This was a short meeting, <20 minutes. There is some interesting news.
..● Hunting ●..
Viewers
As of 3/12 the main Linden release viewer is still 4.0.1-310054.
RC Second Life HTTP update Viewer version 4.0.2.312094
RC Second Life Maintenance Viewer version 4.0.2.312269
RC Second Life Quick Graphics Viewer version 4.0.2.312297 – This viewer updated Friday.
All three RC’s doing better than current release viewer. Oz Linden says one of these will promote early next week. As the Quick Graphics viewer has one more fix that Oz wants added it is the least likely. But, now way closer to being ready for release.
After they look at the data accumulated over the weekend, the Lindens will decide if the HTTP or Maintenance version will be promoted.
Second Life Project Bento Viewer version 5.0.0.311861 – Project Bento is close to having a final version of the avatar skeleton. But, the project is not to release ‘real soon’. There are things to fix before it is ready for prime time. Expect it to stay in beta until may be summer.
I recorded the last Bento UG meeting. But, I had a problem with Viewer sound. I couldn’t tell until after the meeting that FRAPS was not getting the sound… to my recording is useless.
Second Life Project Oculus Rift Viewer version 3.7.18.295296 – This version hasn’t been updated in a long time. The Lindens are running into some non-trivial challenges with the latest Oculus Rift SDK. But, they are determined to get a viewer working with Rift.
Other News
TLS 1.2 – Beehu Linden made a PSA. Beehu is requesting all TP Dev’s test their viewers to confirm they are working with TLS 1.2. The Lindens are removing support for previous versions of TLS. This change is part of their compliance effort. Soon you will not be able to do money stuff and some other related security things… whatever those are… no one said, unless your viewer supports TLS 1.2.
Progress on the Linden 64-bit viewer is good ans we will see an RC viewer ‘soon’. Progress is fast and things are going well as the past changes to the compiling tools the Lab uses has made this design process much easier.
There is still no support for the new Havok version, the physics engine for Second Life. Once the 64-bit version is working well the Lab will look at a viewer side Havok update.
STORM-2116 – Improved support for Retina Displays. It seems the Alchemy viewer has this problem solved for Apple device users. The Lindens are looking at bringing those changes to their viewer.
Servers
Server side work is focused on anti-griefing updates. That explains why we aren’t hearing much news from the server side of the team. The Lindens don not talk about security fixes. Test™
The question was asked about the Registration API’s ETA. This is the connection interface to Second Life that allows third parties to provide a signup and entry way to Second Life. Grumpity Linden is estimating it is going roll out in late March or early April, but this first update will not be the complete update. Some additional features will come out in a later version.
Web Site
The Lindens will be cutting off old RSS stream for the Grid Status page. Steven Linden is pointing out that the change to the new Grid Status site and removal of the old RSS feed could break some TP viewers. You can see the new status pages at http://beta.status.secondlifegrid.net. Months ago this site appeared. The Lindens have been working on it and will ‘soon’ change over to it. Steven is estimating about the middle of April.
As a user that browses to the current URL you won’t notice a change as the current URL pointing to the old Status page will be changed to point to the new site.