Category: SL Tech

SL projects update week 17 (1): Server releases, SSB/A, particles

Posted on by Inara Pey

Server Deployments – Week 17

SLS Main Channel

On Tuesday 23rd April, the SLS Main channel received the update package deployed to the three Release Candidate channels in week 16, primarily comprising the new server-side LSL Animation Override capabilities, complete with a fix for BUG 2164, wherein the new capabilities could conflict with built-in animation poses in chairs, etc., as discussed in my week 15 updates.  This deployment additionally includes the slight region performance improvement when there are no pathfinding characters present. Release notes are available.

Release Candidate Channels

On Wednesday 24th April, the RC channels should receive the following updates:

  • BlueSteel and LeTigre: should gain a new project which brings preliminary server-side support for experience permissions – release notes
  • Magnum: should gain a new server maintenance project.  This update brings some new minor features to LSL, and fixes some crash modes – release notes

So the long-awaited experience tools / advanced content creation tools permissioning system looks to be finally on its way, a little under a year since an exploit caused them to be withdrawn after their initial deployment.

Viewer Updates

Development Viewer Updates

The SL development viewer has been through a rapid series of updates over the last few days of week 16 and the start of week 17, with version 3.5.2.2744 released on Monday April 22nd. While release notes are not available, it is thought it includes (among other things), the fix for music stuttering every few seconds when using FMOD EX, as submitted to LL by Latif Khalifa  (see OPEN-173).

Particle Project Viewer Soon (?)

It appears a new particle project viewer may be on the horizon in the near future. If it does appear, it is likely to be primarily aimed at testing a new capability to help deal with griefing attacks which use particle emitters. Speaking at the Simulator User Group meeting, Simon Linden said:

We’re doing some testing and may get a project viewer out, which would allow you to test it and (I believe) let other viewers check out the source code. This is right-click on a particle, and it kills the generator … We’ve tossed around a few ideas about blocking particles in other ways but definitely want to get these first steps out the door.

This sparked further discussion on ways and means to help stop particle griefing, which has been on the increase across the Mainland of late. However, given that particles are a viewer-side effect, “stopping” them is actually easier said than done from a server-side perspective. One idea which gained some interest, if it is feasible, would be a block of any particle emitters belonging to an avatar banned from a region / parcel.

In the meantime there are means of stopping the viewer from rendering all particles – such as CTRL – Alt – Shift – +, or going to Preferences > Graphics > and dropping the Particle Count slider to zero. These again only work in your own world view, and while not always ideal, do present an option.

Asked if such a particle project viewer might include the new LSL particle capabilities already deployed server-side, Simon could only say, “Hopefully yes … I’ve been working on getting that chunk of code solid for the last few days. Unfortunately it’s pretty easy to crash at this point and so it’s not ready for consumption.”

The particle ribbon effect  is a particle which repeats the texture horizontally, and can follow the object creating them, which offers a lot of potential uses, as which forms a part of the new particle capabilities – soon to be seen within a project viewer? – Time will tell.

Server-side Baking / Appearance

The viewer-side code for SSB/A is starting to appear in more TPVs:

  • Cool Viewer has had SSB/A support in the “Experimental” branch for a while, and this moved to the “Stable” and “Legacy” versions on April 20th – see the Cool VL website and release notes
  • Singularity released version 1.8.0 with SSB/A support on April 21st, which I’ve reviewed
  • Firestorm released version 4.4.0 with SSB/A support on April 22nd, which I’ve reviewed
  • Kukua has had an experimental / development version since the start of April (version 3.5.1) which also incorporates SSB/A.

The status of the SL beta viewer with the SSB/A code will take place around the middle of week 17, when a decision taken as to whether to incorporate the code into the SL release viewer or run a further beta release. The expectation is that the code will move to the release channel unless a last-minute significant issue is found within the code which prompts a further run in beta.

Assuming the code does make it to the release channel, it is likely that a release viewer will appear early in week 18 rather than late week 17, due to the time required to test and QA a build.

