Second Life News 2018 w22

Monday was a US holiday, Memorial Day. So, today is the Lab’s first workday this week. As of 10 AM SLT this morning there is no Deploy post. But, there is some HOT new news today. See the Other News section.

From the Server-Scripting meeting, Simon Linden: Let’s see … for server news, we had a rollback last week of the RC channels for a bug.  I think there was a post somewhere about that. We’re going to have updates out tomorrow that have that fixed … and possibly another release that has a few other items in it.  It’s all internal changes, as far as I know.

Concrete studied under orange light - 3

Concrete studied under orange light – 3

Viewers

Second Life Love Me Render Viewer version 5.1.5.515528 – This an update from the previous version 5.1.4.514788 released in week #16.

Second Life Maintenance Viewer version 5.1.5.515527 – Last updated in week #21.

Second Life Project 360 Snapshot Viewer version 5.1.3.513006 – Last updated in week #10.

Second Life Project Animesh Viewer version 5.1.4.515420 – Released week #16.

Second Life Project Bakes On Mesh Viewer version 5.1.3.513936 – Last updated in week #14. 

Third-Party Viewers

The Firestorm wiki has 63 updates since I last looked, about a week ago. So, I think we are close to a new viewer version release.

There is a new Ubuntu page for an Alex Ivy Linux viewer. I don’t know if there is such a viewer version. But, it suggests there is or might be someday.

Kokua Release 5.1.4.43398 (RLV) and 5.1.4.43399 (NORLV) including Alex Ivy for Linux is an update on Kokua.

The Kokua Linux version has some known problems, which they are working on.

Cool VL Viewer-1.26.22.6-Windows-x86_64-Setup.exe (2018-05-26, 90Mb) – Windows 64-bit.

Other News

You may notice there are a number of people making backdrops for SL photography. Chic Aeon mentions this in a post, Black White and Red All Over. The cute outfits are BnW and the set is red. Scroll to the bottom of the article to see the pose backdrop.

I’m finding these photo-props here and there around the grid.

EEP – Enhanced Environment Project – Rider says he is working on a backend issue that is blocking progress. Oz mentions that fixing the backend blocker is a high priority for reasons beyond just EEP.

The EEP code is available to Third-Party devs. Presumably that are looking at the code and thinking about implementing it.

Oz Linden said, “… once we’ve gotten that fixed, we’ll deploy the backends that it depends on (simulator and inventory at least), and then put out a Project Viewer. My hope/expectation is that the Project stage will go well and we’ll get feedback quickly.

In regard to when we will see EEP rollout Oz said, “If it’s not less than 6 months, I’ll be very unhappy.” This is pretty specific for Oz.

EEP introduces a new inventory type called “Settings”.  These settings may be applied to a region or parcel to alter the Windlight settings. And there are four 1,000m zones vertically that can have their own Windlight (WL) settings. “… However, scripts can be used to alter the environment for an individual user” said Rider Linden.

An interesting new bit is Rider saying, “The script functions to modify an agent’s environment will require an experience however.

Rider explains about sun control, “You can set arbitrary paths for both the sun and the moon.  Day cycles consist of a series of fixed skys.  Each sky has a sun and a moon position.  In transitioning from sky to sky the sun or the moon will follow the great circle from one position to the next.  If that is a progress from east to west, then that is the path the sun will take.  If you like you could also make the Khalisi happy and cause the sun to rise in the west and set in the east.

He also explains, “You will be able to change the moon texture.

The question came up about whether EEP will be able to override the viewer settings. Oz Linden explained, “Anything can be overridden by the viewer. It’s just a practical thing, …. the viewer is what does rendering, so it has the ultimate control.

Grid Wide Experiences – Many of us have been looking forward to grid wide experiences. Oz Linden comments that this feature will be part of the Premium Member package. So, to create a grid-wide experience you’ll have to have a Premium Membership. Anyone, Premium or not, will be able to use the experience.

Currently Premium members can create local experiences. From what Oz says it will stay that way.

The feature is a lower priority than EEP and not getting much attention right now.

Simon Linden tells us he is part of the holdup on grid-wide. His concern is a highly successful ‘experience’ could crash the system. What would happen is the Key-Value database would overload.

Those Internal Changes – For sometime we have ben hearing about server updates described as internal changes. Today I heard Oz say, “We’re working on lots of changes for premium… some of the “internal” changes are prep for that.

I wonder how many the changes are for coming Premium changes and how many are for security. It is hard to know. Oz does tease. But, this is a new bit of information for me.

Online Friends – This is a bug that is biting more and more people. BUG-7557Online Friends are not showing when login (Once again).

As a workaround you can IM a friend and the list will repopulate with the correct status. In general this is a region-by-region problem. If a region doesn’t give you an accurate Friends List, it has to be restarted to resolve the behavior.

Simon Linden said, “There’s work going on to convert that to a cap so it’s more reliable, I believe.

Seems there is drama developing from this bug. People thinking their friends/lovers/partners/whatever aren’t online leads to drama. Think about that… I’m imagining someone waking in on someone else doing things when they expected to get away with it.

Simon suggests you check the SL website as the friends list is more likely to be correct. Could avoid a divorce.

Group Chats – We seem to be getting more group chat fails. New JIRA reports on the issue are showing up.

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