Second Life Third Party Viewer Meeting 4/8

The HTTP/Co-routines RC viewer promoted to the main viewer 4.0.3-312816

The RC HTTP viewer has a bunch of voice fixes too. The Vivox people say considering how their software interacts with SL voice processes, the new Vivox code should just be a drop in update for older viewers.

The successful warrior is the average man, but with great focus.

The successful warrior is the average man, but with great focus.

There are a number of robustness fixes in voice. But, this update won’t fix the big drop outs we are seeing. Those are from DoS attacks on the Vivox servers.

Vivox and the Lab are working on a feature to restore service when voice drops… Those will be in the next round of improvements. Other coming updates provide better voice privacy and better security. 

There is a new RC Second Life Maintenance Viewer version 4.0.4.313759 – The noted fixes are:

  • Crash fixes
  • Fixed memory leaks
  • Fixed input/cursor issues
  • Fixed graphics bugs
  • Restored invisiprims – not a final fix (I’m unsure of this one)
  • Formatting (? I don’t know, I think the fixes are: Resizing “Picks” floater breaks formatting in list items)
  • Notifications – No notification is displayed when saving appearance to XML, Group notices do not show in chronological order in Notification floater, and Notifications Update: “When I spend or get L$” split into two options.

There are 3 known bugs in this Maintenance viewer. See Release Notes. One being: Viewer 4.0.3 ignores settings for Shaders in Graphics Preferences for ATI Radeon HD 3800 Series graphics card/chip.

The Lindens are working to merge the HTTP Viewer code into RC Second Life Quick Graphics Viewer version 4.0.2.312297. A couple of bugs showed up with the HTTP merge. For one it is not uploading crash reports and that is a deal breaker. It has to get fixed before they will release it.

The QG Viewer is generally standing up to graphics crashers. The crashers still have some impact, but they are not crashing or locking up the viewer as in past.

There has been a problem that when the max complexity setting was UNLIMITED (essentially turning off the feature) people were still seeing Jelly Babies*. That was because 3 things were triggering the abbreviated/muted rendering. The complexity setting, of course, excessive geometry, and too much surface area. These have been 3 different settings. Anyone of them could trigger the limited/muted render.

So, the features are being changed. The excessive geometry is being dropped as it is pretty well covered by the Complexity setting. If I understand the geometry setting will remain for a time, it just won’t do anything. Surface area control of rendering will remain a setting but sort of be combined with complexity. Setting Complexity to the ‘unlimited’ max, essentially turning it off, will also cancel the surface area limit setting. The result is you will be able to ‘effectively’ turn off Jelly Babies.

The problem with completely turning off Complexity is it makes the viewer vulnerable to graphics crashers. So, it is probably better to set Complexity limit at a high value, say 350k.

The change is being made because the Lab received so many complaints from those that thought they had the feature turned off. Dealing with all the complaints is just not worth it. Bye geometry and nerf surface area.

More pages, links below…

2 thoughts on “Second Life Third Party Viewer Meeting 4/8

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