Second Life and Virtual Worlds
General Viewer Information
Well, good things come to an end. Yesterday BlackRose Dayafter and Connor Monaron posted that development of the viewer is ending. For them this is a good life change. See their post: Everything good must come to an end!
It is generally sad to see a developer discontinue a viewer. In this case they are going traveling. Looks to be fun. Best wishes.
The Deploys information placed in the forum is less and less. As of now they are simply a link to the release notes.
The main channel did get a roll out this morning. Package: #17.04.26.325840 – This package changes server logging.
Blue Steel and Magnum get the new package: #17.05.05.326151 – The package consists of “internal” changes… probably meaning bugs that only affect backend operation, nothing we would notice.
Le Tigre gets the package: #17.05.05.326155 – This isn’t a simulator software change. The servers running this channel are being upgraded to a new Operating System version. Sort like you updating Windows and not your viewer. We aren’t likely to see any noticeable changes, provided all goes well.
The OS upgrade will spread through the entire set of simulators.
I do bits when either there isn’t much to report or for whatever reasons I’ve missed UG meetings. This week RL work had me busy. So… its bits today.
Empirically, we seem to be seeing more inventory loss. Apparently Grumpity Linden was at the Thursday Beta Server UG meeting talking about the Lab responding to complaints. Inara made the meeting and covers the discussion (here).
I’ve seen more posts in the SL Forum about people losing inventory. The cause is generally thought to be a poor connection or a flat inventory – having everything in the root or first set of subdirectory folders.
The Lab is apparently thinking either users are accidentally self-deleting things or there is bug eating inventory. While they look for a bug they are changing the viewer’s user interface (UI) to reduce the possibility of accidental deletion.
So, at some point we will see the Empty Trash process changes and another ‘Are you sure…’ prompt when deleting things.
See: BUG-100541
People seem to be having problems getting images into their profiles. See: BUG-100516.
The Third-Party Developer’s meeting ran 36 minutes. There is some interesting news. So…
A new RC HTTPAsset viewer is out, 5.0.5.325940. This version is significantly better than the previous, crash-wise. There are still too few people using it to have good stats on the viewer’s performance.
There has been an update to the voice viewer. Problems were fixed. At the first of the meeting Oz Linden thought the viewer would be out any minute. The new release actually posted during the meeting.
A new beta release is out, Catznip-R12 (Beta 2) – May 3rd 2017. The download is here. I have yet to try the viewer’s new version. I gather that beyond just catching up to Linden features the inventory features have been extended. More details are available at Catznip Blog and Catznip R12: Three Days of Teasers.
I like the inventory features being added. So, I have to decide if having a viewer for photos and machinima (Firestorm), another for latest features (Linden), and another for inventory (Catznip) is worth the effort or frustration. I would like to have all the features I use in one viewer, which just isn’t possible now. I hate being one viewer and needing a feature only in another.
I was reading a thread in the forum where the Opening Post (OP) was asking how to deal with scripts. They went somewhere and found out they were wearing too many scripts and were threatened with ejection. Been there done that… it’s been awhile.
Of course, there are the devices that will tell you your script weight. (Weight Scale – free) These generally provide an aggregate weight leaving you to try and figure out which scripts are heavy and lite.
However, the viewer has features you can use to make life easier. In ABOUT LAND (FS: World->Parcel Details – LL: World->About Land) there is a button (bottom-left) labeled Script Info. That pens a panel with the tabs; REGION and AVATAR. (see image) You can see it lists the script weight for each scripted item you are wearing.
NOTE: 2020/05 – Some time ago the Avatar tab was removed. You will have to use the method below to get script info.
You can also right click the ground and select ABOUT LAND.