Second Life and Virtual Worlds
The Linden made series of viewers
Monday was a US holiday, Labor Day. So, scheduled things are off this week. As of 9:45 AM this morning and 3:45 PM this afternoon there is no Deploys thread post in the forum. However, my mainland home region did restart this morning.
There probably was no roll and this was just a 2-week restart for performance’s sake.
RL pulled me away today and I missed the Server-Scripting UG meeting… 🙁
This week has seen discussion on the ARC/ACI values and how broken they are. See the SL Forum thread: Rigged mesh LoD bug. I knew ARC/ACI weren’t all that accurate. But, I thought they were reasonable comparisons. I still believe once up on a time they were. But, in light of this new information I can’t prove that.
ARC = Avatar Render Cost
ACI = Avatar Complexity Index
The purpose of ACI is to influence users and designers to buy and create more efficient mesh content. Something along the lines of Consumer Reports, but free and in your face.
A couple of things have happened that has not only changed ACI’s usefulness but distorted it and pushed us away from its goal. Possibly even making it counterproductive
Yesterday I couldn’t make the user group meeting, RL lunch meeting. So, I’m relying on Inara’s coverage and the Deploys thread for what came out in that meeting.
There was no roll planned for the main channel. My main channel home region did not get a restart. It continues to run version #18.08.10.518612.
AFAIK, the RC channels did restart all updating to version #18.08.24.519036. This is some backend change needed to get the new land auction system working.
By meeting time, the Voice RC viewer had promoted to the main viewer, 5.1.8.518593. They have already found one new bug. Still, voice should be better on this version.
The RC version of the Animesh was waiting for a merge with voice, but, in the meeting, Kyle Linden told us it had passed Q&A and should be up on the Alternate Viewers page by the time you read this.
So, you may see some frozen characters scooting around the grid, which is what you see when you do not have an Animesh viewer and look at Animesh.
The Love Me Render RC viewer needs to update with voice. We’ll likely see that this week, 35.
Next week another Maintenance RC viewer w/bug fixes should pop up on the page.
The main channel will update to version #18.08.10.518612. This version will allow notices you neither accept nor decline to hang around until the next login.
Blue Steel, Le Tigre, and Magnum channels will continue to run version #18.08.10.518612. No rolls.
And no Server-Scripting UG meeting this week.
The main viewer is version 5.1.7.517973 released in week #32.
Second Life Animesh Viewer version 6.0.0.518579 – Released in week #33.
Second Life Bugsplat Viewer version 5.1.8.518305 – Week #32.
Second Life Love Me Render Viewer version 5.1.8.518751 – New this week. This version focuses on Rendering fixes to the Viewer. Release Notes
Second Life Voice Viewer version 5.1.8.518593 – This is a new update to version 5.1.8.518310, which was released in week #32.
Second Life Project 360 Snapshot Viewer version 5.1.6.515934 – Last updated in week #10.
Second Life Project Bakes On Mesh Viewer version 5.1.7.518013 – Released in week #32.
Second Life Project EAM Viewer version 5.2.0.518362 – Released in week #33. This is the Estate Access Management viewer.
Hamlet at New World Notes points us to a job listing that suggests the Lab is considering developing a viewer for iOS and Android. See Linden Lab Creating IOS & Android Versions Of SL, Job Listing Suggests. The job listing is here: Senior Mobile App Dev.
Some points in the listing lead to speculation the iOS and Android support would be a server side render streamed to the devices. A Bright Canopy sort of thing. If that is the direction, would it be a monthly charged service or a Premium benefit?
For SL users there is the Apple question, will Second Life™ run on Apple? Or… continue to run on Apple?
In June of this year Apple announced its discontinuing support of OpenGL after macOS 10.14 Mojave (scheduled for release Sept 2018), the core aspect of SL’s render engine. It will take a couple of years for Apple to phase it out. But, updates and support officially stop now. For some time support has been really bad.
They explained their reasoning when some game developers declared they would stop making games for Apple.
The reasons;
On the PC side of things OpenGL is still supported. We can’t know for how long. Khronos, OpenGL’s developer, has introduced Vulkan. (See: State of Graphics: DirectX 12 & Vulkan – 4/2016) Development is exciting and popular. The group is on the forefront of some interesting tech. But, I don’t know that it will be helpful for SL.