Update: subsequent to this article being published, the Lab issued their own blog post on the new project viewer.
Linden Lab released a project viewer for materials processing on Monday April 8th, to go with the server-side support already released.
Materials Processing video demonstration
This is very much an “alpha” status viewer, and as such comes with a series of caveats, including:
The viewer is still very fragile
It is still subject to change in various ways
It should not be used on content you care about – particularly if said content is MODIFY / NO COPY.
As Oz Linden wryly commented at the Open-source Dev meeting where the release was announced, “Regular attendees may notice some small changes in my raft…. I had to reconstruct it because I messed it up playing with this viewer (mostly my fault).” So, if you plan to download and play with the viewer, be warned!
For information on the materials project, please read my overview.
Bitbucket repository (it is recommended that this code is not merged into existing viewers at this time, as it is buggy, without the sunshine merge and liable to change)
It’s time to kick-off another week of fabulous story-telling in Voice, brought to Second Life by the staff of the Seanchai Library SL. This week features the usual tea-time date at Baker Street, and a visit to the quirky world of one Frank Key.
As always, all times SLT, and unless otherwise stated, events will be held on the Seanchai Library’s home on Imagination Island.
In March and April Seanchai are inviting library guests to join them in supporting their featured real world charity Project Children! Have questions? IM or notecard Caledonia Skytower.
Sunday April 14th, 13:30: The Adventure of the Naval Treaty
The 19th on his list of nineteen favourite Holmes stories, Conan Doyle uses a letter received by Dr. John Watson as the springboard of this adventure.
Sherlock Holmes, as depicted by Sidney Paget in the Strand Magazine for “The Adventure of the Naval Treaty”, 1893
The letter is from an old friend of Watson’s, one Percy Phelps, now working for the Foreign Office. It appears that Phelps has been recovering at the home in Woking he shares with his fiancée and her bother after a most distressing incident at his place of work, which took place over two months previously.
While working on an important naval treaty at his place of work, Phelps had requested a cup of coffee. Unusually, the office commissionaire’s wife had responded to his summons, rather than the commissionaire himself, but she had promised to deliver the coffee as requested. When the beverage failed to arrive, Phelps left his office by one of the two entrances to find out why. To his surprise, he found the commissionaire – who would normally be watching the main entrance to the office – fast asleep, the kettle boiling and the commissionaire’s wife nowhere to be found. At that moment, the bell from his office rang, indicating someone was inside – and much have used the side entrance. Fearing for the treaty’s safety, Phelps rushed back to his office to find the treaty had vanished.
Holmes and Watson set out to investigate, first at Phelps’ place of work, then by visiting him in Woking. All the evidence points towards espionage on the part of the commissionaire’s wife – but Holmes is far from convinced; particularly as the treaty has yet to be divulged by a foreign power in order to embarrass Her Britannic Majesty’s government.
Then someone armed with a knife attempts to break-in to the room in which Phelps is still convalescing at his Woking home …
Once again, Caledonia Skytower brings us another tale from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes.
Monday April 8th, 19:00: Classic Tales from Russia
Join Caledonia Skytower as she brings tales from the ródina to life.
Tuesday April 9th, 19:00: Selections from The Hooting Yard
Frank Key is an English self-published writer, blogger, broadcaster and voice behind Resonance FM’s long-running radio series Hooting Yard on the Air, a weekly show broadcast live and consisting almost entirely of Key narrating his own short stories and observations.
Frank Key’s prose reduces meaning to dust and then resurrects it in his own skewed image. But no creative genius is less godlike than Frank: his world is mournful, crazy, stupefyingly complex, hilarious and dark, peopled by characters at once engaging and perverse.
– Edmund Baxter
Join Crap Mariner as he presents a selection of Key’s writings.
Wednesday April 10th, 19:00: Spring Into Stories
Spring is sprung, the grass is ris. I wonders where the birdies is. They say the birds is on the wing. Ain’t that absurd? I always thought the wing was on the bird.
(Ogden Nash or ee cummings)
Gina Pralou-Maven and Faerie Maven-Pralou get together a rich bouquet of Spring Stories to delight your fancy. The trees are budding, the flowers are blooming, the bees are beginning to buzz and all the world seems bursting with new life and new possibilities! Presented live in voice.
Thursday April 11th, 19:00: The Darkside: Tales of Guy De Maupassant
Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant was a popular 19th Century French writer, considered one of the fathers of the modern short story and one of the form’s finest exponents. During his life he authored some 300 short stories, six novels, three travel books, and one volume of verse, prior to his premature death.
Here Shandon Loring brings some of Maupassant’s dark tales to life; stories of the supernatural which explore the furthest reaches of the macabre and at the same time parallel de Maupassant’s own descent into madness and death.
Sunday April 7th marks the last opportunity for people to enjoy Neva Crystall’s beautiful Neva River for a while – at the end of the day, the region will once again be closed to public access. This does not mean the region is going away – just that it is Neva’s home, and she understandably deserves some peace any quiet to enjoy it with her friends.
