nVidia Releases 310.70 WHQL

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WARNING: Update – I can’t say for sure, but this version seems to be having problems with SL Shadows.

nVidia has a new driver out. (Downloads) They released it December 17. This is version 310.70 or 9.18.13.1070, depending on how you write version numbers.

nVidia 310.70 WHQL
nVidia 310.70 WHQL

This version promises speed ups in a number of games. Second Life™ is not one of them. Plus there are a number of bug fixes too. I don’t know that any of them affect SL.

I’ve tried it, barely. But, it seems to work OK. I’m using the nVidia settings to override a number of the viewer settings. Turning off the viewers Anti-Aliasing (AA) and using the video card’s CSAA gives me a good performance boost, which just means I turn on more stuff and slow it back down…

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Possible Alpha Layer Problems

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Part of the thing with mesh clothes is alpha layers. Even with prim and sculpty shoes and other attachments alpha layers have become a part of wearing these items. Invisaprims are a thing of the past. There is a thing in Second Life™ Alpha Masks that has been over looked by many. It may come back to bite us if we don’t pay attention… or not.

Alpha Mask Edit Panel
Alpha Mask Edit Panel

Understand

We call them Alpha Layers and they do layer, but, they do NOT layer with clothes. The real name is Alpha Mask. The Alpha Mask has its own channel. That makes sense to you if use channels in Photoshop. If not, just understand that a channel effects everything associated with an image, like all the layers.

You can layer clothes and skin as they are in a texture channel. You can stack textures in a clothing channel like SHIRT. But the clothing layers are a bit like folders in the texture channel. You can’t change the order of the folders; Jacket – which is on top of: Shirt – which is on top of: Undershirt – which is on top of Skin stay in that order. You can add shirts and rearrange their order.

The Alpha Mask is a channel that affects all the clothes layers; Skin, Shirt, etc. We can add masks together. We can think of that as layering, but it is really more like ADDING transparency.

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#SL News 2 Week 51

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We did get a roll to the main channel this morning. The Lab was running similar packages in all three Release Candidate channels. Blue Steel and Le Tigre had the week 49 package with additional fixes running. Magnum had the same pages with additional fixes. The Magnum package rolled to the main grid. So, we got all the fixes in the RC channels.

Content-Mesh Meeting
Content-Mesh Meeting

Sudden Massive Lag

This has been a perplexing problem for weeks. We have: BUG-355 – Increased Instant Sim Lag & Avi Crashes During Major Events – sim network issue. A serious problem is the Lindens have not been able to reproduce the problem. They can see it. But, they cannot trigger it. That makes it very hard to fix.

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#SL News Week 51

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Today I made it to the Open Source meeting, something I seldom do as it is too early for me, 7:00 AM. A few interesting things came up.

[youtube HueOLnF7sW8]

Phoenix Viewer

Oz was asking how the community was talking the ending of Phoenix support and the end of the Phoenix Viewer’s useful life. From my perspective, it has been surprisingly quite.

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Beyond the Phoenix Viewer

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Saturday Jessica Lyon, representing the Firestorm development team and support groups, spoke at the first Phoenix Hour since March 2012. This meeting was to announce the coming end of support for the Phoenix Viewer. That announcement could have been a sentence on the blog. So, why have a Phoenix Hour meeting to make the announcement?

Nature

Part of human nature is people having personality and beliefs. The nature of Jessica, the leader of the development team, is such that she is a volunteer. That says something, good I think, about Jessica. So, Jessica was doing her best to explain why they have chosen to end support for the Phoenix Viewer.

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