This past Friday there was a third-party developers meeting. There wasn’t much new news. But there was a discussion of the teleport disconnect problem many are experiencing. More about that later.

Servers

Bugsly Linden made the Deploys Post this week. It is still marked as a ‘placeholder’…

The main channel is to be on version #19.04.09.526122, an update over last week (15).

Last week a number of us had the impression the rollout had fixes for the teleport disconnect problem. And the week before that the RC’s had a version with such a fix. At the dev’s meeting, the Lindens were surprised that is what we thought. Well, DUH! Can’t imagine where we got that idea.

However we came to that idea, it is wrong. The Lindens do not have a fix. What they were rolling out is improved logging to detect the problem. We are seeing that this week’s update has more logging targeting the problem. From the discussion at the dev meeting, I have the impression the Lab is putting a lot of effort into tracking down the problem. Oz Linden is on it, which I think is something.

In the Server-Scripting UG, Simon said, “We have some good info on the underlying causes and are working on fixes, but don’t have a real improvement yet.

It usually fails as the viewer and 2nd region don’t start communication properly, so I’ve been digging through that code and all the ways it can fail … that’s my life lately.

I’m sure I’ll have something new for testing in a day or two so hopefully, next week’s updates will be better, or at minimum give better information.

I’d like to be able to make it around that LH [Linden Homes] continent … [Simon was sailing around the new continent – trying] that seems like a reasonable goal.   Not easy, but something to shoot for.”

In the server compile process, there was a glitch and the UDP code was left in. So, while the Lindens thought they were turning off UDP inventory and asset fetching, they didn’t. So, we will have UDP for another week or two.

Blue Steel, Le Tigre, and Magnum at the time I write this the version for these channels is TBD.

Viewers

The default viewer is 6.1.1.525446 released in week #14.

Second Life Bakes On Mesh Viewer version 6.1.1.525409 – Released week #13.

Second Life EAM Viewer version 6.2.0.526190 – New. Previous update week #13. The Lindens are thinking this is the most likely viewer to become to default viewer.

Second Life EEP Viewer version 6.2.0.526104 – New. The previous version released in week #11.

This is the EEP version we have been wanting. A new feature is added… BANG! This is going to work. Personal Lighting is the feature. These are the controls we need to change sun position for those tweaked photos. This feature is very much like the Windlight panel that lets us adjust an existing environment to suit our artistic sense.

Check it out.

On Sun/Moon position sliders… there are none. The two sliders have been built into 3D representations of the Sun and Moon positions. The little sun or moon in the UI can be drug to where ever you want them. The arrow icons let you move them when they are behind the planet.

Second Life Maintenance Viewer version 6.1.1.525401 – Released week #13.

Second Life Project 360 Snapshot Viewer version 5.1.6.515934 – Last updated in 2018 week #10. Now on the back burner for over one year.

Other Viewers

Black Dragon – Has updated. This one is listed as mostly a bug-fix version. Plus, it has better frames rates. Better mesh selection. Revised head-tracking (think where you look – ±NSFW).

Niran is on about how bad EEP is in this post. Salt Niran’s rant. Many of his complaints are invalidated by this latest release of the EEP viewer. And there are some valid points. You’ll have to try both viewers to see what you think.

I am at the point where I think of Black Dragon as the best rendering viewer, gorgeous. Firestorm remains the most popular because it is the intermediate to power user version with an easy to use Photo Tools panel that makes it the photographers first choice. Black Dragon has just too high a learning curve. But it has REALLY NEAT features.

Cool VL Viewer 1.26.22.43 – Released 2019-04-13. Henri says this is an update and bug-fix version all users should update to. This version has a change/fix to reduce ‘spurious disconnects’.

Firestorm – There is an EEP viewer in testing. I am still curious about how they will update Photo Tools. The Linden’s latest EEP RC Viewer shows it will be possible to have an updated set of tools.

Singularity is changing. They have tried to build in fixes for the stop-watch disconnect. I think they have it but, you must use a nightly build to get that version. I’m not sure how they class their nightly builds. Some consider them an alpha or beta versions. You can get a nightly build here. Build 7509 – 4/16 is the latest.

Niran says Singularity has the best FPS of all the viewers… neat.