Second Life News 2014-46

Group Chat

I think most people have noticed it is better. So far, I have been able to comment in groups such as Firestorm Support without a problem, a group I seldom could connect to. I could listen, but not post comments, about half or more of the time.

Blood Letters - Mad Pea 2014

Blood Letters – Mad Pea 2014

Posting to any large group was a problem. That has now mostly been resolved.

We are losing the open post of any chat that starts after I login. In some cases it is not noticeable. In others it is apparent. The Lindens are aware of it.

Today grid status reported the internal utilities servers would be getting updates. In the Server Scripting meeting we learned that additional changes to group chat were being rolled out. So, this is likely that change going into place. The Lindens say not to expect visible improvements. That doesn’t mean there aren’t any, just that they are not likely to be as noticeable as previous changes. 

Servers

No roll to the main channel. Today, Wednesday, the RC channels are getting an update. The Deploy thread and release notes say minor changes. The Lindens told us the changes are tweaks to the CDN system.

All three RC channels will run the same release.

Viewers

You probably saw the post on BUG-7776 (Second Life Viewer Failing). The main viewer is a problem for apparently some small number of users. My article provides a quick work-around.

The main viewer is still the problem version: 3.7.20-296094.

Update 11/12 11:37 AM: I just got an update to the viewer. Release Notes v3.7.21 (296729):

This release adds some fixes to previously released changes in the way we handle joint offsets in rigged meshes. Originally, if you attached multiple meshes with joint offsets, the results were unpredictable, depending on the order in which the attachments were processed. This means that you could see yourself with different joint positions at different times, and the way you saw yourself might not match up to what others saw. With these changes, the behavior is deterministic, so wearing the same set of meshes should always produce the same joint positions, and the way you see yourself should consistently match the way others will see you.The process for removing attached meshes is also more robust, so you should be able to reliably get your old joint positions back after meshes are removed. People running un-updated viewers will continue to see the original behavior with the original bugs, but will not experience any new regressions due to these changes.

This release also fixes some issues found with adding and removing attachments after the recent AISv3 deploy, and improves the status information shown in inventory for attached objects.

This version has a problem installing. It cannot update the crash logger, which is typical. Just hit ignore.

The install also reset my graphics settings.

RC & Project Viewers

Attachments Viewer version 3.7.20.296355 – This is the version with the AIS updates. I am running this one in the Day 2 post about Blood Letters. I haven’t taken time to see if it is just slow after using the HTTP viewer or what is going on. But, it seems to do well enough in regions without lots of mesh wearing avatars. Otherwise it texture thrashes like crazy.

Maintenance Viewer version 3.7.20.296368 – This is a collection of about a dozen fixes and improvements.

Project Experience Tools Viewer version 3.7.16.293901

Project Oculus Rift Viewer version 3.7.18.295296

Project Snowstorm Viewer version 3.7.20.296071Release Notes. This version has a fix for Japanese characters. A OSX Yosemite crash is fixed.

The SL Wiki page Project Snowstorm got some updates. It’s been about a year since much changed there. The changes are really minor. The SL Wiki is still locked down, no user changes possible.

Tutorial: Modern Rigged Mesh Fashionista Edit Skills

Kirsten Corleone has made a tutorial for those needing to learn something about wearing the new mesh clothes. See the tutorial here. Be sure to say thanks while you’re at the site. Thanks to Scoop.It! for finding this.

She is showing us how to edit worn rigged mesh. She is just changing the tint of No-Mod items. But, that is something I did not know how to do. Just selecting those worm mesh items is trick. Check it out.

She also shows how to adjust the size of rigged mesh skirt panels. Now that is trick.

This is a must watch video for all of us wanting to wear rigged mesh.

Visual Studio

Some things are shaking in the Visual Studio world. This is the software Microsoft makes that is used for writing programs targeted at Windows. Indigo Mertel suspects that core dot NET software going open source may have an effect on how SL2 is built. See her Plurk.

ReadMeri

Meri is posting about Blood Letters as she goes along. She has NSFW pictures. As I have advertising I am restricted from posting those NSFW pictures. I may need to figure away around that.

See her post: MadPea Blood Letters Hunt Part 4: More Prize Previews!

Fringe in SL

The blog It’s Only Fashion has an article: NPISL, which is a play on the SL blog Not Possible in RL (NPIRL). Cajsa Lilliehook is talking about not being able to have a simple RL thing like fringe in Second Life. Good point. But, people are finding work-a-rounds.

I’ll have to find out how well this ‘fringe’ works. Many things that look good in pictures don’t work well inside SL.

Thanks to iHeartSL for posting the article.

Selection Problems

In the Server-Scripting UG Lexbot Sinister) asked about: ‘Selected prims by surrounding don’t show their accurate LI count if they are obscured – I guess it has to do with interest lists? it makes difficult to gather larger groups of objects either for inspection, or for taking – is there any workaround anyone knows of?

Whirly Fizzle) answered: ‘Lex, are some of the prims getting deselected when the LI shows wrong? That happens on interesting viewers when the selected prims are out of cam view but there is a fix – maybe out in v3 release now, can’t remember. (Fix reference and see BUG-7115)

Simon Linden says the fix is in next maintenance version of the viewer. So, if you are having problems like this, a fix is on the way.

Larger Script Sizes

No.

This subject comes up every so often at UG meetings. I believe there is no chance of this every happening in SL1. But, we expect great things from SL2.

Simon Linden points out: “We’ve obviously learned a lot from SL and The Next Thing is starting from a clean slate so we can do much better.”

In regard to more memory for scripts and the ability to write to note cards…

Simoan answered a question: “We’re hoping the Experience Tools features will help with some of that need, Jenna – being able to save and retrieve data.  I know it’s not the same thing, but I assume you’re not putting info in there for someone to read.”

The XP Tools has a key-value storage feature that is expected to be better than providing scripts memory or opening up writing to note cards. The XP Tools key-value data will with stand a script reset, which is the desired attribute from note card writing.

4 thoughts on “Second Life News 2014-46

  1. Hi Nalates. thanks for mentioning my post. Just a correction: I don’t think that a free copy of Visual Studio will have an impact on how SL2 will be built (that is, if you meant LL developing its core engine). What I think is that it will have a considerable impact for SL2 if LL will adopt C# as the scripting language of choice. And, my guess is that LL will base SL2 on Unity. Visual Studio has a free plugin to develop for Unity 3D. Furthermore, the fact that MS has finally decided to officially port the .NET core to the Linux and Mac worlds is another important change.

    And now that the Opensim devs are talking about adopting C# as a scripting language, this move may have an impact on Opensim as well. If you top all this with the fact that MS also offers a free repository system (TFS) for work groups of up to 5 people since a couple of years and that Visual Studio seamlessly integrates with GitHub as well, this move can put a complete multi-platform professional development system into the hands of a lot of VWs scripters. It’s an important change.

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