Second Life and Virtual Worlds
On Plurk Indigo Mertel posted that Blender has a bug fix release out. Ashasekayi Ra, on Plurk points out that Blender 2.64’s Collada export works with Cloud Party (CP) allowing weight painting data to transfer into CP.
Get your update here: Blender 2.64a download.
The Mesh Deformer is in testing. Oz Linden still needs more test clothes to test with. While the first part of the Deformer is complete, a second part is just getting started.
The Deformer as is works. I think pretty well. That ‘deforming’ part is being tested. But, a part that was added to the Deformer is the base shapes feature. Currently we can select two base shapes for the Deformer to start its calculations from. But, we could have more base shapes because choice is really what Karl added in.
The only shapes that exist right now are the default female and male. Where are we going to get more? By making and uploading them. But, we can’t do that right now. That upload thing is the part that is in development now.
Darien Caldwell is currently working on that project. The repository branch https://bitbucket.org/oz_linden/viewer-storm-1716 is what Darin is forking for a starting point.
Oz Linden has given us some news on the crashing problem they have had with the Beta and Development viewer. The Lindens believe the current Beta viewer (3-4-1-265642) has the memory leak, or whatever, fixed. The crash rate is back to low rates.
For the techies, the problem had to do with how the cURL wrapper was threaded. The cURL thing has to do with computer network communication over networks. It is a programming library that makes it easier for programmers to implement communication protocols like HTTP and HTTPS. It helps with encrypting communications.
One more round of testing in the Beta viewer is in progress. Once completed the basic fix and changes will move to the main release viewer, likely next week (42).
It takes a couple of days of testing to collect enough data to make a determination on whether a fix is working or not. The current Beta Viewer was compiled on Saturday and released on Monday. If you have Auto-Update on, you got it before it was on the web site.
I am a political activist. I don’t often write about politics on this site. But, a few things make it into this blog every now and then. This is one item that should make it in as it affects everyone on the planet.
The nations of the world are negotiating the International Telecommunications Regulations treaty lead by Russia and China that will allow regulation of the Internet through the United Nations. We know about the talks through a WCITLeaks anonymous posting by a participant in the talks. The signing ceremony has been scheduled in Dubai in December of 2012.
It currently looks like Hamadoun Toure, From Mali and a graduate from the Russian Leningrad Institute and Moscow Technical University, is Vladimir Putin’s choice to run the Internet.
Oskar Linden posted in the SL Forum requesting help testing some network changes. I suspect this is related to the Sudden Lag I’ve been writing about. See: Networking Optimization Pile On Test – October 11th
Linden Lab has made some changes to the way regions handle network traffic. We need your help to test. This will help us insure that regions are communicating appropriately over the network. Mainly we are concerned with agents entering via direct login, teleport, and region crossing. As well as other functions such as IMs, Voice, and Group chat.
Tomorrow, October 11th, at 4PM Pacific time (right after the server beta user group) we will conduct these tests with as many people as we have. Testing will take place on ADITI and require out of world communication we will be coordinating via IRC. This will require an IRC client connected to EFNET in the channel #sltest. If you don’t know how to do that you have until tomorrow afternoon to figure it out. 🙂
The details on the tests are here:
– https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Networking_Optimization_Pile_On_Tests
I hope you can come and help us test these new changes.
__Oskar
The test procedure is described in the SL Wiki. See: Networking Optimization Pile On Tests.
These tests will be on the ADITI grid.
There was a roll to the main channel this week. It seems to have gone well. At least all the regions get a restart after 3 weeks or so. The package was the one running on the Blue Steel RC Channel. It is a minor update and should have no visible effect on the simulator behavior. This is a release needed to enable a coming release.
Will get a new package. It will be the main channel code plus the changes to allow better use of the new hardware. Not knowing exactly what hardware the Lab is upgrading to… its hard to speculate on what the change may be. Presumably, if they are running Intel, they may be adding more threading features for the iCore series chips. If they run AMD, I have no clue.