Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation
Updates for the week ending Sunday, November 25th
This summary is generally published every Monday, and is a list of SL viewer / client releases (official and TPV) made during the previous week. When reading it, please note:
It is based on my Current Viewer Releases Page, a list of all Second Life viewers and clients that are in popular use (and of which I am aware), and which are recognised as adhering to the TPV Policy. This page includes comprehensive links to download pages, blog notes, release notes, etc., as well as links to any / all reviews of specific viewers / clients made within this blog.
By its nature, this summary presented here will always be in arrears, please refer to the Current Viewer Release Page for more up-to-date information.
Note that test viewers, preview / beta viewers / nightly builds are not recorded in these summaries.
Official LL Viewers
Current Release version 6.0.0.520636, dated October 18th, promoted November 14th. Formerly the Animesh RC viewer – No Change.
As always, please refer to the server deployment thread for the latest news and updates.
On Tuesday, November 20th, the SLS (Main) channel was updated with server release 18#18.11.09.521593, previously deployed to the RC channels and comprising internal fixes.
There are no planned deployments to the RC channels.
Due to the Fact the Lab is closed from Thursday onwards, it is unlikely there will be any deployments in week #48 (commencing Monday, November 26th).
SL Viewer
The Love Me Render RC viewer updated to version 6.0.1.521759 on November 20th, bringing it to parity with the Animesh release viewer.
Currently, the rest of the viewers in the official pipeline remain unchanged. Given this is US Thanksgiving week, the remaining viewers due an update for parity with the current release viewer may not be issued until week #48.
Current Release version 6.0.0.520636, dated October 18, promoted November 14. Formerly the Animesh RC viewer – NEW.
Estate Access Management (EAM) RC viewer, version 5.2.0.520057, September 28.
BugSplat RC viewer, version 5.1.9.519462, September 10. This viewer is functionally identical to the current release viewer, but uses BugSplat for crash reporting, rather than the Lab’s own Breakpad based crash reporting tools.
Project viewers:
Environmental Enhancement Project (EEP) viewer, version 6.0.0.521803, November 16.
Bakes on Mesh project viewer, version 5.1.10.520711, October 29.
Linux Spur viewer, version 5.0.9.329906, dated November 17, 2017 and promoted to release status 29 November – offered pending a Linux version of the Alex Ivy viewer code.
Obsolete platform viewer, version 3.7.28.300847, May 8, 2015 – provided for users on Windows XP and OS X versions below 10.7.
EEP
The next EEP function to see light of day should be llReplaceAgentEnvironment, that should allow an experience to override any environment setting currently being used by an avatar within that experience.
General News
Thanksgiving – Support Closed
Concierge Phone Support, Billing Phone Support, and Live Chat Support will be closed on Thursday and Friday, November 22nd & 23rd in observance of the US Thanksgiving holiday. Ticket submission will remain available, and support services will resume Saturday, November 24th, at 06:00 PST / SLT.
Winter Wonderland and 5 Weeks of Gifts
Winter Wonderland, the five-region activities area designed by Linden Lab and the LDPW, has reopened for the holiday season,, and the Lab is using it as the first swap on a gift hunt, which itself features the return of the Swaginator. Find out more via Grab Your Winter Swaginator & Collect Exclusive New Gifts!
Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation
Updates for the week ending Sunday, November 18th
This summary is generally published every Monday, and is a list of SL viewer / client releases (official and TPV) made during the previous week. When reading it, please note:
It is based on my Current Viewer Releases Page, a list of all Second Life viewers and clients that are in popular use (and of which I am aware), and which are recognised as adhering to the TPV Policy. This page includes comprehensive links to download pages, blog notes, release notes, etc., as well as links to any / all reviews of specific viewers / clients made within this blog.
By its nature, this summary presented here will always be in arrears, please refer to the Current Viewer Release Page for more up-to-date information.
Note that test viewers, preview / beta viewers / nightly builds are not recorded in these summaries.
Official LL Viewers
Current Release version 6.0.0.520636, dated October 18th, promoted November 14th. Formerly the Animesh RC viewer – NEW.
On Sunday, November 18th, 2018, Kokua issued version 6.0.0, which includes full Animesh support. As always with Kokua, the viewer is offered in two options:
With RLV support: 6.0.0.44120.
Without RLV support: 6.0.0.44121.
Both of these options are, again as always, available for Windows, Mac OSX and Linux.
As well as Animesh support, the update includes a series of third-party updates and additional bug fixes.
Animesh
As per my release overview, Animesh has been in development for about a year, and like Bento, has been a collaborative effort between Linden Lab and Second Life content creators. Essentially, it allows the avatar skeleton to be applied to any suitable rigged mesh object, and then used to animate the object, much as we see today with mesh avatars. This opens up a whole range of opportunities for content creators and animators to provide things like independently moveable pets / creatures, and animated scenery features.
