Updates for the week ending: Sunday, April 5th, 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.
HeatWave RC viewer version 3.7.27.300424, released on April 3rd – core updates: the same fixes and improvements as the Maintenance release, with an additional fix for a URI parsing issue (download and release notes)
Maintenance RC viewer updated to version .7.27.300323 on March 31 – core updates: multiple fixes and improvements (download and release notes)
Tools Update project viewer version 3.7.27.300242 updated on March 30th – core updates: builds Windows and Mac viewers using the new tool chain and autobuild process and also incorporates the revised viewer log-in screen (download and release notes)
Project viewers:
Attachment fixes project viewer (Project BigBird), version 3.7.27.300377, released on April 1 – core updates: a number of fixes for various attachment issues (download and release notes)
Avatar Layer limits project viewer updated to version 3.7.27.300098 – allows users towear up to 60 wearable layers (jackets, shirts, tattoo, alpha, etc.) in any combination (download and release notes)
Black Dragon updated to version 2.4.2.1 on April 4th – core updates: bug fixes (change log)
V1-style
Cool VL Viewer Stable branch updated to version 1.26.12.37, Experimental to version 1.26.13.6 and Legacy branch to 1.26.8.92, all on April 4th (release notes)
Farewell SL Go; one of OnLive’s most successful services, but nevertheless one unlikely to be saved
Since the announcement that OnLive’s gaming services are to shut down at the end of April, there has been understandable upset from within the SL community (and from some OpenSim users as well, given Firestorm on SL Go can be used to access OpenSim grids).
Following the news, there were a plethora of requests made to Sony on social media that they continue to provision SL Go as a service and an on-line petition was started in the hope of achieving the same end. Unfortunately, these requests and the petition overlook one thing.
As OnLive made clear in their statements on the future of their gaming services, and as I attempted to point to in my original article on this news, Sony didn’t actually acquire OnLive’s services. They took the opportunity to purchase the IP and 140 patents the company held relating to cloud gaming and other “assets” (which would most likely appear to be the additional 135 patents related to cloud gaming OnLive had pending), without actually buying OnLive’s services. So technically, there’s nothing for them to “continue” to offer SL Go users.
What’s more, as Dennis Harper, the SL Go Product Manager at OnLive, made clear in these pages, taking the IP and patents is akin to taking the heart and lungs of OnLive’s services; without them, a service like SL Go cannot easily be continued by someone else. At least, not without money changing hands and someone having the infrastructure by which they can deliver the service.
So, are Sony the Big Evil for doing this? did they gobble OnLive’s patents to stifle competition? Is this, as was dramatically stated in some quarters as the news broke, some kind of first shot in a forthcoming “VR battle” between corporations? Well …. No.
From the start, OnLive was well ahead of the curve, and even though we’re reaching a point were the viability of cloud-based gaming can be demonstrated, it seems few are yet willing to take a gamble on taking-on the kind of services OnLive have offered (image courtesy of OnLive)
The truth is that OnLive put itself on the market.
That this is the case can be found in another post on the company’s blog entitled, A Bright Future for Cloud Gaming At Sony. As well as containing useful historical information, the post underlines the specific issues the company’s management had been forced to face:
Since 2012, the company has dramatically improved its technology and business models such that all of its 5 services are gross margin positive, ranging from 43% to 86% margin … The company also was able to achieve conversion rates from free trial to paid of between 64-78% for its services. Despite these positive metrics, the lifetime value (TLV) of a subscriber was still less than the cost to acquire subscribers (CPA), but they were converging. While we knew we could not get to break-even on our own, we believed that there were many large companies who would be able to get there.
In other words, in order to get to a break-even point, OnLive’s management felt the company needed to be offered-up for acquisition, albeit hopefully as a going concern.
Perhaps the first fully public hint that this was the case may have actually come in a blog post issued a couple of days ahead of Sony deal being announced. Of course, by the time the post appeared, the deal was undoubtedly cut and dried; nevertheless, The 2015 Case for Cloud Gaming and OnLive, could almost read as the company laying out its stall in order to attract a suitable investor / acquirer.
