#SL Viewer 1.23 Dying

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For some time I have said that the series 1 viewers are doomed and will eventually stop working. That day is drawing nearer. Several blogs have covered the demise of Linden Lab’s Viewer 1.23.5. Word is that OZ says it will soon lose the ability to deal with some inventory handling aspects. I’ll try to put that in factual perspective.

So far few have found where he said that. Oz doesn’t post meeting transcripts, so one has a hard time knowing whats going on there without attending. However, Fri, 06 Jan 2012 16:15:58, Oz Linden sent an email to the Open Source List saying:

We’re going to deploying changes to the inventory backend soon that improve robustness and performance, but in testing those changes we found that existing viewers relied on certain things being strictly ordered.  With the new backend, that assumption does not always hold true.

Changeset d327dcc8ae51

<https://bitbucket.org/lindenlab/viewer-development/changeset/d327dcc8ae51>

from viewer-development implements the viewer change needed to avoid race conditions.  It should be straightforward to apply to any viewer, and is safe to release before the changes are deployed (it is compatible with the services as they are now).

You are strongly urged to port this patch and get it deployed.

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#SL Scripting UG Week 2

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Tuesday the next server maintenance pack should roll out to a release channel. For scripters this roll will have llSetRegionPos(), the frame_number parameter for llGetEnv(), and some llSetKeyframedMotion() bug fixes. We’ll find out which channel gets the update Tuesday.

Roll outs are a bit off and the pipeline is a little dry because of last week’s network switch failure. So, I think we will see release channels roll Tuesday instead of Wednesday.

A backend feature has been added. Kelly Linden says it is a % scripts run stat. This tells one what percentage of scripts ran in the last frames as an average. We will eventually see it in the viewer. But, it has the QA pipe to make it through before we see it. Version 3.2.7 made it to the development alpha today. So, % scripts will likely be one or two versions behind that.

This new stat is the average percentage of scripts that ran in the last frames. A 100% average means all scripts are running in every frame.

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#SL Server News Week 1

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Now the holidays are past and the ‘No Change’ windows have ended. The cycle of roll outs is resuming. Unfortunately we started out with a crash in Week 1. That roll failed because of a hardware problem. Seems just before the roll out to the release channels was to start a switch (as in network switch) failed and took out a rack of severs.

When servers disappear from the network and the lights are still on it takes some time to figure out what happened. Getting the servers back up took priority over the roll out. So, the release channels ran the main channel’s version for another week as the roll out was postponed to Week 2.

The roll will be attempted again tomorrow, Tuesday.

#SL Milkshake Viewer 3.2.6(6) Review

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New Milkshake Logo

A new release of Milkshake came out January 5. This one has Qarl’s Mesh Deformer. I suspect this feature is based on Exodus’ work so I think it would have a enable/disable feature. I can’t find the control to enable or disable it.

Somewhere in the updates process the logo changed from a cupcake to a cow with I think daisies for a hat.

The viewer is now using newer code. This viewer is basing its update on the Catznip Viewer updates. There are imports of ‘graphics tools’ from Exodus.

The Snapshot and AO panels have been updated. However, the post to Feed feature is not yet working.

I think I’ve posted one image to my Feed. However the Post to Feed is a way around the L$10 upload fee. Need to share a quick snapshot of something with a friend? Save it to your Feed. This is a great work around for newbies that have no Lindens. Unfortunately they have no way to learn about it.

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Animation Overriders

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More and more Third Party Viewers (TPV) have built in Animation Overriders (AO). A huge problem for those of us that use multiple viewers is the problem of each viewer having unique AO folders. There is no standard AO folder. Milkshake names their AO folder Milkshake, Phoenix’s is named Phoenix, Firestorm’s is Firestorm…

New AO's

If you have walk’s and stand’s that are no copy, you were screwed. You were forced to have different animation sets for each viewer, which sucks. This is the main reason I still use my ZHOA-II HUD. It is available in any viewer I choose to use. Plus I only need to set it up once.

AO Animation Configuration Tool

I also avoided using built-in AO’s because I have a couple of favorite animations that are no copy. Fortunately more and more animations are provided as copy-ok. The super cheap (L$10 mostly) animations in Kuso are copy \o/. Eventually I’ll find replacements for my no-copy fav’s. (I was new when I bought them.)

AO’s Change

I haven’t been keeping up on Viewer AO’s. When they first came out I played with them, ran into problems, and stopped using the built-ins. At some point things changed. While playing with the Milkshake Viewer I decided to try the built-in AO for one of my Alt’s.

New Milkshake Logo

Milkshake has a nice AO system. I like it and was surprised several times. I’m not sure who wrote the code or which viewer had the system first, that just doesn’t matter to me. Sorry programmers, no offense or diss intended.

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Blender Dropping Collada?

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The rumor that Collada will be dropped from Blender is circulating. See: SL Post: Blender dropping COLLADA support and Blender Lists. It is undecided whether the Blender development team will drop it or not. Everyone strive for No Panic Mode.

Don't Panic
Don't Panic

It looks like Collada is the ideal format for use with SL. Several other pay big money modeling programs have Collada export. So, it is unlikely it is going to die out. I have a hard time believing the Blender Team will give up on it. But, those playing with the code say it is a bit of a mess and likely will be rewritten. That could mean we will see it removed and come back latter. But, even that seems unlikely to me… the ‘remove’ part that is.

It looks like Domino Marama is going to make a Python Collada exporter for Blender. For those of us that have purchased Primstar or Avastar it will be free. Or it may end up free to all. Only time will tell us what is finally decided.

I’ve heard someone at the Lab say they had some people working with Blender Org on Collada. So, may be they can or will LL chime in at Blender Org or otherwise help to keep Collada in Blender. We’ll ask but don’t expect a definitive answer. It is obviously in LL’s interest to have Collada export in Blender.

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