There have been concerns and rumours circulating about Metabolt, the text-based client for Second Life and OpenSim. The last update occurred in August 2013; the long delay coupled with the recent unavailability of the Metabolt website, fuelled rumours that the client was being discontinued.
However, this is not the case; CasperTech are stepping-in to take over curating the project, as an announcement on the Metabolt website reveals:
Same Viewer. New Opportunities
It was recently announced that the METAbolt project was being discontinued. We are very happy to announce that this has not happened, and instead CasperTech have stepped in to curate and maintain the project.
CasperTech is a leading provider of solutions for content creators within Second Life. We believe that METAbolt will benefit from our strong legacy and foundations.
It is not our intention to commercialise the project, and we will maintain it in the same spirit of open source community collaboration. We do intend, however, to rejuvenate the METAbolt community with active development, support and new innovation. We are very excited by this opportunity, and we hope you are, too!
Please bear with us while we complete the transitional period – we’re working on a new website and will be making our first release of METAbolt soon.
– Casper Warden, CasperTech Ltd.
While the new Metabolt site is being set-up, a link to the download page / source code for the current release of the client is included below the message.
Metabolt: set to continue thanks to CasperTech
Metabolt is popular text-based client for users of various types of bot in SL (such as the Pandora Bot), which can be used for a variety of role, such as greeters, automated assistants, etc. As such, the news that the client looks set to continue should be warmly received.
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 Viewer Round-up 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
By its nature, this summary will always be in arrears
The Viewer Round-up Page is updated as soon as I’m aware of any releases / changes to viewers & clients, and should be referred to for more up-to-date information
The Viewer Round-up Page also 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.
Official LL Viewers
Current Release version: updated to 3.7.0.286015 on February 10th (Fitted Mesh viewer), then to version 3.7.1.286557 (Facebook hotfix) on February 14th (release notes)
HTTP RC updated on February 13th to version 3.7.1.286567 – core updates: DNS look ups changed; improvements to mesh uploads / downloads (download and release notes)
Project viewers:
Sunshine / AIS v3 project viewer updated to version 3.7.1.286565 on February 13th – core updates: removal of old viewer-side baking code, stability and performance improvements (download and release notes)
Black Dragon updated to version 2.3.9.4 on February 16th – core updates: merge with LL HTTP updates, rendering improvements, UI updates (release notes)
CtrlAltStudio Alpha version for Oculus Rift updated to 1.1.8.34412 Alpha 8 on February 10th – core updates: et display output to 120Hz for stereoscopic 3D; slider to control speed at which turning head in Riftlook turns avatar; variable avatar walk / fly speed for SpaceNavigator (release notes)
UKanDo updated to version 3.7.0.27930 on February 14th – core updates: merge with LL 3.7.0 code base; merge with RLV 2.8.5.9; Options added for MUpose and OOC Brackets (also working with RLV disabled) (release notes)
V1-style
Cool VL Stable version updated to 1.26.10.11; Experimental version to 1.26.11.11 and Legacy version to 1.26.8.48 all on February 15th – core updates: Fitted Mesh support; backport of LL’s “Show on Map” feature in the inventory context menu for landmarks; backport of merchant outbox fixes; fixes and a speed optimization to render debug features from Singularity; FmodEx updates; code clean-up (all); fix to a materials rendering glitch from Singularity (1.26.10.11 / 1.26.11.11), crash bug fixes to the new object caching code from LL’s viewer-interesting (1.26.11.11) – release notes
Mobile / Other Clients
Mobile Grid Client updated to version 1.21.1207 and then to 1.21.1212 (February 16th) – core updates: connectivity issue fix for new (Z10) BlackBerry devices; fix for crash when using a mouse
On Saturday February 15th 2014, the Firestorm team hosted a meeting to cover news on the upcoming release of Firestorm, projects they’re working on, and to answer audience questions.
While the meeting was recorded, the Firestorm team are aware that many of their users have hearing difficulties, and / or prefer to read text, so this transcript has been supplied on their behalf.
