Mesh
This week mesh made it to main grid and is officially rolled out. With the exception of regions in the Blue Steel Release Channel mesh is enabled in all regions.
Oskar Linden said,
You all already know what went live this week. Mesh! There were times I wondered if it would ever ship. We started that in late 2009. I’m not saying the release is without issues, but getting it out there has been a big step. Now we can work on polishing it. We already have a phase 2 in the works with fixes and updates.[We’re] not sure the date for that but Septemberish.
Large Prims
Along with mesh comes large prims. All our prims can now be sized to 64m in X, Y, and Z directions. The only restriction for this is your viewer. Older viewers may be hard coded to the 10m limit. Using those viewers you will NOT be able to make a prim larger than 10m. Viewers used in OpenSim, like Phoenix and Imprudence, have the options to allow limits to be overridden.
In general the maximum size of a prim is checked by the region’s server. Over size prims are reduced to the limit when the server updates newly changed values on the asset server. So, with some viewers it may seem you can make prims larger than 64m. But, in a minute or so, they will change to the size limit.
The newer SL Viewers allow one to build with large prims. Any mesh capable viewer will allow you to reach the 64m limit.
Mega-Prims
Mega-prims are just prims previously larger than 10m and now larger than 64m. Once upon a time a glitch in the SL servers allowed people to make prims larger than the limit. Someone collected all of the mega-prims they could find and distributed them. They became so common the Lindens decided not to push people to remove them. So, we still have mega-prims.
While mega-prims are not a favorite of the Lindens, it appears they will tolerate them. Use them for your builds at your risk. The Lindens could change their minds. You are safer building with 64m prims.
Mesh Upload
Some people are having problems getting approved to up load mesh in both AGNI, the main grid, and ADITI, the preview grid. You may have to take the Intellectual Property rights tests twice, once while logged into AGNI and once while logged into ADITI. If that does not work, contact support for help. You can also get help at the Server Beta Group meeting in ADITI. See the User Group Meetings Schedule.
Upcoming Stuff
Oskar says they have some new projects in the wings. Backend changes and tweaks are being made to facilitate them. Once he has time he says he’ll tell us about them… what a tease!
Kelly Linden will be working on server maintenance stuff. Simon Linden is working on server performance stuff. Some of the work is looking at getting the server concierge to place adjacent regions in the same simulator. Having regions in the same server has communication hardware advantages and load distribution disadvantages. So, handling load balancing and region performance issues is not going to be simple.
Server Problems
This week saw some problems from the web services. Some regions went down and took a long time to come back. Maestro Linden said the roll back was a bit of a problem. Many of us noticed profiles going down and other problems. Also, script timers in class 7 servers are running slowly. How the problem exhibits makes no sense so the Lindens have yet to get their hands on it. Kelly thinks they have started to get a handle on the time warp problem that has been around for months. I first wrote about Time Warp 14 weeks ago.
HTML Based HUD
Kelly Linden was on hand at Thursdays meeting to show of an HTML Based HUD he had made. Several of us took copies of it. I must say it is pretty nice. One page even has an embedded video.
One must have a viewer capable of MOAP (Media On A Prim) and have it enabled. The HUD worked in my SL Dev Viewer 3.0.3 (239192).
Kelly says,
If you add objects or note cards [to the HUD object] they show up in a GIVE drop-down on the individual people pages. Except that there are good things we could build like better message boards if everybody had MOTP [?MOAP?]. This [HUD] shows something that is possible today, on beta or on agni. This is live on agni as of last week.
This type of HUD is possible by using HTTP Text and responses. Some of those at the meeting has to change the script from using llRequestSecureURL to llRequestURL to correct an SSL error.
I expect to see this HUD turn up as an example in the SL Wiki.
llCastRay()
Oskar says this feature will have its own release channel package. Expect to see it in a release channel near you soon (read soon as being Oskar’s trademarked version of the word soon with its own unique definition).
Summary
Now that mesh has rolled out to the main grid I suspect the Lindens are reorganizing and getting new projects scheduled and manned while they clean up details and tweak the mesh package. Soon we will start to hear what is next.
As you predicted Kelly Linden has published the HUD source code in the SL Wiki:
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/HTML_HUD_Demo
THX for the link 🙂
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