Category: SL Tech

Kokua 3.6.2: all set for auto-update

Posted on by Inara Pey

Update August 21st: Nicky Perrian from Kokua has added a comment about a Windows issue with uninstalling, due to a change in the installer.

kokua-logoKokua released version 3.6.2.29072 on August 16th, becoming the first TPV to start operating LL’s viewer update capability since the Lab formally announced it was making the capability available to TPVs if they want to make use of it (Catznip has actually has an auto update capability since release R7, but I’m not clear on whether that uses any of the LL code, or is something the Catznip team built for themselves). Along with this change comes a number of smaller updates.

Download and Installation

The latest Kokua installer (Windows) weighs-in at 36.8 Mb. As expected, the installer runs without a hitch. As I’m still getting around to re-installing viewers on an “as needed” basis on the new PC, I didn’t have to perform a clean install (not that one is recommended in the release notes).

Auto Update

Oz Linden announced that the Lab would be making their viewer release mechanism available to TPVs via an e-mail earlier in the month and also at the TPV developer meeting on Friday August 9th, when he indicated that the Lab were already working with some viewer development teams to help them implement it, Kokua clearly being one of them.

Kokua implements LL's viewer update mechanism code
Kokua implements LL’s viewer update mechanism code

With Kokua, the update options are presented exactly as they are in the official viewer – complete with the check box to update to release candidates. Whether this means Kokua will be completely following suit with the overall release process implemented by the Lab, I’ve no idea.

Obviously, while the code is from LL, viewer updates obtained via it are still coming from Kokua – it doesn’t mean people sill suddenly start getting SL viewer updates!

The change does mean that from now on, updates will be obtained from Kokua’s SourceForge repository as the code does not work with BitBucket. However, the team are at present continuing to post updates to both BitBucket and SourceForge.

Additional Updates

This release brings the viewer up to parity with the Linden Lab 3.6.2 code base, which means it has the more recent materials processing code updates, although not necessarily the very latest to surface in the SL Materials Project viewer, and well as other recent updates within the official viewer. Other notable updates comprise:

  • A return to standard SL viewer Debug for the login menu. This allows the selection of Debug level before logging in
  • “Stop animating me” short cut has been assigned to Shift-S
  • There are several Linux build changes to allow compiling on current compilers (builds on gcc-4.7 and gcc-4.8 have webkit runtime issues)
  • Maximum number of groups has been corrected for OpenSim
  • Freeze/Unfreeze and Eject/Ban context menu options have been added to the people / radar floater, as per Feature Request #1254
  • The Reach Out slider on the people floater mini-map is renamed Radar Range, has been repositioned above the mini-map and now has a maximum range of 4095 metres
  • The Map button in the tool bar is renamed World Map
  • Clicking on the bandwidth or packet loss graph will bring up the Statistics floater
  • The middle mouse button can now be used as a paste function and / or to scroll the world map.

This is another small but very tidy update for Kokua, and the release notes are available on the Kokua blog. While I only had a very brief time to try it out over the weekend, I didn’t notice any issues of import / impact (other than the issue of mesh clothing on other avatars failing to render, which I frequently encounter on Firestorm and the official SL viewer, so is not a Kokua issue).

All-in-all a tidy update.

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Server-side Appearance to go live across the grid August 20th/21st

Posted on by Inara Pey

A blog post has appeared from the Lab announcing that Project Sunshine – otherwise known as Server-side Appearance (or Baking as was), and a part of the Project Shining initiative – will go live across the grid this week.

The blog post doesn’t provide any date(s) by which this will occur, however Nyx Linden has confirmed that:

  • The Main channel will have Server-side Appearance (SSA) enabled following the server deployments on Tuesday August 20th
  • BlueSteel and LeTigre will have SSA enabled following the Release Candidate deployments on Wednesday August 21st (as Magnum is currently the only channel with SSA enabled).

So, if you haven’t already updated to an SSA-capable viewer, you have less than 24 hours in which to do so before you start seeing a lot of avatars failing to render correctly.

Currently, all maintained TPV viewers with the exception of Dolphin (V3-style) and Imprudence (V1-style) support SSA rendering of avatars.

Commenting on the upcoming enabling, Nyx Linden said:

We have stats that show that it should speed up avatar loading time for everyone, so hopefully it will go smoothly and be a great improvement across the grid.