When reading, please remember:
This is not a word-for-word transcript of the entire meeting. While all quotes given are as they are spoken in the video, to assist in readability and maintain the flow of conversation, not all asides, jokes, interruptions, etc., have been included in the text presented here
If there are any sizeable gaps in comments from a speaker which resulted from asides, repetition, questions to others etc,, these are indicated by the use of “…”
Timestamps are provided as guidance should anyone wish to hear the comments in full from any speaker on the video
Questions /comments were made in chat while speakers were talking. This inevitably meant that replies to questions would lag well behind when they were originally asked. To provide context between questions and answers, questions in the transcript are given (in italics) at the point at which each is addressed by a member of the Firestorm team, either in voice or via chat.
Please note: This transcript is provided for informational purposes only. I am not an official member of the Firestorm team, and technical or support issues relating to Firestorm cannot easily be addressed through these pages. Such requests for assistance should be made through the in-world Firestorm Support groups or at the Firestorm support region.
The TL;DR Summary
Items here are presented in the order in which they are likely to be of interest to users, rather than chronologically. Timestamps in braces refer to times in the video where the relevant commentary can be heard. All sections are expanded upon in the main transcript – click on the timestamp to go to them.
[0:51:07] The next release of Firestorm will be out around March 9th – possibly a little before, possibly after. Some of what should be in it includes:
From LL: Fitted Mesh, HTTP (hopefully – see HTTP discussion), SLShare (Facebook support), Request teleport, New region restart warnings
RLVa 1.4.9, Animation Explorer, Area Search updates, revised Contacts Sets, Mmany mini-map updates (from Exodus), avatar shape XML import, group list .CSF export, materials support in object exporter, Phototools updates, anti-spam updates, and more
Major and minor bug fixes
[0:17:57] Firestorm Download Server: Firestorm have been forced to discontinue using Google cloud as their viewer download service due to reasons of costs following to changes to Google’s service. As a result, after looking at options for offering viewer downloads, the team has opted to invest in a dedicated download server of their own. This may lead to issues being experienced when downloading future releases of Firestorm. Details in the section Firestorm Download Server
[0:07:54] Cinder Roxley, one of the core Firestorm developers and open-source code contributors to the Lab, has departed Second Life, leaving something of a large hole in the Firestorm team
[0:07:54] Leap Motion: work is underway, now to be led by David Rowe (Strachan Ofarrell in SL), who develops CtrlAltStudio, who is partnering with Firestorm to carry the project forward. Work has started on camera manipulation, object manipulation and avatar movement. However, there is still a major amount of work to be done, at least some of which is contingent upon Leap Motion producing an releasing an update for the device itself. It is therefore unlikely any work on Leap Motion will be appearing in the near future, and certainly on in the next Firestorm release
[0:27:55] Voice issues: Vivox has offered to assist the Lab in dealing with at least some of the issues with SL voice. A new SDK (SLvoice plugin) is due to be released soon. If it arrives in time, it may be incorporated into the upcoming Firestorm release
[1:13:34] Mac issues: and update on matters for Mac users.
[0:41:02] HTTP: Tankmaster Finesmith has been merging the Lab’s HTTP updates into his own Firestorm repository. Depending on what happens the Lab’s HTTP viewer updates, Tank’s work may be merged into the upcoming Firestorm release and form a part of it
The following notes are taken from the TPV Developer meeting of Friday February 14th, a video of which is included below. My thanks, as ever, to North for the latter. Timestamps relative to the recording are given in braces both at the start of each section and within the text where appropriate.
SL Viewer
Release Viewer Update
[01:20] The Facebook Hotfix RC (version 3.7.1.286557) released on February 12th was promoted to the de factorelease viewer on Friday February 14th. Based on the Fitted Mesh viewer code, this viewer has a single fix for a problem in the in-viewer web browser that made it impossible to login correctly into Facebook. The rapid promotion was made because the issue was seen as obnoxious by those people who have connected their SL and Facebook accounts, and it was felt those who do may want to post Valentines-related messages and images to their Facebook accounts.
