#SL News Week 21

Region Idling

This is the server update that is advancing to the main grid today, Tuesday. I’ve been writing about Second Life® Region Idling for a few days now. So, if you don’t know about it see: #SL Region Idling and #SL News Update Week 20.

Open Source Meeting

Threaded Region Crossing

I’ve been writing about the Region Crossing Phase I code for some time, since about February. This is a major refactor of region crossing code. It touches many parts of the Second Life system. Because of its complexity it has been a difficult write. We have seen lots of problems from it. It has been rolled back from the Release Channels a number of times.

It looks like this code will stay on the Le Tigre and Magnum channels this week.

SL Viewer Uninstall

The SL Viewer’ uninstall is supposed to be changed such that it no longer removes chat logs. I stopped using the Linden Lab® supplied uninstall because it did wipe chat logs.

It also seemed to make the assumption there was only one install of the SL Viewer on the computer. Since I run the Beta, Development, and a number of project viewers having all their settings removed was a big PITA.

I’m too chicken to test the new uninstall. I would have to spend way too much time backing up to run the test. But, if you would like to try it… I would be interested in the result. 🙂

Avatar Double Vertices

I was curious what was up with the double vertices in the Second Life avatar. There are about 700 doubles that can be removed when one joins the head, upper, and lower parts of the avatar. Whoever made the avatar for the Lab is no longer around. So, most of the Lindens have no idea about any details of the avatar. STORM-1800 is the most informative JIRA item about some of the problems in the current avatar we hope to fix.

Another JIRA issue about the avatar is VWR-3432Improve Avatar Mesh. This one would like to simply redo the avatar and shape controls. I think such a change would be way complex requiring viewer and server changes. Plus everyone suddenly having a new avatar one day is not likely to be popular, especially if clothes don’t fit. So, that means the new avatar needs to be backward compatible, which greatly adds to the complexity and further reduces the likelihood of the Lab changing the avatar.

A meta issue for avatar features is SVC-345Meta-Issue: Avatar Improvements. This is a collection of things people would like. It links to all… or at least lots of JIRA items about the avatar.

With all these problems the Lindens seem to see the avatar change as a gnarly can of yucky worms. So, I’m not surprised that none of the Lindens I know has much information on the avatar. If one wants to know about the avatar one needs to find residents that know about it. Look at the JIRA’s to find those people.

Those doubled vertices… they come from the seams used to unwrap the UVMap. Thanks to Ashasekayi Ra for the explanation. For those of us working in Blender, they can be removed. They are an artifact of the export-import via Collada and its inclusion of the avatar mesh’s UVMaps.

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