Day: March 2, 2013

Server Deployments – week 9

Server Life Server (Main) Channel

As noted in part 1 of this report, the Second Life Server (SLS / Main channel) received the server maintenance project which was on all three RC channels in week 8, comprising miscellaneous bug fixes, and the improved region restart notification. Deployed on Tuesday 26th February, the roll-out was followed by a number of issues being reported via the deployment forum thread.

Issues have included:

• Parcels / regions vanishing from search for a period of time following the restart (an issue WolfBaginski Bearsfoot gave some thought to in commenting on part 1 of this report)
• Further region crossing issues, with loss of control followed by “broken” camera positioning after recovery. This issue has been reported at some of the Simulator and Server Beta meetings previously, and Eric Gregan has produced a video demonstrating the problem as it occurs on some aircraft, although he’s also come up with a means of avoiding the issue which may or may not work for people.

• Problems with Dwarfins attachments.

Release Candidate Channels

On Wednesday February 27th, all three Release Candidate channels received a new server maintenance package which includes a fix for a crash mode (see the release notes (BlueSteel)). No significant issues have been reported for this deployment.

SL Viewer

The Communications Hub User Interface finally made its debut in both the SL development and SL beta servers, arriving as release 3.5.1.270826 for the development viewer on Tuesday 26th February, and 3.5.0.270825 for the beta viewer on Wednesday 27th. I’ve provided a brief introduction to CHUI, and there is also a video from Torley Linden.

CHUI is liable to remain in beta for a “Good long run”, to quote Oz Linden. Hopefully, this may mean that materials processing will be the next significant viewer update to arrive as a project viewer.

Interest List

The recent updates to Andrew Linden’s interest list work are apparently won’t reach a RC channel in week 10, but should see deployment in week 11 (week commencing Monday 11th March). This work includes fixing issues with avatar appearance teleporters which use llSetRegionPos(), as well as correcting problems where objects which change appearance behind the camera ‘snapping’ into place when you rotate the camera back.

Server-side Baking

On Friday March 1st, Linden Lab unexpectedly released an updated version of the SSB project viewer (release 3.4.5.271118), which includes their approach to overcoming the problems of the Z-offset capability common to many TPVs being broken as result of the SSB code. The new approach, which I was able to outline when it “launched”, introduces an additional shape slider into the Edit Shape floater; as such, the ease-of-use of the approach, particularly for those who may swap between different avatar shapes (e.g. “normal” and petite) is very questionable.

Continue reading “SL project update: week 9 (2): servers, HTTP, SSB” →