There was no update to the Main (SLS) channel on Tuesday, March 28th, as there had been no RC deployment in week #12. As there had been a deployment to this channel in week #12, it was not restarted.
On Wednesday, March 29th, the three RC channels should receive a new server maintenance package, primarily comprising a small update to asset metrics stats logging.
SL Viewer
The current viewers / candidates remain as:
Current Release version: 5.0.3.324435, dated March 13th – snapshots to e-mail hotfix
Release channel cohorts:
Maintenance RC viewer version 5.0.4.324882 released on March 23rd – avatar rendering and other updates – overview
Voice RC viewer version 5.0.4.324770 released on March 20th – several improvements to voice
Project viewers:
Project Alex Ivy (LXIV), 64-bit project viewer updated to version 5.1.0.503537 on March 17th
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 8th, 2015 – provided for users on Windows XP and OS X versions below 10.7.
Other Items
Script Editor Minor Bug
A minor, but irritating bug has been noted when working with the script editor. It is described as:
Open a script, select a reserved word, go to “help” > “keyword help”, minimize the wiki, minimise the script. Observe, you can’t open them individually.
The issue repros in both the official viewer and Firestorm, so is likely to be common to most viewers. A JIRA on the issue is expected.
This summary is 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.
Official LL Viewers
Current Release version: 5.0.3.324435, hotfix for snapshots to e-mail issue download page, release notes
The notes in this update are taken from the following sources:
Content Creation User Group meeting, held on Thursday March 23rd, 2017 at 1:00pm SLT
The TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, March 24th, 2017 at 12:00 noon SLT.
A video of the TPV Developer meeting is included, and timestamps to it are included in the text, where relevant. Notes from the Content Creation User Group appear towards the end of this update.
SL Viewer Pipeline
Maintenance RC Re-issue
On Thursday, March 23rd, the Lab released a new Maintenance RC viewer – version 5.0.5.324882 – to replace the faulty March 16th release. As such, it includes the same set of updates, and I’ve written an overview of the core changes.
Voice RC
[0:19] The Voice RC viewer, version 5.0.4.324770, has a problem with the SSL Certificate Authorities update included with it. This triggers some code deep within the viewer which should not be triggered. This tends to affect TPVs for than the official viewer (the issue was actually noted by Firestorm). It’s be at least a couple of weeks before this matter is resolved, and until it is, the Voice RC viewer will not be progressing, and the Lab is unlikely to expand the cohort of users running it. Alongside of this, but separate to is, is an issue which is giving the viewer a higher than expected crash rate. which is also being looked into. Additionally, among the updates to this viewer and not included in the release notes, is support for the Opus Interactive Audio Codec, although server-side support is still required. This should eventually see further Voice quality improvements.
64-bit Project Alex Ivy
[3:10] As noted in part 1 of this week’s update, the 64-bit viewer was updated on Friday, March 17th to version 5.1.0.503537. This viewer is showing a significantly lower crash rate, although it does have some other issues. It should have a further update in the next two weeks.
360 Snapshot Viewer
[4:06] It appears unlikely that the 360 snapshot viewer will be update in the next week due to the ongoing work with the 64-bit viewer.
Asset Fetching Via HTTP
Vir Linden has been focused on the viewer side of this work, which will see the remaining inventory asset classes – landmarks, gestures, animations, shapes, sounds and wearables (system layer clothing) – switch from UDP delivery through the simulator to HTTP delivery via the via the Content Delivery Network(s) the Lab uses.
[4:42] The viewer for this work may be appearing in week #13 (week commencing Monday, March 27th). However, this is dependent on some back-end web configuration work being completed so that the required simulator changes can be correctly enabled on the Main grid.
Once these remaining assets have been shifted to delivery to the viewer via HTTP / CDN, the remaining UDP messaging for asset delivery will be turned off on the simulator end. This may be around July / August time (to be confirmed once the HTTP updates have reached release status), and will mean any older viewers still using UDP messaging for asset data fetching will be unable to do so.
