#SL Mesh Deformer Update

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Whirly Fizzle has been doing some poking at the Deformer. She He sees it as working very well with avatar physics. She He has made some new Collada files and uploaded them to test with the Deformer.

We still need more clothes to test with. The lack of test items is slowing the QA process for the Deformer. Apparently the testing clothes in the closet were uploaded with a previous version of the Deformer Project Viewer. So, they don’t deform. Oz Linden is going to clean the closet out. So, there will be just about nothing in it.

For weeks we have been trying to get people to provide test clothes. This is an old problem in Second Life. People like to complain about the Lab not getting things right, but when people are asked to help, they don’t. They will however be quick to rave and rant about what the Lab SHOULD have done.

The best we can do is send notices to our favorite mesh designers and ask them to help and more responsibly provide something ourselves.

Internet and Cellular News

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If you live in an area where your Internet connection suffers from lost packets or your mobile phone sounds horrible and has trouble streaming data, you have hope. A new breakthrough in how the Internet and digital transmissions handle lost packets may improve your life.

This breakthrough is all about how lost packets are handled. Think of the Internet as a pneumatic tube, like at some banks’ drive through services. Those with the clear tubes and cylindrical carriers you put your check and ID in to send to the teller and they return cash to you in them. Internet packets are like the carriers. But think of all the tubes coming from the drive ups you use into a single tube. If your carrier bumps into another it jams in the tube. In the digital world it sort of magically returns to the starting point.

A traffic controller in your network card and system handles those collisions. It uses a mathematical algorithm to decide when to send the packet/carrier on its way again. The idea is to prevent packets from various computers and devices from being sent at the same time. It is inefficient and slows things down.

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#SL’s Zindra Business Interview

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I got interviewed by Ginette Pinazzo. She is a strongly opinionated mover and shaker in the Adult Content community. I met her when I started to attend the Adult Content User Group meetings. I realized she had opinions and knew Second Life™ history. It wasn’t long before I realized some people like her and others seem to detest her. Others just don’t understand her. But, are any of us really understood?

From Ginette Pinazzo’s SL Feed November 2012

Ginette and I talk every so often. She is active in the Zindra community and adult content in general. Her interests seem to extend beyond those confines as she is often working with the art community. She is often talking with and sometimes hammering on the Lindens to make things better.

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#SL News 1 Week 45

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This week the main channel got the code that had been running on Blue Steel and Le Tigre. This means the new version of Havok 2012.1 is going to be running in all channels as of Wednesday. So, the region crossing problems for vehicles should stop… well those caused by the Havok version difference.

The release notes are here for version: 12.10.26.266333. I’ve listed them several times in previous articles so I’ll skip providing them again.

Blue Steel & Le Tigre

This channel is getting a maintenance package. It will include bug fixes generated from code running on the Magnum channel in week 44. The most notable change is in BUG-166 – Something invisible pushes avatars around on Dore. This fix has to do with link sets larger than 64m failing to rez.

What was happening is griefers were rezzing 256x256x256m mega prims, which users can’t see, unless they have estate manager status. It looks like the Lindens are bringing back restrictions on rezzing objects larger than 256x256x10m. That size was selected because some race tracks make legitimate use of large thin objects to achieve seamless race tracts.

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#SL Mesh Uploader Change

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Runitai Linden has released a pre-QA version of a modified viewer. The mesh upload function has been changed to solve some problems. The primary problem being SH-3055 – Cannot upload any model (*.dae) file; “xxx failed to upload, see the log file for details.”

Runitai announced the release in a comment in the JIRA.

Download Second Life Test Viewer

REMEMBER: This is an untested build so it likely contains other unrelated bugs.

If you find problems with the viewer’s mesh upload, post the information in SH-3055. This should be a JIRA item open to all SL users.

Second Life Render Metadata

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You may have noticed the item in the Develop menu labeled Render Metadata. At this week’s Content and Mesh Creation user group meeting Zed Tremont asked about getting more information for items in this menu. Nyx Linden provided some insight into these items.

Second Life Viewer’s Render Metadata Menu

If you have not noticed the item look in the top menu try: Develop (Ctrl-Alt-Q – Advanced has to enabled in some viewers to see it Ctrl-Alt-D)-> Render Metadata.

These tools are more for developers than ‘for creators.’ But, creators can use some of them. Unfortunately most of the items are not explained in the Second Life™ Wiki. Nyx says, “…at the moment our documentation around this *is* the source code, most of these displays are mostly used by our graphics engineers, they’re not intended to be general-use displays (hence the lack of documentation).”

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