Second Life

Things about SL

Oskar Linden Gone?

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It seems this rumor is more fact than rumor. I think it is a tragedy. Oskar has been one of the more communicative Lindens. So, what hard evidence do we have? The best I have seen is from Jessica Lyon, the lead in the Firefox Development Team. While I often disagree with her take on facts, … Read more

#SL News 2 Week 44

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Well the roll out went nowhere near as planned. There were problems starting out that pushed the rolls back one day, from Tuesday to Wednesday. And that pushed Wednesday’s roll back a day. But, then the actual roll to the main channel rolled out the wrong version…

Server/Scripting Meeting

The Main channel was to get the code running on Blue Steel. Instead, an older version of the server code from a couple of weeks ago was rolled out. So, the main channels has regressed. I don’t know which version. Lydia Craig reported end up on version 12.10.12.265813 when the release notes said it should be 12.10.19.266079, which would be a one week regression.

Only a few people have noticed the glitch and posted in the forum Deploy thread.

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#SL Materials System Update

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This Content Creation Improvement Informal User Group is not completely dead… they are having meetings. Still Tuesdays at 3 PM in Hippotropolis.

The subject of glass materials with refractive properties came up. It is confirmed that there will NOT be any glass or refraction in the first release of a Materials System and likely not until the third stage of the Materials System. One has to wonder how long that will take.

Normal Map

I had forgotten that currently normal maps are used with water surfaces. In the Environment Settings you can add a normal map for the water surface.

It seems there are two flavors of normal maps; OpenGL and DirectX, which I didn’t know. There is more than two ways to do ‘bump’ on surfaces but, we will only get the tangent space normal maps style in the SL Materials System. The difference is in how the maps are created and used.

OpenGL uses -Z and DirectX uses +Z… or visa-versa… doesn’t really matter. By ‘-Z’ I mean the values are taken as a negative direction. That means dark is either up or down. The different types just reverse the way color values are used… sort of like a negative image that was common with old film cameras. In Photoshop press Ctrl-Shift-I to invert an image’s colors and get the negative or inverted colors.

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#SL Adult Content Problems

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I used to attend the Adult Content User Group (ACUG) meetings. Some of the most fun people were there. But, IMO Viale Linden pretty much killed off the user group. It was pretty much dead by the end of 2011. There are resident groups that organize their own projects on the adult continent. But, they … Read more

#SL News 1 Week 44

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The Tuesday roll out to the main channel has been postponed to Wednesday. Wednesday’s Release Candidate roll outs have been postponed to Thursday. This delay is from some backside problems.

Main Channel

As expected the main channel is getting the package running on Blue Steel & Magnum. This is what they call a backend infrastructure change. We won’t see any changes in operation, unless it breaks something.

Mesh Alpha Rendering Problem – See Invisaprim Below

Blue Steel

This is getting an upgrade of the code now running on Le Tigre… I’m not sure whether this is supposed to mean Blue Steel and Le Tigre will run the same code or not. Until the detail release notes come out I won’t know.

This channel may get the server fixes that are hoped to fix some of the Sudden Massive Lag problem event managers are seeing. BUG-355 

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#SL News 2 Week 43

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I’ve been distracted on weekends, so I’m just getting to writing up the last of the news from last week (43). There is no great news, but there are some interesting things.

Large Group Edit

The code for this change rolled out Wednesday. It had problems and was rolled back the same day. It is however currently running on the Snack Release Candidate Channel. You can get the details of that in: Second Life Large Groups Edit Week 43.

Server Scripting Meeting Oct. 2012

Part of the reason for getting this change up and running is to get it where Third Party Viewer Developers can test their viewers against the new server code. To use the new Group Editing code on the server viewers need to change the viewer code. Getting the code on a release channels allows TPV Dev’s to get their QA people and Beta testers involved.

The Problem

The package with the Large Group Edit code had a problem with the llSenor() function. It stopped returning a sorted list of objects. The sort is on distance. Not being able to figure out what is close or far meant breedables were not able to find food or each other… you know… to breed… The lack of loving was tragic.

The problem has been fixed. So, this week (44) we should see it move into one of the main release candidate channels.

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