Category Archives: Changes

Virtual Landmarks

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There is a new proposal on the Linden table. It comes from Toysoldier Thor and can be found in the JIRA as: SVC-8082 – Proposed Global Service for SL:  VIRTUAL LANDMARKS & VLM Mapping Services.

The Problem

Consider what happens when you have a home or shop in-world and your landlord decides to return the land to Linden Lab or for some other reason you have to move. The land is either going to disappear and all your stuff will be returned or your shop or home will be gone. You find a new house, apartment, and/or shop. There is little that can be done to stop that process.

Current Landmark Flow – By Toysoldier Thor – Click to Enlarge

But, consider. What about all the Landmarks that point to your shop or whatever that no longer exists? What do you do with the dozens to thousands of links in the Market Place to your non-existent shop? Did you know there is no easy way to just change the landmark you have included with a product you have for sale? You have to reload the entire product package.

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Second Life Changes Coming

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After a long day at the San Diego fair, getting home at 6AM, and then sleeping until noon I find we have a new technology announcement from Linden Lab. You can find it here: Project Shining to Improve Avatar and Object Streaming Speeds.

They have tried to tone down the geek speak. So, it is readable. If you are still wondering what it means for you and the future, well… I can give you my take and speculation.

Sunrise by: Sean MacEntee – Flickr

The Lab has divided the new work into 3 groups called the Shining Projects:

  • Project Sunshine
  • Object Caching
  • HTTP Library

Sunshine

Project Sunshine is changes coming out the research done for Cloudy, Blurry, Avatars. I started writing about Cloudy-Blurry as a subject in March as Charlar separated from the Lab and Nyx Linden took over the Content & Mesh group. (#SL Clouds, Grey, and Blurry Avatars)

Early in the year we started to see more problems with avatars failing to rez. The term Bake Fail became well known across the grid.

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#SL Pathfinding Update Week 20

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The Lindens were not overly happy with my explanation of Pathfinding (PF) to Hamlet (see: SL Pathfinding a Potential “Tsunami” (If We’re Not Prepared)). I didn’t expect it to get quoted when I wrote it. So, I took less time with it than I would have if I knew it would appear on Hamlet’s blog. Hamlet ask if he could quote me after I wrote it, which is OK. I could have rewritten some of it to be more accurate and more geeky. But, I didn’t. So, I got some stuff right and some stuff wrong and it got out there.

PathFinding I

Editing Pathfinding Attributes

Whatever… The Linens got busy in Thursday’s PFUG meeting and explained which parts were right and wrong. We got lots of good information. The technical corrections are easy. The most disagreement was on how much drama there will be. I have no doubt there will be some drama. There always is.

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#SL Region Idling

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Simon Linden announced today that Region Idling will roll out to the Blue Steel Release Channel this Wednesday. If all goes well it will be completely invisble to Second Life users. So, if we can’t see it what good is it? Well, I’ll ‘splain.

When a region has no avatars in it and no one is looking into the region, what good does it do to run full blast? None. So, the plan is to have a region slow from 45 FPS to 10 FPS and release the CPU to spend more time on other regions. Ideally, the other regions running in the simulator will benefit from the extra CPU cycles.

You can read the announcement here: Region Idling coming to Second Life.

Possible Problem

The only likely problem the Lindens are expecting is scripts that use the function  llGetRegionTimeDilation() may have a problem. The function is not going to fail. But, if the script is using it as a region monitor to signal a problem with a region, it is likely going to be fooled and report a false positive. Normally 10 FPS is an indication there is a problem. Now going to 10 FPS to idle is an expected behavior. The scripts will have to rewritten.

 The FAQ’s on Region Idling

There is a FAQ page up: Region Idling FAQ

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#SL Land Impact Update Week 19

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Since my last update on Land Impact Costs changing there has been a decision on how the Lindens will handle sculpties.  In the recent Pathfinding (PF) User Group (PFUG) meeting Falcon Linden reminded us of the new equation for figuring Land Impact Cost.

As Falcon put it, “…sculpts will be capped at 2.0 streaming cost, not 1.0. (Note, that’s a CAP, so if they were less than 2.0 in new accounting before, they’ll still be less than 2.0).”

Ardy Lay asked, “What was jacking up the streaming cost?”

Falcon’s response, “It wasn’t a bug, it was just a formula that, upon further consideration, we decided was not appropriate, i.e., when it was first implemented, it was actually calculating a triangle-based render weight, which for meshes is a good measure of streaming cost, but not for prims.”

Yuzuru Jewell asked, “Is the new cost applied to all the objects?”

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#SecondLife Land Impact Costs to Change

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Friday Falcon Linden made a late appearance at the Sever/Scripting User Group meeting. He announced with the coming of Pathfinding we will see a change in the costs associated with Land Impact. In no small part the change is being influenced by PATHBUG-69.

The Brain behind Torley?

PATHBUG-69 – llVolumeDetect(TRUE) is broken. According to the wiki:

If detect is TRUE, VolumeDetect is enabled, physical object and avatars can pass through the object. This works much like Phantom, but unlike Phantom, VolumeDetect objects trigger collision_start and  collision_end events when interpenetrating. Collision events will trigger in any script in the object.

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#SL The Great AO Debate

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From a couple of sources we have bits and pieces that suggest the Lab is looking to provide a built in viewer feature for handling avatar animation. Currently we use animation overriders (AO) to override the built-in avatar animations. Most of those are a HUD of some type.

Animation Overriders

Discussion is in progress to determine what AO feature set is needed for the Lab’s viewer. Since AO’s are basically free (only the animations cost) the user’s choice of which one to use is entirely based on features and personal preferences. Free market principals allow the best to become the most popular.

Concern is voiced by some that a built-in replacement for AO’s by the Lab may limit our freedom of choice. However such limiting would break a considerable amount of existing content. Breaking all the existing AO’s, or any content, is something the Lab is loath to do. So, I can’t image the Lab will take that path. Whatever they do, will allow users to still use their AO’s.

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Oz Linden Interview Summary

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Wednesday Jessica Lyon, of Firestorm/Phoenix project Manager, conducted an interview with Oz Linden, the director of open source for Linden Lab. After a previous crash prone four region Phoenix Hour the week before, Jessica conducted the Interview on a private region with no audience.

The Interview Arrived

Treet.tv made the heroic effort to stream the interview. With something like 350 or so people connecting, there were problems. But, Treet.tv  was able to make a recording of the interview and it is now available on Treet.tv. See: Specials -> Episodes to find it. LINK

I’ve written a review of the audio tape. I paraphrase wording. Transcribing is tooooooooo tedious for me. May be I can find a masochist in the SL community that will do that… Whatever, be warned that I listen, decide what they said and then write what I heard. I try to be objective and accurate. But, I have my biases and prejudices. So, I include the time marks so you can listen to the parts important to you.
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