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…
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.
I think many Second Life residents have a bit of the explorer in them. Curiosity is an attribute of many residents. So, news of interesting places is usually welcome. And then there are clothes and shoes, which are really important. Finding good sources of information on places, clothes, and shoes can be a problem. I’ve found a couple of blogs that seem to have never-ending-streams of interesting stuff.
Places
Second Life Places
Search remains broken. But the in-world Destinations Guide in Search gives us an ever changing list of places to visit. However, Honour’s Post Menopausal View is a blog providing a genuinely interesting flow of places to visit. Each article in the blog introduces a place with photos and a brief write up by Honour McMillan. On average she posts one new article per day.
Clothes & Shoes
Second Life Fashion
We have such a varied interest in fashion it is hard to recommend a fashion blog that is interesting to everyone. The Daily Look is a good recommendation for all. That includes the fashion conscious men too. Articles appearing in The Daily Look cover a wide range of tastes and styles.
The Daily Look blog is an aggregation of fashion blogs. You’ll likely find some of your favorite designers linking their blogs into The Daily Look. The number of new articles on a slow day is 50 or more. On most days there are over 100 new articles. Fortunately the articles are picture rich and text poor.
Warning… reading The Daily Look can be expensive. The blog of course is free. However, the clothes you find and want are not… well some are free. Reading the blog… well… looking at the pictures, has lead to by buying new outfits. Plus there is skin, makeup, hair, nails, stockings… ethnic styles… everything related to your look is there… and tempting. Now and then you’ll see articles on new furnishings for your home too.
If you are breaking into the fashion world, this is a good place to see the competition. Plus it is a good exhibition of fashion photography. One can easily see the strong and weak promotions.
All the items in the images are from recent posts in the two blogs.
I tend to leave previous downloads of the viewers on my computer. If the new install is bad, I can revert back to the previously downloaded version. Every so often I clean out the folder. I thought it would be interesting to see how fast things were happening in viewer development. I put the version build ID, which advances numerically, and download date in a spreadsheet. It may not be significant or particularly accurate, but it is interesting.
SL Viewer Development Rate
The information doesn’t directly say anything about features being added, bug fix rates, or much of anything other than some Linden felt another iteration of the viewer was ready to test.
Version 2.57b was released a couple of weeks ago. This version has over 100 significant bug fixes. You can get your copy at: Blender 2.57b Download
Blender 2.57b Released
Windows Installing?
One of the problems I’ve had with Blender is my need to run multiple versions. Until just recently building for Myst-Uru Plazma required 2.49b. Also, the Collada exporter in 2.49b is reputed to be better for Second Life. Then there are the JASS and Primstar tools made by Gaia Clary and Domino Marama which have dependencies on Blender and Python versions.
The Lindens have reasons to change how mesh is handled in Second Life. The changes are format changes to the mesh data set. The reason given is performance and compatibility issues with the existing SL software.
For those of us that are not up on C# or C++ and object oriented data that doesn’t tell us much. Suffice to say mesh is sort of changing from a round peg to a square peg. That means all the holes for mesh have to change too. The place in the asset database where mesh information is stored must change. How the physics engine deals with mesh has to change. The inventory handlers, the build/edit dialog, render pipeline, and other parts of the viewer handling mesh must change.
This week the movers and shakers in OpenSim have been looking at how this change will affect OpenSim. Justincc has a post up on what is known now. His post is probably the most authoritative words on the subject for OpenSim. See: Warning: Don’t rely on meshes uploaded to OpenSim (just yet)
