There was no deployment to the Main (SLS) channel on Tuesday, August 16th, and there will be no deployment on Wednesday, August 17th.
It is currently “doubtful” there will be an RC deployment next week – although this may change. A contributing reason for the slowdown is that the Lab is currently focused on server-side operating system upgrades.
SL Viewer
Release Viewer
BUG-37646 “Attachments get ghosted at login on 4.0.7.318301”; and BUG-37653 “Every time I delete Cache and Relog, my Saved Appearances do not load and I am left as a White Cloud in Second Life Viewer 4.0.7.318301”, noted in my last TPVD meeting update have both been accepted by the Lab and are being worked on.
VLC RC Viewer
As expected, the VLC Media Plugin RC viewer, which contains the LibVLC-based replacement for QuickTime for Windows, updated on August 15th to version 4.1.1.318504. An additional fix is included with the update, which should correct an issue with new MOAP objects losing audio.
Remaining Official Viewers
This leaves the remaining list of official viewers, at the time of writing as follows:
Current Release version: 4.0.7.318301 (dated August 8), promoted August 11 – formerly the Maintenance RC viewer
RC viewers:
Visual Outfit Browser viewer updated to version 4.0.7.318263, on August 1 – ability to preview images of outfits in the Appearance floater – due to update
Project viewers:
Project Bento (avatar skeleton extensions) updated to version 5.0.0.317597 on July 14 – incorporation of final skeleton and slider updates from the test viewer
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 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: 4.0.7.318301 (dated dated August 8), promoted August 11 – formerly the Maintenance RC viewer download page, release notes
Cool VL viewer Stable branch updated to version 1.26.18.19 and the Experimental branch updated to version 1.26.19.21, both on August 13th (release notes)
Mobile / Other Clients
Group Tools updated to version 2.2.40.0 on August 14th – no change log provided (download)
The majority of the notes in this update are taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, August 12th. The video of that meeting is embedded at the end of this update, and references to it are indicated through the use of time stamps in the paragraphs below. My thanks as always to North for recording and providing it.
Server Deployment – Recap
There was only a Main (SLS) channel deployment this week. This saw the roll of the server maintenance package previously deployed to the three RC’s in week #31, on Tuesday, August 9th. This comprised internal fixes and an update to prevent BUG-37573.
SL Viewer
Release Viewer – Texture Handling Fixes
[0:35] The Maintenance RC viewer release on Monday, August 8th gained a rapid promotion to the de facto release viewer on Thursday, August 11th. Version 4.0.7.318301 (dated August 8th).
This viewer includes a number of fixes in the image pipeline (e.g. fixes for “bad” textures – those texture files which have invalid data in them). Also included is a fix to prevent the viewer crashing when you system runs out of main (not GPU) memory while attempting to load a texture file. Instead, the viewer will substitute a plain grey texture. So, when you start to see grey everywhere instead of expected textures, it’s time to restart the viewer. This may be a pain to look at, but it is considered preferable to having the viewer crash at a potentially inconvenient moment.
[1:35] The Lab intends to move along similar lines for other issues within the viewer which can result in a hard crash, and also go through cleaning-up how exceptions are generated and caught by the viewer, and this work should be appearing in the next but one Maintenance RC update. The overall goal is to improve the image pipeline and some other points in the viewer where a relatively low-level thing results in the viewer crashing. Some of this work might also help prevent attempts to deliberately crash other viewers using textures.
In the meantime, issues have emerged affecting attachments and the Current Outfit Folder with this release – see BUG-37646 “Attachments get ghosted at login on 4.0.7.318301”; and BUG-37653 “Every time I delete Cache and Relog, my Saved Appearances do not load and I am left as a White Cloud in Second Life Viewer 4.0.7.318301”, for details.
Remaining Viewers in the Release Channel
[4:20] The VLC Media Plugin RC viewer, version 4.1.1.318152 dated July 28th at the time of writing, which contains the LibVLC-based replacement for QuickTime for Windows, is liable to be the next RC that will be promoted to release status. A new RC version of this viewer, merged-up to the 4.0.7.318301 code, should appear in the release pipeline in week #33 (commencing Monday, August 15th).
[4:32] The plan remains to update the Mac version of the viewer to use VLC as a part of the 64-bit viewer development.
[6:10] The Visual Outfits Browser RC viewer, version 4.0.7.318263 dated August 1st at the time of writing, which allows users to preview images of outfits in the Appearance floater should be updated in week #33 following a merge with the 4.0.7.318301 code. This update will also include a further round of bug fixes for this project.
