Pathfinding is advancing. Tuesday Lorca Linden visited the Server/Sim/Scripting User Group and updated us on Pathfinding.
New Pathfinding Viewer Tools
Lorca told us the Pathfinding Viewer Tools need testing. The tools are built into the viewer and interact with the SL Servers. The system is ready for Open Beta testing. Of course one needs a viewer with the tools. You can now get that at: Second Life Alternate Viewers.
Next one needs a place where the tools work. The place is ADITI in the Path Test regions. Use the World map once in ADITI to find them.
Yesterday the new Firestorm and Phoenix viewers were released. I think with this release the Phoenix viewer is pretty much dead. On March 21, when Direct Delivery goes live on the Second Life grid, the Phoenix 1600 release will be noticeably broken, at least the inventory panel will be. So, Phoenix users will need to upgrade to the version 1.6.1.1691.
HOWEVER, Firestorm has a Phoenix mode, soon to be named V1 mode, that is almost an exact Viewer 1.23 interface. But, with the new SL and FS features. Before you download Phoenix 1691, watch the video and then decide which viewer you want to download. I am encouraging you to go with Firestorm and click on the Phoenix mode. I’ve reached the point that I’ll soon uninstall my copy of Phoenix and I won’t be upgrading to Phoenix 1691. Firestorm is the future.
[youtube QYaf2NZZmIE]
Download & Install
Simple download, quick. Install is the basic SL Viewer install. It installs over the top of your last install. They usually have one do a clean install. They did not say anything about that in the release announcement as they usually do. I tried installing over the top. It seems to work. I hate the idea of re-downloading a 9gb cache…
Niran released this version March 17, 2012. I saw Inara did a review. Our takes are different. I’ll try to skip some of the stuff she covers or at least provide more information. Also, I’m running the nVidia 296.10 version on my GTX560, which may change how some things work for me. I seem to have fewer problems now that I’ve updated.
Niran Viewer in Mayfair - Notice my shadow
Experience
The viewer is innovative. If you are looking for something different, this viewer is different.
Every so often I see someone using statistics to back up a viewpoint they have. It is very common among Warmistas and Deniers. We also see politicians misusing statistics. The most common misuse of stats is to select the data segment and use it to PREDICT the future. If that worked, everyone would get rich playing the stock market.
So, recent articles on stats got me wondering what was up. I used to write an article each month on SL statistics. Unless stats are showing change, they get pretty boring. It’s been 16 weeks since I wrote about Second Life Statistics (Sept. 2011).
Sign Ups
Rod Humble, the Linden Lab CEO, seems to have been spinning a bit when he said, “…and over the holiday period we had over 20,000 new people sign up a day.” Well, take a look at the stats. I get the images from Tateru’s site, Dwell On It. I composite them in Photoshop to provide a longer period. You can click the image below to see a larger version.
Daily Signups
It looks like for the month of December the average could be over 20,000 per day. So, the spin, like all good spin, has truth in it. But, since then the sign ups have been in a steady decline.
Looking at the User Groups page in the SL Wiki I see that the Content Creation and Mesh Upload group, formerly lead by Charlar Linden, is back on the page. Nyx Linden added the group back to the back March 14 – 11:20 AM. Nyx will be facilitating the group’s meetings. The next meeting will … Read more
There are a few interesting things that came up in Andrew’s late Friday afternoon meeting.
Scripting-Server Meeting
Encroachment Return
Andrew has been building a script to turn on Encroachment Return across the grid. The feature made it through QA and has been rolled out for some time. But, enabling it in thousands of servers is not small chore.
The script was run Thursday morning. So, you should now be able to return encroaching objects.
