There is a Firestorm Release Coming…

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At some point in time there will be a new release of the Firestorm Viewer. It is over due by about 3 months. The team’s stated goal is a release every 3rd month. In practice it is working out to about one every 6 months.

There are some significant changes coming to viewers. You likely know about EEP, which will likely eventually replace the enhanced Windlight features in Firestorm. The team will likely figure out to have both EEP and Enhanced FS Windlight working together. Then in a later release remove the FS Windlight. The point being to allow those relying on FS Windlight to change over to EEP. But… I’m guessing.

" And It’s shaken me to stone "
” And It’s shaken me to stone “

Animesh is coming. The server side of that is figured out and looks to release in July. Its on the main grid in the RC channels. So, we’ll likely see it go to the main channels in week #27. BUT… the viewer side is a bit behind the server and likely to only appear as an RC viewer, project viewer now, toward the end of July.

For the Firestorm team this means they don’t have a final version of the viewer code to be working with. They are still likely having to deal with changing Animesh code that changes how Animesh renders.

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Second Life Content Creation UG 2018 w26

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There is some interesting news out this week. The Lindens are getting more definite about some release dates.

This is the last meeting for a couple of weeks. Next meeting is July 19. The 4th of July is a US holiday and the next week is the company wide meeting, so no meeting those weeks.

Some of the discussion this week gets a bit heated.

Index

I had some problems with sound. I think I caught most of the problems in post. The audio track has been dynamically compressed to lift the whispers and tone down the shouts.

Some sections have been time compressed, meaning the video can be running 2 to 5 times faster than RL. That can make it hard to read chat. Just stop the video to read. I suggest you not worry too much about chat. The Lindens are pretty good about repeating a question in voice before answering it.

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Second Life News 2018 w26

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We’ve reached the midpoint of the year… and I forgot to hit the publish button… until now.

The main channel is getting an update to #18.06.14.516450. This update has Internal Fixes and Logging Improvements… so likely more data collection things.

Long Term Memory
Long Term Memory

Blue Steel, Le Tigre, and Magnum will get an update to #18.06.22.516968. This update is preparation for the release of Animesh. Specifically said to be;

Some land owners are noticing their regions restarting twice when the updates roll out. See BUG-134297 – Issue with region restarting then restarting again with version change.

Seems one restarts lands the region on a new host and a second restart updates the simulator version it is running.

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NVIDIA 1180 Almost Here…

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We had rumors for months as to what the next NVIDIA card would be, when it would release, and what it would cost. But, we are getting closer to a possible release. NVIDIA only goes so long before they release a new card. So…

Ray Tracing is a way of rendering a scene. Its big advantage is in rendering very realistic images. For instance, most of an Ikea catalog is made from rendered images that for a long time I thought were RL photos.

The reason it isn’t used so much in games is the cost of rendering the images. So, software like AutoDesk’s AutoCAD use it as real time rendering isn’t needed. The primary task is prototype product images, pictures of products not yet existing in RL. Only within the design process… a computer.  Making it more of a snapshot thing than a  movie camera.

NVIDIA adding in a Ray Trace feature will being higher quality graphics to more games. Less time will be spent calculating the effect of lights and shadows.

For use in Second Life it isn’t going to be a big plus or even a change. The SL render engine is required to support older systems. So, adding a ray trace feature to the engine is not going to be a high priority, if it is even a consideration.

However, the card will be faster and likely have faster video memory.

Oz and Grumpity Linden Talk

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Just now, 6/21 @ 3:15 PM SLT they are were talking live… Actually live from 2:00 to 3:30 PM SLT/PST.

00:00 – Grumpity Linden relating her coming to Second Life. Interesting.

03:25 – Oz Linden explaining how he came to SL. Also interesting.

08:40 – Oz what do you like best about your job? Good answer here…

12:00 – Oz, are you inspired by what people do with your engineering? Grumpity waxes poetic…

18:00 – Have gotten to see much of SL15B? 

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