SUN-72 – Fix Submitted

One issue which is known to exist within the current beta release of the SSB/A viewer code and which has caused considerable problems is SUN-72 – if you have inventory items with special characters (including the likes of asterisks) in their names, they will fail to load. Similarly the use of accented characters (e.g. such as René) in things like chat log path names, the logs are not saved.

Nicky Dasmijn of the Firestorm team developed a patch for this specific problem which is already incorporated into the recent Firestorm 4.4.0 release, and which has been contributed to, and accepted by, the Lab for integration into the SSB viewer code. Hopefully, it should be appearing in the next SSB viewer release, whether beta of SL release viewer.

Sun-38 – Avatar / z-offset

As noted in my last major update on SSB/A, the ability to offset an avatar’s height on-the-fly to accommodate various animations (e.g. kneeling), or to adjust an avatar’s height when sitting / walking of floors, etc., and which will effectively be “broken” as reported in  SUN-38, remains an issue for many.

While the Lab have produced an alternative approach which addresses some issues around avatar height offset using new appearance sliders, and which Nyx Linden and others have been continuing to tweak, there is no solution on the horizon for maintaining any form of on-the-fly adjustment; nor does the proposed solution work with no-mod shapes, as noted when I first  reported on the “fix”.

During the Content Creation User Group meeting on Monday, April 22nd, a request was made for the Lab to not shut-down the existing baking service until such time as  SUN-28 is “solved”, which prompted Nyx to comment:

SUN-38 is not currently considered a blocking issue for our initial release. It’s on our list to investigate, but we don’t have a patch or update immediately. There is a new hover parameter, which should work for attachments that affect your avatar, but the bug reported is also discussing the need to adjust the offset on the fly without changing wearables. Having both the new and the old system enabled is not an option … We are investigating options, but it is not a hard requirement for the initial release.

Continue reading “SL projects update week 17 (1): Server releases, SSB/A, particles” →

Firestorm 4.4.0 bake, backup and roll!

Posted on by Inara Pey

Updatefirestorm-logo April 29th: Don’t forget my additional piece on the new cloud options in Firestorm 4.4.0.

Firestorm 4.4.0.33720 made its formal debut on Monday 22nd April, although it has been well and truly put through its paces by both the Firestorm beta testers and the preview group for some time now, in order to ensure it is as ready for mainstream release as possible.  It includes a huge number of updates and revisions, both from the Firestorm team and their contributors and from Linden Lab.

Given the size of the release, this is not intended to be a review of absolutely everything within Firestorm 4.4.0 – please refer to the release change log for that. Instead, this review focuses on what I regard as the key updates / changes. As always, credits for the various updates and contributions to Firestorm which re mentioned here can be found in the release change log – again, please check them there.

Server-side Baking /Appearance Support

Note that this item is Second Life-specific.

This isn’t actually a visible change to the viewer in term of UI, etc., – but it is an important one.

Server-side Baking / Appearance is a major change within Second Life which is primarily aimed at reducing or eliminating issues of “bake fail” (when the avatar skin & clothing layers fail to render correctly and with remain blurred or show the avatar wearing the “wrong” outfit). This capability is being introduced in two parts: viewer-side support and server-side support.

Viewers which do not have the viewer-side support will not work with the Server-side Baking  / Appearance service once it starts being deployed on the grid – people using them will increasingly see grey avatars around them. Therefore, it is essential that Firestorm users update to Firestorm 4.4.0.

Server-side baking and how others see you: (l) if you continue to run Singularity without SSB support when the new service goes live, others will see you as a cloud, (and, other than attachments, you'll see them as grey); (r) when you're running Singularity with SSB support, you'll appear correctly to everyone else - and they will to you.
Server-side baking and how others see you: (l) if you continue to run a viewer without SSB support when the new service goes live, others will see you as a cloud, (and, other than attachments, you’ll see them as grey); (r) when you’re running a viewer with SSB support, you’ll appear correctly to everyone else – and they will to you.

