Second Life News 2013-46 #2

Some big news from this week is the release of the ‘Interesting Viewer’, this is the viewer with improvements from the Interest List project (ILP).  The project is about doing a better job of deciding what to render first.

Torley did a good job of illustrating what the project does.

[youtube W7AC1RojXOk]

For months we have been getting the server side changes from the project. For weeks we have been promised the viewer side changes. Now those changes are out in a RC Viewer release: Second Life 3.6.11 (283895) Nov 13 2013. 

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Second Life News 2013-46

Main Channel

This week there is no roll to the main channel. Monday was a US holiday, which would normally through of this week’s rollouts. Since there is no rollout to the main channel, we should see the typical Wednesday rollout for the RC channels.

Wow Obduction made it to Server Scripting Meeting 2013-46
Wow Obduction made it to Server Scripting Meeting 2013-46

RC Channels

Blue Steel and Le Tigre will have the Experience Tools preparatory package running.

Magnum will have a maintenance release with bug fixes. One fix is: “Sim crossing on vehicle fails when parcel at opposite sim border is full.” (BUG-4152). Another is a case where a viewer with a high draw distance would not connect to distant regions which are within the draw distance area.

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Second Life News 2013-44

There is stuff going on. But, there is not much in the way of news, at least that I find interesting. Also, I am distracted by RL work.

CtrlAltStudio Adds Interface for Oculus
CtrlAltStudio Adds Interface for Oculus

CtrlAltStudio has released a new Oculus viewer version that adds in some basic user interface controls. See: Alpha 4: Some Preliminary Rift UI in the CtrlAltStudio Viewer.

It looks like CtrlAltStudio is doing some good work. I will be interested to see what Linden Lab™ comes up with for a User Interface (UI) for Oculus Rift.

SL Server Update

The main channel is not being updated. Calab Linden provided the Deploys update this week. He did not make cler if there would be a wave of restarts are not. By the time you read this you’ll know if your region restarted or not. As yet (9:45AM PDT) I haven’t received a restart notice from my in-world home.

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Second Life News 2013-42

Viewer Status

Second Life™ Viewer 3.6.8 (282367) Oct 14 is a hot fix release for an ATI driver incompatibility problem. The Release Candidates will be getting updated with this change too.

Interest List

Richard Linden says the project is coming to an end and viewer side source code is out. TPV Dev’s are looking at it. The changes have NOT been through QA and are NOT ready for release. But, at least TPV Dev’s can see what they will need to handle. More eyes mean more bugs found and more brains thinking mean more solutions and improvements.

While building the coming Interest List release the Lindens were focused on things not rendering but still having a presence in the physics engine. Sever changes at this point are significant. The viewer is a preliminary version without significant change.

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Second Life News 2013-40

Another third party Viewer meeting and some more interesting news.

TPV Meeting 2013-40
TPV Meeting 2013-40

Viewer Pipeline

The Lindens have promoted the Maintenance RC viewer to the main release. That makes the main viewer 3.6.7-281793. You can see the release notes here.

This release has improvements for avatar render speed and other fixes and improvements. Most notable are:

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Second Life Viewer 3.6.7-281236 RC

Many of us like seeing what is new or need to get a bug fix that is in the works. Before the new viewer pipeline was implemented we just downloaded and installed beta versions of the viewer. With the new pipeline that is still possible, but it has gotten rather complex. It is easier to just install an RC viewer over the top of our main install of the SL Viewer and run a single SL Viewer.

Second Life Viewer 2013-38
Second Life Viewer 2013-38

I’m trying that for now and watching how things work. In general, pretty well. There are some Windows oddities I am still sorting out.

You can download a copy of the current Maintenance Viewer 3.6.7-281236 RC from the Beta/RC page. Before you install it, open your SL Viewer and check that you have Auto-Update and ‘willing to install RC’ options enabled. Then just install it as you could the main release SL Viewer. Some versions do wipe out your settings when installed manually. 

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