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

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 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

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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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.

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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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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We have new updates to Linden Lab’s viewers. I haven’t had much time to play with them. I’ve only been on a couple of hours in the last few days because of RL work. But, I do have them installed and running.

Second Life 3.4.0 (262596) Jul 26 2012 – Second Life Development

I’ve seen some odd behavior in this viewer. I had problems installing it. Files like static_data.db2 failed to update giving an error: can’t write to file. I think there were 3 of them, all dot DB2 files. But, the viewer seems to work.

I have noticed that some mesh avatars and mesh objects disappear as LoD levels change. Oskar Linden wears an avatar (or outfit) that blinks in and out as you move away from it.

I am getting more FPS from this version which is nice. With L&S, Ambient Occlusion, and Sun/Moon enabled I’m staying in the 20’s tending to be around 28 FPS in my house.

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