Since my last visit in March, the region has gained an enchanted forest, made by Alex Bader, down in the south-west corner, close to one of the beaches. Here paths wind between a variety of trees, a now-shaded bridge crosses the river, and people can wander and enjoy or simply sit on the beach and admire.
If you have not yet visited Neva River in its current form, I really urge that you do before the end of the day; once it is closed, it may not re-open until after Neva has once more remodelled it at some point in the future. so why bot make a little time and pay a visit; it’s unlikely you’ll be disappointed.
Update: If you missed the April 6th show, there will be a further performance on Saturday April 13th and 14:30 SLT, same SLurl as below.
Ziki Questi keeps her finger on the pulse of SL art and performances far more closely than I; so I was delighted to drop by her blog and read that Tyrehl Byk will be presenting a special performance of his outstanding Catharsis at 13:00 SLT at Eden Celebration on Saturday April 6th.
Tyrehl’s immersive work has featured is this blog over the years, his work never fails to engaging and enthrall, whether it is an installation piece or performance art – at which he is one of the great exponents.
I first witnessedCatharsis back in October 2011, when Tyrehl was sharing facilities at LEA 6 with Quadrapop Lane, and found myself dawn to watch it several times over. As I described it at the time, Catharsis is, “Emotional, cleansing and utterly superb” – and it is not to be missed.
This is a fully immersive show performed in a special theatre in which Tyrehl takes control of your camera and takes you on a journey of music, light, particles and images designed to instill the very definition of the word itself, and which lasts for around 20-25 minutes.
As an immersive, interactive piece, there are a few points worth noting in advance – notably that you attend as lightly scripted as possible; there is a lot going on between the server and people’s viewers, so the less personal load either has to deal with the better it is for everyone.
Also, and assuming Tyrehl’s two “assistants” may not be on-hand to guide you prior to the performance starting, make sure you sit in one of the chairs provided (they all provide the best view in the house), close any open floaters in your viewer, crank particles to maximum and ramp draw distance to around 250 metres. Then tap the ESC key a couple of times to free-up your camera ready for Tyrehl to take control when the show starts.
After that, it’s a question of sitting back and just taking in the show (although I also tend to turn the light off in my little home office as well!).
If you’ve never seen this show before, I honestly cannot recommend it enough. See you there!
The Server-side Baking / Appearance (SSB) project took a significant step forward when, as reported in my week 14 projects update, the viewer-side code reached the SL development viewer. Barring any significant issues, it should also be appearing in the SL beta viewer very shortly.
While it will still be a while before the new service makes its debut on the main grid, viewers supporting the new service are liable to start appearing over the coming weeks and communications from the Lab and TPVs on the subject are liable to increase. As such, it seemed appropriate to blog on the most recent discussions on viewer updates in general (LL and TPV) and on the upcoming server-side code deployment, using the TPV Developer meeting on Friday April 5th as a reference.
A Quick Recap
For those who are still perhaps unaware of what Server-side Baking / Appearance is, I have an overview of the project, with detailed information on what it is, how it will work and what will change. However in short.
What is it all about? Primarily solving the issue of “avatar bake fail” (when your skin or clothing layers appear blurry to you or those around you, or when you change outfits and you see yourself wearing the “new” outfit and those around you still see you in the “previous” outfit). This happens because the current process of “baking” your avatar’s appearance (the skin and clothes it is wearing) is driven by the viewer, and hiccups c in the viewer / server communications can result in the server failing to receive all the necessary information following a change of outfit & is unable to process it, leading to the problems mentioned above.
What does it do?
The new service moves much of the emphasis for the baking process from the viewer to a series of dedicated servers (sometimes referred to as the “ovens” required to do the baking), which should reduce the amount of viewer / server communication and ensure the “bake” process is more robust.
As some of the work is still carried out by the viewer, it also is being updated with new code
Why Should I Care? The new service is incompatible with the avatar baking mechanism currently in use. This means that once the server-side of the new baking service starts to be deployed on the main grid, viewers which have not been updated to use the new service will no longer function correctly; people using them will see those who are using updated viewers as permanently grey figures (other than attachments).
The SSB problem in part: I’m standing on an SSB-enabled region. On the left – as I appear to others who are using an SSB-enabled viewer; On the right, as I appear to others who are using a viewer which does not support SSB. The latter group would appear as unrezzed ghosts to me
Where Things stand and the Road Ahead
In order to try to make the switch-over between the “old” and “new” baking services as smooth as possible, and minimise the issue of “grey” avatars, the actual deployment of the new service will effectively be in two parts:
Because the viewer side of the SSB code will work with the existing baking service, this will be deployed first, in the hope that people will upgrade their viewers as new versions (both the official viewer and TPVs) become available
The server-side code will start to be deployed on the grid as the viewer code reaches the SL release viewer; however, this will be a gradual process, driven in part by the number of people either updating to or transitioning to SSB-capable viewers.