HTTP RC
Robbie Monty Linden sports new look
[02:32 and 36:56] As noted in part 2 of this report, the HTTP viewer has been rebuilt using the Facebook Hotfix / Fitted Mesh viewer code to version 3.7.1.286567.
However, it has suffered from the number of RCs currently in the queue, or as poor Monty put it, getting “stuck behind everyone”. This viewer has one of the lowest crash rates on record as an RC, and given this, the expectation is that it will be promoted to release status “pretty soon”.
One of the major issues Monty faced with the viewer-side updates was directly related to mesh, and thread race conditions, and he admits that not all of these have been resolved. This is partially due to some of them being infrastructure-related Heisenbugs, which are time and labour-intensive to resolve. However, they shouldn’t impact the stability of the updates made to date.
Remaining RC viewers
[03:54] The three remaining RC viewers – the Maintenance RC (3.6.14.285499), Interest List RC (3.6.14.285213) and Google Breakpad RC (3.6.14.285686) are in the process of being rebuilt to the 3.7.1 release code, so updated versions should be appearing in the release channel in the next week (ish).
Project Viewers
[04:23]
It is unclear whether the Merchant Outbox project viewer (3.6.13.284731) will move forward or pulled back to have some more work done on it, and it is unlikely to move towards viewer release “any time soon”
The Sunshine / AIS v3 project viewer was rebuilt to the 3.7.1 code (Fitted Mesh and the Facebook Hotfix), with a new version (3.7.1.286565) appearing on February 14th. It is anticipated that this viewer will move forward to a release candidate status fairly quickly now that the Facebook Hotfix has been promoted, reducing the number of viewer RC cohorts currently in the release channel.
AIS v3
[05:16 and 14:50] A surprising piece of news passed-on in the meeting was that the AIS v3 server-side code has been deployed across all channels on the Main grid. This initially caused some confusion during the meeting , as there has been no mention of this in any server-side release notes. Nyx Linden queried the situation with the ops tem and received a confirmation that the new AIS capabilities had been deployed to Agni [21:40, via text], but are currently disabled [22:29 via text]. It would seem likely that the capabilities will be enabled once the Sunshine / AIS v3 project viewer moves to release candidate status.
Voice
[07:35] There have been a number of issues with regards to voice in SL, particularly of late. As noted in my week 6 report, there was some recent back-end work carried out which should improve things for those using viewers running with the most recent versions of the voice SDK (SLvoice.exe).
Discussing the matter at the TPV Developer meeting, Oz Linden revealed that Vivox had reached out to the Lab to assist with issues being experienced, and as a result of this underlined the issues with viewers using older versions of the SDK (and which will not see any real improvements to their voice performance as a result). Vivox have requested that TPVs provide details on any older versions of the SDK they are running, and details of specific issues they are encountering, as well as offering encouragement to update.
As a new version of the SDK is due to be released in the near future (hopefully within a couple of weeks), it may prove to be an opportunity for TPVs to update, given it has a number of audio quality fixes and Vivox have offered to assist in dealing with issues being experienced with voice in SL.
In addition to this, Oz is looking to work with Vivox to try to get any new versions of the SDK used by the viewer made available to TPVs at the same time it is made available to the Lab, thus eliminating the need for TPVs having to wait for LL to QA and integrate the package into the LL code prior to being able to merge it into their own code, allowing them to test new SDK releases in parallel with the Lab. These will hopefully include 64-bit binaries of the SDK as well a 32-bit versions.
Group Ban Lists
[48:23] It had been hoped that Baker Linden might be providing an update on the overall status of his group ban list work. However, this was unfortunately not the case, although Oz provided a small update on things, stating that he has been able to sit down with Baker to review the updated viewer code, which is now with QA. Hopefully this means it will be appearing in at least a project viewer in the near future.