As with previous blog-posts on the subject, the Lab have included a viewer of the new service and what it means.

So, as the video says, “Don’t be cloudy and grey, enjoy Sunshine today!”

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Viewer release summary 2013: week 33

Posted on by Inara Pey

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.

Updates for the week ending: August 19th, 2013

Official LL Viewers

LL Viewer Resources

Third-party Viewers

  • Kokua updated on August 16th to version 3.6.2.29072 – core updates: parity with LL 3.6.2 codebase; implementation of LL auto-update capability; assorted updates (release notes)
  • Restrained Love Viewer updated on August 16th to version 2.8.5.2 – core update: invisi-prims support fix; Linux and Mac version also updated to 2.8.5.2 (release notes)
  • Cool VL updated on August 17th to:
  • Singularity updated on August 12th to version 1.8.1.4863 – core updates: Media on a Prim (MOAP), Voice code update; Wavefront and Collada export; Web Profile and V3 Web Search support; Updated SSA code; OpenSim Hypergrid and high altitude building support, and more (release notes)
  • Group Tools updated on August 18th to version 2.2.20.

Additional TPV Resources

Depreciated / Discontinued Viewers

  • SL Second Life Beta viewer – depreciated as of version 3.6.2.278491, July 15, 2103
  • SL Development viewer – depreciated as of version 3.5.2.274629 April 24, 2013
  • Zen Viewer – discontinued by developer and no longer available, January 27th, 2013
  • Phoenix viewer – development and support ended on December 31st, 2012

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SL projects update week 33 (2): server releases, group ban list, texture issues

Posted on by Inara Pey

Server Deployments Week 33

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

  • As noted in part 1 of this report, there was no deployment to the Main channel in week 33, as a result of the “grey box” attachment issue appearing in the week 32 BlueSteel deployment
  • The Magnum RC channel remained on SSA, with no other updates
  • The LeTigre RC received a new server maintenance package with “under the hood changes” which should not be visible / perceptible to users. This package saw the removal of SSA from LeTigre – Caleb Linden apologised at the Server Beta meeting for the confusion this caused as the forum thread & release notes did not initially make it clear
  • The BlueSteel RC received further updates to the fixes released in week 32 and the fix for the “grey box” attachment issue

Viewer Updates

The CHUI RC viewer updated to release 3.6.3.279849 on August 15th (download & release notes). The Materials project viewer also underwent a further update to release 3.6.3.279904 on August 16 (download & release notes).

Server-side Appearance

As noted above, SSA is currently only enabled on Magnum for the time being. A decision will be made on Monday August 19th on server-side updates and deployments, and until then the Lab is keeping quiet as to what may or may not happen in terms of SSA enabling. However, from comments passed in recent discussions and a hint in the forum deployment thread, it would appear that if the data obtained from Magnum during the week remains solid, SSA might be considered ready for “prime time” in week 34.

The removal of SSA from LeTigre did cause some confusion, with at least one JIRA (SUN-109) being raised as a result. Given the JIRA refers to the slowness of avatar rendering, rather than to any overall failures (which shouldn’t happen anyway, given the viewer code is currently backwards compatible with the “old” avatar baking service), this tends to point to the fact that the rapid nature of SSA baking is being appreciated.

Group Ban list

The obligatory Baker Linden shot :)
The obligatory Baker Linden shot 🙂

“Group bans are coming along pretty well,” Baker Linden informed his ‘Thursday after meeting class’.  He went on:

I chose to take the rest of this week to improve the code rather than continue progressing. I really hated copying an entire source file without trying to refactor it … So now it’s refactoring, cleaning up, and after that the viewer will be finished. Well, I need to add the functionality to some other subsystems and have it actually send an HTTP message but that stuff is all stubbed in anyway.

Some of the cleaning up work apparently involves  removing the, umm, colourful metaphors he used when first commenting on the code to highlight those bits he wanted to poke about at. These have apparently been causing a few giggles among those able to peek into the repository!

Given the work is still ongoing, there is no ETA for a project or beta viewer as yet, and this may be delayed a little more while Baker considers the problem of group chat.

Because of the way in which group chat works, anyone who is removed from a group while they have the group chat window open is actually able to continue chatting / spamming within the group until they close the group chat window, unless the group moderator remembers to block them from chat first. This hadn’t been on Baker’s radar, and he’s going to take a look around and see what can / needs to be done to try to make sure the group ban function won’t suffer this weakness, if possible.

