Changes

Second Life’s Not So New News

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Yesterday Linden Lab posted  in their blog about new improvements coming to Second Life. If you follow my blog, Ciarans’s or Inara’s, you already know most of what they wrote about.

Snapshot_029
Snapshot_029

Project Valhalla is the project viewer where they are changing from Webkit to Chromium Embedded Framework (CEF). I’ve been writing about this change since 4/2014 (Reference – speculation). They Lab started talking publicly about the coming viewer change in early 2015.

Rendering Complexity / Quick Graphics – I’ve been writing about doing something like The Avatar Render Complexity feature since late 2014. I filed a feature request in December 2014 (BUG-7928). I doubt mine is the reason we got the feature. I suspect the reason for getting the feature was mostly discussion in Oz Linden’s Monday morning Open Source meeting. Whatever the case, it is close to being added to the main SL viewer.

Notifications – This viewer feature is a change in how we will receive notifications. This feature came on the radar in July 2015.

Mesh Importer – This improvement has been in discussion for a couple of months and made it to the main viewer a couple of months ago.

Inventory Robustness – It is hard to say when work on this change started. The Lab has worked on and been adding inventory improvements for a long time. This particular problem of losing no-copy-items that failed to rez is more recent.

If you follow the Server Deploys notices in the SL Forum, you probably had not have realized this feature rolled out.

HTTP Project – this is actually a much larger project than they convey in their post. It has been on going for a couple of years and appears will be continuing for some time. Parts get added as they are completed.

SecondLife.com – The SL Web Site is changing. They are removing Flash and if any QuickTime was used then likely that too. They are moving up to HTML5. CEF is how HTML5 handling is added to the viewer. These changes sort of go together. Parts of the web site are used by the SL Viewer, i.e., search, profiles, etc.

Since the viewer will real soon now be able to handle HTML5 via CEF it makes since for the web site to abandon Flash.

Not So New

Between Inara, Ciaran, and myself there are a few thousand SL Users that keep up on SL Development news. That is out of several hundred thousand monthly users. The SL Blog doesn’t show how many people have read a post. The forum does. It is rare any post in the forum gets a thousand readers. But, as the blog articles are in the splash screen of the SL Viewer, more people may read the blog.

So, while the news may be old to you, for most SL users their post is news.

Havok Bought – Means What to Second Life?

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You might know that Havok is the physics engine used by Second Life. It is the part of the system that figures out when the avatar bumps into a wall or walks on a floor and keeps the avatar from passing through.

It is the part that figures out when a bullet collides with us or misses. It makes balls roll. We see it in operation not only in Second Life buy in Call of Duty, Halo, and is used in movies like the Matrix. 

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Notifications Viewer

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Busy Bunnies
Busy Bunnies

The Second Life Notifications Viewer version 3.8.5.305555 is now a release candidate (RC). This is the version that provides a new Notifications floater that separates incoming notifications into Categories. It provides, according to the Lab, a better way to view, interact with, prioritize and manage incoming notices for busy residents.

I haven’t tried this one yet. I am looking forward to it. Now that it is an RC version I may install it. I’ll wait a couple of days to see if it installs itself as I have use RC’s checked.

How did Second Life Change Materials?

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There are gotcha’s in this latest main SL Viewer 3.8.4, in the mesh upload. You can use more than 8 materials now. Gaia Clary has changed AvaStar to export more than 8 materials. But, the announcement of that change comes with a warning: don’t.

POTETO_BackStage Pass - surfash.bade SOME KIND OF BOUNCER MAN
POTETO_BackStage Pass – surfash.bade SOME KIND OF BOUNCER MAN

Also Drongle McMahon commented on the problem and what happens when we exceed the allowable polygon limit per material for mesh items. See: Second Life’s Limits. 

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Second Life’s Limits

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In the SL Wiki there is a page titled LIMITS. This page lists most of the limits we encounter in SL. The page updated today to indicate the change from the main viewer with a new mesh uploader.

simple living room
simple living room – (in Second Life)

::Since viewer release 3.8.4, processing of meshes in the Collada file that have faces assigned to more than 8 materials has changed. Instead of simply dropping the extra material faces, the uploader now creates a new object to accommodate them. The result is that the single mesh is divided into multiple objects (prims) in a linkset (or coalesced object). Thus the limitation to 8 materials is removed as far as input is concerned, but still applies to each of the resulting linked objects actually uploaded. As a consequence it is now possible to upload a mesh with more than 174,752 triangles, although it will be divided into multiple objects. (Reference)

This sounds like a good change. But Drongle McMahon made this comment in my blog about the change (I’ve done a little editing on it – reference):

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Second Life Inventory Changes

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From the Third Party Developer’s meeting we learn a bunch of inventory changes are ready to roll out to RC testing. But, they are waiting on the HTML HTTP* viewer, Azumarill. Once the viewer is out, soon, the HTML HTTP part of these changes can start rolling to the servers.

For her Light...
For her Light…

This is another significant change in technology. For users it will be mostly transparent. You aren’t going to have new features or buttons, at least as far as I know. You will have fewer problems and inventory operations will be more reliable and I suspect quicker. Less chance of losing inventory. 

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