Firestorm Considerations

The FS Team is working on Materials, Sunshine, and adopting the CHUI to Firestorm. I am sure they would love to see all of those in 4.4.2. But, they aren’t saying what they will be able to do because they haven’t even been able to get all the Lab’s code for these features. The Lab is just not done with it. Things are changing as it is developed. You don’t try to hang pictures in a house before the walls are built.

Firestorm Viewer 4.4.1
Firestorm Viewer 4.4.1

The FS Team asked the Lindens if their release of a new viewer requiring a cache clear is loading up the asset server. Monty Linden says the asset system has lots of head room and is not the likely bottle neck. But, the inventory system that tracks what you have in your inventory is near capacity. Consider the inventory an index that deals with permissions and lots of interactions between you and backend systems of SL.

Jessica has explained that people are convinced clearing cache solves every problem and speeds up their viewer. The opposite is true. But, sometimes without a stop watch people cannot get past their subjective impression.

Whatever the case, it looks like the Lab is going to start making plans to look at cache operation. Monty Linden is going to take a look to see how a Firestorm-clear-your-cache release may be affecting the SL servers.

Most of the current inventory problems are with inventory cache, which is not the same as the basic cache. It is possible to clear inventory cache and not clear the basic cache of textures, mesh, and objects. But, it is a clear that has to be done manually.

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SSA Coming Not Too Soon

No one on the Linden side is saying WHEN we might see SSA (Server Side Appearance baking) roll out. Today at the Server Beta meeting we found one reason it is taking longer than anyone would like. I think the Lindens are ready for SSA to rollout. But, they have to get problems fixed and they have a dandy one.

SSA is in testing on the Preview Grid (ADITI). You can go into Testy Sandbox and Lagland to try it out. But, be warned, read the rest of this article first.

Corrupted Textures
Corrupted Textures

JIRA SUN-74Apparent avatar skin and eye texture asset corruption with Server Side Appearance.

This bug is about SSA corrupting textures your avatar is wearing. Skin and eyes are definitely affected. It appears any Mod-OK skin is at risk.

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Second Life Hover

If you have played with the new avatar Appearance Setting HOVER you may have noticed it is less than ideal. The slider ranges from 0 to 100. At 0 the avatar is lowered 2m. At 50 the avatar is neither lowered nor raised. At 100 the avatar is raised 2m.

Since the sliders are integer settings each setting increment of 1 moves the avatar 4cm (1.6 inches) up or down. If you watch the change from 50 to 49, it looks like it moves more than 4cm to me. (see image below – click to enlarge images)

New Appearance Setting: HOVER
New Appearance Setting: HOVER

I’ve used third party viewers (TPV) to adjust my height and found much better control. But, with the release of SSA (Sever Side Appearance – baking) those adjustments in TPV’s will stop working.

SO… how do we get our height adjusted now? Well, the choice for now is Appearance HOVER. But, what if you only need to adjust 1 or 2 cm?

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Second Life Mesh Rendering Problems

Each week the blog Lette’s Trivia And Trivial Stuff publishes the week’s top support issues with the Firestorm viewer. Another issue is out. But, some issues are not limited to the Firestorm Viewer. One of those is mesh objects failing to render.

Lette has written up an excellent section on the problem. She focuses on: MeshMaxConcurrentRequests. This is a Debug Setting in both the Firestorm and SL Viewers.

Word on the virtual street is that setting this higher is better and a must. Well… as often is the case the general advice is wrong. It depends on your computer and connection. But, in general it is a bad thing to change. To solve specific problems it is an acceptable temporary fix. But, used as a permanent change, it is a lag producer for you and everyone in the region.

Find out how to use this setting and understand the tradeoffs: Frequently Asked Support Questions of May 17.

Second Life Collada Import Problem

I came across a tidbit of news this morning. If you are setting your SL Viewer to any language other than English, the Collada import for mesh may not work.

You’ll see the problem in the import preview window. You’ll see polygons with normals reversed and vertices here and there out of place. If you try more than one import, you’ll see the reversed normal polygons and the out of place vertices change and which are messed up are unpredictable.

Problem w/Mesh Import by Lemon AcidJuice @ Flickr
Problem w/Mesh Import by Lemon AcidJuice @ Flickr

For now the problem is corrected by switching the viewer to use English.

If you are seeing the problem and can reproduce it on demand file a JIRA bug report with all the steps.

The discussion of the problem is in the SL Forum: Unpredictable mesh import.

Second Life Meeroos Fix

Seems there is a problem with Meeroos and the Interest List updates. Andrew Linden has been working on it, so a fix is close. Apparently there was a problem with an earlier fix crashing the server. Andrew is testing his current fix today, Tuesday.

The Problem is seen when you turn your back on a herd of Meeroos. After a few seconds when you turn around the viewer updates their position. But, the head and body of a Meeroo may not update at the same time. You see a head take off then later the body catches up. Not exactly conducive to building an immersive experience.