Continue reading “SL projects update week 33 (2): server releases, group ban list, texture issues” →

Singularity 1.8.1: MOAP, Voice Morph, Object & Shape Import / Export, and More

Posted on by Inara Pey

singularitySingularity updated to version 1.8.1 on August 12th, as noted on this week’s viewer round-up summary. There are a lot of updates in the release, including extended import / export capabilities.

The following is a look at the principal updates in the 1.8.1 release. For information on contribution credits, please refer to the Singularity release notes.

Windows Download and Install

The new version has seen some extensive code clean-up, which may have contributed to the installer weighing-in at 5Mb smaller than the 1.8.0 installer. As always, installation was painless and quick; as this is the first time I’ve installed Singularity on my new system, I didn’t have any concerns about clean installs (which tend to be a rarity with Singularity away, as it just gets on and does the job).

Media on a Prim / Shared Media

The headline announcement for the release is that Singularity supports Media on a Prim (MOAP), the ability to see and interact with shared media (such as viewing a web page displayed on a prim, or watching a YouTube video, etc. Shared media AutoPlay is disabled by default, but can be enabled if preferred, via Preferences > Audio & Video and checking Automatically Play Prim Media.

Import / Export Options

While MOAP is the headline update for Singularity, it’s the enhanced import / export options which are liable to be of particular interest, especially to content creators.

In covering this, I’m going to stay first-off and in large, friendly letters, that Singularity respects object permissions. Therefore, it will only export those items for which you are owner and creator in full, and it will not let people run away and do naughty things.

Support for uploading .anim files has been added to Singularity 1.8.1, along with the following.

linden_ genepool Export / Import

For those working with avatar shapes, perhaps the interesting news is that Singularity 1.8.1 now supports wearable export/import in linden_genepool format. This means shapes supported in this format (saved as XML) can not only be used in Blender/Avastar, they can be re-imported into SL with the need to fiddle with the shape sliders after being modified externally using something like Blender.

Wavefront and Collada Export

Pie menu .OBJ and .DAE export options
Pie menu .OBJ and .DAE export options

Singularity 1.8.1 also includes the ability to export those objects to which you have full permissions (again, creations which are entirely your own) as .OBJ or .DAE files (as well as to .XML via the pre-existing Export option).

The options can be accessed directly by right-clicking on the object in-world and selecting MORE > MORE > TOOLS in the pie menu. If you do not have permission to export the selected object, the export options will be grayed out and non-selectable.

Voice Updates

Voice morphing becomes available in Singularity with 1.8.1. This subscription service provided by Linden Lab allows people to use – wait for it – voice morphing in Second Life, and has been a part of SL since the arrival of Viewer 2.1. With Singularity, options are accessed via the Active Speakers floater (requires Voice to be enabled, obviously), and the overall UI changes are shown in the image below.

Voice morphing and updates in singularity 1.8.1 (image courtesy of the Singularity team)
Voice morphing and updates in singularity 1.8.1 – click to enlarge (image courtesy of the Singularity team)

Alongside this update is the ability to adjust your own voice volume from the Active Speakers floater.

Radar Updates and Avatar Lists Right-click Options

There have been a number of tweaks to the Radar floater with the new release, and those familiar with Singularity will quickly spot them.

This release also sees a right-click functionality added to avatar lists – such as the Radar – which allows you direct access to common actions you might want to carry out with another avatar, such as IMing them, paying them, offering them a teleport, and so on.

You can now right-click on avtar lists in singularity and carry out avatar / avatar functions (names removed from radar list for privacy)
You can now right-click on avatar lists in singularity and carry out avatar / avatar functions (names removed from radar list for privacy)

Web Profile and V3 Web Search Support

The Singularity avatar Profile floater now includes a button (top right) which will open the avatar’s web profile in a separate panel, allowing both it and the Singularity Profile panel to be viewed independently of one another and closed independently of one another.

Singularity 1.8.1 also sees an additional tab added to the Search floater, which contains the V3-style web search capability, and an option to search from a separate floater if preferred.

V3-style web search now in Singularity
V3-style web search now in Singularity

For OpenSim

For OpenSim, Singularity 1.8.1 now offers hypergrid map support and high-altitude building.

