Second Life News 2019 Week 15

The Lab has posted “THIS IS A SCHEDULED EVENT Apr 1005:00 – 07:00 PDT”

Apr 812:12 PDT
Scheduled – Second Life will be undergoing scheduled inventory maintenance from 5:00 AM to 7:00 AM PST on April 10th, 2019. During this time, residents may have issues with any inventory related activities including building, logging in, as well as avatar and object rezzing. Please refrain from rezzing in-world, in addition to transacting in-world, on the Marketplace, or on the Lindex during this time.

This coincides with the grid update in the RC channels. So, expect problems. PS: Maybe not. Deploys says no rolls Wednesday.

Servers

Why am I crashing constantly… is a growing thread in the SL Forum. I’ve been hearing of this problem since about December-January. Then it was only older computers and viewer versions. However, it has been growing. With the last main channel grid update, the problem seems to have exploded. The Lindens have commented on it, Darn Teleport Disconnects (4/8).

On my own-

On my own-

People currently have various ideas as to what is happening and how to fix it. There currently is no fix. So, don’t be doing drastic things; clearing cache, reinstalling, clean reinstalling, reinstalling Windows… none of these things are going to fix it.

Depending on who you talk to it is Animesh that is the cause or Enhanced Environment Project or the upgraded OS the servers are being updated to or it is the move to the cloud (we aren’t there yet). Take your pick. All causes have people unaffected by the it-is-this-cause.

As some users and the Lindens understand the problem it is server side. So, all viewer brands are going to suffer the TP disconnect problem. I’ve seen it with Firestorm and the Linden’s SL Viewer.

Restarting the computer and router/gateway may help a little. Continue reading

Second Life News 2019 w10

This is a repost. It seems to have poofed shortly after I first posted it.

We have some news… March 1 was the Third-Party Dev meeting. It ran 57 minutes… but, there was

Servers

Problems continue on the server-front. No updates on the main or RC channels. These problems are holding up viewer releases. EAM, EEP, and BoM are all waiting for server-backend stuff to update.

Any region that has run longer than 10 days will get a restart.

The server update that kills inventory UDP fetching is also held up until the server problems are solved. Actually, lots of stuff is delayed as people are pulled to work on the servers. Continue reading

Second Life News 2019 w08

We have some news. Nothing too earth-shaking Firestorm did get their Animesh supporting viewer released. EEP server-side is behind expectations by another week. But better to fix before grid-wide release. The third-party dev UG  (YouTube video) was last Friday.

Servers

No roll to the main channel. We are staying on version #19.01.25.523656. They found an issue while the planned to roll version was in RC last week. So, there will be a new RC of this one Wednesday. But the regions reaching two weeks without a restart will be getting a restart.

Take over

Take over

An issue for some has come up. If the regions are restarted at different times their day/night cycle gets out of sync with adjacent regions. When the main grid is restarted for an update all those regions are pretty much in sync for daytime.  Regions that have been restarted at various times for some reason get left out of the two-week no update restart, at least I think that is what is being complained about.

Seems the Lindens are not deliberately trying to do a daylight time sync. It is just however it works out. They consider when daylight happens as up to the region owner. Continue reading

Firestorm Viewer Update – Feb 2019 = 6.0.2.56680

We have been waiting for this update. This is the one that adds Animesh. If you haven’t heard of Animesh… well, where have you been? This is the feature that allows us to animate mesh things. So, better horses and dogs…

Firestorm Viewer has had a beta version of their viewer out. It had the Animesh feature too. People often prefer not to update to a beta version. With ~75% of Second Life™ users running on Firestorm and a significant number not updating, Animesh has not been a thing in SL. Now we are likely to see it explode as new animated things begin to be released, animals, pets, babies, Non-Player characters (think Santa and store-bots), new machines…

The Firestorm Update 6.0.2

So… This is version 6.0.2.56680. It has some new features. Inara has a couple of writeups about the two Animesh versions of the viewer, FIRESTORM 6.0.2: ANIMESH RELEASE (this release) and Firestorm 6.0.1: Animesh Early Access (the previous release). Check those writeups if you want lots of details.

Otherwise… Besides Animesh, we get a few fixes, about a half dozen I have never run into (see release notes). The ‘splayed hands’ problem has a fix. Some install parts of the viewer updated; all the Linden 6.0.1 fixes and additions, changes to the code playing sound, the code handling the images – Kakadu – was updated, and the OGG library that has to do with… audio compression of files, you know the sound files we upload versus voice.

RLVa has about a half dozen fixes. Continue reading

Second Life News 2019 w07

The planned roll out to the main channel (leaving us running #19.01.25.523656) was canceled due to a bug in the logging. So, no restart to the main channel. Main channel regions got a restart last week.

The Deploy notice was posted Monday and revised Tuesday. So, if you are confused, it is because of late breaking changes.

Blue Steel and Le Tigre will update to #19.02.08.524296. This includes the EEP feature, which is to being installed in more regions fo broader testing.

Continue reading

Second Life News + 3rd Party 2019 w05 and 06

The third-party Dev UG meeting was short and griefed. The video is here. Pantera Północy, the videographer, edited most of the griefing out. Annoying.

Servers

The main channel got an update, #19.01.25.523656. Has logging to gather baseline information on simulator performance in various areas of interest and additional internal logging. So, they are now getting data from the majority of the grid.

N383 What To Wear

What To Wear

If you drive, fly, or sail now would be a good week to be active. Of course, Tuesday afternoon is a good day to drive, fly, or sail as the most regions have just been restarted.

Continue reading

Second Life News 2019 w05

There is no Deploys thread this week. From the Server-Scripting UG we hear,

[12:05] Simon Linden: For server news, there wasn’t an update to the main channel today but tomorrow will see 3 different RCs
[12:06] Simon Linden: We’ll have a new maintenance update in one channel
[12:06] Simon Linden: Another that only has internal changes
[12:07] Simon Linden: and _maybe_ an update for the EEP servers, but Rider is going after a bug that’s blocking that from moving forward
[12:07] Joe Magarac (animats): The “time is stuck” bug?
[12:07] Simon Linden: exactly Joe
[12:07] Simon Linden: yeah that one is a show-stopper …. and he’s working on it right now

Server-Scripting Meeting

So, no roll to the main channels and 3 updates likely coming to the RC channels Wednesday.

*Ariel*

*Ariel*

Also, notice:

Scheduled – We will be conducting scheduled maintenance on our inventory system on Wednesday, January 30 from 6:00 AM until 7:00 AM PST. During this time, some residents may experience difficulty rezzing items.

Continue reading

Second Life News w/3rd Party Dev Meeting 2019 w03 & 4

There is news. Everyone has been back to work long enough post-holiday for things to be getting completed. So, changes are in progress. I am behind, again. So, I’m just getting this converted from my notes to something readable.

Servers

We did get a Deploy post, appearing Tuesday afternoon.

The Rainforest Photo Contest, Entry # 2

The Rainforest Photo Contest, Entry # 2

The main channel updates to version #19.01.09.523003. This version is listed as having logging collecting data to build a baseline performance measure. Also, more internal logging.

My empirical take is things have degraded. But, without some objective measure that is only an opinion. As I started flying a complex Shergood helicopter in July 2018 my perception of region reliability has likely changed. But, my observation of what happens when crossing region boundaries is more factual.

Using the Firestorm Viewer, I have the option to cross regions in two ways. The default is to cross using the basic viewer prediction of what should happen for a smoother appearing crossing. The other is sort of stop-action crossing. (Preferences->Move & View->Movement->Movement at region crossing: Predict or Stop)

Continue reading