Lil Linden posted an update about changes and upgrades coming to the grid. See: Deploys for the Week of 2011-01-10.

It appears the Compression upgrade is moving to the main grid. All regions will get it. This will greatly reduce region crossing time (see previous post for graphs) and cut the number of failed teleports. Along with it comes the Encroachment feature that allows one to return prim that are only partially on your land.

Blue Steel is getting the Viewer Metrics feature. This will allow the Lab to measure how changes are affecting viewer frame rates and download and rez times of residents. I suspect this is to help guide the work planned for the co-location bandwidth improvements.

Le Tigre will continue testing the Simulator Shutdown software, which didn’t make it out of testing. Plus the Encroachment feature. This little dance allows them to test the Shutdown feature with the same features running on the main grid.

The Magnum release channel is getting the most new stuff. The interesting one is the Inventory API. This was in an earlier test and had to be rolled back. It was incompatible with older viewers. The new version will consider the viewer version when asked for inventory. If it is an older viewer it will respond with the previous API actions. Newer viewers will get the benefit of the new faster Inventory API processes. Another reason to consider getting on a series 2 viewer.

The other features are the Map Server upgrade and the region Conductor. The Map Server handles your requests for region maps on the main map. The Conductor deals with bringing a region up after a restart or crash takes it down. Restarts should be much faster.