SL projects updates 2014: week 4 (1): Server releases, viewer, snapshot uploads

Server Deployments, week 4

As always, please refer to the server deployment thread in the SL forums for the latest updates and news.

Main Channel: Tuesday January 21st, 2014

The Main channel received the server maintenance project which had been on the RC channels for the last couple of weeks. This comprises:

• The forced delay in llLoadURL has been reduced to 0.1 seconds
• New LSL functions for uniformly scaling linksets (integer llScaleByFactor(float scaling_factor), float llGetMinScaleFactor(),float llGetMaxScaleFactor() )

Details on the scaling functions can be found by following the links, or by checking my week 2 projects update. All of these functions, including llLoadURL can be used in any current viewer.

There were two further updates included in the package, both of which require viewer-side updates which have yet to be released by the Lab. These are:

• Preliminary support for custom default permissions on newly created objects – currently awaiting viewer-side support via STORM-68
• Preliminary support for the viewer fetching the LSL syntax rules from the simulator, for up-to-date syntax highlighting in the script editor – currently awaiting viewer-side support via STORM-1831.

Release Candidate Channels, Wednesday January 22nd, 2014

All three RC channels should receive the same server maintenance project, which contains a single fix for a crash mode.

SL Viewer

As per my last report, the “Project Interesting” viewer appears to be running at a substantially reduced crash rate, and has seen the majority of issues resolved within it. If this continues through the current week, given the amount of time the viewer has been in the release channel as an RC, it could be a good candidate for promotion to the de facto release viewer in week 5 (week commencing Monday January 27th), assuming the Lab keeps to its plans of promoting a release candidate  every two weeks.

the Fitted Mesh viewer is also a potential candidate for promotion. However, as there are currently two significant issues with this RC at present,  any promotion of this candidate may well be delayed.

The two issues concerned are:

• Certain non-rigged mesh invisible with ALM disabled -see FITMESH-20 – which has been confirmed by Marissa Linden and
• worn mesh which is not rigged to the collision bones is seen to stretch away towards the 0,0,0 point of the region the avatar is standing in when using the Fitted Mesh viewer on systems with AMD graphics and with ALM turned off – see FITMESH-6 –  which Oz Linden has confirmed the Lab is investigating.

Other News

Snapshot Uploads to SL Feeds

As many are aware, the ability to upload snapshots to the profile feeds was broken for many before the Christmas / New Year holidays. While the functionality was restored for some who could not upload snaps was restored, many have remained unable to use the facility. However, speaking at the  simulator User Group meeting on Tuesday January 21st, Simon Linden indicated that the Lab believe the issue has now been completely resolved for all users. I’ve not had time to test the upload myself due to RL issues, but those who have continued to experience problems my wish to try things out once more. If problems are still evident, please raise a JIRA.