November

(29 Articles) – The first week of this month we got a server RC with infrastructure changes the prepared the way for the Advanced Experience Tools (AET). I think it is about this month the AET is celebrating its second birthday. Implementing AET has a lot to do with permissions. With the addition of Desura to the Linden family I wonder just how permissions are changing.

On the 7^th of November we had a planned shutdown of Second Life. It was only for a few hours to facilitate database maintenance.

In week 46 server RC was running a package with Grey Goo limit changes. If you want to know more about Grey Goo see: Second Life News 2013-46.

One of viewer RC’s had an update to the GPU Table.

The Viewer Release Pipeline was somewhat empty as several viewer changes were stuck in QA.

One of the RC viewers has a basic change for how viewers work with the servers. When logging in the server send information about the avatar’s appearance. That includes information about items in all the clothes lots. Until this change the viewer was not able to take advantage of that information.

The HTTP Project was still in QA in week 46. Monty Linden was explaining to us his work in November was a cleanup of the libraries used to build the SL Viewer and server packages. This cleanup will make it easier to build 64-bit viewers.

Problems in the use of  Meshmaxconcurrentrequests (Debug Setting) were still being discussed. Monty was thinking it was becoming more likely the Lab would need to set limits. And you API with a reward/punishment type feature was becoming more likely.

The Facebook – Share feature was found to be sending a highly compressed 1024×1024 image to Facebook. The results are not impressive. Along with the image a load of Google analytics data was being sent. Third party viewer developers are hoping to be able to send a better quality picture and to drop a lot of the analytics data. Linden Lab is going to have to make a decision on whether they will allow that.

Jessica Rabbit?

For more information about 64-bit Firestorm Viewer see: Second Life News 2013-46. You will need to scroll down a ways.

In week 46 lab announced the official release of the Interest List Project. See: Second Life News 2013-46 #2.

On the 18^th of November Jessica Lyon, the project manager for the Firestorm team, announced they would start blocking older Phoenix and Firestorm viewers. They were letting users know that only three of the latest versions of a viewer would be allowed on the grid. See: Firestorm to Start Blocking Viewers.

In week 47 the Experience Tools Infrastructure package rolled to the main channel. This is the package that prepares the way for future Advanced Experience Tools. The same weight the RC channels were getting a package with lots of fixes and several new features. See: Second Life News 2013-47.

This week Linden Lab announced the change in how they will be reporting SL user income for taxes. See: Second Life Taxes.

November 20^th we got word the Mesh Deformer was being discarded in favor of Fitted Mesh. This was a huge and controversial announcement. See: Mesh Deformer Changes. The Collision Bone weighting used in Liquid Mesh is to be improved and used for mesh clothes instead of using the Mesh Deformer.

Also in week 48 we heard comments from Qarl Fizz and Oz Linden about Fitted Mesh. See: Second Life Fitted Mesh 2013-48.

Server Beta User Group 2013-46

Changes to the Grey Goo Fence had caused large building rezzers to fail. Changes made rolled out in week 47 seem to have fixed the problem. See: Second Life News 2013-47 #2.

In week 47 Second Life got new region update scripts. They were expected to reduce the time it takes to roll new software out to the servers.

In week 48 the GPU Table Viewer rolled out to become the main viewer for Second Life. The Google Brakepad Viewer was pulled off the RC viewers page while changes were being made. The Interesting Viewer, the one for the Interest List Project, was still being worked on and remains an RC viewer. A new project viewer is listed on the page titled: Fitted Mesh Viewer.

Also in week 48 Nyx Linden was hoping to have a viewer into QA that takes advantage of the new HTTP project. This would include the new AIS-3 Inventory changes.

Monty Linden continues to work on the code libraries used to build the viewer and server. One of those he was having problems with was the Collada library.

Also this week people from LEAP Motion were at the third party viewer developers meeting. Both the LEAP Motion people and the Lindens are wanting to integrate LEAP Motion and Second Life viewer. The LEAP Motion people were looking for third-party developers to help them. At the time the Lindens did not have people available to work with the project.

The new Voice code was creating some problems. In some cases the speaker was unintelligible to the listeners. At the time the Lindens were looking for people that can reproduce the problem reliably.

Excitement about 64-bit viewers continues. See: Second Life News 2013-48.