#SecondLife News Week 18

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There is a bit more news on the Thursday service outage. A firmware upgrade in the routers is the likely problem. Other data centers have seen similar problems. Today, Monday, they downed the system from about 7 to 9 AM PDT. The revised upgrades presumably made it into firmware and we are back up. And that is about all we are ever likely to know about the event.

Mesh Meeting

Magnum Release Channel

This channel is running the update package many Second Life® users are waiting for. This is the one with PRIM_SLICE, HTTP header size control, and llGetAgentList(). Unfortunately this package is having problems and is not likely to make it to the main grid.

The problem seen is attachments fail to attach/rez. In some cases they rez but the scripts fail to load.

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What’s Next Second Life?

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Several things are coming together. First is my slow FPS rate. I’m looking for a solution. I can’t find my processing bottle neck. The research is taking me far outside Second Life ®. Complaints about slow or poor performance in OpenGL based games are not limited to Second Life. So, I’m not accepting it is solely poor programming on the Lab’s part.

New Tech - Image by sidduz - Flickr

As one moves through the technology world in such a search it is obvious that we are becoming highly dependent on computer technology. OMG! At my favorite bar they did a BBQ event and brought in a company to do the BBQ food. Patrons pay the caterer direct for the food. The cash register was an iPad with an app.

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Dolphin Viewer 3.3.5 Released Review

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New Machinamists Tool Panel

A new release of the Dolphin Viewer is out: 3.3.5.23763 “Fellini.” This release gets a new graphics floater panel. The idea is it can be used by photographers and machinamists.

The Dolphin Viewer also gets the ability to click a worn item in inventory to edit it. This will be way handy for moving those belly, lip, and nose rings that rez inside the avatar.

A feature to allow clicking a land mark in inventory to open on the world map has been added.

The Mesh Deformer control could previously be found in Preferences -> Dolphin Viewer 3 -> UI. The control is gone, so I assume the deformer did not make it into this version. It seems there are some problems with the Deformer code causing crashes. Also, there is a Linden factor in that Oz says the Mesh Deformer is a TPV Policy 2.k item. This means developers can’t put out their standard public release of a viewer that includes the Mesh Deformer. It can only appear in test viewers.

Download & Install

The download is standard and quick. The install is typical. I did not need to clear the cache or settings before installing. It seems to work just fine without those steps.

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Nirans Viewer Release 1.33 Review

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UPDATE: Be sure you read Niran’s comment at the end of the review. My first impressions make up my article and not all of them are completely accurate. The ATI/AMD Pink Textures problem is a bit confusing. I’ll let you sort it out if you have an ATI/AMD video card. A note added to Niran’s blog says the problem is fixed.

There is lots of news about Niran’s viewer this week. Inara has her experience of using the viewer posted here: Niran’s 1.33: super smooth and totally flexible. She likes the viewer and it is a positive review. Inside the viewer this version is labeled: Nirans Viewer 3.3.5 (1083) Apr 26 2012 23:49:31 (Nirans Viewer).

Image from Nirans Viewer

Third Party Viewer Directory

Niran says the viewer has qualified for the TPVD list. We should see it there in the next week.

It is likely not going to be in the first section of the list where viewers are listed by stability. A viewer version must see 200,000 hours of use in a reporting period to make the rankings. TPV Dev’s get stats the rest of us are not allowed to see. The idea is it helps them with development of their viewer. Apparently those stats or feedback from the Lindens is that more than 200k hours are logged by those using the NiranV Viewer. BUT… that is across all versions of the viewer.

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#SecondLife Land Impact Costs to Change

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Friday Falcon Linden made a late appearance at the Sever/Scripting User Group meeting. He announced with the coming of Pathfinding we will see a change in the costs associated with Land Impact. In no small part the change is being influenced by PATHBUG-69.

The Brain behind Torley?

PATHBUG-69 – llVolumeDetect(TRUE) is broken. According to the wiki:

If detect is TRUE, VolumeDetect is enabled, physical object and avatars can pass through the object. This works much like Phantom, but unlike Phantom, VolumeDetect objects trigger collision_start and  collision_end events when interpenetrating. Collision events will trigger in any script in the object.

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#SL Possible Down Time

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There is a post on the Grid Status page. It gives a bit different spin to Thursday’s down time than what I heard. Whatever, there will more work done to fix some things on Monday and that work may take SL offline for a time Monday morning.

[UPDATED 2:30pm PDT, 27 April 2012] On April 26, 2012, the Second Life engineering team was performing an upgrade to the core network. The upgrade triggered a bug that led to downtime and instability throughout the day. The maintenance described in this post is scheduled for Monday, April 30 at 6am PT in order to correct the bug and may result in additional service interruption. We apologize for the service disruption and appreciate everyone’s patience.

[POSTED 1:00pm PDT, 27 April 2012] We will be performing scheduled maintenance Monday April 30, 2012 beginning at 6:00am until approximately 9:00am. Please save all builds and refrain from rezzing no copy objects or making inworld L$ transactions. Some residents may experience delays logging inworld. Please follow this blog for any updated information.

Emphases mine.

See: Scheduled Maintenance Monday, April 30, 2012