SSA Follow Up 2013-28

We now have SSA enabled on the Le Tigre Release Candidate channels. For a list of regions running SSA see my article: Le Tigre Regions List. So, what is it like? Well, my opinion is it really depends somewhat on the viewer you are using, but generally better.

Non-SSA Region
Non-SSA Region

So, far my best experience has been with the Production release of the SL Viewer version 3.6.1-278007. I’ve had some crashing as I tp from SSA to non-SSA regions. But, otherwise, it is the best I’ve seen.

The Beta version of the SL viewer is another story. It is the worst of those I tried. I expect that to change. It is called beta for a reason.

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Le Tigre Regions List

KarenMichelle Lane posted a list of the Le Tigre regions in this week’s Deploys thread. You can find it here.

Le Tigre is the Release Candidate channel that has SSA enabled. If you’re in one of those regions and have an old viewer, you will be so gray…

If you find problems, see if they are reproducible. If so, file a JIRA. …ummmm… make sure you wait for the rollout to compete before looking for problems.

Also, the list of regions changes. Expect this one to slowly go out of date.

Second Life News 2013-28

This week we are getting new rollouts. The main channel got a maintenance release. I think anything called a maintenance release is a security and exploits fix. Whatever, we are told that this release has a fix for a popular griefing tactic. The hope is we will see less region crashes.

Server/Scripting Meeting #27
Server/Scripting Meeting #27

This package also includes the LSL changes for llApplyImpuse and llXorBase64. 

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Update on SSA

Surely by now you know SSA is Server Side Appearance, which is about baking your avatar appearance. The Lindens have posted a second notice that SSA will be here next week. See: It’s Time to Update Your Viewer!

And they reuse their previous video:

[youtube jwglL3VXI80]

Please make sure all your friends know about the coming update and the need for them to be using a recent version of whatever viewer they use. 

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Second Life News 2013-27

As you know the Materials System has been released by the Lab. The third party viewers are picking up the project and adding it to their viewers. Cool VL Viewer and Niran’s Black Dragon have Materials. Firestorm 4.4.1 does not have Materials yet but, 4.4.2 is nearing release and will have materials.

There are fixes for problems in Materials System that are in the pipeline. One of those has to do with Ambient Occlusion on large objects. That is unlikely to be in Firestorm’s 4.4.2 release.

SSA

Server Side Appearance (SSA baking) is planned for the release the week of July 7-13. The Lab is expecting it may be on the 8th or 9th.

Firestorm and Phoenix users will see a huge notice on the viewer’s splash screen that they need to update. If you have not yet updated to 4.4.1, avoid the rush and do it now.

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