Pathfinding Update Week 38

by

Yesterday late in the day Lorca Linden made a post about Pathfinding (PF) in the SL Forum. You can see it here: Pathfinding FAQ.

Pathfinding

Included in the information is the estimate that the Pathfinding Tools will be in the release viewer by the end of September. The release delay has been due to a viewer memory leak issue that has delayed all viewer releases. The leak is not in the PF code. But, the PF code is in the batch of updates with the leaky code. They are currently trying to separate the PF code from the other code and get the PF Tools released.

Read more

#SL News 2 Week 38

by

Deformer BUG

This YouTube video got posted to show a bug in the Deformer Viewer.

[youtube tjpNEqTA9Cg]

This is likely a viewer problem more than it is a problem in the Deformer. There is no JIRA item that you can contribute to. So, if you see this problem, file your own JIRA and provide your information.

UPDATE: BUG-157 – Interaction between graphic shader setting and deformation enabled mesh. By: BDOGG Hax.

SVC-7959

SVC-7959 – Regions that are restarting need to have their sim state saves occur immediately before or during stopping phase to minimize script memory loss and rezzed content loss or duplication.

Read more

#SL News Week 38

by

Main Channel Roll

Simon Linden tells us there were problems with the Tuesday roll out. The problems were cosmetic. Things just did not rez correctly on a number of regions on the first start after the update. They are not sure what the problem was. Restarts seem to fix it.

In the Server-Scripting Group meeting at 12:21 the ‘second’ restart was 90% complete. So, while the roll out was behind, it was not too bad.

Release Candidate Roll

As I reported in: Group Edit Update Week 37, Group Edit is moving ahead. While I was thinking we were weeks away from seeing it on an RC channel it seems it will make it out Wednesday.

The Deploys thread in the forum has not updated so it is unclear what exactly is going to roll out tomorrow. Simon says a bunch of new localized notifications are included.

As long as Large Group Editing is part of it, a number of people will be happy. I think Baker is going to publish a blog post in the SL Blog. We will see how that goes.

Linden Projects

You probably saw the announcement by now: #SL New Linden Lab Projects.

Simon announced it in the Server-Scripting Group. He made clear that those working the SL side of things have almost no idea what is going on in those projects.

Havok

Another Havok release is coming. Andrew and Falcom are going to be figuring out how to make that roll through the RC channels. As you may remember, different Havok versions are a big problem for objects crossing regions.

Read more

#SL Group Edit Roll to RC

by

SVC-4968 – The large group editing problem JIRA is going to roll to the Release Candidate Wednesday 9/19. This is way ahead of what I was expecting.

This means that sometime around noon anyone with a copy of the project viewer (see the JIRA to get a copy) can visit a region in the RC channels and edit groups with more than 10k members. If you have never logged into the JIRA, I have links too.

You may not want to be the first person to try this new feature. But, you may. Whichever, realize that the viewer feature is not a completed and polished product. There is no progress bar and it can take some time for a large group to load. So, be patient. Some large groups, 40k, could take minutes to load.

Older viewers will not be able to take advantage of the feature. Third party viewers (TPV) are getting the feature. We will likely see it in TPV’s before it appears in the Linden Release Viewer, especially considering the problem the 3.4.x series is having.

#SL New Linden Lab Projects

by

Check this out… LindenLab.com

2 new Products from Linden Lab

This means the long speculated on projects are out.

See Hamlet’s article: Linden Lab Unveils iPad-Based Creatorverse & 3D Sandbox Game Patterns, Two of Four Non-SL Products for 2012

Patterns is taking Beta sing ups. I’m signed up.

CreatorVerse is for the iPad and both are coming soon.

Also see the announcement: Coming Soon from Linden Lab: Creatorverse and Patterns

#SL Avatar Render & Bake Fail

by

It has been awhile since I updated the status of the bake fail problems. Bake fail is well and healthy… but, the Lindens are working on removing the fail part.

Back in March 2012 the Lindens were tracking down the problem. The failure to properly rez the avatar was not a simple failure. A number of things in the overall Second Life™ operation cause the failure. After tracking down as many of the failure triggers as they could they started planning the fix.

If you are interested in know how the system works now, read: #SL Clouds, Grey, and Blurry Avatars. Or the short version I supply in the forum Answers is here.

The solution the Lindens have come up with is a server side compositing engine. Rather then do the compositing in the viewer and upload it, a folder named Current Outfit will be used to contain a list of the items an avatar is wearing. The folder is updated automatically as you change appearance. When the folder changes I suspect a dirty flag is set probably posting a date and time of the change. Some message is likely sent to the server after some time period. At some point the Compositing Service on the Linden side pulls the list from your Current Outfit folder and bakes the composite texture made from your skin, tats, and clothes. That server will cache the texture. As others need your appearance texture they will get it from the Compositing Server’s cache.

Read more