Second Life Viewer Update Week 37

This Friday (9/11) there was a Third Party Developer’s meeting. This is where most of the early news comes from. These days this meeting is pretty much The Source for any word about anything new or in progress.

~Humana~

~Humana~

Viewers

The main viewer is currently (9/12) Release/3.8.3.304115. This release is based on a maintenance package of fixes. Release Notes 

RC & Project Viewers

RC Importer Viewer version 3.8.4.304605 – This Mesh Importer update is going through cycles of fixing problems. The problems are less severe in each iteration. This will get released some day, but not soon. I am expecting the Notice Viewer or Quick Graphics Viewer to promote to the main viewer before this one.

RC coming… A batch of maintenance fixes is working through QA. We will likely see them in an RC in week 38.

Project Quick Graphics Viewer version 3.8.4.304916 – The Lindens expected… hoped… to get more feedback on this version. Oz Linden says they are not getting much feedback. If you have any, get it in a JIRA… soon.

There are a couple of couple of tweaks they need to make. Once those are working well this version will move out of RC. Expect that to happen in a couple of weeks.

Oz Linden says the Lab is avoiding creation of a avatar render weight standard…  If you and your friends have high end computers they do not want you limited by forcing lower standards on everyone. And those with lower powered computers won’t be lagged down by your high avatar render cost/complexity. Everyone is free to do what they want. People can bling their avatar out and not hurt anyone.

Oz doesn’t like the term Jelly Babies and we won’t be seeing it in SL documentation or user interfaces. But, expect SL users to adopt the term. It is too descriptive for users to pass up.

The advanced settings for graphics settings now fits on laptops again. The panel had been changed to a single column. That didn’t work on smaller screens. Now it is a double column panel and fits on smaller screens.

Project Notice Viewer version 3.8.3.304107 – This version changes how we handle notices.

Chromium Embedded Famework

This is the Webkit replacement. It has been in the works for some time. It is getting close. Expect to see a Project viewer in week 38 or 39. There are some minor issues to solve before it goes RC. But the Lindens think it is ready for testing by current media users. The Lindens will need feedback. There is always the chance there is something they missed. They hope to catch anything in the viewer’s Project status testing.

Once CEF goes live there will be no QuickTime or Flash in SL. While it may be possible to enable Flash for some time, it won’t be supported by the Lab. Flash and QuickTime things will stop working soon… well… those that haven’t already failed from existing WebKit problems. When people using media call up to see what is wrong and how to fix it, they will be told to: Go to HTML5 and CEF. Media has to change.

How long this CEF viewer stays as a project viewer depends on how many people test it and what problems they find.

Project Azumarill Viewer version 3.8.4.304871 – This is the HTTP rewrite viewer –  Quoting release notes: This viewer release is a complete replacement of the under the hood HTTP infrastructure. It provides improved performance and stability by replacing the self deleting responders with coroutine implementations. These coroutines also provide a finer grained concurrency allowing the Viewer greater control over the numbers and types of HTTP requests that can be simultaneously outstanding. This release also removes a considerable amount of deprecated and unused code from the viewer.

These changes impact all areas of the viewer that use Sim Capabilities. A nonexhaustive list includes:

  • Asset upload (Images, Meshes, Animations)
  • AISv3 inventory manipulation
  • Viewer Managed Marketplace
  • Simhost event polling
  • LSL script compilation
  • Experience management (blocking, allowing, creating)

The new HTTP code and protocol interfaces Monty Linden made will be used in all places where HTTP is used to communicate with the SL Servers. This is a significant rewrite of portions of the viewer. Expect Project Viewer status to soon change to RC. This is mostly code and process clean up without user visible changes. So, the time for testing in RC will be minimal.

 Project Oculus Rift Viewer version 3.7.18.295296 – Someday the Rift will get an update but, there are no VR changes to the viewer. So, it will be a matter of catching up with other changes. Don’t hold your breath.

Summary

We have quite a bit going on viewer-wise. I am looking forward to both the Notices and Quick Graphics viewer being promoted. The Azumarill/HTTP version should improve performance and reliability.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *