SLV2, 3, 4, 5, 6. & 7 Series – Page 94 – Nalates’ Things & Stuff

#SL Viewer 1.23 Dying

2012/01/10 by Nalates Urriah

For some time I have said that the series 1 viewers are doomed and will eventually stop working. That day is drawing nearer. Several blogs have covered the demise of Linden Lab’s Viewer 1.23.5. Word is that OZ says it will soon lose the ability to deal with some inventory handling aspects. I’ll try to put that in factual perspective.

So far few have found where he said that. Oz doesn’t post meeting transcripts, so one has a hard time knowing whats going on there without attending. However, Fri, 06 Jan 2012 16:15:58, Oz Linden sent an email to the Open Source List saying:

We’re going to deploying changes to the inventory backend soon that improve robustness and performance, but in testing those changes we found that existing viewers relied on certain things being strictly ordered. With the new backend, that assumption does not always hold true.

Changeset d327dcc8ae51

<https://bitbucket.org/lindenlab/viewer-development/changeset/d327dcc8ae51>

from viewer-development implements the viewer change needed to avoid race conditions. It should be straightforward to apply to any viewer, and is safe to release before the changes are deployed (it is compatible with the services as they are now).

You are strongly urged to port this patch and get it deployed.

Qarl’s Alignment

2012/01/07 by Nalates Urriah

I found a post by Innula Zenovka on SLUniverse that says Qarl has donated his prim alignment tool code to Linden Lab. I wrote about the tool in October of 2010: Qarl Fizz Prim Alignment Tool. I included Qarl’s video about how the tool works and have copied it to this post too. The original development announcement can be found on Qarl’s blog as: setting things straight. Check out the JIRA links at the end.

[youtube 7UCeU8ItZGA]

You can see Qarl’s blog post about it here: thank you, back. Qarl links to Tateru’s article: How to send Qarl money. It seems someone sent Qarl some money. As a way of saying thanks to whoever that was, Qarl donated the code to the Lab.

#SL Viewer Performance

2012/01/05 by Nalates Urriah

Inara Prey recently wrote an article on Comparative Viewer Frame Rate performance. It is a handy reference. It took lots of effort to collect those numbers, which is why I seldom do rigorous tests.

Somewhat surprisingly it is the Linden Lab’s 3.2.5 viewer that is the fastest in the comparisons. I use the Development viewer 3.2.6, which is a little faster for me than 3.2.5.

The Lab’s viewers have not updated over the holidays. We may see some updates today or tomorrow. I suspect the Lindens are just getting back from the holidays and getting back into things. Also, it is a new year. People are fresh from a break and we may see some things change as they look at things with fresh eyes. Time will tell.

The main viewer is now 3.2.4. The beta version is 3.2.5. And the development viewer is 3.2.6.

The 3.2.6 is said to be the release with most of the Shining branch’s OpenGL fixes and changes for compatibility. I’ve been using a 3.2.6 version since December 12^th (246465) with four updates; 246560, 246813, 246889, and now 246959. Of that series the 246959 version is the fastest, but not by much on my system.

#SL Texture Loading Freeze

2011/12/17 by Nalates Urriah

SH-2738 – Texture fetching freezes due to LLcurl. If you have seen textures refuse to download and/or rez completely you may be having a problem described in SH-2738. (There is no link because the JIRA item is one of the Lab’s private items. I should point out the JIRA tends to make items in some … Read more

#SecondLife Global Illumination

2011/12/12 by Nalates Urriah

You may not have noticed the Graphics Setting feature: Global Illumination. It began appearing in viewers some time ago. But, now it has disappeared from the SL Viewer. So, what’s up?

What it is…

Global Illumination is the label used to describe how light is handled in 3D games. Its purpose is to make lighting more realistic. It adds ‘reflected’ light effects. This means if you are standing with a blue wall to the right and the sun to the left, some blue light will be reflecting on to your right side.

Status

Back in May 2009 the Lab, Runitai Linden, posted a video showing new features they were working on. See: SL Tech Demo above.

The video (above) includes Mesh and Global Illumination. At about 1:34 in the video you can see a sun cycle that shows an example of Global Illumination. (GI) Notice how the sun seems to reflect off surfaces and illuminate other surfaces. That is the Global Illumination.

#SL Viewer Status Week 48

2011/12/03 by Nalates Urriah

Main & Beta

The current main viewer for Second Life is version 3.2.1.244864. Of course, this version is available from the main Second Life download page. Also on that page is the Beta version of the viewer, which is now version 3.2.2.244666. And the link to the wiki page Linden Lab Official: Alternate Viewers with development, project, and alternate third party viewers is there.

Currently Second Life viewers are running slow. In my previous article I was researching how to get more speed out of my viewer. The information you need to diagnose your computer’s performance is there. How to get a Faster Second Life

Direct Delivery

The Direct Delivery Project Viewer is currently at version 3.0.2.239555. This viewer is currently for use on the ADITI grid where the servers are setup to test Direct Delivery.

Project viewers tend to come in two versions, the current Project Viewer and the Latest Build version. The latest build is similar to what many call a nightly build version. Today the Direct Delivery project’s Latest Viewer page is not loading.