Second Life – Page 314 – Nalates’ Things & Stuff

Mesh Deformer Update 2013-28

2013/07/08 by Nalates Urriah

Well, it has finally happened. Another grid, In-Worldz, is going ahead with the Mesh Deformer. They contacted Karl Stiefvater (Qarl Fizz) and paid him to make changes to improve the Deformer’s performance.

Karl is estimating that the new version is 21 times faster. I don’t know that anything else has changed in the Deformer. Is it faster because the process of deforming changed? I don’t know. I doubt it. But, may be.

Henri Beauchamp posted in STORM-1716, the Deformer JIRA, that speed really hasn’t been the problem some think it is. But, there is a problem with how the viewer is handling the item’s LoD. That problem delays the deformer kicking in. So, this change may not resolve the ‘time’ problem in SL Viewers.

Henri says he will support this new Deformer code in Cool VL Viewer in his three branches of the viewer. The code is already in his viewers. BUT… only when connected to OpenSim grids. Only his experimental viewer will support the Deformer in the SL Grid. Linden Lab’s Viewer Policy requires any viewer that changes the ‘shared’ experience to be an experimental viewer until the feature is officially released by the Lab.

And Yet Another Interview with Rod Humble 2013-27

2013/07/06 by Nalates Urriah

These just keep popping up. Ciaran Level in Linden Lab CEO Rod Humble on Second Life’s Tween Years links to the article on AllThingsD: Linden Lab CEO Rod Humble on Second Life’s Tween Years (Q&A).

Also Jo Yardley has an article, up about the same interview: Oculus Rift in Second Life goes public late summer!

Again Rod comments on Second Life’s performance and how it has been a prime concern. Rod says that this year he believes he will be able to say, “Hey, performance is good.” I definitely will go with ‘better.’ But, I’m going to have see more before I’ll say ‘good.’ I also suspect it is going to be ‘good’ for SL.

Another Rod Interview 2013-27

2013/07/06 by Nalates Urriah

The site Co.Create has an article about Second Life™ by Susan Karlin. She interviews Rod Humble, Linden Lab CEO. The title is: A Look At Second Life’s Second Decade. Jo Yardley posted about it on Facebook.

Co.Create Article and Interview with Rod Humble

Susan gets into the creative nature of people in Second Life. She mentions Jo and Drax.

Update on SSA

2013/07/04 by Nalates Urriah

Surely by now you know SSA is Server Side Appearance, which is about baking your avatar appearance. The Lindens have posted a second notice that SSA will be here next week. See: It’s Time to Update Your Viewer!

And they reuse their previous video:

[youtube jwglL3VXI80]

Please make sure all your friends know about the coming update and the need for them to be using a recent version of whatever viewer they use.

Firestorm Viewer 4.4.2-34167 Released

2013/07/02 by Nalates Urriah

I see late yesterday the FS Team released viewer 4.4.2. There is an announcement on the FS Blog: Mandatory Firestorm 4.4.2 Update. This version fixes the problem of overloading the Linden stats servers. Users would not notice a problem. So, many might not update and stats indicate that would be the case. The result is this is a mandatory update.

Firestorm Viewer Download is here. Look in the right hand column, white area.

You may have found that your 4.4.1 viewer will no longer login. You get an update message on the splash screen. If you close it and attempt to login, you get another notice and the viewer does not login. If you close that one and attempt to login again, you find you are in a loop. The viewer is not going to login because the FS Team has told it not to. It is blocked by the FS Team.

Viewer Updates 2013-27

2013/07/01 by Nalates Urriah

We seem to be coming to a crunch point in viewers. The Lab is changing things so quickly third party developers have a challenge keeping up. Henri Beauchamp does well with Cool VL Viewer, which is a viewer based on V3 code with a vintage V1 user interface.

Niran seems to have leapfrogged the Niran’s Viewer to having all the latest Linden features by jumping to a recent SL Viewer V3 model. Niran’s Viewer is now Nirans Black Dragon viewer. Niran’s features from previous versions are being added to the new SL V3 Viewer code in Black Dragon. Eventually Niran will have Black Dragon on a feature par with his previous versions.

So, both of those viewers have materials. Firestorm 4.4.1 doesn’t and Tonya Souther of the Firestorm Team explains why, in a blog post: Tracking LL’s big changes, and why the 4.4.2… well now that there is an emergency roll out… 4.4.3 version won’t either.