And the Rest

For a complete list of the top-line updates to Singularity 1.8.1, please refer to the release notes, which provide more information on things like LSL support updates, improvements to the script editors, the ability to start / stop scripts running in an item directly from inventory, notes on new  shortcut commands and chat bar commands, an improved auto response function, performance and stability updates, the latest available SSA code updates, and more. The release notes also credit those responsible for the various updates and improvements.

No Materials

The keen-eyed may have noticed there’s no mention of materials processing support. This is because the Singularity team opted to pass on adding the support with this release. Given that Linden Lab are themselves still working on the viewer-side code, and have themselves just made a significant set up updates available to TPVs and users within the Materials Project viewer, this is actually an understandable move on the Singularity team’s part.

That said, preparatory work has been carried out in readying Singularity for materials processing support, so expect it to appear in an upcoming release just as soon as the team are satisfied LL are not about to drop a significant set of updates on people.

Volunteers Needed

One other change which has occurred with this release is that F1 no longer opens Help, although it will still open a web browser window / tab. This is because the Singularity team are thinking about picking-up a V3-style help; however, they need more hands to make this happen. So, if you are interested in giving them a hand and have the necessary skills to make it happen, please give Siana, Latif or one of the team a shout in-world.

General Feedback

As ever, a tidy set of updates incorporated into a v1-style viewer which is solid, reliable and which shouldn’t overly tax older computers. For those looking for a v1-style viewer which supports SSA (which Singularity has done since the release of 1.8.0 in April) and which offers a very credible list of additional TPV capabilities, then Singularity 1.8.1 is very much worth taking the time to look at and to take for a spin in-world.

Related Links

SL projects news week 33 (1): server, “grey box attachment” issue, SSA, materials

Posted on by Inara Pey

Server Deployments Week 33

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

Second Life Server (SLS Main) Channel – Tuesday August 13th

There was no update to the Main channel. It had been anticipated that the package deployed to BlueSteel in week 32 would reach the Main channel this week, but this is not the case, for the reason given below (see the Grey Box Attachment issue notes, below),

Release Candidate Channels – Wednesday August 14th

    • Magnum remains with SSA enabled, but otherwise received no further updates.
    • LeTigre should receive a new maintenance package which “only includes a few internal bug fixes which shouldn’t show any visible changes to the residents”. In describing this at the Simulator User Group meeting on Tuesday August 13th, Simon Linden said, “There’s one performance fix that you might see in the viewer … you shouldn’t get those situations where you see lots of ‘duplicate caps. messages”
    • Bluesteel should receive a new server maintenance package comprising:
      • A fix for the “grey box attachment  issue” (non-public BUG-3547, details below)
      • A (further?) update to for “llListen in linked objects is listening at root instead of linked object local position *after re-rezzing the linkset*”, which was also listed in the BlueSteel release notes for week 32  (non-public JIRA BUG-3291)
      • The code to block avatars entering a region / objects being rezzed in a region during the last 60-seconds before a restart. In addition, restart warning pop-ups will include the region name. This was again in the release notes for week 32, so would appear to be a further update to that code
      • Fixes for further simulator crash modes.

“Grey Box” Attachment Issue

This is a problem whereby a grey prim appears around any passenger(s) sitting on a boat / vehicle when crossing from a BlueSteel region to any other region (including another BlueSteel region) – the driver / pilot is left unchanged. The affected avatar has no control and requires a relog, while the prim itself appears to be linked to vehicle when edited.

The "grey box attachment issue" (image courtesy of Jen Cuddihy via the SL forums)
The “grey box attachment issue” (image courtesy of Jen Cuddihy via the SL forums)

It is thought the bug was introduced during the week 32 BlueSteel deployment, and Simon Linden indicated it was the reason there was no Main channel deployment for week 33, saying:

We didn’t update the main channel today. There was a bug found involving vehicles and region crossings that needed to be fixed, so that update will go out tomorrow [the BlueSteel RC deployment].  Basically, don’t sit more than 1 person on a vehicle when leaving a BlueSteel region, otherwise it turns you into a box :P.  It happens to the 2nd (and probably more, if you had a crowd) person seated on the object.

Kelly Linden explained what was happening to cause this:

Every agent has a ‘task’ representation on the server that is the same as a prim. The bug is in sending the linked set w/ avatars to the other region: avatars after the first are losing the special avatar treatment and getting passed as a regular linked prim. So that prim is what the server thinks all avatars look like.