Rigged mesh can be set to be used as Animesh through the Build / Editor floater
To help people get started with Animesh, there is already a range of available resources, including:
In particular, the user guide and test content offer the best way of getting started with Animesh for those who haven’t tried it thus far.
And, Animesh isn’t just for content creators: it has been designed such that just about any rigged mesh can be converted to Animesh directly from the Build / Edit floater. Do be aware, however that simply converting an object will not cause it to start animating – you’ll obviously need suitable animations and a script to run them.
Like any other object utilising animation, this is done by adding the animations and scripts via the Edit > Contents tab for your converted object. If you’re not a scripter / animator, you can still use the Animesh test content and have a play around with things.
Additional Updates
The 6.0.0 release of Kokua re-introduces the NACL viewer sound explorer (found under World > Sound Explorer). In addition, a number of options have been ported from Firestorm:
The animation explorer (under World > Animation Explorer).
The Money Tracker/Tip Tracker (View > Money Tracker).
Phoenix-style extended hovertips (View > Highlighting & Visibility > Hover Tips > Show More Information).
Avatar Complexity score in name tags (Edit > Preferences > General) along with the Only If Too Complex and Show Own Complexity options.
Kokua adds Firestorm’s approach to display avatar complexity information
Other updates comprise:
A bug fix so that Turning on Full Res Textures works.
If RLV is active, the Message Of The Day will appear in chat at login as a substitute to it being suppressed on the login progress screen.
Further ports of:
Reporting the latest grid status bulletin in chat at login (Edit > Preferences > Notifications).
The ‘do not hide worldmap after teleport’ option ( Edit > Preferences > Kokua > General).
I’ve not had time to take the viewer for a thorough test of the viewer, and the Kokua team note they’ve not had the opportunity to test Animesh. Therefore, If you see any strange behaviour please check it against the LL viewer and then either raise a Jira ticket on the LL viewer or against Kokua at: https://sourceforge.net/p/team-purple/kokua/tickets/.
The EEP sky over the Linden Hippotropolis region, designed by Whirly Fizzle. Credit: Whirly Fizzle
The following notes are taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, November 16th, 2018. A video of the meeting is embedded below, my thanks as always to North for recording and providing it.
Love Me Render RC viewer, version 5.1.10.521635, November 13th.
Estate Access Management (EAM) RC viewer, version 5.2.0.520057, September 28th.
BugSplat RC viewer, version 5.1.9.519462, September 10th. This viewer is functionally identical to the current release viewer, but uses BugSplat for crash reporting, rather than the Lab’s own Breakpad based crash reporting tools.
Project viewers:
Bakes on Mesh project viewer, version 5.1.10.520711, October 29th.
360 snapshot viewer, version 5.1.6.515934, June 6th.
Linux Spur viewer, version 5.0.9.329906, dated November 17th, 2017 and promoted to release status 29th November 2017 – offered pending a Linux version of the Alex Ivy viewer code.
Obsolete platform viewer, version 3.7.28.300847, May 8th, 2015 – provided for users on Windows XP and OS X versions below 10.7.
Bakes On Mesh
The back-end support is now grid-wide, meaning that Bakes on Mesh can be tested by anyone using the project viewer, which itself will be updated, both to bring it into parity with the new release viewer and with further BoM fixes.
BugSplat Update
[11:55-14:40] There are Four things to note with Bugsplat:
As noted above, it will see the Lab switch to using the BugSplat system for crash reporting, rather than their own Breakpad based crash reporting tools.
The Breakpad support code will remain in place with a build time option, so that TPVs wishing to continue to use it can do so.
The current parent process that handles viewer launch and also updates, will be removed. This means there will be some internal differences to how the viewer updater works, and one of the two executables for the viewer will vanish.
On windows, if the viewer is installed using an account that does not have admin privileges, the viewer installer will install as a local instance in the user’s local applications folder.
It will also resolve the viewer having 2 dock icons on MacOS.
In Brief
Group Notifications
[3:34-4:40] A resource has been assigned to look into the unreliable delivery of group notices. It appears the reason some notices are being received when people log-in to Second Life is because they are not actually being recorded in the database that manages the delivery of things like off-line notices. Investigations are therefore focused on backtracking through the various systems to work out where things are breaking down.
EEP On Legacy Viewers
[5:04-6:24] It’s been noted that when seen of non-EEP viewers, applied EEP skies appear odd – stars persistently overlay the sky and fail to render correctly, for example.
This is because the simulator end of EEP tries to take the environment and tries to approximate it for delivery to non-EEP viewers using the “old” environment settings system for delivery to those viewers – something that works at best imperfectly. The Lab has not determined how much effort will be put into making EEP fully backwards compatible with the older environment rendering system, as the issues should only exist through a transitional period as the viewer-side EEP code reaches all maintained viewers.
The same sky seen at the top of this article, but through a non-EEP viewer, demonstrating how an EEP environment is translated for rendering on a non-EEP viewer
Duplicate Calling Cards
[21:35-24:00] This was an issue some time ago that saw people’s calling cards duplicated – sometimes multiple times. The core issue was largely corrected, so people with duplicates could generally delete them and not see further duplications. However, duplicates could sometimes still be created as a result of inventory issues a logging-in, and sometimes clearing duplicates requires a request to support to run and inventory transform.
