SL Tech – Page 377 – Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld

SL project updates week 3 (1) Server and viewer + misc items

Posted on January 15, 2014September 27, 2024 by Inara Pey

Server Deployments: week 3, 2014

There are no server deployments this week on either Tuesday 14th (Main channel) or Wednesday 15th January (RC channels). The latter was anticipated to be the case, after Maestro Linden indicated there were no maintenance or other projects in the RC pipeline during the Server Beta meeting of Thursday January 9th.

While it had been thought that issues relating to STORM-1831 were not sufficient to prevent the RC package deployed in week 2 from being promoted to the Main channel, the decision has been taken to allow the package to run a further week on the RCs.

Week 4 Deployments

It now seems as if the plan is to deploy the RC maintenance project to the Main grid in week 4 (week commencing Monday January 20th), and to issue a new server maintenance project on the Wednesday of that week, although details on this have yet to be finalised.

SL Viewer

The Project Interesting viewer with the viewer-side interest list changes (notably the changes to how region information is cached and re-used by the viewer) gained a further update on Tuesday January 14th, with the release of release candidate 3.6.14.285213, which includes a number of additional bug fixes – see the release notes and download page.

STORM-1831: LSL Syntax Highlighting

This contribution by Ima Mechanic will allow LSL syntax highlighting in the viewer’s LSL editor to be updated and defined using a file obtained directly from the simulator the viewer is connected to, with the intention to eliminate issues of the viewer using outdated versions of the file. The server-side updates for this work are currently deployed to all three RC regions. However, as of the end of week 2, additional work was required on the syntax file itself.

In addition, there are a number of issues which are currently being addressed with the viewer-side code. These are listed on the JIRA for the project – STORM-1831, and require resolution prior to the code being issued in a release candidate viewer. Most of these are currently being worked on, and are not seen as major show-stoppers, but will delay the code’s appearance in the short-term.

Other Items

Values for brush constants in calls to llModifyLand

One issue which has (again) been raised through STORM-1831 is that the values for brush constants in calls to llModifyLand, used for scripted terraforming operations, are out by 1 each (they are set to 1, 2, 3 and should be 0, 1, 2). This means that, for example, a call using LAND_SMALL_BRUSH will edit an area of 4×4 metres, not 2×2. The wiki documentation for the function notes the error as well. As a result of discussing this issue in the Open-source Developer’s meeting on Monday January 13th, a STORM JIRA was raised to (again) highlight this issue (STORM-2006).

However, as the issue itself is actually related to either STORM-1831 per se and because it will actually require server-side changes, the issue is liable to be moved to a BUG status and triaged from there.

Snapshot uploads to the SL Feeds

“It has to do with authentication under the hood when getting the credentials and then using them to fetch the snapshot config info,” Simon Linden said at the Simulator User Group meeting on Tuesday January 14th. The problem is still being worked upon for those still affected by it (I am), but there is currently no ETA as to a complete fix for the matter.

With thanks to Mona Eberhardt for the meeting notes.

Viewer release summaries 2014: week 2

Posted on January 13, 2014March 16, 2020 by Inara Pey

Updates for the week ending: January 12th, 2014

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 on January 9th to version 3.6.13.284995 (formerly the PackageFix RC) – core update: fix for old versions of the viewer executables not being removed during viewer installation after the executable was remained in the 3.6.12 code (release notes)
Release channel cohorts (See my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself):
- No updates
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

No updates

V1-style

Cool VL updated on January 11th to:
- Stable version: 1.26.10.7
- Experimental version: 1.26.11.7
- Legacy version: 1.26.8.44
- Release notes (all) – backport of newest changes to llcorehttp and to mesh repository code from LL’s new viewer_http branch; FMOD Ex updated to v4.44.29; support for the new linkset uniform scaling LSL functions; status bar tidy-up and code clean-ups

Mobile / Other Clients

No updates

Additional TPV Resources

Third-party Viewer Directory – LL

Kokua Mac test viewer: request for assistance

Posted on January 13, 2014May 25, 2020 by Inara Pey

On Saturday January 11th, Nicky Perian announced a test version of a Mac build of Kokua is now available, and has also issued a call for assistance from Kokua / Mac users.

