This meeting ran 38 minutes. The last 12 being mostly a search for the Simple Inventory Management Viewer. A 2010 project in the version 3.2 era. Not information most of us care about. Kitty Barrnett was hoping to use it as a starting point for a inventory related project.

Don’t think you knew you were in this song

Viewers

Second Life Maintenance Viewer version 4.0.7.318189 – Updated Friday. It is looking good as likely to promote to main viewer in week 31. It depends on how it does over the weekend. As of Friday Oz was cautious optimistic it would promote.

Second Life VLC Viewer version 4.1.1.318152 – An update went out. But, they have directed very few users to it. Once Maintenance is out they will likely start directing more people into it. Oz’s feeling about this one is pretty good. He expects it to promote next after this maintenance version.

Second Life Project Bento Viewer version 5.0.0.317597 – They are solidifying an update we’ll see in 1 or 2 weeks. I think it is this week that the project lead, Vir Linden, is back from vacation.

Second Life Project VOB Viewer version 4.0.6.316422 – A bug is holding up an update. So, we may or not see an update in week 31. I am guessing week 32.

Oz made a point of welcoming UI Improvements. There are some submitted that they haven’t gotten to like: Snapshot panel improvements by NiranV. But, others are welcome.

64-bit Viewer – The Lab doesn’t have a running version yet. So, they are not releasing any of their 64-bit viewer code. Linden devs are keen on getting it done, as is Oz, but it isn’t a Lab priority… so work on it starts and stops as other priorities pull people away. Once it becomes a project viewer it will get as much attention as other viewers. Until then…

Planned Viewers

Another maintenance viewer version is planned. The maintenance versions are sort of catch-all versions with contributions and various fixes built in. Once it goes RC we’ll see what is in it.

A Voice Update… viewer? I’m not sure if this is going to be a project viewer. I get the impression it will be. Oz and Vivox are working Vivox changes with a voice quality improvement included. Also some security (anti-grief) fixes. (And… I sort of assume you know Vivox is the company contracted with by the Lab to provide in-world voice chat.)

SL Voice is getting attention from the ground up. Oz is laying the ground work for future fixes, security, improvements, reduced disconnects, reduce connect failures, and a potential for better voice. Better than ever before… It is a long term project on voice quality and security. The foundation work is going into place now. These aren’t things people can see, I suppose no new buttons to push or things to do, just better. Later new features will show up. No words on what those might be.

The foundation work will include fixing bugs and improving quality. One thing being added is logging to track voice connect failures and disconnections to get better data to know what needs fixing. We saw this with chat and group chat as they studied the system to find what caused problems. Better to know what to fix than fix something and hope that was the problem.

Bug-20075 – is about not being able to connect to voice. Some think it is a worsening problem. As it now the Lab can’t see actual stats on the problem. If all goes well this will be part of the new tracking/logging that Oz is adding to the vice sections of the viewer.

Before they can begine fixing, they need to know if the problem is your local computer or connection, which they can’t do much about, or your local lan, or is it your ISP, or your ISP’s backbone provider… They have to make sure it is something they can fix. If it is on the Linden side, easy. Well… may be not EASY. If it is outside the Lab then they have to see if it is possible to do anything to reduce problems for weaker connection services.

Some changes are already in last voice update. Like more reporting on voice quality and crashes. Now Oz is adding tracking for connect failures. Which should go into one of the viewers soon.

I hadn’t thought about it, but it was pointed out, when running two viewers, only one can use voice. That is intentional.

I am way too fuzzy on this… but my take away was: Linux voice… not a Linden thing. Use WINE to run voice with Linux.

Sticky Settings

There was some discussion about viewers not remembering the setting for automatically streaming music. The Linden default is to enable. Firestorm the default is to disable. I have it disabled in all my Linden viewers.

The setting is in Preferences->Sound & Media (tab)->Allow Media to auto-play (checkbox). If you disable this and it resets to enabled, file a JIRA and let the lab know. None of the versions I am running are a problem.

There once was a time when it was somewhat common for the XML in the settings file to get corrupted. Then on viewer start all the settings after the problem would fail to load. The Lindens have worked on that problem and for some time it has been a very rare problem. The XML reader is more robust and gets past problems to load remaining uncorrupted settings. Then cleans up the file on viewer shut down.

It is still common for a setting to fail to stick if your viewer is crashing on exit. On occasion with a specific RC viewer I would have to start the viewer, make the change and immediately log off to get a setting to stick. I haven’t had to do that for some time.