SLV2, 3, 4, 5, 6. & 7 Series

The Linden made series of viewers

#SL News 2 Week 41

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Viewer 3.4.x Problem

Oz Linden has given us some news on the crashing problem they have had with the Beta and Development viewer. The Lindens believe the current Beta viewer (3-4-1-265642) has the memory leak, or whatever, fixed. The crash rate is back to low rates.

For the techies, the problem had to do with how the cURL wrapper was threaded. The cURL thing has to do with computer network communication over networks. It is a programming library that makes it easier for programmers to implement communication protocols like HTTP and HTTPS. It helps with encrypting communications.

Wind Vectors Displayed – Red Lines

One more round of testing in the Beta viewer is in progress. Once completed the basic fix and changes will move to the main release viewer, likely next week (42).

It takes a couple of days of testing to collect enough data to make a determination on whether a fix is working or not. The current Beta Viewer was compiled on Saturday and released on Monday. If you have Auto-Update on, you got it before it was on the web site.

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#SL Viewer 3.4.x Week 40

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There is good news coming from Oz Linden about the viewer. You probably remember I’ve been writing about a memory leak in the Beta and Development viewers. Their crash rates were way up from previous rates. Oz thinks the latest Beta Viewer 3.4.1-265434 has the problem resolved. Grab a copy of the viewer and try it out. They need as much testing data as possible. The data from over the weekend will give them good information on whether they have found the problem or not.

The Project Download Page

The problem has been difficult to reproduce. That means it is very hard to know what to fix. In #SL Viewer 3.4.x Week 37 I wrote about the problem in more detail.

The Development Viewer has been stalled at 3.4.2-265141 for about a week. The Lindens have been pulling updates and fixes out of the viewer code to narrow down the cause of the crashes. I suspect they are doing that work in a temporary code repository (repo for short) and using internal builds for testing. So, we don’t see activity in the Dev Viewer repo. The latest fixes are probably only in the Beta version.

If the problem has been resolved, development can move forward again. Oz says they have several interesting features waiting in the pipeline. He just won’t talk about them. So, what’s interesting to him, a  p r o g r a m m e r, and us may be different… But, there is hope there is something fun waiting.

Keep your fingers crossed and run a copy of the Beta Viewer. Use the link in the left column labeled SL Viewer Release. The Beta Viewer’s link is a little further down the page. I downloaded it yesterday. I’ve only used it for a short time. I will be using it more latter today. However, it has yet to eat my computer or crash

#SL Viewer 3.4.x Week 37

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Linden Viewer updates are a bit balled up right now. This version got too many changes and fixes poked into one update. Somewhere in all those changes is a memory leak that crashes the viewer. This has caused problems. The Pathfinding Project’s formal release has been delayed, for instance, as have other viewer updates.

Third party dev’s have been splitting the various update items apart and implementing different parts of the 3.4 code in their viewers. Pathfinding Tools are mostly operational in Firestorm and their crash rate is still really low. So, the problem is not in the PF Tools. (You can now see those tools in more viewers, but not yet the official Linden viewer.)

The Lindens are trying to get a viewer version with just the PF Tools into testing with the 3.3 code. They feel that could pass testing and move to Beta and Release quickly.

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Groups Editing Update II

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Baker Linden gave us another update on how he is coming along with fixing group editing. There is hope but there are some issues to be solved too.

Baker said, “I’m in the middle of debugging the server code.

For announcements, I’m pushing legacy viewer support to the back burner.  The new group data format is similar enough that some things should show up in the group list (I haven’t tested that yet), but not everything  [will show up] ([i.e.,] currently group roles, and potentially other pieces of information).

 I could also be lying to myself about that as well; it may be totally incompatible — I’ll have to wait and find out when I get to the viewer side of this. This is why I’m pulling it off the list — if it works, fantastic; if it doesn’t, then it doesn’t.

I think it’s not worth the time spent to support legacy viewers; I’d rather ship the fix, allow TPV to support the new format and allow people to actually use this feature. It’s just a matter of reformatting the data, but that extra work means more time spent on it and not delivering the feature.

 I doubt it’s going to be that big of an issue.”

Remember. He is new.

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Second Life Viewer Change

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Hypergrid Business has an article by Maria Korolov titled: Linden Lab cuts viewer link to OpenSim. This is about a rather subtle change in the Lab’s viewer that creates a not so subtle result.

Error Message from Version: Second Life 3.4.1 (262681)

To use the viewer on a grid other than the Linden grids a small change is made in the desktop icon used to start the viewer. If you right click on the icon and select Properties, you will see a field labeled: Target. It is in the Shortcut tab. The instructions there tell the computer how to start Second Life™.

Knowledgeable computer users will recognize the text as a command line instruction. If you open a command line window you can type in or paste in the text you find there as a command and Windows will start and run the viewer.

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New #SL Project Viewer

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Oz Linden has put up a link to a new HTTP Project Viewer. You can find it in the SL Wiki on the Second Life Alternate Viewers page.

Part of the Shining Project is improved client/server communication using HTTP. Redoing the HTTP coding in the viewer and servers is the project. The stated goal is:

The start of a unified approach to HTTP-based communications between the viewer and grid services with a goal of achieving reliability, consistency and a better overall experience on the grid.

This project viewer has some of the changes the Lindens think will improve things. They are looking for bugs, gathering data, and asking for feedback. The project viewer will allow people to help out.

Oz says:

…if you have had problems when you enable the use of HTTP, we would very much appreciate your giving this a try.  We know that it does not yet solve all the problems, but we think that it solves some and provides the first steps needed for solving some more in the future.

If you are one of the people that have had problems with things rezzing slowly, inventory failing to load then this is something that may help you or, at least, get the Lab the data they need to fix the problem.

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