General News – Page 105 – Nalates’ Things & Stuff

PhotoTools for Second Life

2014/04/102012/08/27 by Nalates Urriah

Update Note 2014-04-10: The Photo Tools are not part of the Firestorm Viewer and do not need to be installed.

I saw these tools mentioned on Hamlet’s New World Notes in an article titled: Want to Take Great SL Images? Get Mr. Weaver’s Phototools! These are tools made for the Firestorm Viewer (Firestorm 4.1.1 (28744) Jul 9 2012 21:43:46 (Firestorm-Release)). The tools will only work with the default skins.

FSPT03 — Mayfair – Not the default settings

This is an interesting addition to Firestorm. It is a rational and logical arrangement of the controls by William (paperwork) Weaver that affects how the viewer renders with world. If you are a photographer this is going to be a way handy tool. All the settings that affect the render appearance are in a single panel consisting of 6 tabs. Some of the controls open other panels, but basically it is one new panel, but what a handy panel.

#SL News Update Week 34

2012/08/25 by Nalates Urriah

First… there will be no MetaReality podcasts until September 24^th, due to RL problems and RL work load. So, I doubt we will see an update on the Mesh Defomer before then. 🙁

SL Support

If you use a Third Party Viewer (TPV), Second Life™ support can be really annoying. There are viewer problems and server side problems. If it is a server side problem, it really doesn’t matter which viewer you are using. Support should help out and get the problem fixed regardless of the viewer being used. That idea is taking root at the Lab.

ServScript120817_001 — Scripting-Server UG August 2012

Now that the MAJORITY of viewers in use are TPV’s, this problem is a significant pain. A process is starting to change that and hopefully reduce the problem. BUT… and this is a big butt… er but… first level support people have a hard time figuring out what are viewer and server side problems. So, some work is going into developing processes to help them decide.

To understand what is happening and what to expect one has to understand the problems support people face. One problem is the Lab’s support people are not trained in how to use or help with TPV’s. That would drive the support training costs and time requirements beyond anything reasonable. If only some TPV’s were supported to reduce cost and time required, there would be a load of drama about which viewers were selected. So, that means an all or nothing approach. It is going to come down on the nothing side.

Bad News on Bandwidth

2012/08/24 by Nalates Urriah

Just after I got my article out on Bandwidth and SVC-8124 I heard that there will be no promotions from the release channels to the main channel. This means the fix for SVC-8124 will NOT roll to the main channel next week. There is a problem with permissions. See: SVC-8177 – There is different behavior between the RC channels and the … Read more

Bandwidth Problem Update

2012/08/24 by Nalates Urriah

With the release of the Havok 2012.1 update and Pathfinding came an increase in bandwidth used. In the articles #SL News Week 33 and #SL News Update Week 33 I mention the problem. See JIRA: SVC-8124 – Excessive “ParcelOverlay reliable” messages sent by regions since last rolling restart (2012-08-08). Votes=124 – Watches=90 – 8/24. Resident interest in the JIRA shows it obviously not a big issue, unless you have a bandwidth capped/metered Internet service.

The fix for SVC-8124 was added to all 3 release channels to increase the probability that it can roll to the main grid next Tuesday.

I asked Oskar Linden if the Lab has seen an increase in bandwidth used since the PF release and 8124. He says not that he has heard. I suppose that means either it is a small enough problem, for the Lab, that they aren’t talking about it in house or Oskar has had his head down working and not noticed it.

Firestorm Support Island Opening

2017/07/242012/08/23 by Nalates Urriah

I received an announcement today that the Firestorm/Phoenix Team has created a support island that will be opening on August 25^th. The island is for use of the SL community. The team is encouraging RHN, White Tiger Mentors, Mental Mentors and others to use the island for training and support. I get that other support groups are welcome too.

Update 8/25 – Now Open: Second Life’s Firestorm Support Island by Firestorm/Phoenix

Update 7/2017 – Photobucket has disallowed use of their hosted images on 3rd party sites unless I pay them. Images are here.

Obviously the island is designed to assist new Firestorm users and for the team’s support crew.

FS Landing — FS Support Island Landing Point

The island has a landing point that starts new users on an educational path, a literal path as you can see in the images. It is designed for those using the Firestorm Viewer. So, people using other viewer may be a bit confused by the images of what to click. But, confusing new users by showing multiple user interfaces might be worse.

#SL News Update Week 33

2012/08/20 by Nalates Urriah

This is a catch up article from last week. I had serious RL partying to attend to this weekend. So, hopefully this will get me caught up. I am bummed there is no new Metareality poscast in week 33.

Region Crossing

In Week 22, 2012 Phase I of the Multi-Threaded Crossing Project rolled out. See: #SL News Week 22. Today Oskar tipped us off that Phase II is moving through the QA process and close to reaching Release Channel Candidate status.

I take that to mean that in the next couple of weeks we might see it on a release channel. This is a complex process that is taking a load of work. So many parts of the SL system are touched there are a load of places for things to go wrong. We saw that with Phase I. It took months to make it to roll out. Phase I was in and out of the release channels for months. Hopefully that will not be the case this time.