Second Life and Virtual Worlds
Tuesday saw the roll out of the HTTP Package Monty Linden has been working on. This ran on all three RC channels last week. The package has to do with changing the connection protocols used between your viewer and the Second Life™ servers.
A few people are reporting an increase in PING time. I haven’t seen it yet.
Some are complaining about region crossings. Simon Linden discussed crossings with us in the meeting.
The feature formerly known as: Server Side Avatar Baking is moving forward. Nyx Linden tells us today that the Sunshine code is now in the Beta Viewer branch. That means we have a working viewer with the near final features. So, far the server side is only running on the Preview Grid, ADITI. Look for the region SunshineTest.
If you find a bug, report it ASAP. Otherwise the bug will likely make it into the main release viewer.
Nyx was asked how quickly this feature would roll out to the main grid. Nyx and Oz have both said it is a bit of an awkward rollout and may take some time.
There was no new news on the server updates at Thursday’s Beta Server meeting. We did get a bit more information.
[youtube SSs5dombRvQ]
(There is a link to the Materials Project Viewer in the left column – more below)
Maestro Linden tells us that Monty Linden’s HTTP Project needed more ‘baking time’, in case there were any subtle issues. This is the project that changes more of the communications between your computer and the Second Life™ servers over to the HTTP Protocol. I suppose since they had the opportunity to roll the package out to all three RC channels before going to the main grid they took it. Or… they may not have had anything else ready to rollout.
It seems the updates for the Release Candidate planned to rollout on Blue Steel and Le Tigre did not make it. So, the package planned for Magnum was rolled to all three RC regions.
The Magnum package is the HTTP one with a crash mode fix.
So, if you have been testing the new Animation Override functions, you are out of luck for a week or so. The scripts you have made will continue to work. But, compiling (saving) new scripts to test is going to fail.
Lots of bits and pieces are coming out. CHUI has made it to the main viewer. That is allowing lots of things to move forward. The Materials System now has a Project Viewer (link in left column – currently alpha version per Oz Linden – if used to edit existing content it may break it). We are seeing Third Party Viewers come out with Server Side Appearance (Baking). See Kokua 3.5.1 now with CHUI and SSA. The HTTP package is moving forward and the Interest List updates are everywhere.
Honour has a post about things changing in Group Management.
Today there will be no rollout to the main channel. None of the Release Candidates made it past testing. So, those packages are getting updates Wednesday and will run for another week.
Blue Steal and Le Tigre will continue to run the package with the new scripting functions for animation overriding. There are some changes to improve how these functions work with other scripted items, such as pose balls.*
Magnum had the update to HTTP Protocols. That package gets some bug fixes and will continue to run on Magnum.
The server updates seem to have gone pretty well. There are some good things and some bad things.
Region crossings are way better. A couple of sailors and pilots have commented in the Deploys thread about how much better things are.
[youtube t8IUxCMyElU]
With this rollout the problem of some items simply not rendering has gotten worse. If one clicks on them they show up. So, the server has told the viewer they are there. But, for some reason the viewer is not rendering them. It seems the problem is showing up in Linden and third party viewers.