Updates for the week ending: Sunday, July 26th, 2015
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: Current Release version: 3.8.1.303130 – no change
Black Dragon updated to version 2.4.4 on July 22nd and then to version 2.4.4.1 on July 23rd – core updates: incorporation of the Viewer-Managed Marketplace functionality – change logs
V1-style
Cool VL Viewer Stable branch updated to version 1.26.14.1 and the Experimental branch updated to 1.26.15.0, both on July 25th – release notes
On Tuesday, July 21st, the Main (SLS) channel had been listed as due to receive server maintenance package previously deployed to the three RC channels (15.07.07.303297). However, post-roll, the channel had been updated to release 15.07.09.303393, although the description of the changes, internal simulator fixes, remained unchanged.
On Wednesday, July 22nd, the three RC channels all received the same new server maintenance package, again comprising internal server fixes related to Experience Keys, comprising null pointer checkers and – interestingly – a configuration option for the number of Experiences a Premium member can have.
Group Issues
Following the week’s deployment, people started reporting group-related issues, particularly:
BUG-9725 – Activating a group fails on first selection on Second Life Server 15.07.09.303393 & RC
BUG-9735 – Unable to Edit Group Parameters after being made OWNER of newly created group
BUG-9695 – [Project Notice] First attempt at joining a group fails (also happens with current release viewer)
BUG-9735 affects promoting a member of the group to Owner status: their role title will change, but they do not gain the Owner powers, even after a relog (if an invitation is sent to someone to join the group with Owner status, they gain the expected rights). Curiously, this bug does not reproduce on Aditi (Beta grid) on simulators running the same code release.
Note that with BUG-9695 that if a fee is charged for joining the group, the fee will be taken, even if the join fails; you’ll then be charged again on your next attempt to join (which should succeed).
The Lab is actively investigating these issues.
In addition, there have been assorted reports of dropped group chat messages and detectable group chat lag.
Avatar Complexity
There have been recent updates relating to STORM-2082, the work Oz Linden has been undertaking on Avatar Complexity (aka “Jelly Baby avatars”). This work had been held-up due to a bug which rendered all avatars affected by the setting as invisible, rather than as the expected “Jelly Babies”. However, this now appears to have been fixed.
This means that this work may well be appearing as a project viewer during week #32 (week commencing Monday, August 3rd). Commenting on the status of the project at the Open-source Developer meeting on Monday, July 20th, Oz Linden said:
All it needs now is a little more UI – notices that show when your own Complexity has changed, and when your Complexity is too high for those around you to render … I want to wait for those UI changes to release this so that people have a way to understand why things are rendering fully or not … There will be a new setting that controls how long the message about your own cost appears; it will also govern how long the message appears when others are not rendering you.
Avatar Complexity (aka Jelly Babies): expected as a project viewer in early August
Oz also indicated he’d like to experiment a little more with things. One idea under consideration is that currently, the viewer is gets all the data on high render cost avatars prior to calculating the complexity value. However, it might be possible to allow the viewer to make the calculations without having to fetch the full avatar data. A benefit of this could be to reduce the risk of worn mesh crashers impacting the viewer.
NiranV Dean once again issued a rapid-fire series of updates to Black Dragon in week #29, upping the version number from 2.4.3.6 to 2.4.3.9 in the process.
The reason for the speed of updates is a combination of the Lab pushing through quite a lot at the moment, and Niran providing some tweaks, fixes and updates of his own / sourced from other RPVs.
The first update out of the gate was 2.4.3.7, on Monday July 13th, which incorporated the Lab’s summer Maintenance release (version 3.8.2.303563 at the time of writing – see the release notes on the Lab’s release for a list of the updates incorporated into Black Dragon).
This was followed on Wednesday, July 15th by version 2.4.3.8, which incorporated the Lab’s Project Big Bird updates. These are a series of viewer-side fixes for a fair number of attachment issues people have been experiencing since the arrival of AIS v3, and some which pre-date it. These include, but are not limited to, teleporting / crossing a region and having attachments removed; teleporting or crossing a region and losing attachments in your view while others can still see them (and vice-versa); seeing attachments as removed but the viewer reports them as attached, etc.
This version also incorporates Kitty Barnett’s “borderless window mode” (Preferences > Display). when enabled, this will expand the viewer window to the full size of your screen, hiding the title bar without the need for a re-log. When disabled, will return the viewer window to its last framed sized.
The borderless window option with expand the viewer window to your full screen size, hiding the top bar and without the need fora re-log
Released on Sunday, July 19th, version 2.4.3.9 contains further maintenance tweaks and updates, notably the official code for right-clicking and selecting worn mesh.
Niran has also addressed the issue found in the Notifications Viewer, where the buttons for accepting / declining a group invitation are only displayed when an invitation is received – if you miss it due to AFK or anything, and then open the invitation in the Notifications floater, it is displayed without any means to act upon it – see BUG-9625, which also points out that invitations to Experiences, and requests to accept deny debit permissions suffer the same issue).
Niran has added the buttons for accepting / rejecting a group invite when it is displayed in the Notifications floater.
As well as the above, Niran has included a range of fixes and updates with each of these releases – please refer for the relevant release notes for details – and is continuing to tweak things on the rendering side of things, improving things like lens flare, ans also tweaking the Unified Snapshot floater.
There will doubtless be a further Black Dragon update winging its way towards release very soon, one which contains the Lab’s Viewer-Managed Marketplace updates. In the meantime, these updates ensure Black Dragon remains on a par with the majority of the Lab’s offerings available in the viewer release channel.