The Viewer – LL and TPVs
As noted above, the viewer code for SSB is now available in LL’s development viewer (as of release 3.5.0.273529), and will shortly be arriving in the SL beta viewer before moving to the release viewer (possibly in around two weeks, although this does depend on whether or not unforeseen issues arise when the code is in either the development or beta viewer).
Third-party viewer developers have also been working on integrating the SSB code into their viewers (and several already have pre-release / alpha / experimental versions of their viewers with the code already implemented, which they have been making available to their users for testing purposes). As such, TPVs are liable to be releasing updates to their viewers in the next few weeks which users will be strongly advised to take for the reasons noted above.
Quite when TPVs will start releasing SSB-capable versions of their viewers is going to be something of a balancing act. Given that there is a chance that unforeseen bugs / issues are found within the viewer code while it is in the SL beta viewer channel, some may opt to not make any release until after the code reaches the SL release viewer channel in order to avoid the risk have having to make two (or more) updates in quick succession as a result of bugs being found. Others may opt to make a release alongside the upcoming SL beta viewer release, and track how things progress, updating their viewer as required.
Communications
A vital part of the deployment process is that of communications. Therefore, in the coming weeks users can expect to see both LL and their preferred TPV developers communicating directly on SSB as viewers become available / server-side deployment commences in order to encourage as many as possible to update to a viewer supporting SSB ahead of the the server-side deployment.
On Tuesday April 2nd, the Second Life Server (SLS or Main) channel received the interest list update which has been running on the Magnum RC channel for weeks 12-13, together with fixes for the following issues:
BUG-1779 – Updates for objects that are out of view are delayed for a maximum of 5 seconds, at which point they will be sent
BUG-1795 – “Agent appears in incorrect position to other agents after being moved by a sim teleporter”
BUG-1814 – “No object updates from vehicles after some region crossings” – yes, the vehicle region crossing bug fix reaches the Main channel (and should be on BlueSteel and LeTigre following the RC deployments on Wednesday 3rd April).
Magnum received Monty Linden’s new server-side HTTP updates – release notes.
SL Viewer
There has been some activity within the various viewer channels, and the promise of more to come.
The Communications Hub User Interface (CHUI)
CHUI has now reached the viewer release channel with LL issuing viewer 3.5.0.273444. This release includes both the new CHUI UI for conversations, etc., as well as a lot of additional refactoring of code. A blog post has accompanied the launch, complete with Torley’s original video on the interface.
Server-side Baking Viewer Code
The viewer-side code for Server-side Baking / Appearance (SSB) reached the SL development viewer with the release of version 3.5.1.273529. With CHUI now in the release viewer, SSB should also be appearing in the SL beta viewer view shortly.
Materials Processing
“Materials is actually making great progress,” Oz Linden reported at the Open-source Dev meeting on Wednesday April 3rd. He went on to say the latest work on the code is showing promise and was due to go to LL’s QA department. If things go well with QA, it is possible that a project viewer could finally be emerging from the darkness. However, as Oz again warned this will only happen when, “We’re confident that 1) it won’t do any serious harm, and 2) it’s not so terrible that it’ll give the project a black eye.”
Nevertheless, things are moving.
Server-side Animation Override Capabilities
New server-side AO capabilities: LSL functions now being deployed to main grid
While the new Animation Override LSL capabilities have only just rolled-out BlueSteel and LeTigre, the server has actually supported overriding animations for over a year; it has just lacked the required LSL functions and some bug fixes. This means that if you use the new capabilities on either BlueSteel or LeTigre, any animations you set will continue to work across the entire grid until you log out.
In noting this at the Server Beta user group meeting on Thursday April 4th, Kelly Linden went on to say:
The new override functions do not allow setting by UUID. My original version (well over a year old) set by integer constants. However there was some desire internally to make the system more flexible, to allow for different states or modifying the state machine diagram, and for that string constants were used. Right now those string constants are converted to integer constants for use in the existing internal state machine.
In other words, the system allows animations to be specified by name (string constant), making the capability somewhat more user-friendly than might have been the case has UUIDs for animations been required. The the string constants are converted to integers for handling by the server’s state machine (the “engine” for animations on the server-side) means that it should be possible for the state machine to be updated in the future without potentially breaking content using the capabilities.
In answering a question on the lack of support for animations such as idling and typing, Kelly again explained that some animation types are not supported by the state engine. These are either handled within the viewer (idling) or elsewhere in server (typing), as such they fall outside the new AO capabilities. Swimming is also excluded, although Kelly couldn’t remember if that is handled viewer-side or elsewhere in the server.
HTTP Updates
Monty Linden’s ongoing HTTP work reached the Magnum RC channel. For those interested in monitoring SL’s port usage, Monty provided a quick summary in response to a question on texture fetches posted to the deployment thread:
The Texture Console speaks truth for texture fetches, either http or udp. If that is quiet while this transport is going on, it’s something else …. and here are some rules that will determine the traffic:
Port 12046 but textures are quiet => mesh fetches
Port 12043 (corrected, was 12042) => other HTTP services (“Capabilities”)
UDP port 12035, 13000-130XX => simulator communications
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 