New JIRA – Soon
[14:35] There is a new JIRA update coming, in line with recent updates made by Atlassian. It is currently on internal testing at the Lab, but there is no time frame as to when it will make a public appearance.
FMod Studio
[16:00] Around the start of the 64-bit viewer project there was a potential for an open-source contributed project for using Fmod Studio with viewer audio. This is likely to be re-examined, and if found suitable it may be up for adoption. However, given it will require a licence, which is likely to take a while to be processed by the Lab, it will not prevent the 64-bit viewer progressing forward toward release. Instead, the code module will be integrated as and when the licence has been obtained.
Content Creation Meeting Round-up
Animation Transitions: as noted in my March 9th CCUG meeting notes, people have been noting issues with animation playback, some of which appear to be related to llSetAnimationOverride, one of the server-side functions for controlling your animation state (see BUG-7488 as an example).
Vir has been looking at this, but no definitive cause has been found. One suggestion is that it might be related to Walk Adjust cutting in, which can occur when transitioning from standing to almost any other state when using llSetAnimationOverride. Although is that some transitional animation, such as a pre-jump or landing might be accidentally set to loop, causing an apparently freeze / lock. Vir will continue to poke at this.
Avatar Rendering Calculations: work continues on refining the rendering cost calculations for avatars. However, this work is still not ready for shipping. Theses adjustments are twofold: to account for more “recent” changes which have been made since the system was last properly evaluated, and to address known issues in how the calculations are made.
Applying Baked Textures to Mesh Avatars: this is still on the short list, but is not an adopted or active project within the Lab as yet.
Rigging Animated Attachments to the Skeleton: there are issues trying to rig animated attachment to the avatar skeleton (e.g. a set of nunchaku or a gun that twirls before being holstered). While they may work OK using a specific avatar shape, problems can occur should the shape be changed (e.g. the nachaku / gun no longer accurately positions relative to the hand). Medhue Simoni suggests items like this might be rigged and animated to the relevant attachment point instead.
NPCs / Animated Objects: this is still not a formal project at the Lab, but there has been some discussion on the potential feature set, were it to become a project.
Scripted method to position bones: see BUG11407. VIr’s concern with this approach would be the level of complexity / risk of conflicts with animations / need to expand the scripting capabilities on the back-end in order to make full scripted positions of bones useful. However, within the meeting, it was seen as being more useful in being able to fine tune poses for things like photography (e.g. to prevent hands vanishing into breasts or thighs), and thus supplant something like Anypose. As a result, Vir’s agreed to look at tools like Anypose and have a fresh look at the JIRA.
Other Items
Bento Ridable Horse
Strawberry Singh has all the information on a new Bento Rideable horse, which has a release had of Saturday, March 25th. As the name implies, this is a horse which makes full used of the Bento skeleton extensions (so when worn, it is an extension of your avatar). Berry has produced a tidy video on the horse, and I’ll finish this update by embedding it – read Berry’s blog post for the specifics.
On Thursday, March 23rd, 2017, Linden Lab issued a new Maintenance release candidate viewer – 5.0.4.324882 – featuring a number of bug fixes and improvements.The viewer was actually a replacement for an earlier Maintenance RC, version 5.0.4.324646, which was withdrawn after it was noted it lacked some of the expected improved functionality.
In particular, this RC viewer brings some additional options for managing Avatar Complexity (aka Jelly Dolls), gives us a new option for checking the Grid Status page and offers a number of other nice nips-and-tucks to the viewer, as well as resolving a series of bugs.
As is my usual approach the following is not intended as an in-depth review of the RC, but is intended to highlight the core changes.
Avatar Complexity Rendering Updates
The re-named avatar complexity rendering options in their new sub-menu
There are several improvements to avatar complexity, which are outlined below.
