Second Life – Third-Party Dev’s UG 2017 w32

Not much change in the viewer status this past week. The Lindens were having their planning summit (week #32). So, work hours were being expended on planning, not production.

The Alex Ivy viewer, the 64-bit viewer, hopefully, updates next week (#33). It has some fixes being QA’d this weekend. The viewer is crashy for some, not others. I guess I’m an other…

They have put stuff in the coming update hoping to catch the bug(s).

1001 Arabian Nights

1001 Arabian Nights

Looks like Maintenance Viewer will be the one to promote. We’ve heard that for a couple of weeks.

Voice Viewer is suffering high crash rates. Lindens have yet to figure out why. So, it is iterating through changes.

The 360-Image Viewer is on hold due to vacations. And when the vacationer comes back he’ll have to fix some CEF stuff first. So, expect this to be on idle for a couple more weeks.

There is some excitement around the LSL HTTP Request function. Problems came from the move to a new OS, some from Linden changes, and some from legacy low-level code. The Lindens believe they have it mostly sorted. But, some problems are still being worked through.

Once another change is added Oz Linden will be blogging about the HTTP Req problem and informing the community about a test period on ADITI.

The current general focus for the next couple of months is on things that crash simulators and infrastructure things. Most are things users can’t see.

The Lindens are sensitive to people thinking work has stopped on SL. It hasn’t. They will be making changes that people can see. But, I don’t expect anything big… beyond what I have already been writing about, Animesh and Windlight…

There was a discussion about a bug that allowed griefers to set a home location and circumvent being banned or ejected from that region. It was being recommended that some control be implemented to prevent griefers from setting a home location…

The Lindens think it is better to stop entry of banned people and eliminate loop holes.

If you are aware of people using a home location to defeat a ban, write it up and get it in the JIRA. The Lindens consider such work-a-rounds bugs and will fix them.

Short meeting… lots of rambling discussion in the last half… 15 minutes. Not much reportable or interesting news.

4 thoughts on “Second Life – Third-Party Dev’s UG 2017 w32

  1. I know SL is doing stuff. At least, I’ve noticed it more so in the past few to several years. I think one factor is that SL has been around since 2003. For a platform that has been around for that long and is also very complex, the feeling of this slow development progression sinks in. Some people can live with the current state and progression of things. Others have high expectations.

    And, of course, third-parties are doing things, too. They’ve added features into the viewer that LL never has probably because of LL’s priorities or maybe they just left it in the hands of the community.

    Didn’t Linden Lab have an official meeting recently about their plans for development? How did that turn out? Did they disclose their plans or are they going to leave people in the dark? We already know about their project viewers, Animesh, Windlight improvements, etc. What does the long-term development roadmap look like beyond what is already known?

    I wonder if LL should have a “Vote for Features” poll or tracking site to see what people really want. Cloud Party setup a part of their site with a very similar vote system. Users could submit features and then people could up-vote that feature along with providing additional comments. The more votes, the more likely it would be considered for implementation. I don’t know if the current JIRA is the best place for such stuff.

    • The Lab used to provide their 5-year plan. That changed a few years ago. If they have a long range plan I suspect it is generalized. They haven’t provided details of the current plan. They have said the next two months will mostly be infrastructure work.

      The Lindens don’t do vote for features. Oz Linden has expressed his experience dealing with users when it comes to what they want. He points out there is no clear way to determine what users want as many simply do not understand the system. Users are contradictory.

      Since Oz is in charge SL development pretty much conforms to what he believes works best. That is simply, provide a Feature Request with well-explained user cases and clear statements of why a feature is needed. Staff then decides how many people they think will use the feature and sets development priorities. Additionally, staff determines what is causing them grief and blocking their efforts. From that, we got updated Libraries for the server and viewer compilers. They collect performance data and determine where bottlenecks are and work to remove them.

      When ACI was proposed as a sort of Consumer Reports to give users a sense of the quality of clothes and attachments built and used in SL, the idea popped and the current ACI was developed.

      The JIRA is the ONLY place for feature requests. Since only JIRA entries are tracked and triaged, it is BEST way because it is the ONLY way.

  2. “He points out there is no clear way to determine what users want as many simply do not understand the system.”

    But hasn’t the Content UG meetings been all about sharing ideas and finding a common ground to achieve cool new features? Is this because the system was explained to the creators in order to come up with some sort of reasoning?

    • Not really. The UG meetings are more about figuring out how a feature should work after the Lindens decide to add it.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *