#SL Server Update Week 32

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Mesh seems to still be the top priority. Two of the release channels are running Mesh Enabled versions; Le Tigre and Magnum. Blue Steel is running a Server Maintenance upgrade. The Lindens have posted in the Wiki what changes are coming over the next few upgrades.

State of the Art?

Main Grid

The upgrade called Improved HTTP Service made it to the main grid last week. One of the items is improved texture fetch. As more users pile on HTTP Texture Get a problem was found in the servers and routers that handle the requests. Lately I’ve seen the time needed for textures to download go up. I’ve also seen more textures simply not download. I’ve also been in crowded places where I’ve changed groups 2 or 3 times to all the avatars to render. I still think changing groups to rez avatars sounds silly, but I see it work. This fix should correct the problem, but I can’t say I have seen improvement.

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Second Life’s August Update

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It looks like the Lab is going to do consistent monthly news updates. This month we got a new update Monday as to what is happening in Second Life. August Update If you regularly read this blog, you’ll probably find you know most of the things announced in the blog post. But, there are some things I did not know about, so you won’t have found out about them here.

The New Splash Screen

Splash Page

I think everyone is now seeing the new Second Life Splash page. This is the one a wrote about: New Login Screen Arrives a few days ago.

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Hiding Avatars in Second Life

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Rand Linden posts a blog article about how to use the new privacy feature in Viewer 2.8.1 and newer.

See the article here: Hiding avatars and restricting avatar sounds

The change is a new land control. If you don’t own land, you can’t do much with the feature. Understanding it will help you understand the differences between what you see rendered on your screen and what the mini-map tells you.

 

Second Life Mesh Update Week 32

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This week the Mesh Upload User Group met in AGNI. Prior to now the group met in ADITI. The meeting filled up one region and we overflowed into a second. The location links for the meeting are wrong, but should get fixed this week. The questions being asked are getting more complex. Still, there is some interesting news.

More Mesh Avatars - Click Enlarge

Meeting Location

My understanding is that from this meeting on future meetings will be held in AGNI. I expect the new location to be the NW Corner of Mesh Sandbox 9. Right now one has to be a member of the Mesh Volunteers group. More information on that here: Mesh/LiveVolunteers. The Lindens will soon be removing that restriction. Then a resident may easily attend the meetings.

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New Dolphin Viewer2 v2.5.9.15037 Review

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A new version of the Dolphin Viewer2 is out. The viewer is based on SLV 2.5 version code. There are a number of fixes and a couple of new features. Version are available for Apple, Linux, and Windows.

Download & Install

Download file size is about 24mb. Download Dolphin Viewer.

The only option in the install is which folder to install to. The install apparently wipes out the previous viewer settings. It seems to have kept my color settings.

Pteron Region in Dolphin Viewer

The install also takes over the Windows setting controlling which viewer is used for SLURL’s. I need to update my article on how to reset Windows to use the viewer you prefer for SLURL’s. See: Emerald Viewer vs SLURL (Emerald… that gives away the age of the article.)

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nVidia Driver GTX 460 Problems

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It seems a number of people are no longer able to open SLViewer version 2.7.4 and newer. The problem apparently started in June 2011. So, what is the problem and what is the fix?

nVidia and Second Life Shaders

Some change in the Second Life render pipeline’s shader code has created a problem between the nVidia driver and the OpenGL drivers used by Linden Lab in the viewer. It appears the nVidia GeForce GTX 460 card with any driver newer than 260.99 has a problem.  If the graphics level is set at the default or on High or Ultra, the viewer crashes on login.

The problem does not exist in the nVidia driver 260.99 WHQL and presumably earlier drivers.

Updated 8/15: See TIMOTHY LOTTES‘ article NVIDIA FXAA.

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