Second Life News 2014-11 #3

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Viewer Candidates

Hot Fix Viewer 3.7.4.287875 – Monty Linden is doing most of the work on this one. Fixes include problems with a FMODEX (sound) race condition and other problems. The working fixes in this one are important but are not the problems they hoped to solve.

The main emphasis here is getting the SL Viewer crash rate down. If this version can accomplish that it will move to the top of this for promotion to the main viewer.

Interesting Viewer 3.7.3.287127 – This is the viewer that has better caching and scene loading. This iteration has 12 fixes to previous versions.

Merchant Outbox Viewer 3.7.3.287344 – This has about 8 fixes, one being A Windows 7 crash when exiting the viewer. So, if you have been losing settings made recently, this may be the fix. 

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Drax, Jo, Widely, and the Rift

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I haven’t been taking the time to listen to Drax and Jo’s Drax Files Radio Show. Just too many other things to do. But, the information about the Oculus is of interest and I wanted to hear it. Waking up far too early this morning I took the time.

As always this synopsis is what I heard. Before reacting to anything written here take the time to listen to the original audio of the show: Show #10: Oculus!!!

Time marks are approximate, but they should get you into the audio before the subject’s start point.

Synopsis

00:00 Intro and description of the show contents: Oculus Rift – SL Oculus Viewer version goes to Beta. The Show gave away a LEAP Motion controller. They are giving away another. You need to answer a question to win. Instructions are related between time marks 03: 00 and 04:00.

04:00 More discussion about show content to be covered in this episode.

05:00 Discussion of the ToS. It is apparent from this part of the audio that Jo and Drax are accepting of the verbal position the Lab has stated: ‘We do not intend to steal your stuff and sell it.’ It is obvious that for Jo, Drax and many others this is believable and the problem is with the legalese of the ToS, which I think is a reasonable position.

The show moves forward and presents what I’ll call the state of the industry/things, showing this is the way things are and the Lab is conforming to a generalized behavior of the industry with its ToS.

[youtube yzyafieRcWE]

A clip from South Park and clips from the movie Terms and Conditions May Apply (movie trailer above) is played.

At 07:00 at the end of the clips they start talking about Emily Short, of Versu, being in a future show.  ??? 

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Firestorm Update

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Firestorm Logo
Firestorm Logo

I am finding that I can’t stay logged into SL for more than a couple of hours, if that long, before the viewer starts to lag out. I have mini freezes and periods where the frame rate (FPS – Frames per Second) drops to 2 or 3 and PING jumps up into the thousands of milli-seconds.

Testing with the OS ping to the SL servers at the same time I am not seeing those long times. Nor with the SL Viewer am I seeing those long ping times. Also, I had occurrences of the screen going black then coming back. There is some kind of video problem happening.

I just added the 335.23 driver to my GTX560. So, it should be good. But, doesn’t mean there isn’t a problem. 

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Second Life News 2014-11 #2

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Servers

There is not much news to relate about servers. We already know the package that rolled out to the main server channel consisted of bug fixes. The only one which is noticeable, unless you were experiencing one of the bugs, is the fix for Help→About Second Life. The viewer would not consistently report the server version. Now it does.

Server Beta 2014-11
Server Beta 2014-11

Server RC’s

In week 10 the Magnum EC channel ran the Sunshine package, the one that supports AISv3. These are the changes to the way the system will deal with inventory. There are no user interface changes. The changes are all backend things. Users should only see more reliable inventory loading and fewer bake fails.

That package is now running on all the RC channels.

Maestro Linden is hoping the Lab can release the project soon. It has been on the RC channel for some weeks now.

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JIRA Change to PUBLIC

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Those old JIRA BUG items that the Lindens left as unreadable… Well, the one that filed the report can mark it readable. So, if you have a bug that has not been closed and want help with it, or feel it should be open to the public for some reason, change it.

This change is only possible for your BUG items. To make the change so it is open to everyone for reading look in the horizontal middle of the report heading where you’ll find an item labeled Security Level. It will likely be marked Triager and Reporter. Change that to Public. Done.

This option allows people to keep issues private. Since it was known the issues were private at the time of filing, it would be rather rude to remove privacy when there was an expectation. This choice to leave it to the one that made the report, allows the privacy to be protected or removed at their discretion. Smart.

All newly filed BUG reports will be PUBLIC by default. But, this gives us a way to open up older reports filed during the JIRA dark period.

Firestorm Viewer 4.6.1-40478 64-Bit Review

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Firestorm Logo
Firestorm Logo

I got to use the new Firestorm Viewer release 4.6.1-40478 64-bit. My first impressions are:

The download file size is 67.6mb. The 64-bit viewer installs in a separate folder from the 32-bit version. On 64-bit systems you’ll find the 32-bit version installing in: C:\Program Files (x86)\Firestorm-Beta. The 64-bit version installs in: C:\Program Files\Firestorm.

You can run both the 32 and 64 bit versions. I think you should be able to share the cache between 32 and 64 bit versions. But, by default the viewer uses a separate cache for the 64-bit viewer: C:\Users\[Win_Login_ID]\AppData\Local\FirestormOS_x64\ .

It also places the chat logs in their own folder, separate from the 32-bit versions: C:\Users\[Win_Login_ID]\\AppData\Roaming\Firestorm_x64.

The install created a new Firestorm icon for me. I was using the Firestorm Beta, which has a uniquely named icon. So, if you have not been using the beta, it may overwrite the 32-bit icon. So, pay attention to which version you actually start by checking the Firestorm Help→About. Or… the version info is on the splash screen too. 

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