We’ve reached the midpoint of the year… and I forgot to hit the publish button… until now.
The main channel is getting an update to #18.06.14.516450. This update has Internal Fixes and Logging Improvements… so likely more data collection things.
Long Term Memory
Blue Steel, Le Tigre, and Magnum will get an update to #18.06.22.516968. This update is preparation for the release of Animesh. Specifically said to be;
- Animesh Support!
- Find the latest Animesh Viewer here http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Linden_Lab_Official:Alternate_Viewers
- Contains new Main Channel code
Some land owners are noticing their regions restarting twice when the updates roll out. See BUG-134297 – Issue with region restarting then restarting again with version change.
Seems one restarts lands the region on a new host and a second restart updates the simulator version it is running.
EEP – Environmental Enhancement Project, is getting more interest. While it has been explained numerous times over the past few months it is only now that more people are becoming aware of it. Of course, they asked all the previously answered questions.
There is a forum thread on EEP, Question on EEP. Good place to ask questions. I’ve written about EEP here. But, as yet only as part of other articles. So, the EPP info here has to be found via search or tags.
Rider Linden has been working on EEP. A problem in the backend code has been holding up the project. Rider thinks he has that solved and is moving forward again. “…Some of the backend code to support new inventory objects has already entered QA.”
Rider said, “The environment on a parcel will completely override the region’s. You may define one water and up to 4 day “tracks”. Each track represents a different altitude, ground level, 1000m, 2000m and 3000m.”
There is some confusion in people’s minds about what that means. But, elevation 0m to 999.99m is ground level. 1,000m to 1,999.99m is the 1,000m track and so on. Consider that .99 as anything less than the bottom of the next track above.
Each of these zones can have its own Windlight-EEP settings, sky and atmosphere. Only the ground level will allow a water setting. Tracks (zones) without an explicit setting will use the one from below.
Parcel settings override regions settings. Scripted settings for individuals override both parcel and region settings.
Laggy Regions – There was considerable discussion about getting a tool to tell land owners, and possibly others, which scripts were using up region resources. It would be a handy troubleshooting tool. This will likely get more discussion next week.
Viewers
The main version is now 5.1.6.516459. This was the Unloop RC Viewer. It jumped up to the main viewer replacing the previous 5.1.5.515811 released in week #23, which is the updated render engine viewer.
Second Life Maintenance Viewer version 5.1.7.516813 – This is an update of a previous version of the RC 5.1.6.516459 released in week #24. Code name: Pálinka. The release notes are here. There are a bunch of fixes, over two dozen.
Second Life Project 360 Snapshot Viewer version 5.1.6.515934 – Last updated in week #10.
Second Life Project Animesh Viewer version 6.0.0.516979 – The previous version released in week #24 was 5.1.6.516525. This version is very likely the intended Animesh release viewer. I suspect if things go well for the server update and this viewer version we’ll see it quickly released and the release of Animesh. Zombies are going to be much more scary.
Second Life Project Bakes On Mesh Viewer version 5.1.6.516270 – This version was released in week #25.
Third-Party Viewers
Black Dragon 64x – Update 3.1.7 “Selective Dragon” – This is an update that quickly followed version 3.1.6. Click this last link for a description of this update.
The big thing in the 3.1.6 update is the changes to the Poser/Animator. NiranV has met with the Lindens. They are looking into adding the feature to the main viewer. There idea for how it is to work and how it will be used are different than NiranV’s. If you know NiranV, you know what that means.
NiranV is doing good work on making this an easy to use Pose-Animation tool. Each iteration has gotten better. But, now we start to deal with permissions and things will likely get complicated.
Consider. I buy a sit pose that has my hand on my leg. But, in world my hand floats a bit above my leg. That problem with poses is they do not scale. So, a pose has to be made for specific size avatar and doesn’t quite work for any other size.
I can use the Poser in BD to move the hand down to rest on my leg. Now. Should I be able to save that pose no cost? Or pay an upload cost to save the pose/animation? Pay the original author something for the adjust pose? Can I sell the pose?
These questions get tricky. The answers affect the design and usability of the Poser-Animator in BD.
This problem leads NiranV to propose that the pose adjustments be sync’d with the server. Make a change, that change is sent to the server and relayed to all other viewers. But, the server only tells the viewers what pose or animation the avatar is using. It has no idea what the avatar is actually doing.
You can see this when you try to walk through a wall. You can’t. The server knows where the avatar is, how big it is (somewhat), and where the wall is. So, it can calc when the two collide. But, if you start a dance animation while standing next to the wall, you’ll dance right through the wall. The servers do not know what the animation is doing with the avatar. So, it sees no collision.
To detect a collision caused by the animation would require a huge change to the system and a major increase in the data flow. I can’t see the Lab ever going down that road.
Firestorm – The last release was in late January this year. So, we are past the stated goal for a new release. I do see a new set of wiki updates that suggests a release is near. But, those are not a certain indicator. But, we are now six months from the last release.
Other News
There was maintenance (6/26 10AM SLT) on user profiles, which may have causes some issues using profiles. That was completed by 11:30 AM.