SL Tech – Page 308 – Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld

Black Dragon 2.4.4.3: going Chromium

Posted on October 19, 2015May 25, 2020 by Inara Pey

On Saturday 17th October, Niran V Dean released Black Dragon 2.4.4.3, which sees his viewer merged with the latest release from Linden Lab, gain the Lab’s Chromium Embedded Framework code for media, and which includes some updates from Niran himself.

The latter most notably take the form of a re-working of the Display tab in the Preferences floater. Here, Niran has replaced the older scrolling tab layout with a more compact version, with expandable sub-tabs allowing feature sets to be viewed and expanded whilst also offering quick and easy on / off check boxes for functions users may wish to enable / disable, but where they don’t necessarily wish to change the associated settings.

The new Display tab in Preferences offers a series of function defined expandable sub-tabs, some of which had default on / off check boxes.

The sub-tabs can be individually opened / closed by checking on the + to the right of each tab’s title bar, and those opened will remain so until either closed, or the viewer session is closed and re-started. Opening multiple sub-tabs will add a scroll bar to the right of the Preferences floater when displaying the contents of the Display tab, allowing for smooth navigation between sub-tabs.

Clicking on the + on any od the Display sub-tabs will expand it to reveal all the associated options and settings. Sub-tabs will remain open until either manually closed or the viewer is shut-down — Clicking on the + on any of the Display sub-tabs will expand it to reveal all the associated options and settings. Sub-tabs will remain open until either manually closed or the viewer is shut-down

The inclusion of the CEF code from the Lab sees Black Dragon move a little ahead of the curve feature-wise, given the code still is only at project status when the Lab prefers TPVs not to adopt it until it has reached RC status. That said, the code appears to work well within the viewer, allowing media to be easily viewed and well as allowing the expected manipulation of webGL elements either through the viewer’s MOAP capabilities or through the built-in web browser, as the very simple video below demonstrates.

Overall, a tidy update for the viewer, with the new Display tab layout present an interesting approach to encapsulating the myriad from display options available in the viewer in a format that allows for ease of use and viewing. While scrolling and expanding options aren’t to everyone’s liking, it does offer a tidy way of presenting things, with the quick on / off check boxes on some of the sub-tabs providing a good alternative to the growl factor of otherwise having to scroll and / or open / close sub-tabs to in order to disable or enable the functions.

Those on Black Dragon who produce media products in SL, or who wish to test their MOAP applications can, with this release, get to test their items without having to necessarily fall back on the Lab’s project viewer, but with the potential for updates to be pushed out by the Lab slightly ahead of them reaching any TPV, it might still be an idea to watch the Lab’s own viewer channels, just in case things get slightly adrift.

Note the video included in this article is only a very simple demonstration of WebGL manipulation in a CEF viewer. It is not intended as an in-depth demonstration or as a significant commentary on CEF use within the viewer, where it is intended to replace the use of llqtwebkit for media support (including within in-world televisions, etc.). WebGL demos via David Walsh and with thanks to Whirly Fizzle for the link.

Additional Links

2015 viewer release summaries: week 42

Posted on October 19, 2015March 16, 2020 by Inara Pey

Updates for the week ending Sunday, October 18th

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: 3.8.5.305531, October 13 – formerly the Maintenance RC viewer download page, release notes
Release channel cohorts (See my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself):
- Notifications RC viewer updated to version 3.8.6.305981 on October 14 – new Notifications floater separates incoming notifications into System, Transactions, Invitations, and Group. It provides a better way to view, interact with, prioritize and manage incoming notices for busy residents (download and release notes)
Project viewers:
- No updates.

LL Viewer Resources

SL Alternate Viewers wiki page – LL
Viewer Source Repositories wiki page – LL
Test Builds wiki page – LL
Supported Viewers wiki page – LL
Viewer release process overview – this blog
SL Viewer updates and reviews on this blog

Third-party Viewers

V3-style

Black Dragon updated to version 2.4.4.3 on October 17th – core updates: CEF integration, merge with current LL release viewer.
UKanDo updated to version 3.8.5.28153 on October 14 – core updates: merge to latest LL viewer release.

V1-style

Cool VL Viewer updated on October 17: stable version 1.26.14.10; experimental version: 1.26.15.9 – release notes.

Mobile / Other Clients

No Updates.

Additional TPV Resources

Third-party Viewer Directory – LL

SL project updates 42/2: server, viewer

Posted on October 17, 2015September 27, 2024 by Inara Pey

Richmond Landing at Crossing Sands – blog post

Server Deployments – Recap

As noted in part 1 of this week’s update, there were no deployments to either the Main (SLS) or RC channels in week #42. This means there will be no deployment to the Main channel in week #43 (week commencing Monday, October 19th).

The RC deployment planned for week #42 was ultimately postponed pending further work.

Week #43 RC Deployment

The deployment originally planned for week #42 is now targeted for deployment on Wednesday, October 21st. It will include the server-side updates intended to help prevent attachment links in group notifications from going stale. However, as per the first part of this week’s report (see link above), because it is also believed that there are some viewer-side issues causing these problems, the update might not fix all situation where an attachment to a group notice fails to open when viewed in the incoming notification.

The reason for the late postponement of the release in week #42 was because the Lab wasn’t entirely happy with aspects of the update, and as a result of recent issues in attempting to deploy some server-side improvements to inventory handling which lead to unanticipated side-effects, caution won the day.

