SLV 1.23 Life Expectancy

The other day Tateru was blogging about the life expectancy of SLV 1.23 and series 1 viewers. (Reference) She was quoting OZ Linden. Today the minutes for the Open Development User Group posted. Oz Linden is talking about where the Lab is with older viewers and has the quotes. So, how long do the older viewers have?

Old Viewers

‘Old’ is always a subjective or relative term. Apparently some residents are using some really old viewers… you know, the ones that come on the stone disk. I guess the Lab just doesn’t bother to block older third party viewers (TPV).

The problem with older viewers is in the way they talk to the Second Life servers. Over time how the servers talk changes and viewers have to keep up. After all when was the last time you saw a rotary dial phone?

Read more

#SL Direct Delivery

We have an approximate roll out date. This feature is expected to hit the grid this summer, first in Beta and within a couple of months the final version. It is down to weeks. So, what is Direct Delivery? Direct Delivery is a new way to deliver products to residents in SL. We will have … Read more

Dolphin Viewer Congratulations

Dolphin Viewer
Dolphin Viewer

Today the Dolphin 1 viewer made it to the top of the Linden Third Party Viewer list.

Third Party Viewer Directory

This list is ordered by crash rate. The viewer at the top of the list has the best (least) crash rate. Dolphin has not been in this list because crash reporting is optional and the Lindens lacked the data to rank it. Some minimum number of reports and logins have to be received to be ranked.

The ranking is:
Dolphin 1
SLV 1.23
Phoenix (probably 1050 – 1102 is too new)
Imprudence
SLV 2.6.3
Singularity
SLV Beta 2.6.8
Firestorm (pre-alpha)
Emergence
Ascent
Kirstens

Read more

#SL Server Updates Week 20

The last two weeks have been hectic for the Lindens. Several updates to the server software did not work as expected and the crash rates went up. It seems those have been corrected and things are returning to the normal cycle of upgrades.

This week’s (today’s) roll out was stopped and rolled back part way through the process. Something went wrong.

Server Room
CERN Server Room - By: torkildr @ Flickr

Snack Release Channel

One of the code updates that is proving difficult to get working is the Mono2 upgrade. You probably remember it is the Mono scripts rezzing in a region that caused regions to stall for 5 to 30 seconds. That fix has been in progress since Mono was released. A couple of times now Mono2 updates and improvements have been rolled out and back. The Snack Release Channel is a special channel made up of just a few simulators on the main grid where the Mono2 changes can be tested.

Read more

SL Viewer Progress Week 20

Lots of confusion and server problems this last week. New code being merged into the servers caused problems. For viewers the result has been problems and things not working. If you aren’t checking the SL Grid Status, you can’t tell if it is the viewer or the grid. Things are calming down and work is resuming on the viewer.

Region WindLight

More work has been done on getting controls built for setting a region’s Windlight values. The control dialogs are being arranged this week. Once that is done we’ll get a project viewer for testing. Of course, you can only test it if you have a region you manage (estate manager). If you are a region manager and willing to test the feature, get in touch with Oz Linden.

Oz expects the server side code to be on the grid by the time the Project Viewer Rolls out. So, I think we are talking a week or two…

Read more

Phoenix Viewer 1.5.2.1102 Released Review

The new Phoenix version has Enhanced Avatar Physics. This wasn’t planned. It is a bug fix, as odd as that sounds. The problem is that series 1 viewers started having problems rendering avatars wearing the new SL Viewer’s Physics Layers. So, Phoenix  Viewer users would see avatars wearing the new layer as a Ruth. Oddly the SLV2 people would see Phoenix users Ruthed too.

The details of the problem are in a JIRA report: VWR-25479

While one does need to upgrade their copy of Phoenix to the latest version, one is not required to use Avatar Physics.

I gather that the Phoenix Team had pretty much moved on to Firestorm. But, suddenly the realization the Phoenix viewer was not going to correctly render the avatars of those using the future Firestorm, Kirsten, Singularity, Dolphin, or any other viewer that used Physics Layers. This was worth a fix.

Read more