Updates for the week ending: Sunday, July 19th, 2015
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: Current Release version: 3.8.1.303130, July 14 (formerly the attachment fixes RC viewer offering a number of fixes for various attachment issues) – download page, release notes
Importer RC viewer version 3.8.2.303565 released on July 17 – provides a modified mesh uploader which can (optionally) improve debug output, perform name-based LOD association, and handle models with many materials, allowing models with more than 8 unique faces to be imported (download and release notes)
Maintenance RC viewer updated to version 3.8.2.303563 on July 17 – comprising some 50 updates, fixes and features (download and release notes)
Viewer-managed Marketplace RC viewer updated to version 3.8.2.303583 on July 16 – allows Merchants to manage inventory associated with Marketplace Listings from within the viewer + sale of items which Merchants do not have the right copy will now be supported with the Direct Delivery purchase mechanism (download and release notes)
Alchemy updated to version 3.8.1.35916 Beta on July 16 – core updates: parity with LL 3.8.1 code base; avatar name in viewer title bar; music stream info floater; option to display legacy or web profiles – release notes
Black Dragon multiple updates, versions 2.4.3.7 through 2.4.3.9 (July 19th) – core updates: incorporation of LL’s attachment fixes and the Maintenance and VMM RC code updates change logs
Kokua issued Mac test version of their viewer, built using the new tool chain – release notes
On Thursday, July 16th Alchemy both released their latest beta and announced they are considering moving to monthly releases in order to better keep pace with the Lab’s own releases.
Such a schedule would in part depend upon what the Lab have coming downstream, even allowing for their aim of promoting a viewer every other week. So we’ll likely see how this pans out. In the meantime, there is Alchemy Beta 3.8.1.35916. The following a brief summary of the release; as always, please refer to the release notes as well.
This update brings Alchemy to parity with the Lab’s 3.8.1 code base, meaning it has everything found in the Lab’s release viewer up to and including the attachment fixes found in the SL viewer 3.8.1.303130.
Some of Alchemy’s new additions: displaying the avatar name in the viewer title bar and the audio information floater
In terms of Alchemy additions, the 3.8.1 release brings an optional musical stream identification floater (accessed via Me > Audio Ticker), and now shows the currently logged-in avatar’s name in the viewer title bar; a useful addition if you’re running multiple instances of the viewer and wish to see which is which when they are minimised.
A further addition is the option to view profiles (your own and other people’s profiles either in the “legacy style” floater or as a web profile. The profile view can be switched by checking / unchecking Preferences > Interface > General > Open profiles in web mode.
Which profile: legacy or web? You get to choose
Among the under-the-hood changes and the fixes in this release can be found OpenSSL updates, while a further update visible to users is a fix to prevent the radar spamming a series of messages about avatars in a previous region “leaving” when teleporting to another region, if you have it set to report “entering” and “leaving” agents (see ALCH-223).
There is a known issue with the viewer starting on Windows. If you receive a message similar to “The application was unable to start correctly (0xc000007b)”, please download and install one of the following two files from Microsoft:
If you are using the 32-bit version of Alchemy: vcredist_x86.exe
(The above links will take you to the respective download pages at Microsoft, where you can review the file details prior to downloading.)
There is also a known issue when trying to alter Music URL etc., when accessing About Land via the land information icon in the navigation bar. This will be fixed in the next release; for now the workaround is to right-click the ground and access About Land via the context menu.
A small, tidy update. Will be interesting to see if the Alchemy devs do opt to try for monthly updates.
There was no Main (SLS) channel deployment on Tuesday, July 14th.
On Wednesday, July 15th all three RC channels received the same server maintenance package, comprising internal simulator fixes.
SL Viewer
Following the promotion of the attachment fixes viewer to release status, all three remain active release candidate viewer in the release channel were updated as follows:
The Viewer-Managed Marketplace RC viewer updated to version 3.8.2.303583 on Thursday, July 16th
The Maintenance RC viewer updated to version 3.8.2.303563 on Friday, July 17th
The Mesh importer RC viewer updates to version 3.8.2.303565, also on Friday, July 17th.
Viewer-Managed Marketplace
On Thursday, July 16th, the Lab announced that VMM is now “released” (even through the viewer is currently still at RC status), and that automated migration of those Marketplace stores which have not already converted to VMM will commence at 21:00 SLT on Thursday, July 23rd, and will continue at the same time on weekdays for a 12-hour period (21:00 – 09:00) until complete.
That the announcement has been made prior to the viewer being promoted, and that it was made apparently without any notification to TPVs (who had been trying to work closely with the Lab in getting people ready for VMM) has caused no small amount of upset on the Commerce forum thread opened when the announcement was made, some of which is understandable, particularly given the way TPVs have tried to work with the Lab in support of VMM, and this announcement have left those still in the process of trying integrate the code into their viewers with little time to actually do so and support their users with a VMM-enabled version of their viewer.
Experience Tools
In my week #28 report, I referred to a comment made by Simon Linden relating to Experience Keys / Tools concerning some work he’s been carrying out on the KVP database:
I’ve been working on updating the KVP code that runs on our server and had the most frustrating time integrating the newest version into our code … The code we have is dated and we should have better performance and stability with their latest.
The use of “their” and “our” code led to some questions at the meeting (unanswered at the time) as to what it might indicate. During the Server Beta User Group (SBUG) meeting on Thursday, July 16th, some clarification was given.
The “their” referred to by Simon is MongoDB, which is the database being used to manage the KVP store and key value pairs. The version the Lab had been / is using can only apparently search around 1,000 values per minute. The new version that Simon has been working on should apparently improve on this, hence his reference to performance and stability improvements (not to mention scalability).
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 