Second Life: How AISv3 Impacts Some

Agent Inventory System version 3 is about new back end programming that improves the inventory system. Listening to Firestorm Team members and other third party developers there have been big problems with the system. It has been enabled on SL servers for some time now. Form where I am I can’t tell if it is problematic code made by the Lab or integration problems because of third party developer code.

Danseuse

Danseuse by Charisma Jonesford, on Flickr

Marine explains there were other problems too. So, they have had legitimate reasons for avoiding HTTPInventory.

Either way, the result has been a problem and third party viewers have lagged implementing the update. Now that the Lab is disabling the older UDP protocol for inventory things have to change.

Recently, like Tuesday, the RLViewer ran into problems. Marine Kelly made some quick changes and put out version 2.9.8 of her RLV viewer and explained the problem. I was writing about this AIS problem last week, but it only affected those on regions running RC code. Screaming was limited.

Apparently RLV has been running using the older UDP data transfer for inventory. HTTPInventory, a viewer debug setting, was disabled by default in previous versions of RLV. This setting enables or disables use of the newer HTTP protocol for data transfer, effectively switching the viewer between the older UDP and the newer HTTP. Now that UDP inventory downloads are turned off server side, disabling the setting is a problem.

I wrote in Second Life Server & Viewer Update (4/02) that the Lab was depreciating the setting and viewers with the feature disabled would have problems. When the server package rolled out to the main channel and ALL regions were running the new software, people started banging into the problem.

The new release is handling the problems. One of which is the old Height adjustment that is a setting in your shape. This was a great work-around for a problem Server Side Appearance baking of the avatar caused. For RLV use SSA was often causing a problem, so the work-around.

The new RLV version takes advantage of the new Height adjustment (right-click your avatar and choose Hover Height) and uses the newer HTTP protocol for inventory loading. If you are suddenly finding your inventory is not loading, you have run  into the AIS update problem and will need to update your viewer.

2 thoughts on “Second Life: How AISv3 Impacts Some

  1. Another proof that Marine’s Z-offset replacement was a bloody ugly hack and it was a good decision to not implement it in Firestorm!

    • ‘Another proof that Marine’s Z-offset replacement was a bloody ugly hack’

      The original implementer for this feature was me… And it works perfectly in my viewer (no trouble with HTTP inventory or rebaking in my viewer…), thank you… As for ‘bloody ugly hacks’, please, look at your own code before insulting others…

      I’m also surprised about the complaints with AISv3… It too works like a charm in the Cool VL Viewer for many months. Granted, there was an ugly bug with links in LL’s very first implementation (see SUN-129), but I worked around it while backporting the feature and LL since fixed it with a different method (now too adopted in the Cool VL Viewer).

      As for TPV lagging behind LL’s viewer feature, I think that I’m not concerned. The Cool VL Viewer got Experience tools, AISv3, AHH and even (in its experimental branch), Maketplace Listings and the new global clothing layers limit support.

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