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: 27 January, 2013
The major news for the week is that the Zen viewer has officially ceased development and has been delisted from the SL Third-party viewer directory at the developer’s request and all repositories removed from public access. The reason for this is unknown at the time of going to print with this summary.
SL Viewer updates:
Development rolled to 3.4.6.269302 on January 22nd, then 3.4.6.269515 on January 25th
CHUI development viewer rolled to 3.4.4.269464 on January 25
Dolphin rolled to 3.4.11.27250 on January 24th – core updates: cursor now displays in the correct position on the input line of the Places floater; moving, animated linksets will not leave phantom prims behind (LL breakage); llLoadURL no longer includes a “?” when sending URL to a browser (VWR-17689); source up-to-date with latest LL development viewer code – release notes
Kokua issues an experimental CHUI viewer (3.4.4) on January 24, with dedicated repository
Niran’s Viewer updated to version 2.0.8 on January 22nd – assorted UI updates (About floater and fog settings, updates to playing local sounds); revised animations speed to control speed of all animations sseen through the viewer; improvements to custom always-on mouse steering mode; XML files clean-up – release notes
Cool VL updates – three versions for the time being, all updated on January 26th:
Stable version rolled to 1.26.6.7
Legacy version Legacy (v2.6 renderer) rolled to 1.26.4.50
Issues within the 3.4.5 code have prevented viewer releases progressing through beta, with the code stuck in QA while LL tackled them. However, it appears the majority are now either fixed or on their way to being fixed, and an updated beta viewer should be appearing next week, which should see the beta viewer come pretty close to alignment with code in the development viewer, with the latter only having “a couple” of things not added to the beta branch.
Communications Hub User Interface (CHUI) Project
There have been a rapid series of merges between the CHUI project viewer code and the development viewer recently (as seen in my Viewer Round-up Page and weekly summaries), helping the former to keep pace with the latter, with the most recent CHUI development release (3.4.4.269464) being made on January 25th.
Speaking at the TPV Developer’s Meeting on Friday 25th January, Oz Linden indicated that a formal merge of the CHUI project viewer code with the development viewer code branch “pretty soon” (possibly in the next two weeks, putting it ahead of the server-side baking project). However, according to Nyx Linden, the plan will be to not merge CHUI with the server-side baking project for as long as possible, so that TPVs have the choice of deciding whether they wish to integrate both projects into their own code at the same time or not.
CHUI is viewed as potentially the more problematic implementation for some TPVs to undertake as it involves more widespread changes to the UI, and, and project lead Merov Linden pointed out, the need to refactor a number of areas within the viewer to work with the CHUI elements. As some TPVs have already made substantial changes to the communications floater and other aspects of the communications elements of the UI, there is also a need for these TPVs to work through the code and see how it works with / impacts / breaks / undoes the changes they have made, in order for them to make a proper determination as to which code to adopt / maintain, and which code to ignore / discard.
Avatar Baking (Server-side Baking or SSB)
Work in progressing on all sides of this project, with the various TPVs working on integrating the initial code release from LL into experimental versions of their viewers (with varying degrees of success) and LL working on “bug stomping” and fixes. As commented on in my week 3 project report, there are concerns over the speed of releases for updated code from LL and general visibility of JIRA items.
Nyx Linden was on-hand at the TPV Developer Meeting on the 25th January to provide an update and field questions.
Nyx linden discusses server-side baking at the TPV Developer meeting (stock)
In terms of the server-side code, there have been a number of fixes which should have rolled-out to Aditi on Thursday 24th January, although the status of these had yet to be confirmed at the time of the meeting. Various issues are still to be fixed, such as some avatars being reported with heights which don’t match LL’s computations (particularly very small / petite avatars and very big avatars), which may be down to a mis-match between the way some viewers are calculating avatar height and what the server is anticipating receiving in terms of a value range.
The viewer code has also been receiving a number of updates and fixes, which should be available for use by TPVs and in an updated version of the project viewer in the next day or so. These updates include a required fix for an issue whereby edits make to a wearable item are not saved unless the user also changes something else they are wearing (for example, edits made to a blouse are not saved unless the user swaps the pants they are wearing).
Currently, and so far as I’m aware at the time of writing, Cool VL viewer, Singularity and Radegast all have experimental builds of their viewers / clients which incorporate the code and which are being used purely for testing purposes, with Exodus planning to start merging the code shortly. Niran’s viewer has reported issues with the new code “breaking” RLV/a which (so far) haven’t been reported by other TPVs.
Given the overall pace at which things are progressing on LL’s side, particularly with CHUI and dealing with issues uncovered within SSB itself, it is likely the original eight-week window for TPVs to integrate the SSB will be extended inasmuch as the deployment of SBB to the main grid is now likely to be slightly later than LL may have originally anticipated.
The RC channel deployments went ahead as planned on Wednesday 23rd January. BlueSteel and LeTigre Received the Threaded Region Crossing Code, and Magnum the Interest List code.
The week 3 maint-server release had been the only contender for the Main channel on Tuesday 22nd January, but was not deployed due to the issue of places not indexing correctly in search. A fix was available for this issue, but was rolled to Magnum as a part of that deployment.
