#SL Avatar Render & Bake Fail

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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.

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#SL News 2 Week 37

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Interest List

The interest list is all about how fast things rez and download due to the number of requests being made. A small number of requests complete quickly and the viewer can go about rendering the newly downloaded stuff.

Server-Scripting Meeting 9/2012

Figuring out what you are looking at so the viewer knows what to request from the server is a bit of a chore. Andrew Linden has been working on improving the interest list to improve performance.  This week (37) his code is moving into testing.

We should be seeing it on the ADITI grid. The changes are server side. No viewer changes are required, if I understand correctly. So, the effect will show up quickly not having to wait on viewer QA.

Andrew says there is an experimental change that could cause some viewers to use more memory. For now he has that disabled. Andrew says they will test that feature with a custom viewer and decide how much of an impact it has. Then they’ll see if they can better coordinate the viewer and server for better performance and less memory use. He did not get into the details… of those details…

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JIRA Change Update Wk 37

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Oskar was asking about the Second LifeTM JIRA Change in the Server Beta meeting and how it has gone for the first week. He asked for pro’s and con’s.

Not Entirely Harmonious

Pro’s are: No duplicate checking, easier to file bug report, and faster for those that can read JIRA’s. The ‘faster’ part being attributed to: removal of whiner and rant posts.

Con’s are: — no one voiced any — that does not mean there aren’t any. But, that no one brought up any says something. What it says is debatable.

Oskar says there are lots of internal conversations with the QA teams about the JIRA Change and how to make it possible for the ‘regular contributors’ to the JIRA process to continue contributing. The key concept being: contributors who are regularly positive and helpful. Oskar wants a larger group of people with enhanced JIRA privileges. Oskar says they are discussing the idea of a QA Contributors group. While Oskar is not sure how it will shape up, he is confident that it will happen in some form.

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#SL Viewer 3.4.x Week 37

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Linden Viewer updates are a bit balled up right now. This version got too many changes and fixes poked into one update. Somewhere in all those changes is a memory leak that crashes the viewer. This has caused problems. The Pathfinding Project’s formal release has been delayed, for instance, as have other viewer updates.

Third party dev’s have been splitting the various update items apart and implementing different parts of the 3.4 code in their viewers. Pathfinding Tools are mostly operational in Firestorm and their crash rate is still really low. So, the problem is not in the PF Tools. (You can now see those tools in more viewers, but not yet the official Linden viewer.)

The Lindens are trying to get a viewer version with just the PF Tools into testing with the 3.3 code. They feel that could pass testing and move to Beta and Release quickly.

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#SL CCIIUG Week 37

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These meetings are getting smaller. There were about 8 to 10 people and this one had 2 griefer idiots at this one. Blocking took care of clowns that eventually wondered off.  I’m pretty sure User Interface design is not a popular subject in SL.

Blender 2.63 Normal Map Controls

Oz Linden was at the meeting asking about control layouts for the Materials System. The problem is how to handle those controls. Oz explained and asked:

For the Normal and Specular maps, our goal has been to allow the texture and each of the two maps to have their own set of positioning controls; offset, rotation, repeat, mapping mode… if you want to line them up, you can, if you don’t, you don’t have to.

Suppose that those controls were tabbed such that you could look at one of the three images with its controls, then flip tabs to see the next one, etc…

The alternative may be to make a huge build floater, but for smaller screens that can get bad fast.

Inara Pey asked, You’re talking sub-tabs within the texture tab, Oz?

Oz answered, something like that, Inara, or possibly a separate floater that has its own tabs… not sure. The essential question is whether or not those parameters need to be seen together, I think.

[…] I’m trying to get a sense of what the relationships are between the controls needed for Materials right now.

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MetaReality Podcast Week 37

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Yay! We have a new MetaReality podcast out today: Aaaaaaand We’re Back!

My timeline of, summary of, and comments on the podcast follow. As usual this is not a transcript. I provide time marks for the things I see as subject change points or interesting entry points, so you can check out what interests you.

If you decide you should yell about something, be sure you check out the audio first. The subject content I hear and you read from my writing may have no relationship to what was actually said.

 

Metareality Podcasts

01:15 MetaReality podcasts are loved by a good number of SL users. As evidenced by Gianna getting all sorts of questions via various media about whether she was going to be doing more podcasts. Gianna is committed to continuing the podcasts. This recent break was due to RL busyness. So, we will see more podcasts coming. Yay!

2:00 Material System – Discussion about this new feature starts.

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