Second Life News 2017 w35

I’m a day late… busy with other things. I try to get the update out on Tuesday. That gives the Lindens a day to look at data from the weekend and decide what gets updates rolled out or queued for more attention.

Servers

The main channel was restarted and updated to #17.08.11.328152. This adds the MIME Type changes for HTTP with LSL talked about here: MIME Type changes for HTTP with LSL.

As of the time I am writing this a package for Blue Steel and Le Tigre has yet to be decided on.

● i see you ●

● i see you ●

Magnum will get #17.08.22.507928, internal fixes… Simon Linden says there are no user-visible changes… Apparently, the changes are switching built tools. Sort of like building the same car on a different assembly line.

If you are into the tech on your region, you may have noticed restarting regions restart faster now. I hear it takes about 6 to 7 minutes. But, regions are doing double restarts. The region restarts but comes back online with the same version as before the restart. Then an hour or so later restarts again then comes up running the new version.

Some region owners have noticed this duel restart cycles for the last 6 weeks or so. I think Lucia Nightfire will be filing a JIRA with logs from the recent restarts. If you have logs of your region’s double restart, please add them to the JIRA.

Qie and I disagree on the need for cache clears. So, I asked if all assets are now delivered by HTTP, the error correcting protocol. If so, there would be almost no reason to ever clear the cache. Only user-side computer failures would create a problem.

Seems almost all assets other than note cards are now delivered via the HTTP protocol. Most of those HTTP delivered assets are also arriving from CDN servers. (Content Delivery Network) Just recently sounds, gestures, animations, landmarks, and shapes were added to the HTTP/CDN channel.

Animations

The conversation about what is delivered by HTTP+CDN touched on a concern about animation delivery speed and animation syncing. Several have requested an LSL function to allow preloading of animations just as we preload sounds. This would give us more control over when an animation starts.

The primary goal of animators is to find a way to sync animations for multiple avatars and ‘things’. For the Lindens the concern is in knowing which animations to sync with which.

Consider two couples dancing, Avatars A & B, and C & D. If they are using the same animations, boys A & C and girls B & D, how does one know whether to sync A with B or C? Or sync all four? And what if the animation for B & D is longer than the animation for A & C? It gets complicated.

Syncing is done mostly in the viewer. Also, syncing is usually achieved by simply by the viewer restarting the animations. That is how the sync in the Firestorm viewer works. There is nothing similar in the Linden viewer.

Also, there is nothing that syncs animations across viewers. You and I will not necessarily see the same movements happening at the same time. Line dancers are synced by the nature of the viewer. All lane dancers are running the same animation. Your viewer downloads it and starts all those running the animation as soon as it finishes downloading. Thus, a simultaneous start and apparent sync without any deliberate sync action.

Several of us are hoping for better controls in the future.

The sync-thing will be more of a problem when Animesh is released. There will more complex things being animated and an increasing need to control synchronization for all users. Plus, the FS re-sync is only for avatars. Animesh items would not be synced. So, something needs to change.

Viewers

The main viewer is now 5.0.7.328060, previously the Maintenance RC Viewer. The prior version was 5.0.6.326593.

Second Life Alex Ivy Viewer version 5.1.0.507412 – No updates since last week.

Second Life Voice Viewer version 5.0.7.327253 – No updates since last week.

Second Life Project 360 Snapshot Viewer version 5.1.0.506743 – No updates since last week.

We expect to see a new Maintenance RC Viewer come out of internal QA this week. (see it below) We will also see a round of updates for the RC’s as the changes in the default 5.0.7.328060 are added to all the RC’s.

I understand there has been a lot of work on crash fixing. Now work is about why not all crash reports are being sent and changes to the launcher program that figures out if you use 32 or 64-bit version of the viewer and downloads the right version.

Alex Ivy is closer to release. We just don’t know how close…

8/30 – Second Life Maintenance Viewer version 5.0.8.328612 – This RC appeared about 5:30 Aug 29. Whoever is writing the version descriptions has wit and a sense of humor. Nice. I suspect Steven Linden, but I can’t be certain.

Moonshine was originally a slang term used to describe high-proof distilled spirits usually produced illicitly, without government authorization. In recent years, however, moonshine has been legalized in various countries and has become a term of art. Legal in the United States since 2010, moonshine is defined as “clear, unaged whiskey”.

This deploy is filled with a jigger of crash fixes, a splash of translation fixes and a kick that will make you say “I can’t feel my face anymore!”

There are over a dozen fixes in this release. Several or in what I would class the ‘Odd Annoyance’ category. Release Notes.

Firestorm is getting various BitBucket updates, which often proceed a version release. Since the last update was mid-June, it is likely we’ll see a release in mid to late September. That is only a couple of weeks…

 

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