Second Life and Virtual Worlds
Things about SL
Yesterday, the Phoenix Team announced that the 1050 RC version would become the final 1050 version. No changes are being made. The version worked as is. So, if you have the RC, you have the final version. But, if you have had problems, there are some things you need to do.
There is currently a shift in mesh development. To understand the shift you need to understand how viewer versions are made. You probably know programmers write a program that becomes the viewer. The nuance in that process is the language programmers write in is not the language computers speak. So, at some point a translation has to happen. That ‘translation’ is called a compile. The compiler tool being targeted for use is Microsoft’s Visual Studio 2010. Much of the last week’s work and probably this week’s and next week’s will be toward getting the new mesh-viewer code compiling using VS2010.
What you may not realize is why the change to VS2010 is important for the Mesh Project. The main SL Viewer has been worked over to get it to compile in VS2010. See: Second Life 2.6.3-225584 VS2010 Review This moves the code and the viewer abilities to a new level of optimization for newer computer hardware. If you follow KirstenLee’s viewer development, you know it too has moved to VS2010. So, most viewers on the SL grid are going to be optimized to a 2010 era, at least for those on Windows systems.
This week Fast Assets moved to the main grid. This is sort of a change from doing things in a sort of single cue of first in-first-out to multiple cues. The idea being to reduce anyone person’s wait time. One should see the world rezzing faster.
Moving into the Release Channel testing are various bug fixes. None too exciting, but they are progress.
You may remember that LSLeditor was given to open source by Alphons van der Heijden, the creator. It is now a Source Forge project named, LSLEditor Community Edition. There is also a forum for the editor at Source Forge.
I had not known about the project. The main LSLEditor site is still up. It is also where I have looked for updates.
If you script for SL or OpenSim using the built-in editor in the viewer, you need to check out LSLEditor. Both the viewer’s script editor and the LSLEditor have problems and bugs. But, LSLEditor has debugging tools that are not available in the viewer editor. It is an impressive bit of programming and well worth learning to use. Especially if you have multi-prim, multi-script projects.
No sooner do I see the Kirsten release than up pops a Phoenix Viewer 1050 release. This is another Release Candidate. While the Phoenix team is calling this an RC they say they will provide support for it. So, again the lines between esoteric alpha, beta, RC, and final versions gets fuzzier, at least from my side.
This release is mostly bug fixes and improvements to existing features. The goal was to get a stable viewer. Over the previous part of this year most developers have been getting previous features and new code and features from Linden Lab working. That has lead to crash prone viewers.
Today we get a new version of KirstenLee’s S21 viewer. KirstenLee says this is a NEW viewer, new in the way that it is compiled, created, using VS2010. For weeks this has been a main topic of discussion in Snowstorm mailing list for weeks… and weeks… It is quite a feat to get viewer working with VS2010. Plus KirstenLee says there is a ton of new code in the viewer.
UPDATE: As of 1:55 PM SLT there have been 4 quick fixes. If you have downloaded a copy before then, get a new download. I’ll be running over to ADITI and then OSGrid.
You probably know by now that the Lab’s viewers have Enhanced Avatar Physics. I can now control how my breasts, belly (belly?), and butt bounce and jiggle. This version has improved physics for the avatar. So, the big question from club owners is: can she make the tassels helicopter?