Second Life News 2017 w10

Servers

Who knows? The Second Life blog/forum is still off line. There is no ETA for its return. Every week or so they post in Grid Status about it being down. Duh! And that it is taking longer than expected to get it going. The excuse is they want to be sure they get it right… the post must be written by a former politician… They blew the time estimate. Software developers ALWAYS run into unexpected problems.

I'll stop the world and melt with you

I’ll stop the world and melt with you

The Grid status seems to be on automatic so, update or not it tells us there is an update. My region device tells me the main channel region I live in has not restarted since 2/24. So, no roll to main channel today (Tuesday) as of 10 AM SLT/PT.

Viewers

The main Linden viewer for Second Life™ has updated to version 5.0.2.324126 from version 5.0.1.323027. The previous version was mostly fixes, but included new features; change in Abuse Reporting, Appearance Panel behavior is sticky, Pay Floater, Build Floater key cycling, and the combat fix for weapons reverted to the more historic behavior.

This version adds several new features and of course fixes some problems. (Release Notes) The new features are; the ability to set custom folders for uploaded items, World Map gets a link to Events, Appearance mode got some fixes, the viewer’s Damage indicator now works the same across all viewers, URI for avatar names changes so viewer settings don’t mess up the URI, added a ‘number of blocked’ to the blocked avatar list with max possible blocks, the sun now moves smoothly, a number of fixes in the Build floater, and a couple of dozen other User Interface annoyances and misbehaviors were fixed.

Some details…

You select your upload folders by right-clicking a folder and selecting the type of upload. You can check your Upload Settings in Preferences->Uploads.

In Appearance, the avatar will now display after an inventory refresh… I suppose this is something about the avatar appearing as particles. There was also a problem with changes in attached items not getting saved, that is supposed to be fixed. There is now a cap on an attachment’s render weight… Complexity limit… Sound scary? This is a griefer block. The cap is set at 1,000,000.

If I understand the new cap, no single attachment can exceed a Complexity of a million. But, you could have an avatar with a number of complex attachments that exceeds a million for total complexity. I’ll never see them as I think complexity over 350k is unnecessary.

Using Firestorm, I can render an avatar that exceeds my limit, right-click the Jelly-Doll and select Full Render. I almost always see an avatar that looks way simpler than I expect. I am sure I could get the exact same look for less than 100k. I am convinced the ACI limits are NOT limiting our appearance. We can get most any look we want for under 100k.

So, the cap set at a million is definitely only a griefer eliminator.

Using it…

I had to download this version. I hadn’t used the previous version as I have been using Firestorm and Alex Ivy (Linden 64-bit). I was still on 5.0.0.

To check performance, I stand on my front porch and let the scene totally render and wait for the UDP data flow to hit a minimum. At that point this version makes about 61 FPS.

RC Viewers

There are no RC Viewers listed as of today. The Love Me Render Viewer version 5.0.2.323361 and Maintenance Viewer version 5.0.2.323567 have disappeared from the alternate viewers page. I assume they were rolled into the current 5.0.2.324126.

That leaves us with only 2 Project Viewers:

Second Life Project 360 Snapshot Viewer version 4.1.3.321712 – This version has not updated. It is the one that has been hold so people could work on the 64-bit Alex Ivy.

Second Life Project Alex Ivy Viewer version 5.1.0.501863 – This version also has not updated. The Lindens had hit some problems they wanted fixed before they released a newer version.

I use Firestorm and Alex Ivy most of the time. On my porch, Alex Ivy makes about 100-115 FPS. Firestorm makes about 150-210 FPS in the same place. It seems the 64-bit viewers are considerably faster.

The new 32-bit Linden 5.0.2.324126 makes about 30 FPS in a crowd of 35 avatars, The Alex Ivy 64-bit makes about 40 with 37 avatars, and Firestorm about 85 FPS with 37 avatars.

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