Second Life and Virtual Worlds
There is a blog announcement on the SL Blog about the Sunshine Project being rolled out. There is also a new Torley video out to show the change.
[youtube jwglL3VXI80]
As you can see the Lab is requiring a viewer update. As Torley explains the viewer, then the servers and then another viewer update will rollout.
The main channel is getting an update today. It is the server maintenance package that ran on all 3 release candidate channels last week. This is the package with the new object return scripting functions, the Pathfinding change to keep characters within a parcel, fix rendering of neighboring regions, and another fix for the HTTP-in-bound connection problems.
The release candidate channels will all get the same new server maintenance package tomorrow, Wednesday.
This package includes a fix to llApplyImpulse, which is/was only working in the root prim. If used in a child prim, it would work after the script was compiled in-world, meaning while the containing object is rezzed. If the object has the script and is rezzed from inventory, it fails.
With the coming of Server Side Appearance (SSA – baking) those using older viewers are going to have to update or suffer never seeing an avatar render again. For many the challenge will be their computer not being able to run recent viewers. The hardware is just too old. But, there are inexpensive ways to upgrade to a computer so it will handle the newest viewers.
Minimum is this case is a very nebulous term. If you read Gwyneth Llewelyn’s blog you’ll know she gets by with some really minimal hardware. I think that would drive me nuts. But, I also use the computer for graphics intense work. So, in most ways it is a matter of personal choice and priorities.
This tutorial is intended for those people using RedPoly kits. But, anyone can learn some basic ideas on how to match skin color. Like starting with changing Windlight to eliminate extraneous color and shadows. (7:40 min)
[youtube L9HRzNfNIQ4]
I usually run my viewers on DEFAULT Windlight or local region settings. So, I haven’t needed to change my Windlight for some time. I had forgotten how few Windlight settings come with the new viewers: 36. The CalWL setting was not in my current viewer.
If you are wondering why Firestorm does not yet have materials and releases I expected didn’t make it out last week, it is the CHUI (Chat Hub UI). Getting the CHUI code from the Lab to work with the Firestorm code is a challenge. It took the Lab about a year, hearsay on my part, to get CHUI working in the SL Viewer.
The Firestorm team has only had the code a few weeks. The Lab keeps adding fixes and that is not likely to speed things up for the Firestorm team.
That CHUI is the hold up leads to the question, what does CHUI have to do with materials? Well, consider what Tonya Souther posted on SLUniverse, “The problem isn’t that the materials code depends on the CHUI code directly. The problem is that the merge process depends heavily on code changes being applied in the same order to the same files.
The CHUI changes hit a large part of the viewer codebase. (That’s why it took LL a year to get CHUI out the door.) Inevitably, those changes hit files that the materials project changed. When they do, if you don’t merge in the CHUI changes first, then you have to do a lot more work to fit the materials project changes into the code – work that you’ll have to undo when you finally get around to putting the CHUI changes in, or will have to do over and over if you ignore the CHUI changes altogether.”
They are down to about 20 merge issues. Then the team has to run it through QA. So, this may take longer than I anticipated… or not.
