Second Life and Virtual Worlds
Things about SL
The 4.4.1 version has a bug. It is going to get re-called the version 4.4.2 will be rolled out ASAP. This version will NOT need a clean install. You’ll see this hit today or tomorrow. It seems this version has a bug that overloads the stats server. Once the roll is available the 4.4.1 viewer will be blocked.
As of NOW the 4.4.1 version download is blocked.
The 4.4.2 version is not yet ready.
As you know the Materials System has been released by the Lab. The third party viewers are picking up the project and adding it to their viewers. Cool VL Viewer and Niran’s Black Dragon have Materials. Firestorm 4.4.1 does not have Materials yet but, 4.4.2 is nearing release and will have materials.
There are fixes for problems in Materials System that are in the pipeline. One of those has to do with Ambient Occlusion on large objects. That is unlikely to be in Firestorm’s 4.4.2 release.
Server Side Appearance (SSA baking) is planned for the release the week of July 7-13. The Lab is expecting it may be on the 8th or 9th.
Firestorm and Phoenix users will see a huge notice on the viewer’s splash screen that they need to update. If you have not yet updated to 4.4.1, avoid the rush and do it now.
The FS Team is working on Materials, Sunshine, and adopting the CHUI to Firestorm. I am sure they would love to see all of those in 4.4.2. But, they aren’t saying what they will be able to do because they haven’t even been able to get all the Lab’s code for these features. The Lab is just not done with it. Things are changing as it is developed. You don’t try to hang pictures in a house before the walls are built.
The FS Team asked the Lindens if their release of a new viewer requiring a cache clear is loading up the asset server. Monty Linden says the asset system has lots of head room and is not the likely bottle neck. But, the inventory system that tracks what you have in your inventory is near capacity. Consider the inventory an index that deals with permissions and lots of interactions between you and backend systems of SL.
Jessica has explained that people are convinced clearing cache solves every problem and speeds up their viewer. The opposite is true. But, sometimes without a stop watch people cannot get past their subjective impression.
Whatever the case, it looks like the Lab is going to start making plans to look at cache operation. Monty Linden is going to take a look to see how a Firestorm-clear-your-cache release may be affecting the SL servers.
Most of the current inventory problems are with inventory cache, which is not the same as the basic cache. It is possible to clear inventory cache and not clear the basic cache of textures, mesh, and objects. But, it is a clear that has to be done manually.
I came across Sidden Munro’s video on her work flow for making the various standard sizes. Her process save slots of work. This is a 9 minute video that will save you huge amounts of time making standard sized clothes.
[youtube Nuubb5C64Ck]
Starting at the 07:00 minute mark she starts showing how to export the different sizes.
She did the 5 sizes in the video in under ten minutes. I expect people can get the process down to 5 minutes or less.
Today a new episode of the World maker files is out. There is a post on the SL blog (The Drax Files Episode 8: MadPea Games) and it is all over Facebook.
[youtube 6WVDWILHOpw]
As always this is a well done video and quite fun to watch.
Kiana Writer is obviously a creative mind and fun to listen to also. Drax is himself and Kiana is her avatar.
About 21 hours ago the Firestorm blog announced the release of Firestorm Viewer version 4.4.1-34164. From the teams point of view this is a MUST UPDATE TO release. If you are running the newest version of Firestorm 4.4.0, you STILL need to update to the new viewer.
A number of users have reported problems with the 4.4.0 viewer that have kept them from using it. The team has made every effort they could in the time frame available to fix problem discovered in 4.4.0. They believe they have fixed the majority of problems blocking use of 4.4.0. So, 4.4.1 should work for you.