Despite the fact the Nvidia suggested OnLive themselves were helping to lift cloud gaming out of the Trough of Disillusionment towards its Plateau of Productivity, no-one was interested in acquiring the company as an operational concern when OnLive decided to seek outside assistance (image: Nvidia via OnLive)
Unfortunately, despite all the positive indicators they could show, the Cloud Gaming hype cycle had bitten hard; no-one OnLive approached was willing to take them on as a going concern. Not even the fact that Nvidia had indicated the worst was behind the sector, and that OnLive itself was helping to push the technology up the Slope of Enlightenment, could encourage anyone to acquire the company outright. Thus the deal with Sony for the IP and patents sale was agreed.
Why didn’t Sony acquire OnLive as a whole? Because they already have their own cloud gaming service, PlayStation Now, which came out of a 12-month beta programme in January 2015. The OnLive patents understandably offer more value when put to work within PlayStation Now than Sony would be liable to find in buying-out OnLive as a whole, so they didn’t bother.
Interestingly, and entirely coincidentally, PlayStation Now has its own link to Second Life. It is built on the back of Gaikai, a Japanese streaming game provider acquired by Sony in 2012. Gaikai is the company Linden Lab worked with in an attempt to provide the means of streaming Second Life to web browser, a service which underwent a limited beta run in 2010, as the video below demonstrates.
But to draw things to a close; however “unjust” it might appear, all of this means that SL Go cannot really be saved. The patents which enabled it to function are gone, and the services upon which it runs are closing down. The only real options are for someone else to come along and offer a similar service of their own, or for LL to work with a partner to provide such as services, as they once attempted with Gaikai.
Both would seem unlikely; in the case of the former, SL perhaps represents too small a community of users to be worth catering for (and remember, SL Go came about in part as a result of rather unique circumstances). And while I tend to lean towards LL having an interest in cloud-based streaming, I don’t think that interest is with regards to Second Life, so I can’t see them getting directly involved in trying to provide a streaming solution for SL access. If nothing else, they’ve likely got enough on their plate already.
SL Go was a great and brave experiment. It is a shame that its days are drawing to a close; but OnLive, through their services as a whole, have proven what might be achieved. In that respect, they are right when they proclaim that cloud gaming has a bright future.
As always, please refer to the server deployment thread in the forums for the latest information and updates.
There was no deployment to the Main SLS channel on Tuesday, March 31st, due to the inventory issues arising from the week #13 RC deployment – see my update here for details.
On Wednesday, April 1st, all three RCs received the same update to the current server maintenance package to fix the issues with Trash failing to purge in non-AIS v3 viewers (see BUG-8877. and my coverage of the recent issues here). Those suffering from inventory fetch failures on RC regions are advised to re-enable HTTP Inventory in their viewers, if disabled (found under the Develop menu).
SL Viewer
Wednesday, April 1st saw the release of the Project BigBird viewer (yes, seriously!), version 3.7.27.300377, which contains the various fixes for attachment issues which the Vir Linden has been working on. Specific fixes offered are listed as (note the MAINT designations are for the Lab’s internal JIRA, and thus non-viewable):
MAINT-4351 HUDs and attachments intermittently and randomly detach after teleports, sometimes reattaching on their own shortly after, sometimes staying detached completely, or showing as “worn on Invalid Attachment Point” while still detached
MAINT-4653 [Attachment-RC] When using “Add” or “Attach to” to attach multiple attachments at the same time, some attachments fall off and some get attached to the wrong attachment point
MAINT-4919 Attempting to wear an outfit with more than 40 attachments will fail
UDP Paths: HTTP Inventory, Textures and More
As noted at the top of this report, the week #13 RC deployments have been causing some inventory-related issues, one of which – the Trash purging problem – has been fixed with this week’s RC RC deployment.
