SLV2, 3, 4, 5, 6. & 7 Series – Page 64 – Nalates’ Things & Stuff

Second Life: Crashing Viewer

2014/11/26 by Nalates Urriah

Word is getting around that there is a pre-release version of the viewer for those having a problem getting past the VFS step of viewer launch. It seems it is mostly those using Intel HD graphics chips for their video processor that have the problem.

There is a recommended fix: Viewer 3.7.??-296857. This is a version some lindens and others have mentioned at various times.

The latest possible fix is this viewer: 3.7.??-29????. This version may be better or worse. The link leads to work-in-progress builds that have yet to be passed through QA. Most of the code has been through QA, but not 100%. But, it will be the latest build in this channel. As I write this, the version is: 297042. As new builds are made this link will automatically update.

I suspect most new users are not familiar with these versions. A couple of years age it was common for SL users to be following these pre-release builds. They have been mostly replaced by Release Candidate (RC) Viewers. In other places the pre-release versions would probably be called the nightly builds. They can solve a specific problem. But, they may also have other issues that make them better or worse than the main viewer.

If you are having a problem this version fixes, there is no reason not to try it. But, don’t expect perfection.

Second Life News 2014-48

2014/11/25 by Nalates Urriah

Servers

Tuesday saw a roll out of a main channel update. This update is the tweaks to the way servers work with the Content Delivery Network. Simon says they didn’t change anything with this update. They just added the ability to make changes more easily. I assume that means they added settings controls to the simulator console.

Next week a new RC package will roll out.

This Thursday 11/27 there will not be a Beta Server User Group meeting. This is due to the US holiday, Thanksgiving.

Second Life News 2014-47 TPD

2014/11/22 by Nalates Urriah

This past Friday was the Third Party Developers meeting. Chakat NorthSpring has a video of the meeting: Second Life: Third Party Viewer meeting (21 November 2014). These meetings are consistently getting shorter. This one is down 30± minutes or so.

A couple of extra Linens were in attendance Friday; Brooke, Xiola and Bazz.

Viewers

Oz Linden did his usual recap of viewer devlopment. He says they have lots of stuff in progress.

Second Life News 2014-47

2014/11/18 by Nalates Urriah

Group Chat

Simon Linden Tells us:

Yes some of the chat servers have been having troubles in the last few days. I’ve been looking into that … the code running there isn’t super new, and the outages might be timed with some of those [hardware update] restarts.

In any case, there is an update soon for the chat servers, and already another in the pipeline.

Servers

This week there are no rolls for either the main channel or RC channels. Next week is a no change week. So, I expect no roll outs that week either.

We can expect tweaking to the CDN system. This week whatever they are doing that requires multiple restarts is ongoing.

The main reason for no updates is the hardware updating requiring the restarts scheduled for this week. Estimating time for any individual update or the group is difficult as Simon says, “We also have to actually open up the server box and look inside to see if it needs an update, so it’s random how long each one takes.

This shouldn’t do anything grid-wide, aside from extra region restarts.”

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Second Life Performance: Render Muting

2015/05/092014/11/17 by Nalates Urriah

We have and are hearing lots of complaints about how some number of avatars lag our Second Life™ experience. If you open up the Viewer Stats (Ctrl-Shift-1) and look at server performance (Simulator: Time Dilation, Sim FPS, Physics FPS, and others), you often find the region server performing well; TD=0.999, Sim FPS=44-45, Physics=44=45. Even with lots of avatars in a region. So, it isn’t region/simulator lag that is the problem. Over the last year large steps in reducing simulator lag have been taken with CDN being the most recent. The lag is now in our viewer.

There is a value the viewer displays labeled Avatar Render Cost (ARC). In November 2011 I wrote about ARC and how to use it, as it had recently changed. (See: #SL ARC Replaced) Things have changed since then. We now find the value displayed in two different ways. Try: Top Menu->Advanced (press Ctrl-Alt-D if you do not have that menu item)->Performance Tools->Show Draw Weight for Avatars. This will display a colored text above avatars showing their ‘render cost’. This does clutter the screen, but makes it easy to see which avatar has what ARC.

Second Life News 2014-46

2014/11/122014/11/12 by Nalates Urriah

Group Chat

I think most people have noticed it is better. So far, I have been able to comment in groups such as Firestorm Support without a problem, a group I seldom could connect to. I could listen, but not post comments, about half or more of the time.

Blood Letters - Mad Pea 2014 — Blood Letters – Mad Pea 2014

Posting to any large group was a problem. That has now mostly been resolved.

We are losing the open post of any chat that starts after I login. In some cases it is not noticeable. In others it is apparent. The Lindens are aware of it.

Today grid status reported the internal utilities servers would be getting updates. In the Server Scripting meeting we learned that additional changes to group chat were being rolled out. So, this is likely that change going into place. The Lindens say not to expect visible improvements. That doesn’t mean there aren’t any, just that they are not likely to be as noticeable as previous changes.