The Server Beta UG meeting, Thursday February 13th, 2014
Server Deployments: week 7 – recap
As always, please refer to the server deployment thread in the forums for the latest updates / changes.
On Tuesday February 11th, the Main channel received the server maintenance package previously deployed to the RC channels in week 6, which includes a crash fix.
There were no updates to the RC channels.
Upcoming Deployments – week 8
As there was no deployment to the RC channels this week, there is nothing to be promoted to the Main channel in week 8 (week commencing Monday 17th February). However, according to Maestro Linden, speaking at the Server Beta meeting on Thursday February 13th, there will a new maintenance package deployed to the RCs on Wednesday February 19th.
This will include a fix for an issue reported in BUG-5034, whereby if an Estate Manager restarts a region and then immediately teleports out when there are no other avatars in the region, the Estate Manager will be logged out of Second Life just after the teleport completes.
That Estate Managers tend to encounter the issue may be purely down to the fact they are the last to leave a region on a manual restart; there are reports of some being disconnected when teleporting out of a region during a rolling restart.
The issue has been problematic for the Lab to reproduce, and is possibly related to users with higher ping times. The thinking is that the restart is occurring before the avatar is properly reported as having left the region (there is still a child agent present), so the viewer ends up disconnecting. The fix being implemented is to adjust the restart process so the simulator waits just a little longer prior to the actual restart being initiated.
SL Viewer Updates
HTTP RC
Following the promotion of the Fitted Mesh viewer to the de facto release viewer on February 10th, The HTTP RC became the first of the existing RC viewer to be updated to include the Fitted Mesh code and was updated to version 3.7.1.286567 on February 13th.
Facebook Hotfix RC
A new RC appeared on February 12th, with the release of version 3.7.1.286557 on February 12th. This again includes the Fitted Mesh code, but the release is actually to fix a problem in the viewer’s built-in web browser which makes it impossible to login correctly into Facebook.
This puts the total count of current RC cohorts in the viewer release channel at 5, so it is unlikely there will be further RC viewers appearing until this list has been thinned down a little (which does not mean there will be no releases of any project viewers waiting in the works).
Avatar Physics
The arrival of fitted Mesh, which works with most avatar physics (except belly), has led to renewed discussion over issues around problems with avatar physics being so dependent upon viewer frame rates, with the result that lower frame rates can result in wildly exaggerated movement (see both VWR-25545 (publicly viewable) and FIRE-12386. for details).
Whether or not the issue will be addressed (or can be reasonably addressed) remains to be seen; how many people actually use avatar physics is unclear. However, the fact that avatar physics can be used with fitted Mesh may see a wider use of the former as the latter gains more of a foothold, in turn increasing calls for the issue to be dealt with.
News is a little light at the moment., although there are a number of things in the works and yet to be opened to public viewing.
Server Deployments: week 7
As always, please refer to the server deployment thread in the forums for the latest updates / changes.
On Tuesday February 11th, the Main channel received the server maintenance package previously on the three RC channels which includes a crash fix.
There will be no RC channel deployments, and it is not anticipated that the RC regions will not be subject to a rolling restart.
This means there will be no Main channel deployment in week 8 (week commencing Monday February 17th. However, there should be a new server maintenance package deployed that week.
SL Viewer Updates
Fitted Mesh
The Fitted Mesh RC version: 3.7.0.286015 was promoted to the de facto release viewer on Monday February 10th, complete with a video from Torley Linden.
See my coverage here, and my Fitted Mesh preview article (now slightly dated).
As a result of this, the remaining RC viewers will be updated in due course to match the current release build.
Group Ban Lists
The work on group ban list functionality is going through a further round of internal testing at LL. It is still anticipated that a project viewer will be emerging for testing on Aditi (the Beta grid) in the very near future.
There have been concerns and rumours circulating about Metabolt, the text-based client for Second Life and OpenSim. The last update occurred in August 2013; the long delay coupled with the recent unavailability of the Metabolt website, fuelled rumours that the client was being discontinued.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 