Second Life

Things about SL

#SL Viewer Update Week 21

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Today I saw that we have a new Development Viewer out. It is version 3.3.3 (257716).

UPDATE: 2012-05-27 – Version 3.3.3 (258100) is out.

I’ve had some interesting experiences with it. The previous version had horrendous memory leaks. In a couple of hours I would be down to 6 to 8 FPS and memory consumption would be approaching 1.5 gigabytes.

This version took an unusually long time to initialize the texture cache when I first started it. That seems to have been a one time thing. But, I haven’t had much time to play with this version. I’ve been too busy redoing my clothing tutorial.

Once I started the viewer and in 5 minutes it crashed. I have no clue what happened. The next time I ran the viewer for over two hours with no problems.

I also find my Core2 Quad w/GTX560Ti is running at 15 FPS at times when it used to be running at 6-8 FPS.

Not for Everyone

If you are not into problems and cutting edge tech, avoid trying the Development Viewer. The viewer is not intended for every day use. It is a pre-Beta version.

However, if you want to help the Lindens with crash and bug reports then jump right in.

Blender Retopology – Clothing Update

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In April I posted an article on retopologizing (like that is a word – redoing the topology of) mesh objects in Blender. See: #SL Blender Clothes Retopology. In Blender 2.62 I kept having problems getting the method to work. I think it was more me than Blender that was the problem. Whatever… today a decided to figure it out.

#1 Getting Surface Snap to Work - Click to Enlarge

I plan to do more tutorials. One of the things I want to do is work with weight painting to see if I can make skirts that work better than what we have. The current mesh mini-skirts show it all when one sits down. I don’t think it has to be that way. Now I need a well made skirt to work with. So, I’m studying 3D modeling. One of the things modelers deal with is redoing the topology of high polygon into low polygon models. Using the tools built into blender can make changing the topology much easier.

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Second Life’s Bumpy Roads

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Mesh Road Bumps

It has been noticed that there is a problem with using mesh road sections. At each edge of the mesh cars bump.

Drongle McMahon points out that a bug causes the convex hull to be smaller than the bounding box. That leaves a gap when one butts two mesh obects together. See: VWR-28416 – Mesh: Default convex hull is smaller than it should be.

Image by Brron - Flickr

SVC-7883

SVC-7883 – Discrepancy between actual convex hull physics weights and documented calculation. This is about getting the wiki information updated. If you read the wiki, you’ll likely under estimate the physics weight. Nyx Linden expects the wiki will get updated some time after Pathfinding is released, as Pathfinding will being a change in how Land Impact Costs are calculated.

#SL News Week 21

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Region Idling

This is the server update that is advancing to the main grid today, Tuesday. I’ve been writing about Second Life® Region Idling for a few days now. So, if you don’t know about it see: #SL Region Idling and #SL News Update Week 20.

Open Source Meeting

Threaded Region Crossing

I’ve been writing about the Region Crossing Phase I code for some time, since about February. This is a major refactor of region crossing code. It touches many parts of the Second Life system. Because of its complexity it has been a difficult write. We have seen lots of problems from it. It has been rolled back from the Release Channels a number of times.

It looks like this code will stay on the Le Tigre and Magnum channels this week.

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#SL Lab’s Viewers Update Week 21

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Standard Viewers

Today there is a new release if the Lab’s Development viewer: 3.3.3 (257716). This is a big jump from 3.3.3 (255954).

The Beta viewer version is: 3.3.2 (2557442).

The main viewer is: 3.3.1 (254524).

Mesh Deformer Testing

You can get the latest Mesh Deformer Project Viewer, version: 3.3.1 (255595). There are a number of mesh items to test in Hippo Hollow.

Pathfinding

You can get the latest Pathfinding Project Viewer, version: 3.3.2 (256513). There are Pathfinding test regions in ADITI and AGNI. The server code is cutting edge and updated sometimes several times per day in ADITI. The Main Grid AGNI regions can run several days behind.