Second Life and Virtual Worlds
Yuzuru Jewell has released a new version of Rokuro (4.2.0), a program for making sculpties maps and Collada files. In this release being able to save as a Collada file is a new feature. Use the Collada file for import to Second Life™ as a mesh. You can still make sculpties.
We had a roll back of the release channels this Thursday. SO, if you are wondering what happened, here is the story.
Quoting Maestro Linden in Thrusday’s Beta Server meeting, “So, let’s go over releases a bit.
This week was pretty ‘exciting’. The main channel got a maint-server that had been in RC for 2 weeks, which mostly included bugfixes. That went pretty smoothly.
However, on Wednesday we ran into some issues with the new code. We’d planned to put new code in all 3 RCs, and we took care of Blue Steel and Magnum, but by the time we got to Le Tigre, the grid was sick (unrelated to the new code), so Coyot aborted the Le Tigre roll.
Then there were reports in the forums about offline IM emails from objects being broken; if an object sent you an IM and you were offline, the offline email would contain all the usual details *except* for the message this bug affected both Blue Steel and Magnum since they both shared the responsible change.
Then, after digging into offline emails a bit more, we noticed that the ‘To’ field of offline emails would show the object owner’s name instead of the recipient’s name. So it would be like “To: Motor Loon <sonicandmiles@gmail.com>” which was a little confusing 🙂 Fortunately they went to the right person at least.
Anyway, these bugs were kind of bad, but we weren’t sure that they were worth the trauma and downtime of an emergency rollback. But then this morning, we became aware of a 3rd bug, from support. It turned out that deeding parcels to groups was failing. That was the main cause for the rollbacks this [Thursday] morning.
So, now we’re back to Server 12.11.09.266804 on all 4 channels.
Kelly was pretty quick with bug fixes for those 3 issues, but they’re still in testing. We hope we can try again next week.“
It seems the memory leak problem has finally been solved for the SL Viewer. We’ve had a number of false hopes that it was fixed. But now the main production viewer has updated. That is a sure indication the problem is fixed. That does not mean every problem is fixed. But, the problem causing a high crash rate in the Beta & Dev viewers is fixed. So, fixes can now start to roll again. For the last few weeks updates had stopped while the problem was tracked down. So, we sort of have open floodgates and a surge of updates rolling out. Viewer versions are changing quickly.
The Development viewer is at version: 3.4.4-267322
The Beta viewer is at version: 3.4.3-267135 – Release Notes
ADITI is the preview grid for Second Life. This is where we test new scripts, mesh items, and lots of other stuff. It is popular with creators because uploads are free. Currently people are having problems logging in. The problem is caused by the hard drives for the ADITI database filling up.
There will be discussion at Thursday’s Beta Server meeting on what may be the best solution for the problem. If you use the preview grid, you will probably want to be there for that meeting.
Discussion in the SL Forum: ADITI Problems Thursday Meeting
ADITI is smaller than the main grid and runs on less hardware. The database for assets on the ADITI is much smaller, hardware-wise. Oskar Linden, no longer on staff, was handling keeping the grid running. But, the situation required manual cleaning of the drives. Now that is proving a problem.
This week following the Thanksgiving holiday we move back to the regular server updates. The Main Channel gets the maintenance package that was running on all three release candidate channels. This package has the fix for linksets and objects larger than 64 meters. (BUG-166 – Something invisible pushes avatars around.)
While some saw linksets larger than 64m as a good thing, it was being used to grief people and also accidentally causing problems. With this release the problem is ‘fixed’.
Several blogs have covered the art of Whiskey Monday. See the following articles for information on who Whiskey Monday is and some of her art.
Obviously I like Whiskey’s art. You can see it on her web: WhiskeyMonday.com, and Flickr.
The notable change is Whiskey is now selling RL prints, giclee, of her Second Life™ art. Giclee is a high end printing process used for fine art. It is expensive, but it lasts. When one cannot afford original art, a giclee is the next best thing.
You can find the art for sale at Fine Art America. Getting the source for giclee printing is a bit of work. So, not all of Whiskey’s art is on Fine Art America. If you find something on Flickr, you can ask that it be uploaded.
Good luck Whiskey.