It has been awhile since I updated the status of the bake fail problems. Bake fail is well and healthy… but, the Lindens are working on removing the fail part.

Back in March 2012 the Lindens were tracking down the problem. The failure to properly rez the avatar was not a simple failure. A number of things in the overall Second Life™ operation cause the failure. After tracking down as many of the failure triggers as they could they started planning the fix.

If you are interested in know how the system works now, read: #SL Clouds, Grey, and Blurry Avatars. Or the short version I supply in the forum Answers is here.

The solution the Lindens have come up with is a server side compositing engine. Rather then do the compositing in the viewer and upload it, a folder named Current Outfit will be used to contain a list of the items an avatar is wearing. The folder is updated automatically as you change appearance. When the folder changes I suspect a dirty flag is set probably posting a date and time of the change. Some message is likely sent to the server after some time period. At some point the Compositing Service on the Linden side pulls the list from your Current Outfit folder and bakes the composite texture made from your skin, tats, and clothes. That server will cache the texture. As others need your appearance texture they will get it from the Compositing Server’s cache.

This requires some pretty extensive changes in the viewer. It requires a whole new service on the Lab’s side. But, all these changes are starting to come together. Last week and this week, Nyx Linden has been asking for Outfits that are complex or have render problems for testing the new system.

Providing Outfits

To provide an outfit for testing does NOT require a contribution agreement. What is required is the Outfit Name you use in your inventory, your avatar name, and the grid it is on; preview or main. A picture of the outfit as it is supposed to appear is helpful. Of course the more information you supply about problems you have with the outfit the more it helps.

Complex outfits with lots of layers, alpha, tats, and multiple items on a layer (layer as in shirt, etc) are what Nyx needs.

Put the information in a note card and give it to Nyx Linden. Title it: Text Outfit – [your_name].

Include:

• Outfit name as it appears in your inventory
• Where it is in inventory; Appearance or folder path
• Your Name
• The grid; main or preview
• A snapshot of the outfit as it should look
• A snap shot of the outfit failing – if possible

Or put the information in an email to Nyx at Linden Lab .com.

It is important we get Nyx some outfits to test.

Timing

That Nyx is testing now means we will likely see a project viewer and test servers in ADIT (preview grid) within weeks. Current testing is likely only in the internal QA pipeline just now. But, soon we will be able to test for ourselves.