The blog post reads in part:

Several hours ago the first Mac build completed and I logged on to Second Life beta grid, Aditi. Rebranding from Second Life to Kokua is needed. If there are Mac users that would like to help in this area please respond and I’ll help set up a build environment on your system. I would like Mac users to test and provide look and feel opinions as comments to this post. If there are bugs please report them to our issue tracker.

Having a Mac build of the viewer has been one of the more popular requests made to the Kokua team, so if you have a Mac system and are willing to help out test-driving the new Mac build and reporting back both opinions (via the Kokua blog post) and on any issues you discover (the latter via the Kokua issue tracker, as indicated above), please download the viewer from the Kokua nightly builds directory.

Similarly, if you are willing to help with rebranding the viewer from Second Life to Kokua (which, as noted above, will require a viewer build environment created on your system which Nicky can provide help with setting-up), do please contact Nicky either directly (via in-world IM or through the comments on the Kokua blog post.

(Please do not leave feedback or offers of assistance on this blog, they may not be picked-up.).

Release Notes

Kokua Mac test viewer available – Kokua blog
Kokua nightly builds directory – for the latest build downloads
Kokua issue tracker

SL projects update: week 2 (2): Fitted mesh, breedable issues and [L4L]-Gestures & Walkers (Freebies) <3

Posted on January 10, 2014September 27, 2024 by Inara Pey

Week 2 Deployments – Recap

On Tuesday January 7th, the Main channel received the server maintenance project that had been on the RC channels for the past few weeks. It contains a single bug fix, related to vehicles becoming stuck in the ‘sat upon’ state (which prevents parcel auto return)
On Wednesday January 8th, all three RC channels received a new server maintenance project, which contains some crash fixes and the new LSL functions for uniformly scaling linksets, all of which are immediately accessible using current viewers (see part one of this week’s report for details). This project also contains updates related to STORM-68 and STORM-1831, both of which require viewer-side updates which have yet to be released by the Lab.

LSL Syntax Highlighting Updates

Related to STORM-1831, these updates, which were deployed to the RC channels as noted above, will eventually see the viewer able to fetch LSL syntax highlighting rules directly from the simulator. However, there are currently some errors in the syntax file as deployed to the RC channels this week (repeating text, bad whitespace, or inaccurate definitions of functions), which require further corrective work. As there is currently no publicly available viewer which can use this new capability, it is unlikely this issue will prevent the server maintenance project from being promoted to the Main channel in week 3.

The file is designed to be cached by the viewer (once the viewer-side updates are released), and is around some 600KB in size. This means that the file should only ever be downloaded and updated if the LSL editor is open, and the viewer detects a version number difference between the file it has cached and the file held by the simulator to which it is connected.

It is unclear when the viewer-side updates for this work will appear. While planned to arrive in a release candidate viewer containing a number of Snowstorm updates, it appears there are still a few bugs in the STORM-1831 code, such as with function arguments being presented in an incorrect order in the tool tips, which may delay its inclusion.

Week 3 Deployments

It is likely the server project currently on the three RCs will be promoted to the Main channel in week 3 (commencing Monday January 13th). However, it is also likely there will be no RC updates for the week, as there are no server maintenance updates ready to go, and no other projects (such as group ban lists) are in a position to be deployed.

The first Server Beta UG meeting of 2014

Viewer News

Release Viewer

Thursday January 9th saw the PackageFix viewer (dated January 2nd, 2014) promoted to the de facto release viewer. As per pervious notes in this blog, this viewer has no SL-related functional updates. Rather, it corrects an issue introduced with the 3.6.12 code base whereby the Windows executable name was changed from “SecondLife” to “SecondLifeViewer”, without removing any executable using the “SecondLife” name from the installation folder. As a result, any shortcuts pointing to the “old” executable would allow it to run if used, thus potentially triggering further auto-updates.

