Second Life

Things about SL

Dolphin Viewer 1.5.42.3627 Released

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This release is announced as a bug fix release with no new features or visible changes.

The fixes are to the Group Limit code (coming group limit increase) and texture caching.

Texture caching is a big thing. Some weeks ago the Snowstorm Team made some comments about finding some bugs in the caching code. I’ve wondered why, if we have a caching, does my cottage’s door have to download a texture each time I open the door. My door is one of those where the entire wall changes from solid to phantom and the texture changes from a closed door to an open one. The idea for this style door is to reduce the prim count. However, they used two textures that have to download. For better effect they could have placed both open and closed textures in one texture and just shift position to affect the change.

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KirstenLee S21(3) RC2 Review & New Profiles

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KirstenLee Viewer S21
KirstenLee S21 Logo

This article covers more than just the S21 viewer review. KirstenLee’s S21 reveals some of the changes coming to SL. I touch on those as part of the viewer review. KirstenLee is working on the release of her cutting edge viewer S21, now out as a release candidate. Today Release Candidate 2 was made available. This version uses the new resident Profile System.

If you have not used KirstenLee’s viewers, the S20 and S21 viewers are series 2 viewers with a modified SLV2 User Interface (UI) and a custom render pipeline. The S21 viewer has additional UI changes. KirstenLee is making UI change to make the S21 more compatible with SLV2 skins. Of course making a better interface is part of the process too. For compatibility KirstenLee has put the sidebar control back on the right side of the screen.

The S21 is based on SLV2 code from Linden Lab’s Mesh Project Viewer. The viewer will render mesh. It does not yet have the ability to upload mesh. Only the Mesh Project Viewer has that ability. S21 also has Qarl’s patches… there’s more than one? The main one is the prim alignment tool. I’ll have to look around and see if I can find out if there are other Qarl additions.

KirstenLee Viewer S21
Shadows & DoF

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Coming Server Updates

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Lil Linden posted an update about changes and upgrades coming to the grid. See: Deploys for the Week of 2011-01-10.

It appears the Compression upgrade is moving to the main grid. All regions will get it. This will greatly reduce region crossing time (see previous post for graphs) and cut the number of failed teleports. Along with it comes the Encroachment feature that allows one to return prim that are only partially on your land.

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Second Life Beta Server Update

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Region Crossing Compression

The Region Crossing news is hot. The new code is in use across the Magnum Release Channel. The stats on the improvement are impressive. The new improvement is referred to as Region Crossing Compression or just Compression.

SL Region Crossing Time
Region Crossing Time

There are some nifty graphs showing what is happening. Notice a little after ten compression is activated. The graphs take a significant step down.

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SL Region Crossing Upgrade

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The chatter is the region crossing changes are being activated today. I have yet to chase down the sources. The release notes for Tuesday’s rollouts show the rollout to Blue Steel. In world chat is that they are active on Magnum. One person quotes Oz Linden saying activation will be immediate.

I have to do some reading and searching to find out the details. Is this activation just for the release channels or the entire grid? I’ve been to Magnum. (Magnum RC Sandbox 1 — boxes 1 to 4 are the region names). I find it works well going from some of those regions and not so well for others.

Update: 2011-01-06 2:00 PM SLT – It seems the activation is for the Magnum release Channel. That is about 10 to 20 % of the main grid.

There is a meeting with the Beta Server team at their regular Office Hours, today at 3 PM in the ADITI Preview Grid, in Morris.

It seems an avatar carries 4 to 10 megabytes of data from region to region. It is unclear just what all that includes. Your baked avatar textures may be part of that. The state of scripts you are wearing is included. So, it is actually quite a lot of data.

Second Life Update

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Over the holidays not everything stopped. There has been progress and changes in Second Life. One SCRUM Summary even commented on the massive amount of code coming from Linden teams prior to Christmas. From all that, these are some of the things I found interesting that have been happening.

Work is progressing on STORM-807 – update returnability of objects based on new encroachment rules. This change should appear on the main grid in early 2011. The feature will allow a parcel owner to return an object that over laps their parcel. Objects are located by their root prim’s center. If part of prim or some of the objects linked prims extended into another parcel there was/is little the one encroached on could do. That will change.

This is a two sided feature. It is going to the Le Tigre release channel today. But, viewer code is needed to make the feature available to residents. One can apparently return items now, if they use a newer viewer with the Sim Console. Press Ctrl-Shift-[back tic] to see if the Sim Console will open. You can read more here: Parcel Encroachment

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