Project Bento
[7:35] A new project viewer is being readied, which includes bug fixes and which has been merged with the 4.0.7.318301 code. This should hopefully appear in week #33. See my Bento update 22 for more on the project.
Upcoming Viewers
[6:43] A new Maintenance viewer should appear in week #33. This will contain further fixes and improvements, although not the exception handling improvements referred to above.
[7:00] Work is expected to resume on the 64-bit versions of the official viewer in week #33.
SL Voice
[9:45] Work is progressing on Voice, with a further SL Voice plugin update expected from Vivox soon. Oz has been debugging an upcoming project / RC viewer with more Voice fixes – although this isn’t yet ready to be issued.
Avatar Complexity
It has been noted that Avatar Complexity values can fluctuate when seen from different systems, on average by around 5%. This is because it is next to impossible to come up with a single figure that s accurate across all systems, as the calculations have a degree of hardware dependency (GPU, rendering capabilities, etc),
However, the Lab will continue to tweak the calculations to try to make them as consistent as possible, but this will be a gradual process for reasons Oz discussed in the meeting, and which I’ve extracted in the audio file below
A couple of particular issues which have been reported for avatar complexity calculations are BUG-37631 “Rigged mesh with partially transparent texture on it have 4 times higher complexity”, and BUG-37642 “ACI randomly changes (often at login or following a TP)”.
Other Items
Memory Bloat Crashers
[8:50] With the arrival of Avatar Complexity, which provides protection against worn graphics crashers (just don’t set your Maximum Complexity slider to No Limit), it appears that inconsiderates in the virtual world are swapping to use attachments which cause memory bloat in order to crash viewers. There are, for example, attachments which can raise viewer memory to 4 Gb which immediately crasher 32-bit viewers, even if the offending avataris “Jelly Dolled”.
Oz has requested the Lab be supplied with examples, so they can start looking into the matter and hopefully come up with a fix.
Abuse Report Categories
[10:31] One of the possible issues for some Abuse Reports (ARs) appearing to go unanswered is that there are still viewers using the “old” AR categories, rather than the newer categories (as found in the official viewer). This is particularly true where users are still on versions of the viewer which do not have the revised list of AR categories.
To prevent this is the future, the Lab plan to make Abuse Report categories a capability handled by the simulator and downloaded to the viewer. This removes storing the categories in the viewer & having older viewer fail to reflect more recent category updates. It will also make it easier for the Lab to update AR categories to better meet users’ needs. A project viewer will be appearing at some point in the future supporting this new capability.
Also, within the official viewer, appending a snapshot to an AR is to become mandatory, rather than optional, to further help support identify issues and deal with them. Having a picture may not be relevant for all ARs, but for those where it could help in identifying issues, it ensures the picture is provided, rather than ignored.
Updated: animation of collision volumes is being added – section updated section below.
The following notes and audio were taken from the weekly Bento User Group meeting, held on Thursday, August 11th at 13:00 SLT at the the Hippotropolis Campfire Circle. For details on the meeting agenda, please refer to the Bento User Group wiki page.
Note that this update is not intended to offer a full transcript of the meeting, nor does it present the discussion points in chronological order. Rather, it represents the core points of discussion, grouped together by subject matter were relevant / possible, whilst maintaining the overall context of the meeting.
Time Frame for Promotion to Release Candidate Status
Some at the Lab are keen to see Bento move forward and reach a larger audience of content creators (although there is currently no reason why creators cannot get involved now and attend meetings, help with feedback, etc). Inevitably, this means promoting the Bento viewer to release candidate status, and doing so some time in the next two weeks has been mooted.
Given the number of issues currently being investigated, not all of which are viewer-specific (see below), but for which fixes may yet have an impact on the viewer, this would seem to be a somewhat ambitious time frame.
Viewer Issues
Work at the Lab is focusing on a batch of issues for which bug reports have been raised, including:
Several relating to joint positions:
BUG-37546 [BENTO] facial bone joint offset issues – which has been the subject of recent Bento updates in this blog
BUG-37591 [BENTO] New import of a non-human rigged mesh is deformed
BUG-37633 Bento – Custom joint positions and Reset Skeleton not matching
Avatar height calculation issues:
BUG-20013 [Bento] When wearing a Bento avatar, observers see your hover height lower than you see it yourself
BUG-20169 [ BENTO ] Z-Offset not applying correctly & camera tied to Z-offset
Eye scaling problems (referenced via SL-433, an LL internal bug report)
The eye scaling issue, the result of the scaling within the viewer for mesh eyes being different to the expected system eye size, has been corrected, and will be one of the fixes released with the next viewer update, although existing models may need tweaking as a result a test carried out during the meeting using an early build of the next project viewer iteration suggested that there are still issues, and Matrice believes part of the problem might be within AvaStar.
