General News

Preparations for the 9^th Annual Christmas Expo are now underway. See REGISTRATION OPEN – 2019 SL Christmas Expo.

Updating the EEP RC Viewer – If you are running on Win-10 v1903 with NVIDIA and update the EEP viewer as it requires by clicking OK, it will trash your video settings. I mean your screen will go wonky and require a computer restart to reset it. The NVIDIA reset (Win Key)+Ctrl+Shift+B won’t help.

Avoid the problem and download the EEP RC Viewer from the Alternate Second Life Viewers page. You can install over the top of the prior install.

AvaStar – Welcome to Avastar 2.79, the new release, July 14, 2019. This will be the last release for Blender 2.79. With this release the version numbering changes. I suppose the point is to make it easier to know which AvaStar works with which Blender.

AvaStar 2.79 will NOT work with Blender 2.80 and above. The next version of AvaStar will be 2.80 and it is being designed to work with Blender 2.80 and up.

Shergood Aviation – New waypoints have been released. These are server-side changes. So, various aircraft do not have to be updated. This is primarily a help to H-160 and Chinook pilots and GPS HUD users. It will be of less importance to older craft but, still a nice improvement.

A notice was sent to the Shergood Aviation group (SLURL) members explaining how to make use of the new waypoint system. To get a copy, join the group, look in Notices.

Topless Cruise – Cruises start weekly Tuesdays 1PM SLT (21:00 BST / 22:00 CEST) – To get updates, join the group Topless Cruisers.  (SLURL)

Sailors are welcome to change wind direction. I try to make it without changing wind direction. For me, it depends on whether or not I hit some laggy regions where I cannot maintain control of the boat.

Everyone is welcome to the after-party. This week it is (‘was’ depending on when I get this published) at Twice Bitten Villa. (URL)

Servers

Again… no Deploys post.

My home region in the main channel was restarted this morning. It is running version Second Life Server 19.06.14.528215, which is the same version as last week and the week before.

Blue Steel is running the same version as of Tuesday morning. I presume Le Tigre and Magnum are also. I will have to look tomorrow to see if they change.

Aah Ha. Simon Linden at the Server-Scripting UG says we will get an update on the Magnum channel Wednesday. Saying, “a tiny performance boost … one crash fix, an esoteric TP failure fix, update a system library … general fix-it stuff that isn’t likely to be visible.”

Simon also points out that various employees are on vacation. So, some projects, like Scripts Run %, are not being worked on.

Viewers

The main viewer is version 6.2.3.527758, week #27. (Wednesday, June 5, 2019)

This Linden Viewer has the same region boundary-crossing issue that the New Firestorm has. The same Debug Settings as I list below for Firestorm also work in the Linden Viewer.

• Bakes On Mesh – 6.3.0.529185 – NEW – Thursday, July 11, 2019 or late week #28.
• EEP – 6.4.0.529247 – New – Monday, July 15, 2019 or week #29.
• Love Me Render – 6.2.4.529302 – New – Monday, July 15, 2019 or week #29. This version has about a dozen rendering fixes.
• Maintenance – 6.2.4.528492 – Thursday, June 27, 2019, week #26.
• Second Life Project 360 Snapshot – 6.2.4.529111 – New – Tuesday, July 16, 2019, week #29. See the Release Notes for instructions on using it. This candidate disappeared for a bit. It had not been updated for over a year. This version catches it up with the other candidates. I suspect little if any work was on the 360-camera.
• Second Life Project Legacy Profiles – 6.2.3.527749 – Released Wednesday, June 5, 2019, week #23.

Other Viewers

Kokua Releases 6.2.3.45800 (RLV) and 45801 (RLV/FTRLV) – This version has a number of fixes for sound issues.

Firestorm Viewer Release x64 6.2.4.57588 – We have a new Firestorm Viewer version. It does not yet have EEP or BoM. It does have a lot of fixes and new stuff. For all the details see Inara’s Living in a Modem World. Inara usually runs the beta/RC version to have a review ready for release day.

Download – Windows, Apple, and Linux flavors are available. There are Second Life and OpenSim versions. The SL and OS versions are NOT interchangeable.

The region crossing programming has changed in Firestorm. In Preferences->Move & View->Movement the “Movement at region crossing: Predict or Stop” has changed behavior. If you are using Predict, you may notice the change.

To understand what is happening, consider how the region simulator moves you from one server to another. When you teleport, use a Landmark or click the map, the screen blanks while the server for the region collects all the information about you and hands it off to the destination server. Things reappear once the destination server has all the information and is processing your presence. This can take several seconds.

The same process has to happen when you cross a region boundary leaving one region and entering another. The process takes the same amount of time. To make crossings appear more ‘realistic’ or ‘natural’ the viewer tries to fill in what is happening for the couple of seconds the servers are dealing with the data transfer. It is extrapolating to predict where your avatar is. Walking, driving, sailing, or flying the avatar motion is tracked in the current region and projected into the destination region.

When the destination region catches up and begins updating the viewer then we find out well the viewer did or didn’t predict our motion. The error is seen as a rubber band effect, the avatar or avatar and vehicle snapping into the position the destination server is using.

Firestorm’s “Movement at region crossing” setting gives us a choice to enable the viewer’s prediction algorithm or turn it off. The option has been in Firestorm for a time now. This version of Firestorm changed the algorithm. People noticed.

The change is in a setting that controls how the prediction algorithm handles time, how long the crossing takes. Debug Setting: RegionCrossingInterpolationTime. (code section – URL) (bug report FIRE-24184 – URL)

The result is Firestorm’s default Predict setting (1 sec) now behaves as Stop-Lite… which annoys sailors. Word is this setting can be bumped to 2 seconds and provide a more pleasant crossing. You’ll have to experiment. To get the type of behavior seen in FS 6.0.2 you need to set the value to 2 or 3 and possibly up to 5 seconds.

This version is an install over the previous version type install. If you have problems you will need to do a clean install. The install pass takes a couple of minutes.

Note: the FS Wiki has conflicting instructions on installing. In the wiki’s generalized install instructions, a clean install is recommended. The download page has instructions calling for installing over the existing install. I suggest you install over the prior version. If you have problems then go for an “uninstall” then install the new version. Only if this fails do you move on to a clean install.

I said more about the Firestorm Viewer here, Firestorm Viewer v6.2.4 Released July 12, 2019.