The second issue – failures in inventory fetching following clearing cache on RCs regions – has been caused by a combination of the Lab deprecating the UDP message path for inventory updates and users having the HTTP Inventory option in the viewer (found under the Develop menu – CTRL-ALT-Q) disabled (unchecked).
Given this path has been deprecated, it is essential you keep HTTP Inventory enabled (the Lab will be removing the option from the Develop menu in the future to prevent it being unwittingly disabled).
Speaking at the Server Beta Meeting on Thursday, April 2nd, Oz Linden indicated that the Lab would be taking steps in the future to deprecate UDP messaging is “high on the list” for being deprecated in the future, given that textures have now moved to the CDN.
The CDN and Switching Further Services
While discussing the issue of UDP messaging, Oz again re-iterated the desire to pivot things like fetching animations and sounds away from UDP and onto HTTP, with the aim of provisioning them through the CDN, further lifting the load the simulators currently carry. However, he caveated this with two important points:
While this is something he’d like to see done, and is in the plans for SL’s future, the work hasn’t actually be scheduled yet, must less started; therefore it is not something that will be happening in the short-term (or perhaps even the medium term)
The Lab is working on a further round of CDN improvements – again, no time scale is available for their implementation – but there won’t be any additions to the data delivered via the CDN until after such improvements have been deployed.
One aspect here is that, in terms of the simulator load and in terms of the vast majority of users, the switch-over to avatar, mesh and texture data to CDN-based services has been a success for the Lab. However, as we’ve also seen, it has resulted in issues for some users, up to and including what is a degraded service due to the actions of at least one ISP. While the latter is not something the Lab or their CDN provider can directly tackle, it does point to the fact that while off-loading the heavy lifting from the Lab’s servers can make for improvements, it can affect users in other ways.
Hence why the Lab is being cautious in approach, and is continuing to work with its CDN providers to try to improve the service as far as can be done, in the hope of reducing the number of ways in which users might find SL a poorer experience as a result of the CDN implementation. However, exactly what can be achieved and issues mitigated, remains to be seen.
In the meantime, as as per part 1 of this week’s update, if you do feel mesh and texture rendering isn’t what it once was, try following Monty Linden’s interim ideas for easing things.
Update, Friday, April 3rd: An on-line petition has been started to try to persuade Sony to keep SL Go running as a service. In all honesty, the likelihood of this succeeding is less than slim, but if you would like to add your name to the petition, it can be found here.
On Thursday, April 2nd, it was announced that the SL Go streaming service supplied by OnLive has been discontinued.
The move is part of a wider shut-down of services that will take place on Thursday, April 30th, following a decision by the company to sell its portfolio of patents to Sony Computer Entertainment America.
It is with great sadness we must announce that OnLive’s SL Go service will be coming to an end. Sony is acquiring important parts of OnLive, and their plans don’t include a continuation of the SL Go service. However, your service should continue uninterrupted until April 30, 2015. No further subscription fees will be charged, and you can continue to enjoy SL Go on all of your devices until that date.
In our year of SL Go service, we have become quite close to the Second Life® community. Thanks to your patronage and constructive feedback, SL Go became one of OnLive’s most successful services. We know how important SL Go is for many of you, and it saddens us to bring the service to a close. We extend our heartfelt gratitude to you for being a part of “SL Go by OnLive” and wish you all the best.
With warmest regards,
Everyone at OnLive
SL Go provided a means to access Second Life through Android devices, followed by the iPad – something SL users had been hoping to see for years
In a personal address sent out to those with whom he’s been in contact with over the course of the last year or more, OnLive’s Product Manager for SL Go Dennis Harper – someone whom I’ve come to regard as a friend both in-world and through our communications outside of the platform – said:
To my good friends and partners in Second Life,
It breaks my heart to tell you that OnLive (OL2, Inc) has been acquired and will be closing down the game service, including SL Go. The official press release is attached.
SL Go Island will continue to exist for a while, but we have removed the Pay with L$ feature.
