Day: March 12, 2017

SL project updates 2017 10/3: TPVD meeting

Posted on by Inara Pey

Mystical Fae Forest, Elvenshire; Inara Pey, February 2017, on FlickrMystical Fae Forest – blog post

The notes in this update are taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, March 10th, 2017. Audio extracts from the core points of the meeting are included.

SL Viewer Pipeline

There have been no further updates to any of the official viewers since part 1 of this week’s updates, leaving the pipelines as:

  • Current Release version: 5.0.2.324126, dated March 3rd, promoted March 6th – formerly a Maintenance RC viewer download page, release notes
  • Project viewers:
    • Project Alex Ivy (LXIV), 64-bit project viewer, version 5.1.0.501863 for Windows and Mac, released on January 10th
    • 360-degree snapshot viewer updated to version 4.1.3.321712 on November 23rd, 2016 – ability to take 360-degree panoramic images – hands-on review
  • 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.

A further Maintenance RC viewer is in the offing; expect that soon.

Love Me Render Viewer

The Love Me Render RC viewer containing rendering pipe improvements was withdrawn due to assorted issues, in part justifying the move of rendering fixes to their own viewer branch to prevent them bottlenecking viewer releases (which could have happened if they had been a part of the “regular” Maintenance RC). It will hopefully reappear once the issues prompting its withdrawal have been dealt with.

64-bit Viewer

The Project Alex Ivy 64-bit viewer has a new update currently with the Lab’s QA team. It has “quite a bit of work” in it, and should hopefully appear early in week #11 (week commencing Monday, March 13th). This update will include:

  • An open-source wrapper for CEF called Dullahan (link for those who are curious about the etymology of Lab project names) which will replace llCEF, making it easier to render web content through the viewer
  • The same versions of Dullahan / CEF and libVLC (audio handling) on both the Windows and Mac builds
  • The 64-bit Mac build now uses MacOS Sierra, and will be backwards compatible as far as OSx 10.9 (Xcode 8)
  • The 64-bit Windows build still uses Visual Studio 2013, and will support Windows 10, 8 and 7. Vista support is TBC.

360 Snapshot Viewer

Work is expected to resume on the 360 snapshot viewer, which will include further integration with various means of sharing snapshots – such as through the new Second Life Places pages.

New Viewer Management Framework

The next 64-bit update after the one referenced above will include the new viewer update process, which is specifically targeted at Windows users. This will run a process when updating the viewer to check the version of Windows being run (32-bit or 64-bit), and ensure the correct version of the viewer is downloaded and installed. In time, this process will eventually take over producing crash dump data as well.

Some concern was raised over forcing 64-bit users to run 64-bit versions of the viewer if they have found 32-bit versions to be easier (for whatever reason). However, the Lab believes this is unlikely to be the case.

Viewer Build Process

The viewer build process is changing with the arrival of the 64-bit viewer versions. One aspect of this is a new version of autobuild itself. The build process also uses the same compiler switches for building all of the various libraries which go into a viewer build, which are controlled by a new repository. This should smooth the build process and means that for Windows, the process can build either the 64-bit version of the viewer or the 32-bit version, providing the core 64-bit repository is used and depending on how an address size switch is set.

32-Bit Windows Support

There is still a large number of Second Life users running computers with 32-bit windows. As such, the Lab intends to support 32-bit windows for as long as the numbers warrant it / it is practical to do so. However, those on 32-bit versions of the operating system are liable to experience higher crash rates and poorer viewer performance, simply because of the memory limitations inherent in 32-bit Windows.

Voice Updates

The next Voice update should be appearing soon, which fixes the left / right orientation of Voice on the Mac. There are still some connection issues to be resolved, but hopefully the viewer will reach LL’s QA team in the next week or so, paving the way for its public appearance.

Abuse Report Categories

Currently, the report categories associate with Abuse Reports (ARs) are currently held in the viewer. This means that any changes made to the categories may not be reflected in all viewers, complicating the Governance Team’s work it triaging incoming reports.

While first mooted in August 2016, the Lab is now looking to make the Abuse Report categories a simulator-side capability downloaded to the viewer (most likely at log-in). This would both make it easier for the Lab to revise the abuse categories (were their ever a need to do so) and, over time, help eliminate the problem of incorrect abuse categories existing in older viewers.

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Sleuths, survival, suppers and shadows

Posted on by Inara Pey

It’s time to kick-off another week of storytelling in Voice by the staff and volunteers at the Seanchai Library. As always, all times SLT, and events are held at the Library’s Second Life home at Bradley University, unless otherwise indicated.

Sunday, March 12th

13:30: Tea Time Mysteries!

Seanchai Library launches a Tea Time series, featuring everything non-Holmesian from Christie to Hamett, classic sleuthing to hard-boiled detectives of the noir-ish hue.

This week: more Agatha Christie.

18:00: Magicland Storytime

How to Cheat a Dragon’s Curse continues with Caledonia Skytower at the Golden Horseshoe In Magicland.

Monday, March 13th 19:00: Enemy Mine

Gyro Muggins starts reading Barry B. Longyear’s novella which first appeared in a 1979 issue of Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, before becoming the basis of the of the 20th Century Fox film of the same name, starring Dennis Quaid  and Louis Gossett, Jr. This led to Longyear producing an expanded version of the story, written with David Gerrold.

In the midst of an interstellar war between humans and Dracs (a race of humanoid reptilians), Willis Davidge, a human fighter pilot, crashes on a hostile planet after a dogfight with a Drac – who is also forced down on the same planet.

The two initially continue their hostilities towards one another. But the planet proves so hostile that Davidge and the Drac, Jeriba Shigan (whom Davidge nicknames “Jerry”), are forced to join forces in order to ensure their survival. Then Davidge learns Jeriba is pregnant – Drac being entirely asexual …

Tuesday, March 14th 19:00: Save Room for Pie: Food songs and Chewy Ruminations

save-room-for-pieComic writer Roy Blount Jr has been a life-long eater of food. He’s not sure where his attraction to food began, but he knows that eating isn’t always easy – beyond the sitting doing, chewing and swallowing, that is: those most assuredly are the easy parts.

But, what effect is the global climate and the ups and downs of the economy – local and global – having on the food he eats? How much does his own sinusitis, with its deadening of his sense of taste and smell, impact on his actual enjoyment of eating and food?

In poems and songs, limericks and fake (or sometimes true) news stories, Blount talks about food in surprising and innovative ways. In these pages he ruminates on everything from bacon froth to grapefruit, Kobe beef to biscuits. He defends gizzards, mullet, okra, cane syrup, watermelon, and boiled peanuts; he seeks imagined observations from Frederick Douglass to Louis Armstrong to Blaze Starr. There’s even an imagined conversation between Eve and Adam in the Garden of Eden.

And we shouldn’t forget the shampooed possums and carjacking turkeys! With Kayden OConnell.

Wednesday, March 15th 19:00: Celtic Tales

Fairy Tales and Stories of Enchantment with Caledonia (also presented in Kitely).

Thursday, March 16th 19:00: From The Shadows

Celtic Darkness, Tales from the otherworld with Shandon Loring (also presented in Kitely, and InWorldz).

Please check with the Seanchai Library’s blog for updates and for additions or changes to the week’s schedule.

The featured charity for March April is Project Children, building peace in Ireland one child at a time.