Second Life – Page 481 – Nalates’ Things & Stuff

#SL Mesh Update Week 28

2011/07/12 by Nalates Urriah

We still don’t have a cost for mesh upload or prim equivalency. But in Monday’s meeting mesh cost was still a big issue. Mesh making residents are upset that mesh costs too much. Did I mention that the Lindens haven’t set the cost yet? So, we don’t know what it is going to cost, but it’s too much. Sounds like politicians arguing.

Latest Mesh Cost Information

The equation for calculating simulation weight, streaming weight, and physics weight to get prim equivalence cost is pretty well set for the first release of mesh. However, the constants and multipliers aren’t. The upload cost is still in flux. The equations in the wiki are a mix of up-to-date and out-of-date. Jeremy Linden made a bunch of changes to the Mesh Pages in the wiki today.

Kirsten Viewer S21(8) Released Review

2011/07/112011/07/10 by Nalates Urriah

New release, Kirstens S21 2.8.0 (8) Jul 10 2011, with new stuff is out. This viewer is based on Linden Lab’s viewer code 2.8. The Snowstorm Development viewer has just gone 2.8.0 this week. This viewer will give us a glimpse into new features coming to SL.

Download & Install

File download size is about 32 mb. The install is typical Kirsten. The previous RC3 is uninstalled. Settings, logs and other stuff are saved, except for your graphics settings which are changed to the defaults for your graphics card.

There are some reports of problems from the settings file. So, if you run into problems, delete the settings.xml from C:\Users\[user_name]\AppData\Roaming\Kirstens S21\user_settings. The viewer will generate a new file on the next startup. See: S20 Cache & Settings Manual Clearing Howto.

Also, there are some inventory features that are a bit laggy as some of the new stuff in inventory is not yet supported by the server side. That should correct as the features get rolled out to the main grid. Part of the problem is your inventory is connecting to the SL Market Place and that can cause an initial delay.

INSTALL UPDATE 7/11: The normal uninstall/install doesn’t work well. It is better to do a clean install of S21 for this version. See the comments for where KirstenLee noticed that my install was not right.

#SL Server Updates Week 27

2011/07/09 by Nalates Urriah

Since Monday was a holiday in the US there was no Tuesday roll out to the main grid. However, we did see the Release Channels rolled back and the main grid software installed there. This is just until they add a new batch of fixes to the Mesh Prep update that was on Le Tigre and the Mesh Prep update that was on Magnum.

Slowing

Week 27 is the second week for the main grid running with the new Mono2 update in place. The main grid has many more strange conditions than can be found in the Release Channels. So, problems not revealed in testing show up. In the article Second Life Server Update Week 26 I explain one of the cases where Release Channel testing did not find a problem that quickly showed up when rolled to the main grid.

During week 27 there were some reports of scripts still slowing. There may be a problem when a region is using up all the available script time. If you’re seeing a slow down, check the JIRA’s.

Second Life Outfit Folders

2011/07/08 by Nalates Urriah

I like the way the new SLV2 Outfits work, somewhat. I have several problems with how the sidebar handles them. There is a work around that I came across in the JIRA that handles my problem with organizing outfits.

Problem

The Outfits Sidebar provides only a single list of outfits. This mixes together the outfits I make and the default outfits provided by Linden Lab. As I create more outfits this is going to become more of a problem. So, I want to create folders in the Outfit Panel. But, that is not possible.

There are a number of JIRA feature requests and bug reports about the lack of folders in the Outfits Panel. I’ll get to those later.

Work Around

There is a way to get outfits into folders, sort of. First off, know this is for Series 2 viewers. Don’t mess with your Linden Outfits Folder in Series 1 viewers. Doing so is likely to cause you problems. Also, know you will get different results depending on which version of a Series 2 viewer you use. So, you may need to be flexible.

Firestorm Beta 2.5.2 (16922) Release Review

2011/07/07 by Nalates Urriah

A new Firestorm version is out. Apple, Linux, and Windows versions are available. This is the big step up in Third Party Viewers for builders. The development team has added the build tools. I think it was the lack of this feature most holding Firestorm back. Following is my experience with the new Firestorm.

Firestorm Viewer Beta 2

Download

Tuesday and Wednesday the download process was very slow. I am guessing lots of people are finally making the change over to a V2 type viewer. I certainly see patience with anti-V2 people running out in the support groups. Not Firestorm’s support people. They are great. But, the Firestorm users that chime into help other Firestorm users are getting an edge. After they made the change and survived.

May be I’ll make a T-shirt that says I survived the change… ummm… maybe I could word that better.

New Avatars and Cars

2011/07/06 by Nalates Urriah

Linden Lab has just added a new flock of non-human avatars to SL. See: July Update

Avatars1 — New Second Life Robot Avatars

Avatars2 — New Second Life Animal Avatars

These avatars and vehicles are in your Library folder in your inventory, now. They will soon appear in the Basic Mode viewer.

Chat Lag

They Lindens are saying chat lag has been greatly reduced. I haven’t heard of any new technical details since my last update on the subject. So, I’m assuming it is just old news making it to the forum.