The OnLive and SL Go services will continue to operate in full capacity until April 30. All services will be free to anyone who has or creates an account. All prices for the service have been set to $0.00, including SL Go.
On a personal note; you all have been so supportive of SL Go. You have my heartfelt thanks for all you have done. I have made some good friends in SL and it greatly saddens me that this project is ending. You all have accepted us n00bs into your community and mentored us on what Second Life really is. I have learned so much! My sincere thanks to all of you.
This is and unfortunate end, not just for SL Go, but also for everyone at OnLive, a company which had come through a lot to provide a unique on-line gaming service and which has tried to enter a very unique environment with SL Go, and has done so by providing a very successful approach to providing access to Second Life (and OpenSim) to people while on the move through their delivery to Android and iPad devices, and to those using older, lower-specification hardware.
SL Go has also allowed users to enjoy the full richness of Second Life on relatively low-end machines. Following a recent severe hardware failure on my primary PC, SL Go became my primary means of accessing SL for some 2 weeks while the “main” machine was repaired; above, I’m running it on a humble 2 GB win 7/32 Asus PC EE 1201N
I’ve been fortunate enough to be somewhat closely involved in SL Go, initially being offered the opportunity to help beta the product, and then in helping to report on and promote the service, and (hopefully) provide OnLive, through Dennis and his team with useful feedback, support and advice.
As such, I’d like to take this opportunity to offer Dennis, Jeff, Shae, Jersey, Robby and everyone else at OnLive involved in SL Go – including Jane Anderson in the US and Mark Bevan here in the UK, my thanks and my heartfelt best wishes for the future. I do, however hope that we’ll continue to able to see one another in-world, at the very least.
In writing about the situation, in Ars Technica (linked to at the top of this article and in the links section below), Kyle Orland notes:
Looking back, it seems OnLive was just a little bit too far ahead of the curve, both in terms of market readiness and the Internet infrastructure necessary for streaming games. As low-latency bandwidth continues to become cheaper and more accessible around the world, it seems likely someone will nail the correct combination of business model, game selection, and easy-to-use interface to become the industry’s answer to Netflix. That company will owe a debt to OnLive for getting the ball rolling and proving that streaming gaming was something that was worth trying in the first place.
As always, please refer to the server deployment thread in the forums for the latest information and updates.
There was no deployment to the Main SLS channel on Tuesday, March 31st, due to the inventory issues arising from the week #13 RC deployment – see my update here for details.
On Wednesday, April 1st, all three RCs will receive the same update to the current server maintenance package. This update is specifically aimed at correcting the trash purging issue reported with BUG-8877. However, the fix does not address the issue of inventory fetching hanging if HTTP Inventory has been disabled within the viewer.
This is because the Lab regards UDP inventory fetching as a deprecated protocol path, as indicated by the release notes, and non-HTTP based inventory fetching is now being phased out. As such, it is anticipated the option to disable HTTP Inventory within the viewer is likely to be hidden / removed at some point in the future.
SL Viewer Updates
The Tools update RC viewer updates to version 3.7.27.300242 on Monday, March 30th, bringing it into line with the current release viewer (3.7.26 with Avatar Hover Height).
The Maintenance RC viewer updated to version 3.7.27.300323 on Tuesday, March 31st. also bringing it into line with the current release viewer, and includes fixes for many of the bugs and issues encountered with the initial release of the RC.
Other Items
Diagonal Region Rendering Issues
A fair while ago now (late 2012 / early 2013 in fact), I reported on issues that had been noted with regions seeming to be “missing” when seen from other regions.The problem was originally reported in SVC-8130, which is still marked as “unresolved”, and it had been hoped that fix for SVC-8019 would address the problem as well as dealing with other issues. However, the problem has continued intermittently ever since, with numerous issues marked as duplicates of SVC-8130 being reported, with the issue most recently being seen when looking at regions diagonally opposite Brocade on the Mainland.
