Second Life News 2014-7

Servers

Not much to report here. Last week we knew that the Release Candidate (RC) channels would not be getting an update. Next week (8) the Lindens are anticipating rolling out a release to the RC channels. Again it will be one release rolling to all three channels.

Capella at night. Materials & Projectors

Capella at night. Materials & Projectors

The package will be a fix for a rare problem estate managers see when restarting a region. It seems when they are the last avatar out, the get logged off. Seems the server is shutting down before they are completely out. This fix will adjust the time between last avatar out and shut down.

Since there is nothing in the RC channels to roll to the main channel there will be no roll out to the main channel. It is unclear whether there will be a restart. If regions seem to be working well then probably not. But, don’t count on it.

Viewers

The main release updated to the Fitted Mesh Viewer: 3.7.0-286015. For most people in Second Life™ this means they will be able to see the new Fitted Mesh properly. The change will affect about ¼ to 1/3 of SL users. Other users are on third party viewers and the SL update will have no affect on them. Some third party viewers already have the Fitted Mesh feature, or have it waiting in the wings, and a few don’t. It is fuzzy which do and don’t. Check with the author of your viewer.

For Firestorm users I would expect to hear something at the their Q&A meeting, according to the Firestorm blog: February 15th, at 4PM SLT.

Invisible Fitted Mesh

JIRA item: FITMESH-20–  Certain non-rigged mesh invisible with ALM disabled. This should make all Fitted Mesh visible now.

Region Restart Warning

There is a fix in the main viewer for JIRA item: STORM-1980Improve awareness of region restarting message. I haven’t seen it, but I hear the entire screen shakes. That should get a person’s attention. Plus there is a countdown timer that runs…

If you want to see a fun scramble, visit a nude beach and catch the region restart. It makes for a quick separation of the experienced and the new people.

Beacons

There is a fix to extend tracking beacons to the ground. There is an option to have them point up or down, I suppose indicating if the target is above or below the avatar.

Inventory

Included in this release is the JIRA item: STORM-1986 – Add Show on Map when right clicking a landmark in the Inventory floater. The option Show on Map has been added to the right-click menu popup in our inventory. Its near the bottom of the list.

This feature is handy for checking old links.

Warning

I have been using the Interest List Project Viewer. Switching back to the main viewer was a shock. I’ve started to hear others complain about how slow the Fitted Mesh Viewer is. I did not have problems with it when it was a project viewer. But, I am seeing this viewer run at 2 to 6 FPS. I have ALM, Occlusion, and Shadows turned on. But, I had those on in the Interest List viewer too.

Using the viewer for a couple of hours lead to what appeared to be some video restarts.

I’m not sure what is up with this viewer. I’ll be trying to use it over the next few days.

RC Viewers

We have 5 RC viewers today.

1317Hotfix Viewer version 3.7.1.286557 – The release fixes a problem with posting to Facebook. ACME-1317 – Connect to Facebook not working, page flashes refreshing rapidly, not allowing you to click accept.

Google Breakpad Viewer version 3.6.14.285686 – This is the debugging tool that the Lab is adapting for their use with the viewer.

HTTP Viewer version 3.7.1.286567 – This version contains the fix for DNS problems that many have seen. The mechanism used to perform DNS look ups was changed from an application-hosted DNS resolver to a combination of threads and the host operating system’s resolver.

Also, a great deal of work was put into the mesh upload and download code. Better error handling, less frequent request retries, removal of many thread issues and fixes for numerous smaller bugs are a part of this RC release.

Interesting Viewer version 3.6.14.285213 – This is the viewer for improved scene loading. It hasn’t changed for a couple of weeks now.

Maintenance Viewer version 3.6.14.285499 – There are 34 fixes and improvements in this viewer. The release notes are here: Release Notes 3.6.14.285499

Project Viewers

We have 2 project viewers today.

Project Merchant Outbox Viewer version 3.6.13.284731 – This has several test fixes.

  • ACME-1219 Merchant Outbox viewer crashes on Exit on Windows 7
  • ACME-1220 User needs to click OK twice to dismiss Merchant Outbox notification
  • ACME-1221 Merchant Outbox Initialization fails with 404 error with new account in Merchant Outbox viewer
  • MAINT-2287 Merchant Outbox panel unusable and unrecoverable if outbox folder disappears
  • MAINT-2301 Send to Marketplace from Merchant Outbox says it fails when it doesn’t
  • MAINT-2452 Merchant outbox with genuine failure “409 conflict” causes all further imports to fail
  • MAINT-3319 Merchant outbox: Second Life 3.6.8 (282375) build – results when user has a merchant outbox misplaced in inventory.
  • MAINT-3320 Viewer crash when deleting trash which contains Merchant Outbox

Project Sunshine Viewer version 3.6.14.285190 – This test version also has a large number of fixes. See the release notes. The viewer has more fixes for inventory caused bake fail.

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