Connecting to Second Life

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People have been having problems connecting to Second Life™ for as long as I have been using SL, probably longer. As the viewer is shifted to use more HTTP protocol services some are seeing better performance and others worse performance. Whatever the case, more use of HTTP is coming.

HTTP Library

Monty Linden has been working on the communications library used with Second Life. In general we know that work as the HTTP Library. The library is a file that contains all the code to run the HTTP communications channels for the viewer.

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Second Life Deferred Render

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There is a problem with Deferred Render (L&S = Lighting & Shadows) crashing some viewers. The Firestorm Viewer team thinks most people cannot run L&S. That may say more about who is using Firestorm and Phoenix rather than SL users. But, as far as I know there are no good stats to answer the question of how many people can run L&S, at least not in regard to SL users.

As we move forward this will be a more important issue. It certainly makes a difference in how Second Life™ appears on your screen.

What it is?

Deferred Rendering is a high fidelity render of lighting and in some systems shadows. There is no limit to the number of lights that can be rendered, which is a big step up from the 6 or 8 lights we could previously render in SL.

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Flatterbots

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I suppose most of my readers know about Flatterbots. These are automated avatars that run an AI program to carry on a conversation. They basically flatter you while they beg. There is an interview with the person behind the bots on: Every Second Man. See: The Mind Behind the Scam.

Second Life News 2013-1

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There is not much news yet this year. But, there is a little. First there have been no rollouts to the main channel or RC channels for two weeks because of the holidays. Maestro Linden says the Second Life™ servers have not been bad for two weeks without restarts. Things do slow, but otherwise not bad.

First Meeting of the Year - Morris, ADITI.
First Meeting of the Year – Morris, ADITI.

Coming Up

Caleb Linden is working in the Phase II Multi-Threaded Region-Crossing code. Two weeks ago a pile on test was done. Some issues were found and fixes are in progress. If things go well, the code may rollout to an AGNI RC channel next week (2). I think that is pretty impressive. But, there may be some problems so, don’t get too excited.

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Second Life and OpenGL

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A question by Loki got me looking at the state of DirectX/Direct3D and OpenGL. We hear Windows runs games faster on Direct3D than on OpenGL. That is supposedly why Second Life™ viewers run slower, fewer Frames Per Second (FPS), than other games using Direct3D. But, some people say otherwise. One of those people is Steam or more accurately the online gaming company Valve.

Valve makes the Source Engine that runs Half Life 2, Left 4 Dead, and Dota 2. Valve is not a Microsoft fan, which I don’t find surprising as Microsoft is known for trying to make Windows a closed shop that keeps other gaming systems at a disadvantage. In testing in August 2012 Valve reported that OpenGL on Ubuntu ran faster than DirectX/Direct3D did on Windows. You can read more about that in: OpenGL is Faster.

This tells us it is not just OpenGL and Direct3D that solely control performance. The OS has quite a bit to do with it also.

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