Second Life News 2018 w22

Monday was a US holiday, Memorial Day. So, today is the Lab’s first workday this week. As of 10 AM SLT this morning there is no Deploy post. But, there is some HOT new news today. See the Other News section.

From the Server-Scripting meeting, Simon Linden: Let’s see … for server news, we had a rollback last week of the RC channels for a bug.  I think there was a post somewhere about that. We’re going to have updates out tomorrow that have that fixed … and possibly another release that has a few other items in it.  It’s all internal changes, as far as I know.

Concrete studied under orange light - 3

Concrete studied under orange light – 3

Viewers

Second Life Love Me Render Viewer version 5.1.5.515528 – This an update from the previous version 5.1.4.514788 released in week #16.

Second Life Maintenance Viewer version 5.1.5.515527 – Last updated in week #21.

Second Life Project 360 Snapshot Viewer version 5.1.3.513006 – Last updated in week #10.

Second Life Project Animesh Viewer version 5.1.4.515420 – Released week #16.

Second Life Project Bakes On Mesh Viewer version 5.1.3.513936 – Last updated in week #14.  Continue reading

Second Life Server Updates Week 20

Server updates are coming slower than in 2013 and 2014. The Lab seems to be settling into an update every other week. This week the RC channels saw and update roll out, but not last week. The main channel did not get a roll out this week, but did last week.

Always Evolving...

Always Evolving… by Sombra Monroe, on Flickr

My thinking is that after 3 or more years of intense weekly bug fixing, the Lab has to be running out of bugs. In the last 30 days only 229 issues have been filed. Some number of those are duplicates. Of those 200 have been handled. There is probably some way to separate out viewer, web, and server issues. But, I haven’t tried. A quick count across the first page of issues gives me the impression about 20% of the issues are sort of server related. So, that is about 40 issues for the last 30 days and presumably 30 something of those are fixed.  Continue reading

Second Life Bits 2015 Week 11

Servers

I’ve been missing User Group meetings. Yesterday I was finding a work-around for a business class HP Laserjet Multifunction Printer that kept forgetting where to send document scans. I decided HP has totally destroyed their driver & software download site. Frustrating. It used to be simple.

Daisa Daisa - Color Bust

Daisa Daisa – Color Bust by Nylon Pinkney, on Flickr

But, even if I had been at the meeting, there isn’t much news. As there was no package for the RC server channels last week there is no main channel roll out this week.  Continue reading

Second Life News 2015 Week 09 #2

The Third Party Developers meeting Friday February 27 was a short meeting, about 25 minutes. It was almost over in 16.

A Garden Full of Magic

A Garden Full of Magic by Carthalis Rossini, on Flickr

Viewers

It looks like the Project Tools Update Viewer version 3.7.25.298862 will update in Week 10. I would guess it will promote up to an RC release.

This version is a feature locked version, meaning the build tools won’t get any more new things until this viewer is out and people are testing it. Once it release and data is collected another round of improvements will be embarked on. Apparently there is a cue of things waiting for this phase to complete so they can be implemented into the process. Continue reading

Second Life News 2014-43

Group Chat

There are new group chat servers and new code running. Don’t expect a miracle. But, things should be better. The Lindens aren’t saying anything. They are waiting to see if anyone notices the change.

The Trace - Oct 2014

The Trace – Oct 2014

Yesterday the Lindens were updating the chat servers, which are a backend service. People report having gotten odd chat error messages. Hopefully that was during the server change out.

CDN

The Content Delivery Network (CDN) is going to be active on ALL the RC channels as of Wednesday (10/22). Figure that change will be complete by late Wednesday morning. This will put 30±% of the grid on CDN.

It appears it has run well on Blue Steel. So far, no anomalies or problems. If there are no problems in this larger test, I expect this to roll out to the main channel next week. With it we will probably see the HTTP Pipeline Viewer rolling out as the default viewer.  Continue reading

Second Life News 2014-31 #3

Viewers

There is a new viewer in the pipeline called the New Login Viewer. I don’t know much about it or when we will see it on the RC Viewer page. I think this viewer is still running A-B tests with new users. As existing users we probably will not see it until the A-B testing is done.

Tableau 2014 July - Hidden Location

Tableau 2014 July – Hidden Location

Word is the Zipper RC Viewer is having lots of problems on older hardware. Oz says they are not sure at this point if they will continue with this viewer. He recommended that third party developers not merge this code into their viewers. That is a pretty clear ‘stay away’ from this version warning.

There are new versions of the Oculus and Experience Tools viewers. Both are going well. There is no ETA on when improvements from the DK2 may be seen. But, there is work happening in that area. So, I am guessing the Lab has received their DK2 units.

Lots of data is coming back from Experience Tools. There are some problems, but Oz says nothing big. So, that is moving ahead. My guess is we will see more users invited to the Beta or even a public RC Viewer.

The Library Refresh RC Viewer will NOT support Mac 10.6. Once it makes it to being the main viewer, the Lab will stop supporting 10.6 and older Mac operating systems. Otherwise this is the viewer using the newly rebuilt libraries.

Windows 8.1 users have amazingly low crash rates. The Lab is encouraging users to update their operating system if they are  on older OS’s. Especially Win 8 users as the upgrade to 8.1 is free. Continue reading

#SL Chat Update

You probably remember that on the first of the month I posted Second Life Chat Load Test. That test was carried out last week. It was hoped we would see some of the numbers this week. That didn’t happen but we did get some of the story from Oskar Linden in the Beta Server Group meeting. I also posted #SL Server Follow Up Week 23, which has a section on chat. That article explains the inefficiencies in group chat.

The Test

Three regions were involved. One running the main grid server-trunk version (Oatmeal ) and the other two running the a test version with improved chat software. Also, the Utility Servers received new software weeks prior to the test. Nobody told me. But, Oskar just officially announced it here: UTIL hosts updated with Group Chat fixes.  The test was pretty well covered in blogs, forum, and group notices. The turnout was good and the Lindens collected lots of good stuff… data. Oskar Linden said, “It was a huge success from a QA POV.”

The main things being tested were backward compatibility – old grid software to new grid software, multi-region chats, and large in region group chats.

Continue reading