somewhat interesting.

Current Changes

STORM-610: Changes to Environment Editor: water color change is not saved – This one is still in progress. The latest fix failed and the change was backed out.

STORM-680: Avaline callers are added to the Recent list – The expected behavior has been adjusted and the fix is in… as of yesterday. This means one will see it in version SLV2.7.0-222124 Development.

STORM-889 : Put Link/Unlink Button in Edit Panel – Build Dialog Panel – ???

STORM-986 – VWR-21275: A media_plugin_webkit error on some Windows systems – This problem plagues a small number of users. There is a problem with the QuickTime DLL’s not being found and/or failing to load. This problem is showing as fixed Feb. 11, 2011. I think the fix is in the SLV2.7.0-221087 Development version and forward. So, it may yet be some time before it makes it to the main viewer.

Currently in Progress

VS2010 Express – Or Visual Studio 2010 Express is design software one uses to compile the open source program code into an executable file one can run on a computer. A combination of Lindens and residents are working on getting their viewer code to compile using VS2010. The problems they find and the fixes eventually make it into the wiki. The goal is to get a 64-bit version of the viewer and take advantage of new technology in VS2010. It seems the compilation process is still having problems. See: User:Nicky Perian/Visual Studio 10 Autobuild

STORM-236: Allow the “Speak” button to be removed, like other buttons – :/ Well… this has been handled in several TPV’s so I’m not sure why this is still ongoing.

STORM-326: Create and Save your Windlight Skies/Water as a persistent, new Default setting –meh.

STORM-949: please remove actual usernames from XUI files – Various XML log files and crash reports contain RL user ID information, typically seen in path information i.e., C:\Users\[user_name]. I suppose there may be other places where personal information may appear. For some reason the fix is more complicated than expected.

STORM-954: SL-viewer 2.0 No nearby people when over approximately 1000 meters – This problem has been around for some time.

STORM-956: Ability to mute dialogs by muting object (or object owner)

STORM-971: ‘Stop Tracking’ menu item is still enabled in Mini-map floater after you stopped tracking in Nearby mini-map – In the sidebar panel in SLV2 the Nearby panel has a mini map that acts like a basic radar and allows tracking an avatar. When a name is selected a highlight appears around the green dot in the mini map. Apparently highlight gets stuck.

STORM-1001: Viewer needlessly hits the “ObjectMedia” cap with thousands of requests – This is a lag producer. It has to do with a bug that causes the viewer to make lots of requests to the region server.

STORM-1015: Unable to select right Login Landmark when its name is not unique – This is a bug in the new favorites appearing in the Location Dropdown at login. Work-around is to avoid having duplicate names for LandMarks in favorites.

VWR-24889: The viewer doesn’t retry to upload baked textures if the initial upload failed – I would think that would be SOP… but this addition is being considered. The addition could help reduce the appearance of nude avatars at unpredictable times.

VWR-24917: Chat History… Toasts… I’m not sure what is up with this one. The JIRA description and the mailing list are seemingly discussing different aspects of a fix to reduce the number of toasts coming up in the lower right corner.

ATI Video Cards: The ATI Drivers and OpenGL problems are still a finger pointing mess. ATI points at Apple and Apple apparently doesn’t think it is an Apple problem. ATI points out that when one buys an ATI card the driver that comes with it is made by ATI. When the card is used on Apple, subsequent driver updates come from Apple. I suppose this means Apple users with ATI cards should consider using ATI made drivers… but rumor is the problem is with ATI.

Summary

Since Esbee left things seem to have changed a bit. I continue to see lots of bug fixes. Some resident feature requests are being added. But, if there is any major interface design or concept changes, I’m missing them.

There are lots of things in the tube. When the new User Groups, Forums, and Blogs come online tomorrow we make see new information coming out.