For further information on Server-side Baking / Appearance, see the following blog posts:

Preferences Updates

This release sees a large number of Preferences updates, all of which are reported in the change log, and which include:

  • Chat:
    • General: new option to select display name format for IM tabs – a drop-down list of: Display Name, Username, Display Name (Username) and Username (Display name)
    • Notifications: a new option to Show group chat in chat console (useful if you opt to hide chiclets – see below); new drop-down option for IM receipt sounds: Play sound only if not in focus
  • Graphics:
    • General: the Quality and Speed slider incorporates additional settings (Low-Med, Med-High and High-Ultra); Lighting and Shadows is renamed Advance Lighting Model (as per the LL viewer); the Depth of Field check box is moved to the Depth of Field tab; the Windlight Sky Detail slider and the Avatar Physics slider swap positions
    • Rendering: Max number of concurrent HTTP GET requests slider removed; check box to Enable rendering of screen space reflections added
  • Sound and Media > General: uses radio buttons to show stream title notifications in chat, toasts or to be turned off
  • Move & View:
    • View: new check boxes to: disable the mouse wheel from controlling camera zoom; Show user interface in Mouselook; Enable context menus in Mouselook and Leave Mouselook after regaining focus
    • Firestorm: new check boxes to Reset camera position on avatar movement and Show the default camera controls mini-floater always as opaque
  • User Interface > General: new check boxes to open group profiles, teleport history, landmarks, place details, block / mute list in their own floaters; adds an option to show / hide the media control in the menu bar (useful when using a skin which includes the media controls elsewhere) and an option to hide IM and group chat chiclets completely (the notifications envelope and the number of IM’s will remain on the screen all the time whether or not chiclets are disabled)
    • New User Interface > General options
    New User Interface > General options
    • Skins: new colour option (Ectoplasma) for AnsaStorm
    • Firestorm:
      • Windlight: new capability to define cloud texture
      • Build: options to default prim settings, texture and permissions on creation – see the Firestorm Custom Prim Parameters video tutorial and the Firestorm wiki
    • Backup tab – see below.

    Custom Quick Preferences

    A popular feature with Firestorm is the Quick Preference floater which, as the name suggests, provides fast and easy access to some of the most frequently used options in the viewer without having to open the “full” Preferences floater.

    With release 4.4.0, the Quick Preferences floater has been made somewhat customisable – essentially allowing almost anything which is a debug setting to be added to the floater. However – be warned that this capability is considered to be for advanced users, and does require a willingness to delve deeper into the viewer than some users may be used to. Further, not every debug setting can be added to the floater.

    Cutomising Quick Preferences (click to enlarge)
    Cutomising Quick Preferences (click to enlarge)

    For those wishing to find out more, Firestorm have produced a tutorial video on using the Customise Quick Preferences option, and a Firestorm wiki page.

    Settings Back-up

    Often, when installing a new version of a viewer, the recommendation is that one performs a “clean install” – removing all cached and settings files. This can make any viewer installation labour-intensive, as settings all need to be restored after the installation is complete, and this can take time and effort.

    Firestorm 4.4.0 attempts to ease some of the pain by presenting users with a Preferences option which allows them to back-up many of their global and account settings to a local hard drive. Once done, the back-up can then be restored to an updated version of Firestorm following installation; so providing the back-up is kept up-to-date, restoring the majority of preferred settings is no longer a chore.

    The Preferences Backup tab and options
    The Preferences Backup tab and options

    The back-up option can be found in Preferences > Backup. To use it, simply select a folder on a local hard-drive as the back-up location, then select those options which are to be saved; you can then delete all files associated with Firestorm prior to performing a clean install.

    Continue reading “Firestorm 4.4.0 bake, backup and roll!” →

    Singularity prepares for SSB/A

    Posted on by Inara Pey

    singularityThe Singularity team released version 1.8.0.4114 of their v1-style viewer on Sunday April 21st. The chief update with this release is for server-side baking / appearance, which I’ve covered extensively in this blog.

    The following is a look at the principal updates in the 1.8.0 release. For information on contribution credits, please refer to the Singularity release notes.

    Server-side Baking /Appearance Support

    This isn’t actually a visible change to the viewer – but it is an important one.

    Server-side Baking / Appearance is a major change within Second Life which is primarily aimed at reducing or eliminating issues of “bake fail” (when the avatar skin & clothing layers fail to render correctly and with remain blurred or show the avatar wearing the “wrong” outfit). This capability is being introduced in two parts: viewer-side support and server-side support, with the former occurring first.

