Second Life

Things about SL

Second Life Main Viewer Failing

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There are a number of people reporting (11/11/2014) that the update to the now default/main viewer Second Life Viewer 3.7.20 (296071) Oct 29 2014 10:40:27 (Second Life Project Snowstorm) has created problems. The viewer will not run. In most cases it crashes at VFS (Virtual File System) initialization.

Blood Letters - Letter 10 - Not these. The hint says 'canvas'
Blood Letters – Letter 10 – Not these. The hint says ‘canvas’

I am running Second Life 3.7.20 (296355) Nov  3. It does not have the problem. It runs. But, we do not yet know if version 3.7.20 (296071) crashes on all computers or just some. Judging by the size of the response in the forum, a dozen or so, I would say just a few.

It is possible to run other versions of the viewer. The basic trick to being able to install a different version of the viewer is to enable automatic update and  ‘Willing to update to release candidate.’  If not enabled, the viewer will attempt to download and install the main viewer ASAP. The setting is in Preferences->Setup. The setting is also the default setting.

The active thread about this error is: Second_Life_3_7_20_296094_i686_Setup, is anyone else having an issue with this like me? The related JIRA is BUG-7776.

A Clean Install does not fix the problem. Dump version 3.7.20 (296071). Install a different version. You can find the Second Life RC (Release Candidate) Viewers and Project Viewers here. 

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Blood Letters Play – Second Life

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This is sort of a spoiler… I won’t be revealing the things one really has to figure out, no puzzle answers. But, I will be explaining the mechanics of the game and some experiences. I feel my experiences are not going to spoil the puzzles. But, they may. So, read at your risk.

Blood Letters is a hunt through various shops in SL. Many you will know. There are two items to find for each letter/clue in the hunt. The hunt has a story, which is the adult part. Thus most all of the hunt is visually safe for work.

Blood Letters 2014
Blood Letters 2014

Day 1 – Letter 1: Not quite what I expected. This is where I learned it was more ‘hunt’ than game. But, so far it is fun and safe for work, but decidedly adult. Her panties were getting wet… that qualifies as adult.

The first puzzle to solve is getting the HUD (L$400), which is way easy. Find a vendor, purchase, and wear the HUD. The rest is not so intuitive. Getting the letters is the next step. I was told we can only get one letter per day. Well, sort of true. 

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Second Life Bits 2014-45 #2

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CDN

The Content Delivery Network is used by all viewers. No viewer update was needed for CDN to work. It is a pure server-side thing.

Meauxle Bureaux 2014
Meauxle Bureaux 2014

Ciaran wrote about the problem he and others run into in: CDN Teething Problems & Meauxle Bureaux Should Be In Destination Guide. Some regions just refuse to render. Lots of textures fail to load. The usual leave and return tricks are not working. When these textures fail to load they FAIL to load and there seems little we can do about it.

The Lindens are aware of the problem and have posted on the SL Blog about the problem, what they think is causing it, and the hope it will pass with changes being made by both the Lab and the CDN provider. See: An Update on the [Second Life] CDN Project.

If you run into this problem, please file a JIRA report. Add your RL location (City, State, Country) and ISP name.

And like Ciaran I encourage you to check out the mole abode: Meauxle Bureaux. 

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Second Life News 2014-45 #3

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This past Friday was the Third Party Developers’ meeting. This is usually the best source for information about developments in the pipeline at the Lab. This week there is not a lot of news.

Viewers

Benchmark RC Viewer – I been talking about this one. It is the one that ends the use of a GPU table to figure out the default video settings for a new viewer install.

Maintenance RC Viewer – This one is a collection of fixes and feature improvements.

Meauxle Bureaux 2014 - Frost Mole
Meauxle Bureaux 2014 – Frost Mole

AISv3 Fixes aka Attachments RC Viewer – This is a viewer version created to fix problems with AISv3 that were holding up Firestorm Viewer development. The problems were Linden Lab problems and we could see them in the SL Viewers. But, the bugs were a reason the FS Team was not merging the code into their viewer. More on this later. The AIS fixes were moved into this RC Viewer and the code changed to solve issues and make for easier merging into third party viewers.

Oz says this set of code changes are relatively easy to merge and this is the RC Viewer now seen as most likely to promote soon.

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Firestorm Viewer – Soon?

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Firestorm Logo
Firestorm Logo

There is a new article up on the Firestorm Viewer site. See: Be Careful What You Wish For. I can read a lot into the article. That doesn’t mean I have it right. The things I am pretty sure of follow.

We have known for some time that the FS Team planned a viewer release for November. It seems the release date is sliding. I am guessing Jessica is feeling pressure or anticipating blowback from users when the release goes out and thus posted the article. We know from her own words blogging is not a thing she really enjoys. Thus we can assume something is motivating the post.

Jessica is explaining the difficulties of releasing a viewer and deciding what is and is not going to be in this release. Her estimated release date is ‘a few weeks’… the word ‘few’ is ambiguous. Dictionaries define ‘few’ as a small number of things. As examples they give 2 to 5. But, in my family 2 to 5 was a ‘couple of’ and ‘a few’ was closer to 10. We have no way to know what ‘few’ means to Jessica. But, I suspect this puts a viewer release nearer to the end of November and possibly into December. 

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