Facial Bones Issues / Distortions
At least some of the facial bones issues appear to lie with AvaStar exports, which Matrice and Gaia are trying to rectify. Gaia offers an explanation for the problem in the Bento forum thread. Matrice further notes that there is a discrepancy between the restpose and the SL default pose; in Blender there is no easy way to define the absolute SL restpose in order to add bind pose information on top of it, leading to the wrong information (or even a lack of information) being exported to the Collada files.
Matrice is working on improving things in AvaStar, but the work is taking time and effort. Gaia has offered a detailed explanation of joint preparation on the Machinimatrix website as a workaround as they continue to redefine and improve their workflow, and offers a brief summary of the approach through the forum thread. The workaround isn’t seen as optimal at the moment, but the hope is that once the work on AvatStar has been completed, the workflow should be more straightforward and transparent.
Machinimatrix have produced a workflow process to handle the correct placement of facial bones. This is not intended to be the finished means of doing so, but is offered to counter issues currently being encountered
Some questions were asked on whether it was an AvaStar issue rather than something inherent in the viewer, prompting Vir to comment that given the viewer handles joint positions in a model and joint positions in an animation pretty similarly, it’s hard to see how the viewer could be at fault, but acknowledged the only way to be sure of this is test once AvaStar have reasonable confidence they have corrected the issues they have identified.
Later in the meeting, Matrice offered a further explanation of the Belender / AvaStar issue, also pointing to the explanatory document on joint preparation, again noting that things are very much a work-in-progress on trying to fix things.
During the meeting, Medhue Simoni tried the recommended approach given in the documentation and found it did resolve all of his facial deformation issues, other than with his eyes, which as noted above, may require further viewer-side tweaks and additional work within AvaStar, as Matrice commented.
Avatar Height Position Issues
The camera issue which can be encountered as a part of the avatar height calculation issue
I’ve covered this at length in past updates (see update #21 and update #19 for more). The Lab hasn’t progressed any further with a fix, but may look to alter the frequency of updates to see if this helps.
The problem is viewed as being rooted in animating one of the bones used in the calculations for determining the avatar’s height relative to the ground (left leg, up through the pelvis and head), so the solution may ultimately be down to alternative means of animating movement without touching something like the pelvis bone – something which may not be possible when trying to replica certain types of natural movement.
Rigs Modifying Collision Volumes
There have been recent reports of people encountering problems with Bento rigs which modify collision volumes. As Vir explains in the meeting, it’s not something that the Lab planned on supporting, nor did it come up during the original Bento development meetings when rigging to attachment points was discussed, so no effort has been put into making sure it works at all. Vir is now looking at the issue, but whether the Lab will support it is questionable at this point in time; however, the focus at the moment is to more fully understand the impact.
Update, August 12th: Whirly Fizzle pointed me to a viewer repository containing an update to support the animation of collision volumes, to avoid breaking existing content.
Other Items
Slider / Bone Spreadsheet
Aki Shichiroji has been putting together a spreadsheet of all the slider settings and how they affect the Bento avatar bones and geometry. It is very much a work in progress, given things are still in a state of flux, and Aki notes she is aware that there is missing information (she has yet to run through the avatar.LAD file and the avatar skeleton file). However. she has made the spreadsheet available through Google Docs, and welcomes constructive feedback from content creators (which should be addressed to her, I’m not sure if Aki reads this blog!).
Maya / MyaStar And Custom Joint Positions
Following the discussion of Blender / AvaStar and custom joints, Cathy Foil provided some additional information to help Maya users with MayaStar.
On Tuesday, August 9th, the Main (SLS) channel received the server maintenance package deployed to the three RC’s in week #31, and which was itself an update to the RC deployment of July 27th due to BUG-37573.
There were no RC deployment on Wednesday, August 10th.
SL Viewer
It had been anticipated that the Maintenance RC viewer might be promoted as the de facto release viewer this week. Instead, a new version of the RC arrived on Monday, August 8th – version 4.0.7.318301.