    Viewers which do not have the viewer-side support will not work with the Server-side Baking  / Appearance service once the server-side of the capability has been activated on the grid. People using them will increasingly see grey avatars around them. Therefore, it is essential that Singularity users update to Singularity 1.8.0.

    Server-side baking and how others see you: (l) if you continue to run Singularity without SSB support when the new service goes live, others will see you as a cloud, (and, other than attachments, you'll see them as grey); (r) when you're running Singularity with SSB support, you'll appear correctly to everyone else - and they will to you.
    Server-side baking and how others see you: (l) if you continue to run a viewer without SSB support when the new service goes live, others will see you as a cloud, (and, other than attachments, you’ll see them as grey); (r) when you’re running a viewer with SSB support, you’ll appear correctly to everyone else – and they will to you.

    For further information on Server-side Baking / Appearance, see the following blog posts:

    Pathfinding Updates

    Singularity 1.8.0 gains options to display pathfinding information on linksets and characters. These options are on the Tools menu > Pathfinding sub-menu, or by right-clicking on an object / character and selecting MORE > MORE > PATHFINDING from the pie menu.

    Singularity 1.8.0 adds Pathfinding Linkset and Character floater support
    Singularity 1.8.0 adds Pathfinding Linkset and Character floater support

    For those unfamiliar with working with pathfinding, I have two summary articles:

    Note this release of Singularity does not include navmesh support, so as to maintain compatibility with OpenSim.

    Mesh Upload

    Mesh upload capabilities also reach Singularity with the release of 1.8.0, with the incorporation of the non-Havok based uploader by Nicky Dasmijn.

    Mesh uploads with Singularity on Aditi
    Mesh uploads with Singularity on Aditi

     

    Script Info

    Script information can now be displayed for both your own avatar and for your current region in one of two ways:

    • Right-click on the ground and select ABOUT LAND from the pie menu and click on the Script Info button displayed in the General tab of the About Land floater
    • Right click on yourself and select TOOLS > SCRIPT INFO.

    Either option will display the Script Info floater, with tabs for region memory information or avatar script information.

    Continue reading “Singularity prepares for SSB/A” →

    Viewer release summary 2013: week 16

    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 as the week progresses
    • 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: April 21st, 2013

    Discontinued Viewers

    • Phoenix – Development and support officially ended December 31st, 2012
    • Zen – Development and support officially ended January 27th, 2013.

    Related Links

    Exodus: passing the torch

    Posted on by Inara Pey

    exodus-4Recent updates to the Exodus viewer have been a little slow in some respects. This is in part hardly surprising – at least one member of the team (Geenz Spad) has been up to his eyeballs in working on the materials processing project. However, other factors – such as real life commitments  – have meant that other members of the team have also been unable to focus on the viewer perhaps as much as they would have liked.

    As a result of this, both Clix Diesel and Ayamo Nozaki have decided to step aside from lead roles in the project and pass the torch on to others – with Katharine Berry taking over ownership of the project and the role of lead developer. Clix himself made the announcement in an Exodus blog post on Sunday April 21st, which reads:

    Hello everyone!

    I know it’s been a while since an update but we have some important news to share with you.

    I would like to announce Katharine Berry as the new lead developer and owner of the Exodus viewer project!

    Exodus has been a passion of Ayamo and myself for just shy of two years now and we have enjoyed leading the project immensely. Originally we built Exodus as a viewer to compliment various Second Life combat scenarios, Exodus has since catered for a wide variety of user and continues to provide a the best viewer experience we possibly can thanks to the skill and dedication of my team. This will never change. Recently we have not been able to focus on viewer development as much as we would like. Ayamo Nozaki will be leaving as our lead developer and passing the torch to Katharine Berry. Katharine is also the ideal candidate to hand ownership of the project, as Ayamo and I cannot spare the time to do so any longer.

    Thank you everyone, from Ayamo and me, it’s been a blast!

    Exodus remains one of the three viewers I most frequently use, depending upon what I’m doing in-world, so I look forward to seeing what this hand-over brings; I also wish Clix and Ayamo the best for their future endeavours, in-world and elsewhere.

