There are 2 Maintenance viewers showing on the Alternate Viewers page. One with render changes (Love Me Render Viewe), one everything else (Maintenance Viewer).
The non-render change viewer has about 44,000 hours of run time logged. It currently has a better crash rate then default viewer. But, it isn’t enough hours to know how stable it actually is or if problems are hiding. That usually takes about 100,000 hours.
But, if the viewer continues to do as well for the next couple of weeks, it may roll out.
Work is progressing on 3 fronts in the Alex Ivy 64-bit viewer; process management changes that alter how updates work, Work on the Mac side to get Havok (SL physics engine) support, and a new structure for updating CEF, the video player used in the SL viewer.
The 360 Viewer is on hold pending CEF work in Alex Ivy.
The Lindens are starting development to move more stuff to HTTP/CDN. Vir working on it now. When this update rolls out; LM’s, Gestures, animations, sounds, and something I couldn’t make out… will move from UDP to HTTP and be added into the Content Delivery Network (CDN).
Once everyone is using HTTP for these, they will turn off and eventually remove the UDP delivery services from the simulators. We can expect some measure of performance improvement.
The plan is to remove stuff that downloads files from simulator so it only has to simulate…
The Firestorm people are talking about when to release the next version of their viewer. They are deciding what to include and what to push to the next release. Since there is no big ‘thing’ that changes what users will see when in-world, this isn’t all that critical.
I expect the team to include everything they have working well and to drop out anything they feel is shaky. With that flexibility, I doubt anything will push the release date. I’m guessing we’ll see a release in late February or early March but, I’m guessing.
Oz is working on a voice update. Working on one bug then likely to release as Project Viewer. No ETA. No clue what the cause is, just knows the symptom is one has to face East to have directional sounds work correctly.
There is that question about ‘lowering the default volume’ in the Sl Viewer… It hasn’t come up for a while so, Oz is not sure if it is in Maintenance Viewer or not… or on the do it now list…
Monday is a holiday @ Linden Lab… in the USA it is President’s Day. The Lab is closed. Support will be working.
Ban List Management
This is a painful task for Estate Managers.
The Firestorm team is banning a significant number of people from their gateway region. Griefers love coming in and griefing noobs. The large ban lists are a problem. For instance, as it is now it took 4 hours to clear 175 people from the list.
There was some talk of filing a JIRA to see more names in the panel in Estate Tools.
Oz explained the Lindens are internally discussing Estate Management Tools and they hearing a lot about large ban lists… So, Oz suggested a broader discussion on how to handle not just editing the ban list but, the entire Estate Manager’s panel.
The result is, Oz is planning the discussion this Wednesday morning at his meeting Open Source meeting. 2/22 @ 7 AM SLT @ Oz’s Raft.
Oz says at this month’s internal meetings the Lindens spent a lot of time talking about Estate Management Tools, some of which are in prototype testing. So, this is a coming change. Wednesday is a day to put your 2 cents into the discussion for changes you would like to see.
Someone suggested timed bans. But, we were told while possible it would be a complex change and not likely to happen in the near term. It obviously is not something the Lindens want to tackle. May be some day.
Oz says work is proceeding on the change to send email to only verified addresses. You may be getting email now. That does not mean you are verified. Go to your SL Dashboard and click Verify Me… See Account->Change Email->Verify button.
If you give a fake email address or fail to verify your address a Password Reset may not be possible. Forget your password, your screwed.
Oz says that ‘verification thing’ is handled by separate team. So, he doesn’t know if email verify will become part of the sign-up process or not. As far as he know, there is no plan to require email verification for using SL. But, the only way to get an email from LL is to be verified.
There is some talk about multi-factor authentication. The may do that some day.
“The large ban lists are a problem. For instance, as it is now it took 4 hours to clear 175 people from the list.”
If you click and hold you can delete blocks of names at a time ………..
Yeah, but the problem is selecting the names you want to remove. Not usually blocks of names.