The Options for how you render an avatar have been updated to Default (i.e. in accordance with your avatar complexity threshold setting); Always (i.e. always render the selected avatar) or Never (i.e. permanently render them as a grey imposter). These options have also been moved to a sub-menu on the right-click Avatar context menu (shown on the right).
Also, and following Firestorm’s lead, whatever setting you select for an avatar will now persist across all log-ins for the viewer, until either reset or your settings are cleared by a clean install or similar.
Finally, the viewer gets two new options for Avatar Complexity, located on the Preferences > Graphics tab. The first is a check box, Always Render Friends, which is pretty much self-explanatory: when checked your friends will always fully render, regardless of your Avatar Complexity threshold.
Graphics > Preferences: the new Avatar Complexity options
The second is an Exceptions button, which adds a further level of complexity control for how other avatars – including your Friends – are rendered in your view.
Using Avatar Rendering Exceptions
Clicking the Exceptions button opens a new floater, Avatar Render Settings, shown below left. This comprises a people filter for the list of names recorded on the floater (which is obviously blank when first opened), together with a + (add) button.
The Avatar Complexity Exceptions floaters
Clicking + will display a pop-up with two options:
Always Render A Resident
Never Render a Resident
Clicking on either of these will open the Choose Resident floater, shown above right. You can then use the Search, or Friends or Near Me tabs to select an avatar or avatars, adding them to the list on the floater. Clicking OK will add them to the Avatar Render Settings panel. The avatars will also be rendered in accordance with whichever option you used to launch the selection process (Always render or Never render).
Changing the Avatar Complexity setting for an avatar listed in your Exceptions floater – not Default will remove them from the list, as they will be rendered as per your Avatar Complexity setting
You can also update how any avatar in your Exceptions list is displayed.
To do this, simply open the list floater via Preferences > Graphics > Exceptions, locate the name of the avatar in question (use the filter if you have a lot of avatars in your exceptions), and right-click on the avatar’s name.
This displays a sub-menu of rendering options, with the currently selected option indicated by a tick. Click on either of the other two options to change it. Note that “Default” will remove the avatar’s name for your exceptions list and display them in-world in accordance with your overall Avatar Rendering Complexity setting.
Grid Status Display Toolbar Button
Maintenance RC 5.0.4.324882 adds a new Grid Status toolbar button to the viewer. This can be accessed via Me -> Toolbar or by right-clicking your toolbar to select Toolbar Buttons. Either of these routes will open your Toolbox floater. You can then drag the Grid Status button to the toolbar location of your choice (left, right or bottom of your screen) where it will be displayed.
The new Grid Status button
Clicking on the button will open the Grid Status page in the viewer’s built-in browser, regardless of your Preferences setting for how web content is to be displayed.
Other Improvements
In addition to the above, this RC viewer also includes the following improvements:
Inventory Offer messages now display the name of the object being offered to another avatar
Library items can now be worn via a right-click context menu, and not just drag & drop
The Snapshot floater will now remember what you did last, and open with that mode next time (until you next relog)
You can now see and change the type of block (Voice / Text / Particles) from within the block list in People floater
LLTextBox message lines will extend along with the length of the message now.
Bug Fixes
The release notes provides the following list of bug fixes with this release:
Some builds wouldn’t link to release notes. Now they do.
Other minor UI tweaks and adjustments
Removed several instances of legacy People API usage, thanks to Ansariel Hiller.
Inventory floater was missing UI for spawning new Inventory floaters. So now you can do it even if you don’t know the Ctrl+*Shift*+*I* shortcut.
Build floater used to hide behind other floaters due to wrong Z-priority. Not no more!
Appearance editor didn’t “Save as” as well as it should have, but now does.
Avatar animations wouldn’t play after several operations with editing and wearing objects, but do now.
Closing inventory window used to leave an orphaned context menu.
Active listings folder stayed active after everything was cut from it. We don’t need that confusion.
Teleport offers and Eject messages will show complete name when that’s what you’ve chose to see.