    Related Links

    SL projects update: week 16 (4): More on SSB, materials and FMOD Ex

    Posted on by Inara Pey

    Server-side Baking / Appearance

    Viewer Releases

    An updated beta viewer was released on April 19th (3.5.1.274264, with release notes here), which contains a range of updates, including several for SSB/A. Speaking at the TPV Developer meeting on Friday, 19th April, Oz Linden indicated that the current plan from the Lab is that this is likely to be the last beta viewer release for the SSB/A code unless a major blocker shows up. Assuming this doesn’t happen, then it is more than likely the SSB/A will move to the SL viewer release channel and arrive as a viewer update towards the middle of week 17 (week commencing Monday, 22nd April), which should hopefully be an automated update for most users on the SL viewer, given the majority appear to keep that option active on their viewers.

    Given us, it is liable that we’ll start seeing more TPVs updates appearing in the near future – and people using TPVs are going to need to start installing and using those updates rather than remaining with older versions of their viewer if they are to avoid the “grey people” syndrome as the server-side of SSB/A is deployed.

    Users will need to update to version of their preferred viewer supporting SSB/A as they are made available to avoid seeing grey people
    Users will need to update to a version of their preferred viewer supporting SSB/A as they are made available if they are to avoid seeing grey people once the deployment of the server-side of SSB/A commences

    Server-side Deployment

    The precise means by which the server-side will by deployed is still not absolutely clear. As noted a number of times in this blog, Nyx Linden is hoping that things will progress somewhat cautiously, possibly starting with a set of “carefully selected and constrained regions on Agni” as the viewer code reaches the SL release viewer. This still appears to be the case, but it is possible that it will not – as Nyx has previously hinted – roll through the Release Candidate channels.

    “I don’t know whether it will go through the normal RC process,” Oz Linden commented at the TPV Developer meeting, “Because it’s not actually a server software change; it’s a configuration change, so they don’t need to deploy it through the RC progression. All they have to say is, ‘Yes, throw the switch!'”

    If this approach is taken, it’s currently not clear whether or not it will require a region restart.

    In terms of time frames as to when this might happen, things are similarly unclear at this point – a lot depends on how well the testing on the selected Agni regions progresses. However, Oz suggested that the time frame in which the “switch may be thrown” to be anything between 2 and 6-8 weeks from when the viewer-side code appears. His analogy was that of a bell curve, wherein the switch-over could occur at the top of the curve – but could, if circumstances dictate, occur at either end of the curve.

    Communications

    It is still hoped that there will be a concerted effort on the Lab’s part to communicate server-side baking ahead of any server-side flipping of switches. A blog post is apparently in preparation, which should go out when the SSB/A code is issued in the release viewer; whether this will be supported by other means of communicating the changes is unclear.

    However, communications on the whole is not easy – even with the TPVs also liable to be spreading the word through blogs, etc., (as Firestorm have already). This is because even with the official blog, TPV blogs and blogs such as this one, the vast majority of SL users do not read blogs.

    Matters are also further complicated by the fact that there are over 1700 different viewer strings which are used to connect to SL (even if not on a daily basis). These not only include the official viewer and current versions of TPV-registered viewers, but also many instances of older versions of TPVs, Snowglobe (1.x) based viewers, several versions of the official 1.x viewer (some of which date back over 5 years), viewers which are not registered with the TPV directory, self-compiled versions of various viewers, and so on.

    As such, whatever the effort made to communicate the arrival of SSB/A is liable to be missed by a good number of users and people are going to find themselves facing grey avatars as a result of the switch to SSB/A, because many of these additional viewer strings will not have the necessary viewer-side code. This inevitably means that there is going to be some disruption and upset. While this in turn doesn’t mean that attempts to communicate the coming change shouldn’t be made – but it does mean that even with the best efforts of the Lab and TPVs combined in communicating SSB/A, there is going to be an outcry. So anything all those who are aware of the upcoming changes can do to communicate it to others – particularly when there is a visible log post from LL on the matter which can be referenced – can only help lessen the volume of that outcry.

    Continue reading “SL projects update: week 16 (4): More on SSB, materials and FMOD Ex” →