Simon added:

The region crossing code basically un-sits avatars from an object, sends both the avatars and object to the next region [as separate sets of data], which puts them back together. In this case, the 2nd avatar doesn’t get detached properly and things go south from there. So the 2nd avatar gets sent over bundled up with the object … which it’s not designed to do.

The additional avatars on the vehicle at the time of the region crossing essentially end-up in limbo, with data caught between the two simulators. “The regions are very confused about that avatar data by that point, I’m sure a relog would be needed,” Simon said.

An interesting side-effect of this is that the bug makes it possible to exceed the 256-prim linkset limit – sort-of. Enterprising individuals have realised that if you rez a 256-prim linkset, sit a number of avatars on it and move it across a region boundary, it will acquire an additional prim for each additional passenger over the first avatar to sit on it. However, the ability is of limited value; make any changes to the enlarged linkset, such as unlinking a child prim or trying to texture one of the greyprims, and the entire thing turns no modify / no copy – and the fix being deployed to BlueSteel should correct the problem anyway.

Server-side Appearance

Just as a reminder. There are no further SSA deployments planned for week 33. This is to allow for some back-end updates to be made to the SSA servers. These updates shouldn’t result in any visible difference to users on SSA-enabled regions, and are intended to fix a couple of scenarios where the viewer would have to re-try requests when it shouldn’t have to. The Lab wants to get these updates deployed to the SSA server prior to making any move to rolling-out SSA to the entire grid.

There have been comments on the forums that SSA “must” be encountering major problems as the deployment has been so protracted. This is not the case. Linden Lab (via Nyx Linden) have always stated that the deployment would proceed very, very cautiously because it is such a fundamental change in how Second Life functions. Even though the Lab has indicated that very, very few problems have been encountered with enabling the service so far, and the load testing on both Magnum and LeTigre (representing a little over 20% of the grid) has been very positive, they are sticking to their softly, softly approach.

Viewer Updates

As the Vivox updates became the de facto release viewer in week 32, the remaining five release candidate viewers in the viewer release channel have been underground rebuilding using the updated release viewer code base. On Monday August 12th, updates for both the Cocoa Viewer for Mac (version 3.6.3.279554 – download and release notes) and the Maintenance Viewer (version 3.6.3.279564 – download and release notes) were released.

Materials Project

The Materials Project viewer was updated to version 3.6.3.279651 on August 8th. This release lists a large number of fixes, perhaps most notably those related to problems with the appearance of alpha textures under both local lights and sunlight, and numerous issues with mesh rendering and lighting within the materials viewer. Please refer to the full list of JIRA items in the release notes linked-to above.

ALM Concerns

Concerns have been raised about performance issues as a result of having the Advanced Lighting Model (ALM) enabled by default (as is now frequently the case for most graphics cards, as is a requirement in order to see materials in use in-world).

The amount by which ALM can affect the user experience is variable, and subject to a lot of influences, not just the graphics cards / computer system the viewer is running on. Some people with systems similar to my own (see the panel on the right for my system spec), have noted “significant” impact when running with ALM enabled on a materials-capable viewer.

Part of the problem is the “ALM” is a very broad term, and other options within the viewer can influence performance, but will not impact the ability to see materials even if they are turned off – such as having shadows set to None, for example, or having water reflections set to Minimal and turning off local lights (via debug or Phototools, for example). So part of the problem is that of communicating what can be done from within the viewer to help offset performance impacts should they occur, but which don’t limit their ability to see materials in use.

Quick ways to improve performance when running in ALM to see materials. Top left: you can uncheck Ambient Occulsion, keep Shadows set to None and drop water reflections to Minimal. Bottom Left: Using Debug Settings from the Advanced Menu, set RenderLocalLights to FALSE. Right: Firestorm / Phototools, ambient occulsion, hadows, local lights and facelights can all be disabled from the Light tab and water reflections lowered from the WL tab
Quick ways to improve performance when running in ALM to see materials. Top left: you can uncheck Ambient Occlusion, keep Shadows set to None and drop water reflections to Minimal. Bottom Left: Using Debug Settings from the Advanced Menu, set RenderLocalLights to FALSE. Right: Firestorm / Phototools, ambient occlusion, shadows, local lights and facelights can all be disabled from the Light tab and water reflections lowered from the WL tab

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