Mesh Deformer Update 2013-9

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Last week on the Metareality podcast there was some discussion about the Mesh Deformer. I was annoyed because of the lack of information Lexi Zelin of AngelRED Couture had. Since she is building Deformable Mesh Clothes, meaning clothes made for Karl’s Mesh Deformer, I am a bit pessimistic about ever getting Second Life™ users to understand what is happening. It seems if you are not reading Inara or my blog, you are basically clueless.

Open Source Meeting 2013-9
Open Source Meeting 2013-9

Lexi is talking about using the Deformer for months and not having a problem. OK… she is a designer, an artist… So, I can forgive her not thinking about what happens when we start something like a million people using Deformable Mesh verses her and her team and customers using it. I really don’t expect there to be problems. But, that is a BIG consideration for the Lab.

I know it is hard to think beyond ourselves when we are frustrated, but I think we could enjoy life more if we did. 

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New Second Life Dev Viewer

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I see that yesterday a new version of the Lab’s Development Viewer was released: Second Life 3.5.1 (270826) Feb 26 2013 07:22:18 (Second Life Development). There are no release notes yet, but that is normal. So, we can’t easily know what is different in this viewer.

I’ll remind you this is not a viewer the Lab recommends for everyday use. It is pre-Beta and likely buggy. So, use it at your own risk. So, far it has been working for me.

The obvious change is the Chat Hud User Interface (CHUI).

New CHUI SL Viewer 3.5.1 Dev
New CHUI SL Viewer 3.5.1 Dev

This change has been in development for weeks. We have had a CHUI Project Viewer for some time. So, we have gotten to see the new CHUI. Some people like it so well they have been using that project viewer as their primary viewer.

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Second Life RAM Disk

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You probably know that most of the data in our computers is saved to magnetic media hard drives that have spinning disks inside. The disk has delays as the read heads must wait for the disk to rotate the wanted data under the read/write heads. It can take the heads 4 to 12ms to find the data. Then the data can only be read as fast as the next bit of data comes to the read/write head.

Inside a Typical Hard Drive
Inside a Typical Hard Drive

Newer solid state drives (SSD) have no moving parts. So, there is no delay waiting for disks and/or read/write heads to rotate into position. So, rather than waiting several milliseconds the data is available in less than a millisecond. If you put your Second Life cache on an SSD, you will have a faster more responsive cache… places you have previously visited will render faster.

While conventional hard drives are cheap and can store terabytes of data on a single drive, the SSD’s are expensive. The cost per gigabyte of storage is about 100 times more than for conventional hard drives.

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Second Life News 2013-9 #2

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Today we found out for sure the software update running in the RC channels rolled to the main channel. This was a maintenance package with some bug and crash fixes and the improved region restart notification. For now the main channel and all the RC’s are running the same code.

Server-Scripting Meeting 2013-9
Server-Scripting Meeting 2013-9

There are a few regions like Linden Realms and the Wilderness that are running different code. But, otherwise everyone is on the same code.

That sameness will be broken when the RC channels ALL roll to the same new package. The only published change is the repair of a crash mode that popped up a couple of weeks ago, this probably means a griefing fix. My guess is this fix touches multiple parts of the systems and needs as big a test base as possible. Or it could just mean no other packages made it through QA. We might find out later today or Thursday. 

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New ADITI Fix Out

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Simon Linden tells us that some work has been done on the Preview Grid’s (ADITI’s) database. This is because we ADITI users have been having inventory problems over on the Preview Grid. This has been a hit-and-miss change your password roulette. One kept changing their password until it worked or they ran out of patience and used an alternate.

When users change passwords, there main grid inventory is copied over to the ADITI inventory servers, which are not to be confused with the asset servers. As I understand it there is only one asset system. But, the list of what you own is kept in a inventory database and there are different inventory servers for ADITI and AGNI the main grid.

Lots of people that change their password for security, a good thing to do, but do not use ADITI. That loads up the ADITI inventory servers with useless data.

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New Penny Patton Shapes Released

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I like a lot of the work that Penny does with getting regions and avatars scaled to realistic proportions. So, when I saw that she had released new shapes I wanted to check them out. She has a blog article about them here: More Vitruvian Shapes!

The picture is one she made to show the difference between the Linden Made Shapes and the to-scale-shapes she makes and recommends.

Free Second Life Shapes
New Vitruvian Shapes by Penny Patton

You can find Penny’s Market Place here. The Vitruvian Shapes discussed are here. And the cost is: L$0, which you can’t beat. 

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