Second Life and Virtual Worlds
Recently a fix for updating of our inventory in ADITI (preview/beta) grid rolled out. Some people are working with it now. I started writing about the changes being made this last December in: Second Life’s ADITI Inventory Update Change.
Today is the first time I’ve logged into Aditi since the change rolled out. So, my inventory has yet to update. I am hoping for a Friday morning update.
Over on Mesh Body Addicts Lildaria has written an article with that title, Truth About Events (NSFW±). She touches on a pet peeve of mine, but her prime point is the problem we are starting to have… having… with events.
It seems that people are staying longer at events because they have a hard time getting in. If you leave, it may be a day or two before you can get in again. So, demos are downloaded and tried on while people are at the event. This puts a load on the region server and lags it more than their just being there.
This problem is/was happening pretty often. There is no user side fix. It requires a support ticket. The details follow. The error message is:
Login failed. Despite our best efforts, something unexpected has gone wrong. Please check status.secondlifegrid.net to see if there is a known problem with the service. If you continue to experience problems please check your network and firewall setup.
This error started appearing about last Tuesday, 12/19.
It isn’t contagious. This problem passed quickly, I think. I didn’t run into it, so it is hard for me to know. But, it revealed another part of how the Second Life™ system works.
Backend Serve updates – there are a number of backend services needed to support Second Life. When the Lab is changing/updating them they generally provide no public notice, unless users need to change behavior, like refrain from transactions or rezzing no-copy items (which hopefully is changing).
You may remember that weeks ago a point came up about how the little profile icons used in chat are never flushed from viewer memory. The more people that enter chat the more memory is used and never released until the user logs off or memory is consumed and you crash.
As tiny as they are they have a larger impact than one would suspect. The profile image has to be download and is the source from which the tiny icon is made. It is, as I recall, it is the memory for both images that is not released.
Last Friday word in the Third Party Developers meeting is Cinder Roxley started writing a fix. I would guess that we’ll see one this year, but I have no idea what Cinder’s schedule is like – which you should read as I have no real basis I can point to for that guess. I expect the fix would be tested in the Alchemy viewer before appearing in any other viewer.
For most, all this means is another memory leak is getting fixed and we will crash less often.
Lots of Second Life™ people use the Firestorm Viewer. Creators are certainly part of that group. A number of people think the Firestorm Viewer is to blame for LoD problems in Second Life. Can that be?
Personally I think this is a case of a fascist mind set running the standard victim line and wanting someone else to fix their problems. See what you think.