Second Life News 2013-49 #3

Next week (50) we will likely have a rollout to the main grid and another to the RC channels. Then we enter a no change window. We won’t see any new rollouts until probably January 7th.

The packages in the tube right now are minor packages with only a small number of problem fixes.

Viewers have the same no change window. We might see RC and Project viewers updating. But, the main release viewer is unlikely to change after next week (50).

Fitted Mesh Viewer

A new version of this project viewer is out: 3.6.12.284458.

This version lists JIRA item STORM-1985 – Mesh garments don’t adapt to changes in avatar shape.  One of the things mentioned in the JIRA item is FITMESH-6 and how enabling and disabling the Advanced Lighting Model changes the behavior of the viewer’s ability to render shape changed clothing items in wireframe mode. For those of us looking to see how well demo clothes are made before purchasing, this is a definite problem.

Presumably this is fixed in this version.

MAINT-3311 – Skinning to some collision volumes is broken. I can’t read details on MAINT items. But, presumably this too is fixed.

Download here: Alternate Viewer Page.

Second Life News 2013-49

There will be a roll out Tuesday morning. The package running on Blue Steel and Le Tigre will get promoted to the main change. This is the one that includes the vehicle region crossing fix.

RC Update

Wednesday there will a single package rolling out to all three RC channels. This package contains a fix for: llGetAgentInfo() so that it now detects AGENT_CROUCHING correctly for avatars who have custom ‘Crouching’ or ‘CrouchWalking’ animations (BUG-4431). There is also a crash mode that has been fixed.

Since they aren’t saying much about the crash mode, I assume it is some exploit or other security fix.

Viewers

There is one RC viewer and one project viewer on the RC Viewers page. As of late Monday those haven’t changed from last week. The Interesting and Fitted viewers are it.

In the Third Party Viewers class Firestorm has moved back into first place for the most stable viewer. I say first because I don’t count Radegast as a viewer because it is not a graphical viewer in the sense that other TPViewers are. I just don’t see it in the same class.

Second Life News 2013-48

Viewers

The GPU Table Viewer was promoted to main viewer status. So, it is gone from the RC Viewers’ page. This should fix several problems for those with newer video cards. From what I have heard, it may also have created some problems for those with cards that do not meet system requirements. But, there isn’t enough information to know. Reports in the forums are always lame.

The Break Pad Viewer is undergoing updates and doing a better job of error reporting. So, for now you won’t find it on the RC Viewers’ page. It will be back. The Lindens are getting the system figured out. But, they still are figuring out problems. Once this is in place and released it will help the Lab and TPV Dev’s find bugs faster.

TPV Meeting 2013-47
TPV Meeting 2013-47

Interesting Viewer 3.6.11.283895… yep it is still out there, still getting fixes. I was using it, until Fitted Mesh came out. It does make a difference in render performance.

The Fitted Mesh Viewer  3.6.11.283899 currently includes the GPU update. I think it excludes the Interesting and Breakpad code, but I’m not sure.

All the RC and Project viewers are getting fixes. But there will not likely be any new RC releases this week as it is a no change window, US Holiday Thanksgiving Nov 28 to Dec 1. 

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Second Life News 2013-47 #2

There is nothing new on the server front since Tuesday. See: Second Life News 2013-47 for details on the servers.

Next week (48) is a no change window. That means no rollouts. Also, there will not be a Server Beta User Group meeting that week.

Server Beta User Group 2013-46
Server Beta User Group 2013-46

Since the revised Grey Goo fence settings came on line the Lindens have not heard complaints in that regard. So, they are assuming their fix is working. This is about large building rezzers failing because the tighter settings for the fence was catching them. Unless the Lindens see complaints, this problem is considered fixed.

There was discussion of problems with scripts using collision detection and crossing regions. Air planes using Mono scripts with collision cannot cross regions. This may be related to BUG-4084. 

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Second Life News 2013-47

This Tuesday we are getting a rollout to the main channel. This is the package that ran on Blue Steel and Le Tigre last week (46).  It is the Experience Tools package. We know very little about what is changed in this release. It is Experience Tools ‘infrastructure.’

Server Beta Meeting 2013-44
Server Beta Meeting 2013-44

RC Channels

Magnum will run the same package as last week, a maintenance release with bug fixes. My article from last Tuesday covers the details.

This release gets merged with the release going to the main channel. Plus the Lindens are tweaking the Grey Goo fence to remove some of the problems inflicted on large item rezzing tools. The new stricter control now will only apply to tools rezzing physical objects.

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Second Life News 2013-46 #2

Some big news from this week is the release of the ‘Interesting Viewer’, this is the viewer with improvements from the Interest List project (ILP).  The project is about doing a better job of deciding what to render first.

Torley did a good job of illustrating what the project does.

[youtube W7AC1RojXOk]

For months we have been getting the server side changes from the project. For weeks we have been promised the viewer side changes. Now those changes are out in a RC Viewer release: Second Life 3.6.11 (283895) Nov 13 2013. 

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