Nalates' Things & Stuff

Firestorm Viewer Update 5.1.7.55786

2018/07/25 by Nalates Urriah

This version released after my Second Life News was written. I had been expecting a release for weeks and decided they were waiting on Animesh to promote from Project to Release Candidate. But, with a couple of problems being found in Animesh on the server side, that release is delayed. So… surprise we have Firestorm.

The previous update was in late January 2018.

The new release announcement is here. Detailed coverage by Inara is here. She works with the FS Team and uses their testing versions. So, she sees the viewer for a considerable time before I do. So, the detailed review I’ll leave up to her.

I’ll get into what interests me. I am coming from version 5.0.11, the previous release. This morning I retested the viewer performance of 5.0.11. Doing my usual tests;

Porch w/Sun-Shadow-Projector @ 256m DD – 52 FPS
Skybox Green Room 1500m Elv – 120± FPS
Neisonia Safe Hub w/33 Avatars – 22± FPS

The Firestorm website recommends a basic install for this version. If you have problems then do a clean install. This version, 64-bit SL, is 111MB download, the largest FS viewer I’ve seen. An OpenSim version and 32-bit versions are also available.

Second Life News 2018 w30

2018/07/24 by Nalates Urriah

Servers

There is no Server-Scripting UG meeting this week. Seems the SL Summit meeting preempts it. Nor is there a deploys post this week.

However, my in-world monitor says my main channel region was restarted today. That region is running version 18.06.14.516450. This is the same version it ran last week. So, no roll out just a restart.

From last week’s Beta Server UG meeting we know there are no new versions expected to roll out to the RC channels.

Viewers

Second Life Bugsplat Viewer version 5.1.7.518003 – This is a new RC viewer version. The release notes describe the viewer version as;

This viewer should be functionally identical to the current release viewer, save that if it crashes, the crash report is sent to BugSplat rather than to Linden’s crash reporting system.

Second Life News 2018 w29

2018/07/17 by Nalates Urriah

Servers

There is no roll on the main channel. It will continue to run #18.06.14.516450.

There is no info on the RC channels. We are not going to hear until tomorrow.

Today we found out they ran into problems with the Animesh rollout. There was something going on with the physics shape of mesh, not animesh, mesh. So, they are working on that.

Over Dose of CUTE

2018/07/15 by Nalates Urriah

There are neat places in SL. A few are cute or have cuddly animals. But, I stumbled on D-Lab searching for helicopters and they are over the top cute. They have an adorable little 2-seater helicopter that I saw near an airport. I tracked down the creator and found D-Lab’s Skyshop.

Most of the stuff in the image they have for sale. Much of the really cute stuff is only visible inside the chop. They sorta have two showrooms. The fun stuff is in the shop shown above, the Skyshop.

SL Third-Party Dev Meeting June 13 w28

2018/07/13 by Nalates Urriah

Oh nooos… Friday the 13th… Lots of details and status of projects.

The Animesh project viewer will to go to RC soon. They are waiting on Animesh to roll to main channel. So, we will likely see it promote to RC in week #29.

But, as of the meeting today, Friday, Vir Linden is hearing about some anomalies in the Animesh RC server regions. Until Vir Linden can dig into that we don’t know what’s up. This could delay the Animesh server side roll out.

The Bakes On Mesh project viewer is likely to get an update in week #29. There are a couple of fixes in the new release.

The Maintenance RC viewer is in the pipeline.

Second Life Airports – How to Find Them

2018/07/312018/07/12 by Nalates Urriah

Airports – There are large flying and sailing communities in Second Life™. However, finding airports, landing fields, boat launches, and marinas can be difficult. Making it easier is Shergood’s website with the virtual world’s equivalent of Google Earth. Their version is for airports, seaports, and landing fields. It lists about 280. Unfortunately, many are no longer around. So, the list is somewhat out of date. But, the best I’ve seen so far.

I don’t know of an equivalent for marinas.

Kelly Shergood (Airport facilities – Marketplace) is the maker of Shergood’s ultra-realistic helicopters (Group URL). Realistic enough that if you can’t start a RL helicopter, you can’t start one of these. That isn’t strictly true, there is a qstart command to get you going. But, use it and try to fly without knowing something about helicopters is a certain path to a quick and exciting crash …and these helicopters burn when crashed. So… how would I know that? :/

The flight engine designed for these models is unique to Shergood products. The wind and inertia play apart in flying these helicopters. Plus, controls are of the RL kind. This means if you apply a control it compounds over time. One is applying a control that applies a ‘thrust’ and the effect of that ‘thrust’ builds up until the control is ‘centered’, returned to the neutral position. Things can quickly get out of control just as in RL.