Second Life – Page 323 – Nalates’ Things & Stuff

SSA Coming Not Too Soon

2013/05/30 by Nalates Urriah

No one on the Linden side is saying WHEN we might see SSA (Server Side Appearance baking) roll out. Today at the Server Beta meeting we found one reason it is taking longer than anyone would like. I think the Lindens are ready for SSA to rollout. But, they have to get problems fixed and they have a dandy one.

SSA is in testing on the Preview Grid (ADITI). You can go into Testy Sandbox and Lagland to try it out. But, be warned, read the rest of this article first.

JIRA SUN-74 – Apparent avatar skin and eye texture asset corruption with Server Side Appearance.

This bug is about SSA corrupting textures your avatar is wearing. Skin and eyes are definitely affected. It appears any Mod-OK skin is at risk.

Second Life Viewer Pipeline

2013/05/30 by Nalates Urriah

Last week I wrote that the Beta Viewer and Development Viewer channels that carry release candidates are changing. Both have already pretty much stopped getting updates. The viewer development is going to parallel release channels like the server’s parallel release candidate channels.

Viewer development types watch the code repositories as they are often the first place we are likely to get a look at Linden Lab changes to the code. So, these people are interested in how things will change and where they can fine the code. For most of the rest of us, this is a non-issue. All we are interested in is where can we find a new version. For now there is nothing to point at.

Firestorm Post: 4.4.1 Coming

2013/05/29 by Nalates Urriah

To go along with the Linden blog post about Server Side Appearance (baking) Jessica has published an article on where the FS Team is with the next release of Firestorm. See: Server Side Baking on the Way! Jessica is trying to get 145,000 Firestorm and Phoenix users to upgrade their viewers. These are just the … Read more

Server Side Appearance Closer

2013/05/292013/05/29 by Nalates Urriah

Today Linden Lab posted an update on the Sunshine Project, which includes Server Side Appearance (SSA) (baking). You can see it here: Faster Avatar Loading on the Horizon.

This is a warning that failing to update your viewer is going to be a problem. In my mind it seems they are somewhat downplaying the aspect that this update is going to cripple users that fail to update. Those that like the old 1.23 viewer and older versions of Phoenix are going to need to change to a newer viewer. Singularity seems to be the viewer of choice for those users.

Second Life News 2013-22

2013/05/28 by Nalates Urriah

You have probably figured out there is no roll or restart today. Because of the US holiday Memorial Day the rolls have been pushed back a day. The roll the main channel will happen on Wednesday. The RC rolls will happen on Thursday. Main Channel The main channel is getting the package running on the … Read more

GIMP Normals for Second Life

2013/05/252013/05/25 by Nalates Urriah

The title is not very PC. But, I think it will work. GIMP is the free open source image editor many Second Life residents use. With the coming of the Materials System to Second Life™, users of GIMP are going to want to be making normal maps. So, here is a bit more about what normal maps are and how to make them.

First, in English the word gimp also means a lame person. GIMP is DEFINITELY NOT a lame image editor. Its name was to denote it being free. While the name is not particularly flattering for the program it derives from: GNU Image Manipulation Program where GNU or GNU GPL stands for: GNU = GNU’s Not Unix and GPL = General Public License. These later acronyms are about how the software is licensed for sale or redistribution.