Second Life

Things about SL

SSA Context

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The week of May 26 to June 1 Oz Linden checked and reported that 1,665 different viewer versions that logged into Second Life™. That is an approximation of the number of different viewers in use. The SL system records viewer version strings. Each version of a viewer is to have a unique ID string. But, this is open source and people do whatever they do. So, there is a probability some ID strings don’t get changed. Thus I say approximate.

Viewer Production
Viewer Production

Some of these versions are one user only viewers, meaning: someone compiles a viewer for their own amusement and use. They never distribute the version. They may or may not change the version string.

Then there are the griefer viewers. They try to imitate other viewers and may duplicate another viewer’s version string to hide.

The result is going to be more viewer versions than the system recognizes. 

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Second Life News 2013-23 #2

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There is a bit of news coming from various places.

SSA

Server Side Appearance has a problem that the Lindens have been working on for the past week. Well, thinking about, I’m not sure they are writing code. I first mentioned the problem of corrupting modifiable eyes and skin when going in and out of SSA enabled and disabled regions here: SSA Coming Not Too Soon.

Corrupted Textures
Corrupted Textures

Some people say the problem is unique to the Phoenix Viewer. Latif Khalifa tried the SL Viewer 1.23, pre-SSA Singularity, Imprudence and Phoenix. But, only found the problem on Phoenix. Whirly Fizzle said. She could reproduce the problem on the SL Viewer 1.23. Whirly says old FS viewers were OK and did not have the problem.

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New LSL Functions Coming

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Kelly Linden let us know he is working on two new additions to the LSL (Linden Scripting Language). They are:

llReturnObjectByOwner

llReturnObjectsByID

The functions require the prim containing the script be owned by parcel owner or estate manager. The function only operates on objects on land in the same region/parcel as the script.

The ByOwner version takes a scope flag of PARCEL, PARCEL_OWNER or REGION (only usable by estate managers). They require a runtime permission (PERMISSION_RETURN_OBJECTS). This permission is *special* and the permission can be asked of and granted by group owners to operate on group owned land.

They do not handle encroachment.

The functions will return the number of objects returned OR an error code.

There is a throttle on the number of objects allowed in your parcel-pool per hour. If your parcel has a limit of 2000 you can return 2000 objects per hour.

llReturnObjectsByOwner cannot return objects owned by the parcel owner or estate managers.

llReturnObjectsByOwner will return all objects owned by the ID specified – for example Maestro could return all objects owned by Kelly on Maestro’s parcels with 1 call.

These should be a welcome addition to SL. It will make it much easier for land owners to deal with griefers. Kelly does not have an ETA, normal. But, since we are haring about them, they are close to candidate release.

Viewer Stability 2013-23

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The Third Party Viewers List is ordered by crash rates with the highest crash rate last. It is interesting to look at this list and see which viewers are better or worse from previous weeks.

Yesterday the list was updated. Surprisingly Firestorm lost its first place position. That needs some explaining, because I think Firestorm is the most stable viewer going.

First off Radegast holds first place in the list. BUT it is a non-graphical viewer. It is a text only viewer. So, it lacks most of the code that has problems, the 3D rendering pipeline. So, I don’t count it.

Yesterday the SL Beta Viewer 3.6.0 moved ahead of Firestorm 4.4.0. Well yay! Linden Lab. Congratulations.

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Best Building Practices in Second Life

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With the coming of Materials, being able to use normal and specular maps, how one builds is more important. Knowing or not good building practices is going to determine the experience in Second Life™. Poorly built items, whether clothes or objects, have a detrimental effect on our frame rates.

Penny Patton Efficient Building
Penny Patton Efficient Building

The SL Wiki has a page about Good Building Practices. There is lots of good information there. But, a significant number of creators ignore the guidelines or don’t know about them. Or… it may be they don’t understand them.

Penny Patton has a new article up titled: Building a Better Second Life – Tips for squeezing both better performance and more detail out of SL through efficiently made content. This article is something that every person building in Second Life should read and learn.

Penny covers using textures and scripts. She gives examples of what efficiently built things look like. Her M&C fantasy build (some sections are NSFW) is an example of efficient building practices. Penny does get to her ubiquitous near mantra ‘build to scale.’

I believe her points are keys to a better SL.

Second Life News 2013-23

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There no rollout to the main channel this week. None of the release candidates made it through testing.

Release Channels

Blue Steel and Le Tigre will get a new package for testing. This package addresses the disconnection issue many have been experiencing. (BUG-2564) This is the one where numerous avatars in a region would suddenly be disconnected. It also included LSL scripts using HTTP connection being disconnected too.

Plus there is a crash mode fix.

Magnum will continue to run the package from last week: The Interest List improvement for faster rendering of a never be for visited region. The only change to this package is the adding of the disconnect-fix-code also running on Steel and Tigre.

SL10B Contest

The Lindens have announced a contest as part of the celebration of SL10B. The first place prize is a Homestead Region for four months. Second and Third place winners will get a homestead region for 2 months.

The Linden Lab Logo for SL10B
The Linden Lab Logo for SL10B

You’ll find the rules and guidelines here: SL10B Celebration Snapshot Contest. 

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