Day: May 11, 2013

Restrained Love Viewer updated

Posted on by Inara Pey

Update: May 13th: The Linux version of RLV was updated by Kitttin Ninetails to version 2.8.4.1 on Sunday May 12th, and is available here.

On Friday May 10th, 2013, Marine Kelley released the latest version of her standalone version of the Restrained Love Viewer (RLV) for Windows – RLV 2.8.4.1. The release is the first update to RLV in 2013, and is based on LL’s 3.5.2 viewer code (3.5.2.264760, dated April 21st, 2013). As such, it brings RLV pretty much up-to-date with the majority of LL’s viewer-side updates and fixes.

Note that this article only applies to RLV for Windows, as supplied by Marine Kelley. The Linux and Mac versions supplied by Kittin Ninetails remain at version 2.8.3.5.

Communications Hub User Interface

With this release, RLV now uses the Communications Hub User Interface (CHUI) and the standard means of managing chat and IMs, together with the majority of fixes and updates made to CHUI through recent development and beta updates.

RLV 2.8.4.1 includes CHUI for managing communications
RLV 2.8.4.1 includes CHUI for managing communications

Server-side Baking / Appearance

Despite no mention being made of it in the release notes, version 2.8.4.1 of RLV appears to also include viewer-side support for the upcoming deployment of Server-side Baking to the main grid.

To confirm this, as I was somewhat surprised that the release notes failed to make mention of any support, I dropped into the SSB/A test regions on Aditi to see how my avatar would render to others, and they would render to me when using the viewer. With the aid of my Crash Test Alt, all appeared to be fine.

Server-side baking: my avatar and Crash Test Alt as seen through RLV 2.8.4.1 (l) and through another SSB-capable viewer (r). Both render correctly; no greying or ghosting
Server-side baking: my avatar and Crash Test Alt as seen through RLV 2.8.4.1 (l) and through another SSB-capable viewer (r). Both render correctly; no greying or ghosting

I also didn’t encounter any issues in changing / re-ordering outfits which others have reported as encountering recently (although I admittedly have  – perhaps fortunately – yet to encounter any issues of this type while using any SSB/A-enabled viewer).

Other Updates and Fixes

Marine provides a list of additional updates and fixes:

Changes:

  • Camera focus is no longer lost when clicking on an in-world object. To change camera focus, right-click on your avatar, press Escape or focus on something else
  • Viewer allows moving an item or a folder from a locked folder to another locked folder (prevent only from locked to unlocked and from unlocked to locked)
  • Viewer does not expect the user to press Enter before chatting while in Mouselook, since they don’t have to when in 3rd person view
  • Viewer does not automatically rename folders or items in the inventory unless “RestrainedLoveAutomaticRenameItems” is set to TRUE (it is FALSE by default). This is no longer necessary since the viewer no longer needs to figure out whether or not it will kick a locked object because it now Adds by default now.

Fixed:

  • It is no longer possible to drag and drop an item from an object in-world directly into  inventory, regardless of RLV attach restrictions
  • It is no longer possible to wear rezzed items by right-clicking on them in-world and selecting “attach to”, even when @unsharedwear was active
  • It is now possible to hide the UI when unable to rez
  • It is no longer possible to create new pieces of clothing regardless of RLV outfit restrictions
  • The Control key wouldn’t work in Mouselook. Fixing this removes the ability to control the speed of the mouse view while holding Control, but Shift already does something similar.

Related Links

Out of the glare of the Sun

Posted on by Inara Pey

CuriosityIt’s been over a month since I last reported on the Mars Science Laboratory mission on Mars. It’s not that I’d forgotten about it or lost interest in writing MSL reports; the lull has been because during the month of April, we’ve been in a period of Solar conjunction, which places Earth and Mars on opposite sides of the Sun relative to one another.

During these periods, communications between Earth and vehicles operating on and around Mars are severely disrupted / curtailed due to interference from the Sun, so NASA effectively places all of their Mars missions on “autopilot” until full communications can be re-established with them from Earth. This happened early in May, and since then, mission scientists and engineers have been running the Curiosity rover through a series of checks to confirm it is still OK after its enforced silence and also completing a complete software update.

Just prior to the moratorium on Earth / Mars communications coming into effect, Curiosity had been engaged in analysing samples obtained from drilling into a rock dubbed “John Klein” (see: Getting the scoop on drilling, and: It probably doesn’t taste like chicken …). The analysis was performed by the rover’s on-board Chemistry and Minerology (CheMin) and Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instruments, and produced evidence of an ancient wet environment that provided favorable conditions for microbial life, including both the elemental ingredients for life and a chemical energy gradient such as some terrestrial microbes exploit as an energy source.

Sol 229 (March 29th, 2013) The first holes drill into rock by NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity, with drill tailings around the holes plus piles of powdered rock collected from the deeper hole and later discarded after other portions of the sample had been delivered to analytical instruments inside the rover. The two holes are each 1.6 cm (0.6 in) in diameter. The shallower hole was cut on Sol 180 (Feb. 6, 2013) as a preparatory test. The deeper hole was bored on Sol 182 (Feb 8, 2013) and cuttings from this hole gathered by the drill were delivered to Curiosity’s on-board Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) and Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instruments.

A Reduced, but Still Dynamic Atmosphere

Mars has a very thin atmosphere, so thin that the highest atmospheric density on Mars is equal to the density of the atmosphere found 35 km (22 miles) above the Earth‘s surface. However, evidence for free-flowing water having once existed on Mars suggests that the atmosphere was once very much denser. The mystery has been what happened to that atmosphere? Several theories have been put forward over the years to explain the apparent loss in atmospheric density, one of them being that over the millennia, much of Mars’ atmosphere “bled off” into space due to a combination of factors. As a result of data returned from Curiosity in March, scientists found the strongest evidence to date for this being the case.

Continue reading “Out of the glare of the Sun” →