#SL Clouds, Grey, and Blurry Avatars

by

We seem to be getting another round of poorly rezzing avatars. The particle cloud avatars we know about. That is often a connection issue. I write my fix-it article Avatar Render Problems: Ghost Cloud Smoke Ball Ruth in September 2010. But, something new is up.

The Problem - Extended Bake Fail

Blurry Avatars

For several weeks I have noticed when changing clothes I get a blurry avatar. My skin and clothes start blurry after a change, then rez nice and crisp once, then go blurry again and never seem to finish rezzing.  They stay blurry.

Read more

#SL ADITI Login Inventory Problem

by

If you use the ADITI Preview Grid for testing things you make or the new features coming to Second Life, be warned.

A few of us have recently updated our password, which forces an update of our inventory as it exists in AGNI, the main grid, to overwrite our inventory in ADITI. In many ways for me it is cleanup process for all the stuff I play with in ADITI.

This weekend I changed my password and my ADITI inventory updated. I suddenly could not rez anything from my inventory to the Path Test regions in ADITI. I made the things I needed from scratch and wrote my scripts for testing Pathfinding. When I was ready to log out I saved those things to inventory.

When I returned several hours later and logged in, all the things I made were missing from my ADITI inventory. I’ve been through this a couple of times now. I am so glad I use LSLEditor for writing scripts.

At the user group meetings I found out others are having the problem too. So, my advice is to avoid changing your password until the problem is resolved.

If you have already run into the problem, see JIRA item: SVC-7727. Please click Watch and add any additional information you may have. Remember. The JIRA is not for discussion. Also, ‘me too’ posts do not help if they do not add new information. For ‘me too’ just click watch.

Second Life PathFinding Tutorial

by

I’ve wanted to take time to play with the new Pathfinding feature now in alpha testing on the ADITI grid, also known as the Preview Grid. I took the time this weekend. I learned a few things. As you may imagine the documentation is incomplete at this stage. Not much point in writing lots of information that may change.

My First Pathfinding Bot

I’ll explain some of the problems I ran into with Pathfinding and then get into the script and how I fixed the problems. This is not a beginning tutorial for scripting. I am assuming you know about basic scripting with the Linden Scripting Language.

Simple

Writing Pathfinding scripts is way way simple compared to what was previously needed to create similar behavior. My first try was to create a follower. I have a Serge inspired character I made for OSGrid and decided to use that. My little bot is made from two prims and a sculpty. Because of the sculpties work I have to scale it to make it look right. That wacks the bounding box, which I was not over concerned with when I made it. Someday I’ll need to redo it in mesh.

The sculpty gave me my first challenge.  I needed to rebuild my bot here in SL. I rezzed the spheres I needed and put him together. Then wrote the script and tried him out. He promptly fell over on his side… 

Read more

Pages: 1 2

#SL Development Viewer Update

by

I have been watching for a Development Viewer update since February 6. Yesterday SL Dev Viewer 3.3.1 (250315) became available for download. See: Snowstorm. If you are not closely following viewer development it is hard to know what new features and fixes are in the development viewer. If you read ‘repositoryese’, it is easier. I’m not that good at it.

ADITI Receive Testing Area

Viewer related fixes and features from all the various projects make it into the Development Viewer before moving to the Beta Viewer. The Development Viewer is for those that like to play with the bleeding edge tech from the Lab and do not mind some problems. The purpose of the viewer is to allow SL users that want to help to test the viewer. For most users of the Dev Viewer it is mostly about running and using the viewer and letting it send crash reports. Filing JIRA’s to help explain problems is greatly appreciated the various teams. Bitching about bugs in the viewer is poor form that displays a lack of understanding.

Download & Install

The download is about 28mb and it’s fast.

The install is simple straight forward run and done.

Read more

#SL Server Scripting Update Week 9

by

Several interesting things were discussed in Friday’s Server Scripting meeting.

Video Memory Compression

In pre-meeting conversation I heard a new texture compression process is being tested for storing textures in video memory. The feature is in one of the project viewers. I’m unclear on which project. While there are some video artifacts it almost cuts memory use in half. There is a Debug Setting that turns it on. It is off by default. …and I don’t know the name of the setting.

Second Life Server Scripting Meeting
Second Life Server Scripting Meeting

It seems the current iteration of the feature also compresses the User Interface textures resulting in some oddities.

RC Roll Outs

Simon Linden says the new software packages rolled to the release channels Wednesday are working well. Another region crossing bug was found. So, they are planning to roll the Bug Fixes package to the main grid next week. I think that means the Le Tigre and Blue Steel will roll to the main channel and Magnum’s will stay on a release channel.

Read more

Linden Layoffs?

by

I see on Tateru’s and Inara’s blogs and in loads of Plurks that Esbee and Charlar are leaving the Lab. I’m bummed.

As of yesterday Charlar was proceeding with Advanced Creator Tools. I got my join notice to the new group.

Welcome

Thursday,01 Mar 2012 16:05:28 GMT

This group’s purpose is to provide a channel for some communications related to the Advanced Creator tools. You are the first members because you are also part of the closed beta for the tools themselves, especially the Experience Permission system. This beta will take part initially on Aditi with a private group meeting and forum. Currently I see no reason to require an NDA. What we’re doing isn’t necessarily sekrit, it’s more that we want to work out any kinks with you all in a calm, professional group.

That group is for beta testers helping with the Linden Realms Tools. New permissions systems are needed to go with the tools. So, there is lots to work out. I have no idea what the status of this project is now.

Charlar’s departure will likely put a kink in the Content-Mesh Creation group too.

I’ll miss Charlar.

UPDATE: I do have it from a reliable source that Charlar neither left nor was fired… but, he is not here any more. Figure that one out…

I haven’t heard much about what Esbee was doing. I knew her from when she ran the Viewer Evolution group. I missed her when she left the first time. Recently I haven’t been able to tell she was back. So, I’m neutral on her departure.