With this fix, any executables using the old name (“SecondLife”) are removed from the installation folder, so any shortcuts created to them will cause Windows to display an error message, and the user can then remove them or modify them to point to the correct executable.

Fitted Mesh Progress

Oz Linden is anticipating a release candidate of the Fitted Mesh viewer Real Soon Now^TM. There are currently no open issues at present, and work is underway to move it to a release candidate status. Exactly how soon “Real Soon Now” might be, however, is a little up in the air, as Oz went on to note at the Open-source Dev meeting on Wednesday January 8th, saying, “there are a bunch of steps [still to be taken] and I don’t know how long they’ll end up taking.”

Continue reading “SL projects update: week 2 (2): Fitted mesh, breedable issues and [L4L]-Gestures & Walkers (Freebies) <3” →

SL projects updates week 2 (1): server releases, AIS v3

Posted on January 7, 2014September 27, 2024 by Inara Pey

The first Simulator User Group meeting of 2014

Server Deployments: week 2, 2014

As always, please refer to the week’s forum deployment thread for the latest news and updates.

Main Channel: Tuesday January 7th

The main channel received the server maintenance project that had been on the RC channels for the past few weeks. It contains a single bug fix, related to vehicles becoming stuck in the ‘sat upon’ state (which prevents parcel auto return).

This issue is related to vehicles getting into a “bad” state if they lose the passenger right at region crossing. The vehicle is left with what is effectively a “ghost rider” sitting in it, which defeats parcel auto return, leaving the vehicle in-world.

Release Candidate Channels, Wednesday January 8th

All three RC channels should receive a new server maintenance project, which contains some crash fixes and the new LSL functions for uniformly scaling linksets.

The uniform scaling project was one of the last projects Andrew Linden worked on prior to departing the Lab at the end of 2013. The new functions comprise:

integer llScaleByFactor(float scaling_factor)
- Uniformly resizes the linkset by the given multiplicative scale factor (e.g. 2.0 to double the scale in all dimensions)
- Returns TRUE if rescaling was successful or FALSE otherwise
- This function only succeeds in non-physical objects
- Rescaling is subject to Linkability_Rules and prim scale limits
float llGetMinScaleFactor()
- Returns the minimum multiplicative scale factor which can be used by llScaleByFactor(); i.e. such that every prim in the linkset is >=1mm in scale
float llGetMaxScaleFactor()
- Returns the maximum multiplicative scale factor which can be used by llScaleByFactor(); i.e. such that every prim in the linkset is <=64m and the resulting linkset meets linkability requirements

In addition, the RC project includes server-side support for custom default permissions on newly created objects. This is again some of the last pieces of server-side work Andrew Linden was involved in prior to his departure, and forms the server-side work related to STORM-68. The viewer element of this work is a third-party code contribution from Jonathan Yap, and should be appearing in a Snowstorm RC viewer in the near future.

Finally, the RC project also contains the server-side work to allow to fetch LSL syntax rules directly from the simulator, rather than downloading them from a manually maintained file. This should enable up-to-date syntax highlighting within the script editor. This work forms a part of STORM-1831, which is a third-party viewer project developed by Ima Mechanic. Again, the viewer-side updates should be appearing in a Snowstorm RC viewer in the near future.

Sunshine AIS v3

During the Content Creation meeting on Monday January 6th, Nyx Linden reported at the next round of server-side changes for the Sunshine / AIS v3 updates are currently being “queued-up” ready for deployment – although not day is as yet available for when they’ll actually see the light of day.

In the meantime, the viewer-side changes are progressing, and are “nearing readiness for release as a test viewer. Those who have been following my AIS updates will know that the Lab has been encouraging TPVs to adopt the viewer-side code updates for use in experimental versions of their viewers, as LL would like to run a pile-on test to test the new AIS updates and inventory handling using regions on the Beta (Aditi) grid. There had been hopes within the Lab that such testing might take place prior to the end-of-year holidays, so expect to be hearing more on this in the near future.