Second Life News 2013-2

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Sever Side Avatar Baking

This change touches many parts of the Second Life™ system, both server and viewer side. The server side changes are nearing completion and the viewer side changes are about midway, IMO.

Third Party Viewer Developers are working to get the code changes merged into their projects. This is a VERY complex task because of the changes TPV Dev’s have made and the changes from Server Side Avatar Baking. (SSAB)

Since the SSAB clock started ticking most of the time has been used to sort out merge problems. I get the impression that is getting worked out and TPV Dev’s will soon be in a place to actually run their test viewers.

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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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Olantica Grid

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I got a note that a new grid is around. If you’ve been To Olantica grid tell me what you think of it in comments.

This is an OpenSim world. Other than that I don’t know much about it. However there is a web site with a bit more information. See: Olantica – Lost Wolrd. They have a currency  So, one should be able to buy and sell between the VW and RL. That also means one has to trust them with their financial information. But, they do have free accounts.

Read the ToS. It does not inspire me to buy currency.

To point your viewer to the world use these settings:

Grid Nick: Olantica
Grid Name: Olantica
Login URI: http://olantica.net:8002/

Login In Page: http://olantica.net/splash/
Helper URI: http://olantica.net/scripts/helper/

For direct information contact the founder: Leslie Kling

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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