Thanksgiving USA
Week #47 (commencing Monday, November 19th, 2018) is Thanksgiving week in the United States. This means there will be limited updates and releases during the week, and the Lab will be closed on Thursday and Friday, except for essential support.
The following notes are taken from the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting, held on Thursday, November 15th, 2018 at 13:00 SLT. These meetings are chaired by Vir Linden, and agenda notes, meeting SLurl, etc, are usually available on the Content Creation User Group wiki page.
This means that the Animesh code will now be merged with all current RC and project viewers in the coming days / weeks. Firestorm support for Animesh will be coming soon, as is the other case for TPVs that have not already started making releases with Animesh support.
Resources
To help people get started with Animesh, there is already a range of available resources, including:
Concern has been raised about the 2 Animesh attachment option for Premium members impacting performance at major events given the lack of “public” testing of the ability (which had always stated as being one Animesh attachment per avatar across the board).
Interestingly, when the one Animesh attachment per avatar was first set, it was seen as too limiting, with some wanting as many as five per avatar.
The tri count cap remains unchanged at 100K per Animesh.
Environmental Enhancement Project (EEP)
Project Summary
A set of environmental enhancements allowing the environment (sky, sun, moon, clouds, water settings) to be set region or parcel level, with support for up to 7 days per cycle and sky environments set by altitude. It uses a new set of inventory assets (Sky, Water, Day), and which include the ability to use custom Sun, Moon and cloud textures. These can be stored in inventory and traded through the Marketplace / exchanged with others, and can additionally be used in experiences.
The project also includes a new set of render shaders to support atmospheric effects such as rainbows, crepuscular rays (“God rays”), better horizon haze and fogging (but will not include rain / snow).
There are a couple of blockers that have come up on the next viewer update, and which are currently being worked on, and should hopefully be cleared by the end of the week.
The first scripted functionality for EEP is now available: llGetEnvironment. This:
Returns a list containing the current environment values for the parcel and region as a list of attributes.
Takes a list of attributes to retrieve in parameters and returns them in the order requested.
Graham Linden is continuing to work on the rendering side, including crepuscular rays. He is however, also engaged in other work related to viewer rendering (such as project ARCTan).
As a part of Graham’s work, there is a further update to the EEP sky settings that will allow the atmospheric settings to be altered
Bakes On Mesh
Project Summary
Extending the current avatar baking service to allow wearable textures (skins, tattoos, clothing) to be applied directly to mesh bodies as well as system avatars. This involves viewer and server-side changes, including updating the baking service to support 1024×1024 textures, and may in time lead to a reduction in the complexity of mesh avatar bodies and heads.
This work does not include normal or specular map support, as these are not part of the existing Bake Service, nor are they recognised as system wearables. Adding materials support may be considered in the future.
The required Bake Service update (which in part allows the support of 1024×1024 textures) was deployed in week #46.
It was a glitch with this deployment that caused the Bake Service to overload, resulting in a lot of grey or cloud avatars mid-week.
Anchor Linden is now working on updates to the viewer, which is considered to be the only blocker to Bakes on Mesh going live.
Additional channels have been added to the Bake Service already which include the left arm and left leg. A request following this update was to allow upper and lower body skin textures to these channels – this will not be a part of the initial Bakes on Mesh release.
It has yet to be tested, but as Animesh objects do not have the necessary shape support for the Bake Service to use, it is thought BoM will not work (or at least not work as anticipated) with Animesh attachments on an avatar.
Normal and Specular Maps Support Experiment
As noted in the project summary above, Bakes on Mesh will not by default support normal and specular maps when released.
However, in week #45, Cathy Foil suggested it might be possible to allow Bakes on Mesh to indirectly support normal and specular maps using a combination of three additional bake channels within the Bake Service and a scripted “applier” option, similar to current skin and clothing applier mechanisms.
Since that time, she’s been carrying out tests using the existing three Aux Bake Service channels, added to the system as a part of Bakes on Mesh. While the approach appears to work with normal maps, there are a number of questions relating to alpha blending, deriving specularity (normal maps use the alpha channels for specular power in the SL materials setup), etc. These would require more in-depth testing through a suitable viewer, and as such, this isn’t seen as a viable approach at this point in time.
New Projects
No decisions have been made as to what user-visible projects will come next.
There is an infrastructure related project for inventory, but this shouldn’t have user-visible impact.
Project ARCTan (avatar and object complexity calculation improvements) has been on hold, awaiting resources, which are now becoming available.
There are a mix of options in the pot for Animesh and BoM follow-ups, but any follow-on work hasn’t been officially defined.
There are a number of other potential projects the Lab isn’t ready to announce as moving forward just yet.
Next Meeting
The next CCUG meeting will be on Thursday, November 29th, 2018.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 