This RC release may also incorporate a server-side update to prevent the uploading of “hacked” mesh content (e.g. mesh items which show a LI of 1 no matter what their actual complexity, or which spoof a creator’s name).

SL Viewer

The Notification RC viewer updated to version 3.8.6.305981 on Wednesday, October 14th, following the promotion of the Maintenance viewer to the de facto release viewer. This release adds a further set of fixes to the viewer:

MAINT-5370 [Notice] Hard to operate with notification window control
MAINT-5694 [Project Notice] Links on the 1st line of a group notice message are sometimes not clickable.
MAINT-5708 [Project Notice] Images shouldn’t be displayed in notification titles
MAINT-5730 [Project Notice] Text overlapping in group invites with non-default group role.

The notifications viewer update corrects four issues within the viewer relating to layout and control of notifications

European Connection Issues

Thursday, October 15th saw a DNS issue upstream of Second Life impact users in Europe, and notably The Netherlands, preventing people from logging-in to SL and from accessing web properties such as secondlife.com and the Marketplace, etc. The situation occurred as the Lab were also carrying out some unscheduled maintenance on the grid, prompting them to update the original Grid Status report with news on the DNS issue:

[Updated 4:27 PM PDT, 15 October 2015] We’ve received confirmation from our upstream provider that a widespread DNS outage is impacting parts of Europe, including the Netherlands, and possibly other regions. We’re monitoring the situation and will report on developments.

Second Life project updates 42/1: server, viewer, misc items

Posted on October 14, 2015September 27, 2024 by Inara Pey

Hestium (Flickr) – October 2015 – blog post

SL Server Deployments Week 42

There was no deployment to the Main (SLS) channel on Tuesday, October 13th. Also, the server maintenance package planned for deployment to the three RC channels in week #42 did not pass final testing, and the deployment has been postponed as of LL CoB on Tuesday, October 13th.

SL Viewer Updates

The Maintenance viewer, version 3.8.5.305531, was promoted to the de facto release viewer on Tuesday, October 13th. The viewer has over 90 fixes, improvements and feature requests – please refer to the release notes (link above) for details.

Group Notice Attachments

The server maintenance package postponed from deployment in week #42 comprises a partial fix for group notice attachments failing to respond when clicked, forcing recipients to open the Group floater, search the Notices tab for the relevant notice and retrieve the attachment from there.

This problem most frequently occurs as a result of some of the data relating to the notification and the original notification users open to access the attachment being lost to the simulator after about an hour, and the fix in question is geared to correcting this. However, there can be other circumstances where the attachment fails to respond, which might be either server-side issues, or viewer issues.

“I’m pretty sure there’s a viewer issue too,” Simon Linden said, discussing the matter during the Simulator User Group meeting on Tuesday, October 13th. “If you notice when you click on notice attachments, sometimes when it doesn’t work you see nothing at all; no UI feedback where that attachment shading changes or anything. I think in those cases the viewer is dropping the click and not doing anything at all, and it might work if it actually sent a request to the server.” He added that he hopes the RC deployment, once available, will at least improve matters.

Other Items

Accessing Crowded Regions

A question was asked at the Simulator group about whether repeated attempts to access a crowded region by repeatedly trying to cross to it from neighbouring region or constantly trying to teleport into the region, causes it any significant issues in terms of performance. There are already some HUDs on the marketplace which will automatically re-try teleports to a specific location, and the question was prompted by a feature request to Firestorm to make a similar capability within the viewer.

Simon Linden was understandably cautious in his response, pointing out that any attempts to move between regions will use up time and network traffic, but suggested that a retry system with a delay of around 5 seconds or so shouldn’t put any stress on the simulator (some of the available HUDs actually work on a faster retry cycle than this, so could be having more of an impact). It was also suggested – although not by a Linden – that moving such a capability client-side might actually reduce a small load from the simulators when compared to using a scripted HUD.

This question prompted the idea of some kind of list managed queuing system for crowded regions, so that people attempting to reach it would be automatically teleported when there is room, and in the order they were added to the queue.

However, as was pointed out in the meeting, such an approach would require a considerable amount of work in terms of just managing the list (keeping track of who is on the list, who joins the list, who opts to log-out before a space becomes available, forcing an update to the entire list, removing people who are teleported from the list, and so on). As such, Simon indicated he’d rather work on improving simulator performance to allow more avatars into a region, and have the viewer improved so it can better handle large numbers of avatars.

Special Events Regions

In a similar vein, there have been rumours of large events getting dedicated servers to handle the load more effectively. Commenting on this, Simon said, “We’ve talked about that, and I don’t know what might happen; but we’ve discussed the short-term need people have for regions or better performance. It’s now more in the product folks lap … they need to figure out how we would offer something like that.”

Temp Attach from Object Inventory

A question was asked at the meeting about whether anyone at the Lab was working on a means to allow a temporary attachment directly from an object’s inventory (contents). Simon noted that while no-one is currently working on this, it is on the Lab’s feature list, adding, “it’s just an idea; but the current attach process used by experiences is rez the thing, then attach. It would be better to just directly attach.”

It’ll be interesting to see if this comes about.

2015 viewer release summaries: week 41

Posted on October 12, 2015March 16, 2020 by Inara Pey

Updates for the week ending Sunday, October 11th

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.