The rest of the available official viewers remain as:
Current Release version: 4.0.6.315555 (dated May 23rd), promoted July 5th – formerly the Inventory Message RC viewer
RC viewers:
VLC Media Plugin RC viewer, version 4.1.1.318152, dated July 28th – replaces the QuickTime media plugin for the Windows version of the viewer with one based on LibVLC
Visual Outfits Browser RC viewer, version 4.0.7.318263, dated August 1st – ability to preview images of outfits in the Appearance floater.
Project viewers:
Project Bento (avatar skeleton extensions), version 5.0.0.317597, dated July 14th – incorporation of final skeleton and slider updates from the test viewer
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.
Hitomi Tiponi’s Starlight set provides a total of 10 different skinning options for the official viewer, together with a range of additional UI tweaks and options (Starlight Silver Blue skin shown on viewer 4.0.6.315555) – Click any image for full size, if required
Reader Wolf Baginski posted a comment on the subject of alternative skins for the official LL viewer, prompting me to think about Starlight. This is a set of alternative UI skins and additional options available for the official viewer (and for some TPVs, although they are outside the scope of this article), which I last wrote about in these pages page back in 2010/11 when I was using it with viewer 2.x.
So, given I haven’t written about Starlight for a good while, and given there may be users of the official viewer who haven’t previously come across it, I thought it might be a good idea to take a look at Starlight as it is today, and offer something of an introduction for those unfamiliar with it.
Overview
Produced and maintained by Hitomi Tiponi, Starlight has been available for the English language version of the viewer for a good few years, as noted above. Today, it includes no fewer than 10 alternative UI skins and a range of other UI updates and tweaks which may appeal to users. The ten skins comprise:
Original Orange: a dark theme with a touch of orange
Nostalgia Blue: features buttons and some layout changes to remind you of Viewer 1.x
Silver Blue: a ‘dark on light’ theme using a cool blue
Silver Pink: as above, but with a hint of pink
Mono Teal: a high-definition black on grey / white & teal green buttons
Orb Red: designed to make the interface seem less one-dimensional
Orb Blue: as above, but a deep shade of blue
Original Teal: The Lab’s original viewer 2.x colour scheme with slightly improved contrast
Custom Dark: for using with a backdrop of a black, navy blue, dark red etc.
Custom Light: for a brighter, vibrant look, ideal for integrating black text with a lighter theme.
The additional UI items offered within Starlight include, but are not limited to:
Top bar Draw Distance slider (between 32 and 992 metres)
Revised Preferences panels
Additional Toolbar buttons
Film menu, for photography and machinima fans
Inclusion of a “lite” version of PhotoTools
Comprehensive Shadows, Rendering, Depth of Field and Local Lights settings in Preferences > Graphics
Assorted UI layout improvements / updates.
For a full list of such options and updates, please refer to the Starlight wiki page.
Starlight also offers a range of UI options, including updated floater layouts, new floaters, additional toolbar buttons, easy access Draw Distance slider and more. Click for full size, if required
Installing Starlight
Note that while available for the official viewer, Starlight is a third-party product, and isn’t supported by Linden Lab.
Read the notes on downloading the correct version.
If you download the .ZIP file (suitable for Windows, OS X and Linux) following the manual installation instructions on the wiki page.
If you download the Windows Easy Installer:
Launch the installer and follow the on-screen instructions
Make sure you install Starlight to the installation location of the viewer with which it is to be used
If you use different RC and project viewers, and wish to have Starlight available for all of them, you must install it for each one.
Note that if a new version of the viewer is subsequently installed to the same location used with Starlight, the Starlight files will be removed as a part of the installation process. You’ll therefore need to re-install the latest version of Starlight in order to keep using it. However, as the Second Life settings files are not removed during viewer updates / installations (they are only removed if you manually carry out a completely clean installation), the viewer should revert to the last active Starlight skin once you have re-installed your Starlight files.
For photographers and machinima makers, Starlight adds the Film menu to the viewer’s menu options (Starlight Mono Teal skin shown)
Running Starlight
Launch the viewer.
Select a Starlight skin from the drop-down displayed below the log-in button.
Re-start the viewer and log-in.
Repeat these steps should you wish to change skins.
Selecting a new Starlight Skin
Additional Notes
Well documented and supported, Hitomi generally has an updated version within hours of any new official viewer de facto release, offering a good cross-section of UI skins and some excellent UI additions, Starlight remains the add-on for the official viewer.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 