Second Life

Things about SL

#SL Firestorm 3.3.0 (24880) Release Review

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I heard there is a new Phoenix Hour out. I suppose someday it will change to a Firestorm Hour. At about the same time the Phoenix Hours restart the next release of Firestorm is released.

This release has a load of features. As best I can tell all the Phoenix features have made it over to Firestorm.  In addition to those features new ones have been added. A good example is the Particle Editor. The code for the Particle Editor was written by Zi Ree. I understand it was written for Firestorm and shared with the community. I first saw the editor in Dolphin Viewer-3 in mid December last year. It has been popping up in other TPV’s ever since.

Particle Editor

Finding the Particle Editor is a bit trick. It is not part of the standard build panel as I expected it would be. After all one is editing a prim’s attributes, so it seems to me that is where it would be. The number of controls in the panel would be difficult to put in a build panel tab.

The Particle Editor

To use the Particle Editor create or edit a prim. Then in the top menu open Build -> Objects -> Edit Particles. Not overly intuitive. It would seem a button in the Build panel to open the editor would be more intuitive. The Features tab seems like an obvious place to put a button.

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#SL Server Scripting Update Wk6

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Flight Limit

If you start flying straight up you stall out a bit below 200 meters, about 175. This is a limit imposed by the Lab’s servers. We get around the limit by using flight feathers and other devices that let us fly higher and faster.

There is some discussion about removing that limit. Simon Linden thinks people using Animation Over Riders (AO) will be popping into orbit. I don’t have any AO’s that have flight enhancement. So, I’m clueless as to where that idea comes from.

However, without a limit a flight enhancement will likely speed up your accent. Whether it will slam you into orbit I have no clue. But, if we suddenly hit high altitudes when we start flying we’ll know that the flight limit has been removed.

It is unclear of the limit will be removed or just raised. May be the limit will be 1,000m or 2,000m, or some other value.

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#SL Content/Mesh Creation Week 6

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Mesh Physics – A question was asked about creating efficient physics for mesh houses. I’ve seen people having problems getting mesh objects they think are more efficient polygon-wise to actually produce less Land Impact (LI) cost. A few ideas came out in the discussion.

Runatai Linden Avatar - Way Cute

Nyx Linden says from Havok’s perspective, the physics engine, the simplest physics volume is a box. If you want to specify your own mesh, each triangle in the mesh is roughly as complex [physics-wise] to compute as a box. Ultimately using prims as physics shapes shouldn’t necessarily be problematic, though having a custom mesh can be better under certain circumstances.

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#SL Scripting News Wk6

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We have a varied collection of news out of the Scripting User Group today.

First we have word that the current release channel code will NOT roll to the main grid this week. So, there will be no update to the main grid this week. There are some problems and they will be adding fixes to the code in the release channels. Other problems have been fixed too.

Scripting Feb 6, 2012

We have only one code package running in all three release channels. While the single package has gotten good testing, the problems have held any update to the main grid. Later in the week we’ll know what new packages may roll to the release channels for testing.

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#SL Viewer 3.2.9 Review Update Wk5

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It is hard to keep up with the Linden Lab viewer. We do not see lots of changes in the user interface nor are there lots of new features being added. But, there is lots of stuff happening behind the User Interface.

It is not like there is any place where the Lindens are talking about the viewer. Esbee disappeared long ago. While still at the Lab, I never hear a peep out of her. I hear far more from Runitai Linden that leads the Shining Development Branch. He attends various groups and we get information from him. But, it is mixed with the context of the meeting.

The Lab has a number of development repositories where they publish code as they develop the viewer. One of these is the Viewer Development Branch. It is in BitBucket. If you code in large projects, you have some familiarity with code repositories, repo’s. For those of us that work with small short term projects repo’s are mostly over kill.

If you don’t write code/scripts, the whole thing probably seems rather geeky and mostly Greek. It is. Understand that the repo’s are typically where those writing code pass on notes, information, and their code to people that know what’s going on. The notes and descriptions they write are very much like notes we intend to only ever be read by our self. They are not overly explanatory.

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#SL Server/Scripting News Update Wk5

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The work is the roll out from Magnum to the main grid went well. The LSL function llSetRegionPos() is now on the main grid. Oskar says this is Kelly’s first major roll to the main grid for 2012. Yay Kelly.

Server/Scripting Meeting

Ghosting – Can’t Login

Two of the release channels were running a release that had ghosting problems in week 4. The problem was in the new foundational region crossing code. Carmilla Linden fixed the problem. When they merged the fix with the release code for Magnum, a crashing issue was found. The roll of the repaired code had to be foregone. So, that code planned for Magnum was replaced with the same release as Blue Steel and Le Tigre.

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