Second Life Servers Week 15

We aren’t hearing a lot about what is happening with Second Life™ development at the Lab. This usually happens when the Lindens are completing a well known project, like Experience Tools. Or they starting a new project they aren’t completely sure will fly and they are saying nothing.

Sakura Maiden

Sakura Maiden by Lucifer Lightbringer, on Flickr

In this case I think they are focusing on Experience Tools. It isn’t that they aren’t working hard and or not much is happening. It is more about how exciting is finding a ‘;’ that is in the wrong place? Not very. Plus there are a couple of things finishing up that I suspect are consuming resources. The Tools Viewer that is a representation of the change in compiler tools is one that has created a bit of a bottleneck. I think once it rolls out the bottleneck will break loose and we will see more features releasing. 

Simon Linden in yesterday’s Server-Scripting UG mentioned that he is working on key value pairing in the Experience Tools (ET) project. They are working on getting better scaling for the feature. How much can one embellish on those concepts? And how hard is it to turn a very technical, esoteric computer efficiency problem into so something understandable? Often it is just easier to ship it.

It seems the Lindens believe they will have good acceptance of the new ET feature. I suspect they are right. It would be bad to put out ET and have horrible performance. That would leave a bad taste in people’s mouths. So, they are working to make it work well the day it is released. Remember the time they took polishing Server Side Avatar Appearance?

Tuesday we got a roll the main grid. This was a fix for the boomerang trash problem. Empty your trash, log off, come back and login the next day… and your trash came back while you were gone. Sheeesh. This only was happening on the RC Channels. The problem didn’t make it to the main grid. That is the point of having RC Channels for testing.

Today we got a new RC package on the RC channels. This is a maintenance package with fixes for:

  • Fixed server crash when rezzing an object
  • Minor change for CDN configuration
  • Adjusted internal server configuration

There is also the matter of whether ET will have some additional cost. Will we have to purchase ET keys? Rumor is we will. RUMOR, is the keyword. The Lindens have mentioned thinking about that, but they have NEVER said what they decided. The Chicken Little peeps are pushing the idea the keys cost too much… WTF? A key has yet to be sold… wackadoodles.

There is an ID issue. The keys could be a great tool for griefers. Do you remember Griefer Monday? This happened when the Lindens first released ET in June 2012. Now almost 3 years later ET is nearing phase one completion.

So, there will likely be some restriction on ET Keys. Will they be part of a Premium Membership? Could be. The Lindens seem to be pushing the idea of Premium Membership. That would easily handle the ID problem.

However, we will have to wait and see what they do. They aren’t going to tell us before the rollout.

I’m not worried about what they actually do. They have made mistakes before. In some cases they backup and change their minds. It is usually a matter of their misunderstanding the nature of a feature or change has on the user base. So, if they get the restrictions wrong, I expect they will change them.

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