#SL Land Impact Update Week 19

Since my last update on Land Impact Costs changing there has been a decision on how the Lindens will handle sculpties.  In the recent Pathfinding (PF) User Group (PFUG) meeting Falcon Linden reminded us of the new equation for figuring Land Impact Cost.

As Falcon put it, “…sculpts will be capped at 2.0 streaming cost, not 1.0. (Note, that’s a CAP, so if they were less than 2.0 in new accounting before, they’ll still be less than 2.0).”

Ardy Lay asked, “What was jacking up the streaming cost?”

Falcon’s response, “It wasn’t a bug, it was just a formula that, upon further consideration, we decided was not appropriate, i.e., when it was first implemented, it was actually calculating a triangle-based render weight, which for meshes is a good measure of streaming cost, but not for prims.

Yuzuru Jewell asked, “Is the new cost applied to all the objects?

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#SL Damage Control

I heard someone talking about MetaReality having new information from Qarl on the Mesh Deformer Project. So, off I go to listen to it, an hour and 20 minute audio. This one is titled Damage Control, which inspired my title… just in case… never mind.

Well… there is new discussion about the Deformer Drama… but not much on the actual Deformer, nothing that I haven’t already covered. Since I have my notes from the listen I’ll publish them.

Again the time marks are approximate. The descriptions are my take away from the listen. Any resemblance to what is actually in the audio is more than coincidental. Any actual quoting is improbable. But, I did try to convey the ideas expressed in the audio tape.

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#SL Viewer News Week 19

There are a couple of bits of news that I found interesting. First the stable SL Viewer is version 3.3.1 (254524) and the Beta is 3.3.2 (255742). The Development version is 3.3.3 (255954).

New Local Textures

To go along with the viewers we have the current “stable” nVidia driver 296.10. There are some problems with the driver and that translates into problems for those of us using Second Life®. With later builds of the SL Viewer the driver has worked well for me.

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Second Life Wearing All Inventory

This article is about fixing a known problem in Second Life. The fix is simple enough. The cause is a bit odd. It has to do with ‘wearing’ and outfit folder and a selection problem, a sneaky gotcha.

Avatar wearing 90,000 Inventory Items' Rescue Operation Stopped for the Night - Image by Jon Diez Supat

The Firestorm-Phoenix wiki has a page on the problem: wearing_entire_inventory.

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Firestorm 4.1.1 Leaks

We haven’t heard much out of the Firestorm development team since early April and that was about avoiding phishing attacks. But, I am seeing some leaks of the coming 4.1.1 (?). About 7 weeks ago Firestorm 4.0.1 (27000) was released, March 20, 2012.

The release notes are being marked up. And they reveal what MAY be in the next release. Also, that they are being worked on probably says something about the ETA of a new release. Exactly what it says is pure speculation.

Firestorm Release

Many of the updates in the coming release can be assumed. An update to newer Linden code is always a part of any new Firestorm release. As are bug fixes and new improvements to existing features. It is also pretty predictable that some new features will be added. This release has some performance improvements. I’m not sure they will affect FPS, but other features are likely to be quicker and easier.

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#SL News Week 19

Kelly Linden provided some information on the Linden Scripting Language (LSL) function llGetAgentList(). The server maintenance package with this new function rolled to the main grid Tuesday. It rolled in spite of a problem. See JIRA item:

SCR-311llGetAgentList() with scope AGENT_LIST_PARCEL or AGENT_LIST_PARCEL_OWNER returns empty list when attached to avatar.

Server Scripting User Group

Of course those most interested in getting this feature intended to use it in avatar attachments. Frustrating. Kelly believes they can fix the problem and we’ll either see the fix pushed to the main grid or pop up in a release channel, depending on how well the fix goes.

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