Join us once again at Caitinara Bar for 2 hours of music on Wednesday, February 24th, as Anthony Wesburn spins some of the best tunes available in Second Life from 16:00 through 18:00 SLT.
Tonight, the set will feature The British Invasion: Bands of the ’60s. It started with Beatlemania and went on to involve singers like Dusty Springfield, Petula Clark, Donovan and Tom Jones, and groups and bands as diverse as The Dave Clark Five, the Hollies, the Bachelors, the Zombies, Manfred Mann, Freddie and the Dreamers, the Who and, of course, the Rolling Stones.
So join Anthony, Boudicca, Caitlyn and myself for another 2 hours of great music – and remember, if you come by boat, moorings are available right next to the bar on the west side of the park.
On Tuesday, February 16th, the Alchemy team announced the release of Alchemy 4.0.0.37374 Beta.
The release – as indicated by the version number shifting to 4, incorporates code for the Chromium Embedded Framework (CEF) for media handling. Already in the official release viewer on some TPVs, CEF replaces the ageing QTWebkit framework, and supports all modern web technologies including HTML5, CSS3, and WebGL.
This release also implements the Lab’s auto update feature, which means that when a new version of Alchemy is release, users well get a notification prompting them to allow the updater to run and install the latest update when they log into an older version.
Perhaps a more visible change to the viewer is the ability to initiate nearby chat through a local chat bar, rather than either through the Conversations floater or having the detached Nearby Chat bar always open either full-sized or minimised.
As with similar local chat bar options found in other TPVs, this will only work if you set the viewer so that pressing letter keys starts local chat (Preferences > General). You also need to ensure that Preferences > Chat > Open Conversations When Initiating Nearby Chat is unchecked. Once done, starting to type within the viewer window will open a compact chat bar, which will close automatically upon pressing Enter.
The new local chat bar offers a convenient means of typing local chat, complete with gear icon options, and can be enabled by ensuring pressing the letter keys on your keyboard initiates typing (rather than movement), and that the option to Open Conversations when Initiating Nearby Chat (shown above) is unchecked (leaving it checked will open the Conversations floater in full or the Nearby Chat floater, is detached from it)
Removed from this version of Alchemy is media pop-ups, which aren’t supported by CEF. Other updates are reported to be directed at OpenSim use, together with a few “hidden gems” and also under-the-hood updates intended to improve performance. There are also a number of fixes implemented, as indicated in the release notes.
There was no scheduled Main (SLS) deployment on Tuesday, February 23rd. On Wednesday, February 24th, all three RC channel should all receive the same new server maintenance package, comprising a server crash fix and “minor internal improvements.”
It is likely the server deployments will remain at a slower pace over the next few weeks as the Lab focuses on internal infrastructure changes.
SL Viewer
On Monday, February 22nd the HTTP / Vivox RC viewer updated to version 4.0.2.311302. The see the additions of the following fixes:
MAINT-5295 Extra setopt in PUT case for llcore::http forces PUT to POST
MAINT-5625 [Project Azumarill] Selected Objects Show Land Impact of 0
MAINT-5628 [Project Azumarill] When posting to Flickr, Upload button does not grey out when upload is in progress, clicking Upload more than once results in all images failing to post
MAINT-5629 Viewer Makes Request for SRV Records on Login
MAINT-5676 Azumarill repeatedly requests weight of selected objects in edit mode
MAINT-5978 Convert the Vivox state machine over to a coroutine implementation
MAINT-6071 Reference to a UUID used after iterator is lost.
MAINT-6086 Crash when removing non added Vivox session.
The remaining RC and project viewers remain unchanged from week #7:
Quick Graphics RC viewer, version 4.0.2.311103 dated February 17th Avatar Complexity options and the new graphics preset capabilities
Maintenance RC viewer, 4.0.2.310545 dated February 2nd – 38 updates. fixes and tweaks
Project Bento (avatar skeleton extensions), version 5.0.0.310099 dated 20th
Oculus Rift project viewer, version 3.7.18.295296 dated October 13th, 2015
Obsolete platform viewer version 3.7.28.300847, dated May 8, 2015 – provided for users on Windows XP and OS X versions below 10.7.
This all leaves the release viewer unchanged: version 4.0.1.310054, dated January 15th.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 