The majority of the notes in this update are taken from the abbreviated TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, November 4th. The video of that meeting is embedded at the end of this update. My thanks as always to North for recording and providing it.
Server Deployments
As always, please refer to the deployment thread for the latest news and updates.
- On Tuesday, November 1st, the Main (SLS) channel received the same server maintenance package as deployed to the three RC channels in week #43. This comprises: a fix for the bug introduced in week #42 – see BUG-40735 “Paying an object with [slgaming] in the object name (most skill game machines) fails on the RC 16.10.14.320687”; two fixes for issues with the new llSit function for Experiences, and additional internal updates.
- There was no RC channel deployment on Wednesday, November 2nd. However all three channels were restarted.
Both the Main channel deployment and the RC channel restarts saw land capacity / prim allowances for Mainland regions increase.A full Mainland region now has a land capacity / prim allowance of 22,500 as standard. Note that private estate regions will follow in due course.
For the specifics of these changes, please refer to Lab reveals LI / prim allowance changes in Second Life – in full.
SL Viewer
The Project Bento RC viewer updated to version 5.0.0.321250 on Wednesday, November 2nd. offering the following fixes (the reports on the JIRA are non-public, so links aren’t included here to save confusion):
- SL-395 – joint scale locks failing to upload in some cases.
- MAINT-6853 – viewer crash when checking preview skin weights in mesh upload.
- SL-504 – intermittent crash when adding attachment to an avatar (probably during shutdown).
This viewer is expected to go through at least one more iteration to address further bugs.
The Lab hopes that either the Bento RC or the current Maintenance RC (version 4.1.2.321183 at the time of writing) will be promoted to the de facto release viewer prior to US Thanksgiving, with the other being promoted shortly thereafter.
A further Maintenance RC is in development, and is likely to appear once the current RC has been promoted.
64-bit Viewer Progress
The Lab has completed building all of the required libraries for the 64-bit viewer, and are now actually building the first 64-bit project viewers, which it is hoped will see the light of day before the end of the year.
The library updates also mean that the Lab will be able to do large-scale updates to the viewer build environment with significantly greater ease in the future. One of the first of these updates liable to come in the first quarter of 2017, to switch to Xcode 8 (Mac) and Visual Studio 2015 (Windows).
Bento
There was no Bento User Group meeting on November 4th, so there is nothing major to report on that front – except those who have been fascinated and charmed by Medhue Simoni’s magnificent Bento elephant can now obtain it via the Marketplace. There’s also an extensive video on it – and it even flies! How cute is that?
Note, obviously, that you will need a Bento capable viewer to use it, and others will require Bento capable viewers to render it correctly.
The next Bento User Group meeting will be on Thursday, November 10th at 13:00 SLT at the the Hippotropolis Campfire Circle.
Interesting Nugget
During the meeting Sansar is discussed, and Oz Linden indicates that the log-in data the Lab receives suggests than a large number of Second Life users are using systems which are unlikely to be able to run Sansar particularly well, further boosting the Lab’s confidence that Second Life has a longer-term future.
This shouldn’t be taken to mean that Sansar will necessarily have a massively high set of system requirements – although obviously, anyone wishing to use the current generation of HMDs will need to have a system meeting the specifications required by such hardware.
Rather, it would again suggest than many Second Life users continue to access Second Life using systems which might be described as past their prime when compared to even the “modest” hardware standards set by modern home computers.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 