April

(77 Articles) – CHUI is still having problems at this point. The Lindens were thinking one more Beta Viewer version would be needed. In week 14 the CHUI made it to the main viewer.

We got word in April that Rod Humble was talking to the Oculus Rift people. In December we got word that the Oculus Viewer was feature complete and that we might see a RC version of the viewer in January 2014.

As the month progresses it becomes more certain that the Lab will be implementing an interface for the Oculus Rift. See: Oculus Rift in Second Life. On April 24th Hamlet Au in New World Notes confirmed with the Lab that and Oculus Rift Interface is being built. See: More Second Life Oculus Rift.

SSA or Server-Side Appearance got a name change in April. It went from Baking to Appearance.

We got word this month that the Lab would attempt to do something to fix the Z-axis avatar adjustment, which it seems SSA is breaking. In the last half of April Nyx Linden, on personal time, adds an avatar-offset to the avatar shape settings. While the course nature of the settings prevents joyful acceptance of the feature, the feature solves the more egregious avatar-height problems. See: Second Life Avatar Offset.

SSA moved into a beta viewer in week 16. Nyx Linden explained the ETA for SSA would be highly dependent on how quickly third party viewer develops could implement the feature.

SSA was released in the Firestorm Viewer in week 17. Also, Firestorm’s removal of the avatar-height control from their viewer brings the problem to the attention of many more people.

SSA was executed to resolve Bake Fail. But there are still some problems that are causing bake fail. See Current Outfit Folder (COF): COF Corruption

Another part of the Interest List project rolls out to the main channel, week 14.This package was to fix problems with some objects not rendering.

Early in April we saw more prims that failed to render unless clicked on. It turned out this problem is a viewer side issue with the Interest List.

In week 15 we got word that Interest List II was starting to wind its way through QA & RC.

The new AO functions roll out to RC channels. A Beta Viewer became available in week 14. For information on the new functions see: New AO Stuff 2013-14. In week 15 the server side package with these functions was removed while fixes were made.

More drama breaks out in the Mesh Deformer JIRA thread. See: Mesh Deformer Update 2013-14.

This was also the month that Karl Stiefvates addressed the problem of the Mesh Deformer having a 2 to 4 minute delay. It didn’t. See: Mesh Deformer Update 2013-16.

Direct Delivery was out and Magic Boxes were starting to be phased out.

In week 14 region crossings for vehicles had improved. New roll outs were helping.

As April started the Materials Project still did not have a project viewer available to users. But, on the 8^th a project viewer (3.5.1) for Materials was released. It was buggy and came with a warning regarding its use. See: Materials Project Viewer Out – Breaking. As the months progressed the project viewer was updated and more problems were fixed. But, we were warned by Oz Linden to stick with the project viewers found on the Alternate Viewers page.

OpenSim begin adding Materials support.

This month it was more obvious that the speed of viewer update releases was holding up other aspects of Second Life. This is another push on the Lab toward developing a better release process for viewers.

Auto-update for the viewer debuted. In hindsight we will realize this was an incremental step in a new viewer rollout process.

This month Linden lab released Troobles Pigs.

April has the event Fantasy Fair.

The HTTP package rolled out to the main channel in week 16. Numerous problems that probably have nothing to do with HTTP package are blamed on the rollout. For this to the problem see: Second Life News 2013-16 #2.

In April I wrote tutorial about Second Life Avatar Shape Export. See: Second Life Shape Export. There’s a pretty much hidden gotcha in shape export that probably bites a lot of people.

In April a new KirstenLee Viewer S19 (404) Blackbird was released. Drama storm erupted around it.