Second Life Bugs

Some are seeing behavior changes in the viewer. It doesn’t seem anyone knows if they were intentional. Whether they are or are not, some people are not happy.

Ardy Lay describes the problem as:

Expectations:

A) Avatar is expected to stop watching mouse pointer after a short period of mouse inactivity.

B) World Map is expected to close-couple pan with mouse movement and stop panning when mouse motion is stopped, regardless of mouse button state after stop.

Results:

A) Avatar is watching mouse pointer long after mouse pointer motion stops.  This defeats a mechanism by which life-like behavior is imparted into avatar motion.

B) World Map exploration is being awkward as the mouse button must be released to stop the map from panning away from the desired view.

These changes start to appear in SL Viewer versions 3.7.3 and 3.7.4. I find them in version 3.7.6.

With the map, I like the change. To see it click on the map part of the World Map and flick the map left or right. Hold the left mouse button down after the drag/flip motion. The map will continue to scroll. How fast you jerk the image does not seem to matter.  The map scrolls at the same speed.

You’ll see some odd behavior when you move quickly. I think our hand bounces a bit at the end and that can confuse the map scroller. Try it. You’ll see.

As to the avatar eyes following the mouse, I have mixed feelings. I gave up trying to control the avatar for pictures with that feature. See Strawberry’s recommendations for pose tools. So, this is not much of an issue for me.

Second Life News 2014-15

Viewers

The main viewer is  version 3.7.4-288138.

Immersiva Photoshop Night Vision
Immersiva Photoshop Night Vision

This is the version that got the FMODEX fixes that solved a race condition. For the less geeky, a race condition is a common problem in multi-threaded programs. You can think of the threads as separate processes or programs that run at the same time. Once up on a time computers had only one CPU running programs and race conditions were not as common. Now with 2 to 8 cores (CPU’s) built into a single CPU chip the computer can do more than one thing at a time.

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Facebook, Flickr & Twitter from Second Life

SL Share is the feature name the Lab uses for their sharing feature. You probably remember that Facebook sharing was blocked for a time. Facebook advised the Lab on what had to change for the feature to be unblocked. The Lab made those changes. Now Facebook sharing is back.

While the Lab was making changes they added the ability to share with Flickr and Twitter. Torley Linden made a video tutorial that posted with announcement about the newly enhanced SL Share.

[youtube uVlNa2O9if4]

To use these new features you need to download and install the  Project SL Share2 Viewer version 3.7.5.288424

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Second Life News 2014-14

Servers Main Channel

Today the package from Magnum was rolled to the main channel. This package has a couple of bug fixes.

  • Bug fixes
    • Fixed a rare case in which certain users were unable to log in (BUG-5130)
    • Fix for a case in which multiple scripts in the same prim calling llTakeControls() with heterogeneous ‘accept’ and ‘pass_on’ parameters would not receive acontrol() event correctly in some cases (BUG-5281)
    • Updated LSL syntax file to use a new schema (fixes STORM-2000)
      • This change is for a viewer in testing; see STORM-1831 for more information
  • Fixed a crash mode

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Second Life News 2014-13 #2

Viewer

The current main release version is: 3.7.4-288138 as of noon Saturday 3/29.

RC Viewers

StatTest Viewer version 3.7.5.288371 – not to ever be a release viewer. This version was for Linden use in figuring out a problem in Google Breakpad. The changes in this version are already in the Google Breakpad version.

Google Breakpad Viewer version 3.7.5.288464 – this version has the newest debugging code being put into service.

Interesting Viewer version 3.7.5.288404 – This is the version also known as: Interest List – They have made some changes in how it handles multi-threaded processes.

MerchantOutbox Viewer version 3.7.5.288408 – This version has updates added from candidates that have been promoted to main release status.

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Second Life Bits 2014-13

Viewers

After my Tuesday morning post I found the main release viewer updated to 3.7.4.288138. This was the Hotfix RC viewer compiled Mar 15 2014 and released some time Monday.

Image by: Reema Xue, Flickr
Image by: Reema Xue, Flickr

I am finding this viewer runs pretty fast (30+ FPS) when few people are around. Add a dozen people and it slows down horribly. I’ll need to spend more time with it and try it around other groups, but in the little time I have had it, that seems to be a pretty consistent experience.

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