Viewers

General Viewer Information

Second Life News 2017 w/32

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Servers

Corrections made 8/9

The main channel was updated with version #17.07.27.327933 this morning, Tuesday. Last week the main channel was running version #17.07.11.327548. Both of these are listed as having “internal changes”. Geek-speak for changing data reporting, debugging, and performance information… usually.

Street at sunset
Street at sunset

Blue Steel, Le Tigre, and Magnum were supposed to update to #17.07.27.327933 tomorrow, Wednesday. But, Simon tells us that isn’t going to happen. There probably won’t be a restart as they restarted with last week’s update. The Lindens try to restart regions once every two-weeks even if there is no planned update.

No big problem, but enough of one the Lindens decided to hold the RC update back. It had to do with regions names not being applied correctly in the restart, so they never appeared to come online.

The Deploys thread is dying. There is very little discussion or information to be gleaned from reading the posts. They are basically a day, time, and link to release notes. So, I suspect fewer people are reading the posts. I expect the posts to go away at some point.

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Second Life News 2017 w/31

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Servers

The main channel is planned to run version #17.07.11.327548. I am taking that from the Deploys thread for the week of 7/31. It indicates a planned roll for Tuesday. But, this is the version that was running last week… no, two weeks ago. So… I’m not sure what’s up. However, the main channel region my home is in did restart 8/1.

Mimsy Moo
Mimsy Moo

Blue Steel, La Tigre, and Magnum are to get #17.07.27.327933 on Wednesday. Same fixes as last week with additional ‘internal fixes’. That roll posted as completed 8/2.

Viewers

Main viewer 5.0.6.326593. No change.

Second Life Alex Ivy Viewer version 5.1.0.507412 – No change. Still running a high crash rate, according to the Lindens. My 64-bit hasn’t been crashing. But, I may just be lucky.

Second Life Maintenance Viewer version 5.0.7.327958 – An upgrade from last week. This is the version most likely to get promoted.

Second Life Voice Viewer version 5.0.7.327253 – No change.

Second Life Project 360 Snapshot Viewer version 5.1.0.506743 – No change.

Related

This week the SL Lindens are meeting to plan and decide on which projects to take on next. Also, lots of SL users are distracted with Sansar. So, we aren’t likely to see much happening this week.

Second Life – Third-Party Dev News 2017 w30

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Some new news this week. Some of it BIG!

Viewers

The Maintenance RC Version Viewer updated. The update includes a couple of important crash fixes. Oz Linden is requesting third party developers include one of them as soon as possible.

This past week was a perfect storm for the Lab. A backhoe literally cut a network cable. This cut off a significant number of people, dropped connection disconnects. Of course, for them, it was WTH! They then tried to log in again. The Internet being redundant, as it is figured out a new connection path suddenly thousands of users started trying to log in.

The login servers peaked and started to lag. Low-level code in the viewer’s login process started timing out and retrying the login. The code was very aggressive and thousands of users began unknowingly hammering the login servers. The storm of logins created what was essentially a Denial of Service attack. The result was more and more people were blocked from logging in which resulted in more hammering. A Catch-22. 

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Alchemy Viewer Updates Main Release – 5.0.6.41161

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Cinder Roxley

Cinder Roxley announced the release of a new viewer version a couple of days ago. I just noticed. If I am reading right, this is the only main version update in a year. There have been beta updates. But, this one is an official main release, no beta.

See: Alchemy Release 5.0.6.41161. It comes in 32 & 64-bit versions for Windows, Mac 64-bit, and Linux 64-bit. Download links are on the announcement page. The release notes are here.

I find the viewer slower than the Linden and Firestorm viewers. In a crowd, I run about 15 to 20 FPS. In places where FS and LL run in the 80-90 FPS range Alchemy runs in the 50’s. In isolated places where LL & FS run 100-110 FPS Alchemy runs 130 or so.

Alchemy doesn’t support RLV, yet. Bummer.

I describe Alchemy as a nicer LL Viewer. Nice clean U.I.

Kokua Viewer – End Times

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The Kokua viewer is mostly maintained and build by Nicky Perian. Nicky at 75 is sort of retiring from viewer development. This will likely leave Kokua Viewer without a driving force.

Nicky has posted this information on the Kokua blog, Path forward.

Paths

If you are into building viewers, this is an opportunity to head up the project. It will need a new lead developer.

In the meantime, Nicky plans to add in the Alex Ivy 64-bit upgrade. But, during the remaining time Nicky spends with the project until may be October 2017, he will drop RLV support.

I suspect dropping RLV will cost users that use RLV. But, that can’t be helped.

Nicky has been a great contributor to the SL Viewer community. We will miss his contributions. I wish him all the best.

 

Second Life News 2017 w30

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Servers

My main channel region did not restart today. No roll was planned. The main channel continues to run on version #17.07.11.327548.

"pr!tty Summer 2017 Photo Contest"
“pr!tty Summer 2017 Photo Contest”

Blue Steel and Le Tigre and Magnum are scheduled to update to version #17.07.20.327788 this Wednesday (7/26). It is listed as having ‘Internal Changes’.

Viewers

The main viewer is version 5.0.6.326593. No change.

I’m running version Second Life Release 5.1.0.507412 (64bit) as my main LL Viewer.

Second Life Alex Ivy Viewer version 5.1.0.507412 – This is the version I got because I elected to run RC versions. This is the 64-bit Alex Ivy. The release notes now list 2 or 3 dozen fixes and improvements. The previous version was 5.1.0.507006.

Second Life Maintenance Viewer version 5.0.7.327710 – This one has updated since last week’s 5.0.7.327587.

Second Life Voice Viewer version 5.0.7.327253 – No change.

Second Life Project 360 Snapshot Viewer version 5.1.0.506743 – No change.