Second Life and Virtual Worlds
Just days ago Marine released a new version of the RL Viewer. It had the replacement feature for z-Offset, Hover, Height Adjust, or whatever you want to call it. The problem is it had a gotcha Marine did not anticipate. But, that has been fixed and new version of the viewer is out.
This is a bit of a messy fix. Marine got it working. But, is not real proud of the hacky code needed to make it work. But, it works.
Also, it is not that easy or straight forward to use. READ THE INSTRUCTIONS.
There is now a viewer out with some Oculus Rift support. It is incomplete. But, according to the web site you can stick your head in and look around. See: An Initial Foray into Second Life with the Oculus Rift.
There is currently no User Interface. The author of CtrlAltStudi Viewer, David Rowe, says the Lab will soon release a Oculus Viewer with a UI. I’m not sure exactly what ‘soon’ means in this case.
As it is now:
Use the viewer as normal to get to where you want to go, then toggle into “Riftlook” mode (“3D” toolbar button or Ctrl-Alt-3) and don your Rift headset. Move your head to look around and use the arrow or WASD keys to move about. “Forwards” is the direction your Rift was pointing when you toggled into Riftlook. It makes most sense to use it while sitting down.
Jo Yardley is going to love this.
We have a bit of news on the server roll outs. The main gris will get the maintenance package from Magnum. This is the package with the Gray Box fix BUG-3547, the llListen fix BUG-3291, some crash fixes, and internal bug fixes… whatever those are.
All three release channels will get the same package on Wednesday. This package includes a physics fix to stop a griefing problem, another crash mode is fixed, fater regaion restarts for regions restarted by owners or estate managers. Rather than run through the full count down, the region will restart once all the avatars have left.
There are new region and parcel access controls coming. This package has the server side of those controls. Until we see a viewer with the corresponding controls, this change is not actionable.
Server Side Appearance baking is considered a success. We still have some bake fail issues and I’ll get to those. The Firestorm team has put out an article about SSA here: Server Side Appearance a Success! This article is worth the time to read. Jessica Lyon points out how the ignorant are complaining about how the Lab should have worked on something that really needed fixing… like bake fail was not a big enough problem.
Nyx Linden spoke at the TPV Dev’s meeting Friday (week 43) about SSA. Friday a new set of SSA changes were going external that means the SSA code the Lab has been working on for the viewer was made public. TPV Dev’s can now look at the code, find bugs, problems, and begin adding it to their development code.
Nyx says the Lab has this new code working in their development viewers. But, they currently consider it mostly untested. I suppose that means it has not passed through formal QA testing on the way to a viewer release candidate and remains mostly in development.
This is week 35, but the news is from last Friday.
With the viewer release pipeline there is a slow down. Viewer code changes are kept small to reduce the complexity of debugging. That seems to create a number of possible release candidates. With lots of release candidates one either has to release a new viewer each week or it takes some time to get candidates moved forward.
To speed things up some candidates are being merged together. Since only one candidate can move forward there are two staying behind that have been tested for a week. They will of course be merged with the candidate’s code that moved forward and their package tested for another week. But, if the candidate was really looking good, it might be possible to save some time by merging in a new code set that would otherwise have to wait and be a candidate of its own.
That has currently happened with the Snowstorm and CHUI candidates.
There are more Project Viewers coming. Project Viewers coming are; more Snowstorm, another Sunhine round, HTTP, Interest List, and a couple of unannounced ones. We should hear about one of the unannounced ones in two weeks. Could that be Advanced Experience Tools? Probably not.
The Lab rates video cards into 5 classes. They setup your default viewer graphics preferences based on those classes.
There is an update coming to the GPU Table, which is what the viewers use to figure out what class your video card is in and choose your initial settings. We should see it in one of the viewer release candidates this week or next.
The GPU Table has this information:
| // Class Numbers: | ||
| 0 – Defaults to low graphics settings. | No shaders on by default | Not supported |
| 1 – Defaults to mid graphics settings. | Basic shaders on by default | Supported |
| 2 – Defaults to high graphics settings. | Atmospherics on by default. | Supported |
| 3 – Same as 2, but with lighting and shadows enabled. | Supported | |
| 4 – Same as 3, but with ambient occlusion enabled. | Supported | |
| 5 – Same as 4, but with shadows set to “Sun/Moon+Projectors.” | Supported | |
You can find a copy of the GPU Table in the viewer’s install folder. Its secret name is: gpu_table.txt. You can look up your model of video card to see how the Lab thinks it should be supported.