Second Life and Virtual Worlds
There was no scripting user group meeting this morning, Monday. Kelly was away. So, no news on what happened in scripting or server updates.
Several questions came up in the Mesh/Content Creation User Group. Plus some problems and tips for saving Prim Count.
RL work has kept me away from Second Life®. Lot’s is going on with SL Viewers and the Mesh Deformer. I’m having to catch up today, Sunday. Inara Pey got the basic information out Friday the 4th in Mesh Deformer update: release from Qarl, request from Oz.
The Mesh Deformer has its own Linden Lab® project viewer. There have only been two releases of it, AFAIK. The previous one was in January as a version 3.2.6 (247240). The current one is 3.3.1 (255595). I’m not clear on the development trunk; I think it changed to Oz-Porject-2. Whatever, you can get a copy of the viewer here: Second Life Deformer Project Viewer Download. You’ll also find I have added the link to the blog roll on the left.
The current stable viewer for Second Life is version: 3.3.1 (254524). So, the versions are close cousins. The current SL Development Viewer is at version: 3.3.3 (255744). Without digging through the repository and figuring out which branches are merged in when, I can’t know which fixes and changes are in which viewer version. But, the 3.3.1’a I’ve been using tend to crash on exit.
Most viewer reviews are written for those using Second Life®. However, more grids are opening. For the people using alternate grids there is another blog looking at viewers: Excelsior Station. The author, Sarge Misfit, does a Second Life® style VIEWERS COMPARISON. SL users will gain some benefit from the comparison,
The most recent comparison is dated May 3, 2012.
The comparison is a cross between a viewer list and a feature comparison. One of the valuable points in the comparison is whether the viewer is multi-grid ready, does it have a grid manager, handy comparison point.
A little catching up… RL work has interfered with my making a couple of User Group meetings. One of the Lindens was kind enough to send me transcripts for the meetings I missed.
The Lindens were testing the modified Land Impact system in week 17. They were using the algorithm that set a cap on Streaming/Download Weight of 1 on all non-mesh-prims.
Also, the Script Factor of increasing Server Weight by 0.5*prim_count for unscripted-prims and scripted was switched to 0.5*prim_count + (0.25*number_of_scripts) with a cap of 2. Rounding is done on linksets. The Lindens believe that change would only cause the Land Impact cost of existing objects to decrease.
While one could probably prove the deceasing cost belief mathematically, on a practical level bugs tend to add chaos to and invalidate clean logical proofs. So, they test.
Pathfinding is closer to release. I expect we will see it arrive on the Release Channels this month.
Andrew Linden says they feel that are now feature complete for the initial release. I suppose this means that all the features the Lab believes are important for successful use of Pathfinding have been added. They still have bogs and issues to sort out. But, the feature set is fixed until after initial release.
They have decided to change the Pathfinding Tools in the viewer. Seems it is a work flow change that drives the need for viewer changes.
If you have used the viewer to edit Navmesh, you realize there are some klunks. Unfreezing the mesh, editing, and Freezing the Navmesh have some delay issues that have to be handled. Once a Navmesh has been changed and locked it takes some time for the server to recalculate the Navmesh. As Andrew says, may be tens of seconds. With multiple people editing the same Navmesh in a region you might imagine what problems a 20 to 40 second delay might cause them.
I suspect most of us have seen this ‘No Room’ message at one time of another. When I first ran into it I wondered how they did that. Later I wondered about why they did that. I asked around and never got an answer for how or that it could be deliberate. I asked in the College of Scripting and Music Science in-world group. I explored the Ivory Tower Library of Primitive. I read forum threads. I never got a good answer.
There are two similar messages:
I suspect most of us thought these a simple annoyance. Playing in combat regions and wanting to build defendable fortresses I realized the “No room to sit here, try another spot” thing could help with defenses, if I could just figure out how to make it work on demand. Try as I might, I couldn’t figure it out.