#SL News 2 Week 39

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Some topics that did not make the previous post follow.

Interest List and…

Andrew Linden is still working on the Interest List. This is the list of things you are looking at and the viewer needs to render. New Interest List code went up on the Ahern, Balkanski ,and Beirne regions in ADITI.

A girls gotta shop…

One of the changes coming from the Interest List work is the removal of the server side code that runs Particle Clouds. Those are the clouds that were used in SL before Windlight came into use. So, once the Interest List code rolls out the particle clouds will be gone for good.

Removing that old cloud code will free up a few server cycles and take a small bit of data out of the bandwidth pipeline.

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#SL News 1 Week 39

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Deformer Project Viewer

I got the Mesh Deformer project Viewer 3-4-1-264215 on 9/2. I’ve been playing with it on and off since then.

Today (9/25) I checked and I find that a new project viewer is on the download site: Second Life 3-4-1-265137 Project Viewer Deformer.

So, if you are playing with the Deformer, be sure you have the latest version.

Server Scripting 9/25

Kokua Viewer

There is a new release of Kokua out: Kokua:Release Notes/3.3.4 Grid Manager

As best I can tell, there is no Mac version. There are Linux and Windows versions.

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KirstenLee’s Viewer S22(1a)

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I thought I had seen the last of KirstenLee’s viewer. But, a couple of days ago a new post popped up on the blog and the code repository was updated 9/23/2012. Since then there have been over 14,000 downloads of the Kirsten Viewer. I was 14,695.

I am not sure how up to date the viewer is. My last download was 21(9) in July 2011, over a year ago. The current version is 22(1a). The install notes say there are only minor changes from 21(9).

I found the time to download and rez things to be long. Inventory took a couple of minutes to download. Of course my avatar would not rez until I had most of my inventory. I suspect the viewer is still using the UDP protocol for several services that have updated to HTTP.

Direct Delivery’s Received Box is there. Mesh is handled. The Interface is mostly Viewer 2, it has the sidebar. Menu buttons can be turned on and off but no button drag and drop.

It is amazing how little Viewer 3 has changed, interface-wise, from viewer 2 days.

The speed is good. I’m getting 25 to 40 FPS without Lighting & Shadows, Ambient Occlusion, and Sun & Moon.

I don’t know if this new release means Lee has time to work on the project or what the story is.

But, it is nice to see a new version of the viewer out.

#SL Mesh Deformer Discussion

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There is some discussion going on in the JIRA thread STORM-1716. Everyone should be able to see the item. I am not sure who can and cannot comment on it. The comments over the last week or two are on the current Deformer, which I call 0.4.

Problem with Default Sit Pose

User Error

One of the Deformer problems Karl described as User Error. That term is going to mean different things to different people. I think Kitsune Shan best described the problem saying, “Anyway, I see why Qarl says that about “user error”. Most people here use Blender, they trend to just select the mesh and the skeleton, so the weights are copied, but NOT correctly applied. Handmade weights are always necessary if you want to do a good job. And the other factor is that people keep paying more attention in how the default mesh deforms than using a custom one. Tests can be done using a very high poly density mesh, so changes, spikes and vertex problems are more visible. Using the default avatar shape isn’t too bad as “test” but remember, no one will use the default mesh to make clothes.”

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Pathfinding Events Change

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About the 6th of September Maestro Linden updated the Pathfinding Events. See the Wiki page: Event path_update. I hadn’t looked at the page for some time. So, I had not noticed until now.

Events are triggers for scripts. They are sort of thing that says: this just happened. You then have a chance to have the script do something in response. The Pathfinding events now include these things:

  1. PU_SLOWDOWN_DISTANCE_REACHED
  2. PU_GOAL_REACHED
  3. PU_FAILURE_INVALID_START
  4. PU_FAILURE_INVALID_GOAL
  5. PU_FAILURE_UNREACHABLE
  6. PU_FAILURE_TARGET_GONE
  7. PU_FAILURE_NO_VALID_DESTINATION
  8. PU_EVADE_HIDDEN
  9. PU_EVADE_SPOTTED
  10. PU_FAILURE_NO_NAVMESH
  11. PU_FAILURE_DYNAMIC_PATHFINDING_DISABLED
  12. PU_FAILURE_PARCEL_UNREACHABLE
  13. PU_FAILURE_OTHER

The green items are new.

Being able to detect when a region has disabled Pathfinding allows the scripter to move the character out of the area and restart it. That will stop PF Characters from piling up at the borders of disabled regions.

When I looked at the page the links from these items had not been added yet. So, we don’t have detailed information on each event. For instance at what distance does PU_SLOWDOWN_DISTANCE_REACHED trigger? Can one set the distance?

Eventually the pages will get written and appear. Until then we’ll just have to go with the short descriptions provided on the path_update page.

 

#SL News 3 Week 38

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There were problems with the Tuesday roll out. Some noticed the problems and others of us didn’t. For those that ran into problems it was an annoyance. Things just weren’t working correctly.

Server Beta Meeting Sept 2012

Oskar Linden explained what happened:

Things were going great this week ‘til Tuesday then…

So, this is what happened. Our release system is a big machine. It’s operated by hand but it’s still a machine. [I’m visualizing a big Steampunk thing huffing and puffing with levers and stuff.] You put code in one end and it gets released at the other end

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