You can now remove friends even when you’re in a Groups floater looking at Members list.
Feedback
I’ve not driven this viewer for more than an hour thus far, so cannot give any feedback on performance / stability. In terms of the improved features, making Avatar Complexity settings persist between log-ins is a welcome addition to the viewer. Both the Always Render Friends check box and the Exceptions options are also nice additions. .
The Grid Status button is also a handy addition, and should provide help for those of us wanting to know what is going on with the grid (when suspecting something might be wrong), but who get a little annoyed at having to manually visit the grid status page in order to do so.
On Tuesday, March 21st, the Main (SLS) channel received receive the same server maintenance package previously deployed to the three RC channels, comprising new internal logging output and changes to increase stability and security
There is no planned deployment for the RC channels on Wednesday, March 22nd. As all three were restarted as a part of the week #11 deployment, they will not be restarted.
SL Viewer
Maintenance RC Viewer
A new Maintenance RC viewer, version 5.0.4.324646 was released on Thursday March 16th. This update includes a range of bug fixes (please refer to the release notes) and improvements as per my overview of the release. However, the updates to Avatar Complexity recorded in the release note appear to be absent the viewer / not working correctly. There are:
“We will now remember your choices of whether to render or not render certain avatars. You can set this by right-clicking on someone in-world and choosing Render avatar -> Default / Always / Never” – avatars still revert to Render Normally following a re-log
Your selections can be seen (and changed) in Preferences -> Graphics -> “Exceptions…” (under) Maximum Complexity – this “Exceptions” option does not appear to be in the viewer
We’ve also added a setting to always render your friends, regardless of complexity – also does not appear to be in the viewer.
The new Voice release candidate viewer, version 5.0.4.324770, arrived on Monday, March 20th. This viewer offers a number of improvements to voice:
Fixes the apparent position of voices in local voice
Improves retry behaviour when there are problems connecting or during temporary connection problems
Logs more detailed information to the Lab for quantifying connection issues
Improves security of the communication between the viewer and SLVoice
Alex Ivy 64-bit Viewer
The 64-bit viewer for Windows and Mac was updated to version on Friday, March 17th. This update should include the following:
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.
In addition, 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.
New Simulator Build
DRTSIM-323 is the channel on Aditi (the beta grid) which is carrying the a new version of the simulator code using the Lab’s latest build of the server operating system. In includes the regions: Fire Ants, Bug Island and Mauve (again, these are on the beta grid).
HTTP Asset Fetching
This is another project on Aditi only at present. As previously noted, it will eventually see the move of the remaining Second Life inventory assets – landmarks, gestures, animations, shapes, sounds and wearables (system layer clothing and body shapes) – to delivery over HTTP and via the Content Delivery Network(s), rather than via UDP through the simulator. Testing is still progressing, and an initially project viewer repository has been offered, but is not currently listed in the Alternate viewer page, as the server-side of the new code is only available on Aditi, as noted.
If you want to test the new capabilities (uploading new assets – particularly sounds and animations and then running them – you can obtain the project viewer (for the time being) from the Server Beta Group meeting agenda page on the SL wiki. Note the links are liable to vanish as the agenda page is updated, and that this viewer will only currently work in testing the new fetching capabilities when logged-in to Aditi.
Other Items
A new feature that aims to improve landowner experience and help premium members in also in the early stages of testing. no details as yet on what it is, but it has previously been hinted at in recent TPV Developer meetings. More details to come, as they become available
There is a general capabilities failure issue which can occur when connecting to region on on Aditi, which prevents users entering the region. It is under investigation, but JIRA reports if you persistent encounter the problem in respect of one more more regions on Aditi would be welcomed.
This summary is 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.
Official LL Viewers
Current Release version: 5.0.3.324435, dated March 13th – hotfix for snapshots to e-mail issue download page, release notes
Storybrooke Gardens – blog post
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 