Kelly Linden has been working on fixing some problems with avatar banning from land. Those fixes have rolled out. BUT… there is a problem in the Phoenix Viewer. One can ban an avatar using Phoenix and it appears to be banned. But, that data is not getting to the server. So, the system does not ban the avatar.

The work around is to do bans with a viewer other than Phoenix.

Whirly Fizzle described it this way: “Oh, re estate bans, Zi Ree, one of the Phoenix/Firestorm developers found a bad bug in Phoenix viewer yesterday which *may* account for some reports of estate bans failing. Phoenix has an estate ban feature called GTFO. If a user bans a resident using this option, the residents name will be added to the estate ban list but the resident doesn’t actually get banned. If anyone sees reports of estate bans being ineffective, please make sure they didn’t ban using Phoenix viewer. I’d so, remove the ban & reban using Viewer 3/Firestorm etc.”

Simon Linden noted, “I don’t remember the details, but I believe Kelly did find some cases where he thought bans could be bypassed, or issues when the ban list was full.”

I gather that the problem is NOT going to be fixed in Phoenix. People are expecting Phoenix die-hards to mostly give up once the Server Side Avatar Baking rolls out, likely the end of February.

Eject Crash

Banning and ejecting players via scripts has been causing region crashes. There are tools that estate managers use to simplify management processes. About 1 out of 3 eject/temp bans results in a region crash.

The management tools in the V3 viewers do not seem to have the same problem. If you know otherwise, file a JIRA.

The fix for this problem is running in Le Tigre.

Materials System

Simon expects to see a Materials Project viewer this week. I doubt he really knows for sure as he doesn’t work on the viewer side. But, he might.

I am hoping for this week. But, I’ll have to wait and see.

Tankmaster Finesmith thinks Firestorm will have a Materials Project viewer out this week. He says there were some User Interface issues holding things up. But, those have been worked out.

That sounds good.

Tank says that Lighting and Shadows (named Advanced Lighting Model in Firestorm) will have to be enabled to see the Materials effects.

We often refer to Lighting and Shadows as deferred rendering. Computers and graphics cards built before 2009 have trouble handling deferred rendering. A new graphics card, or at least ‘newer’ card, is often all that is needed to handle deferred render.

Deferred Adoption

The question builders are asking is: whether enough people to use it to build for it? We don’t know. I have no data to answer that question. We have asked if the Lab can provide it.

Tankmaster says the Firestorm Viewer does not send that info to the team, so they don’t know how many Firestorm users have it enabled.

Whirly Fizzle says that the Lab is collecting stats on how many V3 users are running in deferred. She would probably know, but maybe not. I’ll assume Whirly has it right. So, the problems are whether they can present the collected information and whether they will.

Also pointed out, the new GPU tables used in the viewer cause more viewers to enable deferred rendering.

Tankmaster points out that there is pressure in the FS community to have Deferred Render off by default.

Region Crash on Start Up

There is a problem in some regions where the physics engine is overloaded on start up. The region shuts down scripting so it can start. Region owners have to keep enabling scripting. Simon Linden says there is a fix coming for the problem.

Regions Stop Allowing Object Rez

There is a problem where regions consume all available all available memory from Navmesh rebakes. Once enough rebakes have eaten up free server memory the region disallows object rezzing.

Simon thinks a fix for that problem is going into RC this week.

Script Highlighting

Ima Mechanique tells us, “For any scripters present, there’s a new project build for the ongoing [script] highlighting changes.”

You can test out the changes in a Scripting Project Viewer. This link is not dynamic. This is a hard coded version.

Region-Crossings

There was some testimony in the Server-Scripting meeting that regions crossing have improved. Some have sailed boat across 66+ regions without a problem. Simon says they are seeing fewer stuck teleports and other crossings.

So, objectively the code seems to be working well.

Dropping Attachments

Some people are reporting attachments not rezzing after a crossing. Others can see them but the one wearing them cannot see them. A relog or remove and wear of the object is needed to get them to rez. This is apparently more common in the Magnum RC channel.

Diagonal Regions

Shug Maitland posted in the SL Forum: Diagonal Regions not rezing – an ongoing issue. We have seen this problem before. It seems to be back. Shug is experiencing the problem in Brocade where a number of different versions of the region software are running in adjacent regions.

If you’re seeing the problem, add your information to the thread.