The return of the missing regions issue (if it ever really went away): looking north-east from Brocade towards where Mullein isn’t on the Mainland. Not, as well, the region kitty-corner beyond Mullein is also absent the view, although both appear on the map
The problems are regarded as handshaking / communications issues between region, and are generally resolved through a region restart; although understandably, some holding regions on Mainland are reluctant to request a restart as this can affect multiple other region as well.
Multiple Calling Cards
Most of us are familiar with calling cards in the viewer. They can be obtained by friending someone, or by someone giving you their card (or you giving them your card, and are useful for things like opening people’s profiles from inventory (particularly handy in cases where you haven’t friended someone, and so don’t have to use search to locate them), or initiating an IM conference call.
One of the many calling cards issues – spawning multiple copies of the same card (images via Jessica Lyon)
However, within v3-style viewer they can also be annoying, as they have a tendency to multiple for no readily apparent reason. People can often have a set of calling cards under the Calling Cards folder, which can be partially replicated in the Friends sub-folder, and then fully replicated in the All sub-folder beneath that, for example. Or individual cards can get spawned multiple times across one or more folders for no readily apparent reason.
The problem here is that having a high load of calling cards can generate problems logging-in to SL, where they run out of curl multihandles, causing log-in to hang or for them to disconnect on logging-in. This can usually be solved through … wait for it … disabling HTTP Inventory and then logging-in and deleting them, but this may not be an option in the future (see the notes at the start of this report). Given that calling cards get re-spawned following a re-log after deletion, and can start multiplying again, Oz noted in the SUG meeting that they are now an area “worthy of some study”.
Rendering / Rezzing Failures and the CDN
In week #13 I reported on rendering / rezzing issues being experienced by some people in the Florida / Alabama region of the USA. Since that time, the Lab’s investigations through the CDN provider have suggested the the ISP in question (Mediacom) has degraded the service, possibly due to the volume of traffic coming from the CDN. This was a concern voiced early-on during the CDN implementation, but this appears to be the first time such a move has been confirmed. In the forum thread on the matter, which has seen more input on the situation, Monty Linden has offered some interim ideas that may help users experiencing problems, while also emphasising the Lab is still working with the CDN providers to further refine the service.
In the Firestorm Tool Tip Tuesday video for Tuesday March 31st, 2015, Jessica takes a look at the assorted tools and options Firestorm provides in order to assist people with in-world building. As with some of the other TTT video, various options described within the video are not exclusive to Firestorm, which makes the video a worthwhile watch by anyone wishing to get more to grips with building, manipulating prims, and so on; although admittedly, if you’re not using Firestorm, you’ll have to poke at your preferred viewer’s Preferences, etc., to see where the options might reside.
Starting with changing the default colour of the basic rezzed prim shapes, the default size, prim status (physical, phantom, etc), and the next owner permissions (a function now common to all viewers, including LL’s own), Jessica takes a rapid-fire run through many of the the more frequently used build options and tool additions.
The build sub-tabs on Firestorm, located under Preferences > Firestorm, present access to the majority of additional options and capabilities associated with building using the viewer
This includes a look as assorted features within the build floater itself, many of which are, again, presented through other viewers as well, including the ever-popular prim alignment option (which, sadly, remains as something the Lab have refused to adopt, as they feel it does not fulfil enough potential use cases, despite the fact it actually achieves precisely what it sets out to do).
The video concludes with a look at the Z-drop and Z-take options, which respectively allow you to drop the contents of a folder into an in-world prim without needing to select and physically drag-and-drop them, and to take a number of in-world objects and place them within a root folder in your inventory – both of which are powerful and useful options, before finally providing an overview of one of the most useful building resources within Second Life: Builder’s Brewery. You can also find out more about BB through their website.
Getting to grips with building isn’t easy, and while this video isn’t intended as a beginning guide, for those who have paddled in the shallows of building, it offers some very useful pointers. Even those with a little more experience might also find it contains some interesting little tips!
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 