#SL Pathfinding Wk17 & Wk18

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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.

Land Impact

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.

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#SL Server-Script News Update Wk18

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Pathfinding

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.

Server/Scripting Meeting - Lego Chairs

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.

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No Room to Sit

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The Problem

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:

  • No room to sit here, try another spot
  • There is no suitable surface to sit on, try another spot.
Sit Tests - Click for larger image

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.

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#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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