Magnum Issues
There have been widespread issues in regions on the Magnum channel since the deployment, some of which have been reported in the deployment discussion thread on the forum, others of which have been reported in groups such as the Firestorm Support group. These issues may be related to a high bandwidth issue leading to packet loss for people on slower connections. Symptoms include:
High packet loss / ping to the simulator
Avatars initially unable to move on arriving in a region
Avatars apparently unable to move on arrival, but then suddenly “warping” to new position if movement keys have been pressed
Avatars already in the region being visible to a newly arrived avatar, then vanishing the first time the avatar moves or rotates camera
Objects failing to rez or to rez correctly (including attachments on avatars)
Other issues as reported in the forum discussion thread, including notable issues being encountered with JVA bots.
At this time, the issues remain under investigation by the Lab.
Deployments for Week 5
There is currently no clear news on deployment plans for the week commencing Monday 28th January. However, if there is a Main Channel release, Maestro Linden is of the opinion that it will likely be the threaded region crossing code.
The maint-server release originally on Magnum in week 3 will be re-deployed on an RC (which one is TBA at this point), which includes a number of additional fixes, including the fix for the search indexing issue.
Materials Processing
There has been little direct news on the materials processing project from those working on it. However, at the Server Beta User Group meeting on the 24th January, Maestro Linden reiterated that the server-side code is very close to a Release Channel deployment and, “May even get a slot next week [week 5].”
Maestro also gave some information on new options for what the alpha channel means during rendering, with four settings available:
None – the alpha channel is ignored, rendering the face opaque, or
Alpha blending – essentially the same as we currently have for any alpha texture, or
A 1-bit alpha mask with each pixel either 100% transparent or 100% opaque, with a cutoff setting to determine where the threshold is (alpha masks should render faster than alpha blending, and eliminate issues with alpha layer sorting), or
Emissive mask – so the alpha layer is interpreted as a per-pixel glow setting.
(Note that these options appear to suggest a surface cannot have both an alpha mask (or alpha blending) and an emissive mask; however, as Maestro Linden pointed out, there will still be options in the build floater to set glow or face transparency.)
Maestro additionally indicated that the remaining “mesh sandbox” regions on Aditi (DRTSIM-169 channel: Mesh Sandbox 3, Mesh Sandbox 6, Mesh Sandbox 22) have been updated with the server-side materials processing code, so that builders can test the new capabilities once a materials processing viewer is available.
A “sneak peek” at materials processing in SL, provided by Geenz Spad. Note the texture of some surfaces and reflections on others – click to enlarge. (Note this image should not be taken as indicating materials processing is available for public use as yet – see below.)
Viewer Status
Even though the server-side code is available on selected Aditi regions and may be deployed to a Release Channel in week 5, it will not be usable until such time as a materials processing project viewer is made available. Currently, this is unlikely to be for another few weeks, as there is further work to be completed on the viewer itself, including UI updates (such as the new build floater), code for fetching the additional materials data and for rendering it.
Server Object Rezzing Code
As I outlined back in week 1, Baker Linden is working on improving how objects with large file sizes (as opposed to them being physically large when rezzed in-world) are handled by the simulator software when being rezzed.
In the first part of this update, I reported that Baker hoped the code would be progressing through LL’s QA for deployment to an RC channel in the next few weeks. In the meantime, the code is now available on the DRTSIM-194 channel (e.g. CCMTEST26).
The key point about this work is that it is specifically aimed at preventing the simulator processes from choking and a region stalling when there are a number of large object files being read / parsed, not at actually “speeding up” the physical rezzing process. As such, it is unlikely that objects will appear any faster in people’s in-world view as a result of this work. However, what it does mean is that the simulator code will be better able to handle rezzing multiple “large file” objects without the attendant region lagging which can occur as a result of the simulator being unable to process messages from viewers and other simulators, etc.
Aditi Issues
Issues continue with Aditi, both in terms of people being able to log-in, and with inventory syncing problems. It is currently unclear as to what the status is regarding potential solutions which have been mentioned in the past – culling “stale” accounts from Aditi and obtaining additional hardware to handle the load. In the meantime, problems continue for some, and the advice remains to keep trying a password change and waiting 24-48 hours for it to fully propagate before attempting to log-in to Aditi once more.
There was no Main Channel deployment on Tuesday 22nd January due to the issues encountered in week 3, which saw the interest list code on BlueSteel and LeTigre rolled back due to stability issues, and the maint-server release on Magnum having problems of its own (including regions not showing up in search, etc.).
There will be RC deployments on Wednesday 23rd January, as follows:
BlueSteel and LeTigre should receive the region crossing improvement project. This project makes sim performance smoother when objects and avatars cross between regions. This is the same project which was on BlueSteel and LeTigre in week 2; the only change is a fix for a crasher – release notes (BlueSteel)
Magnum should receive the interest list improvement project. This update should reduce the bandwidth usage of viewers due to object updates, and should improve simulator performance, especially in sims with many connected avatars. This is the same project which was on BlueSteel and LeTigre briefly in week 3; the only change is a fix for two crash modes – release notes
3rd time lucky? Interest List updates due for deployment to Magnum on Wednesday 23rd January
According to Simon Linden, speaking at the Simulator User Group on Tuesday 22nd January, the issue(s) relating to Magnum regions / parcels failing to show up in search also has a fix, which is apparently included in code due to be deployed to those regions, although there is no comment on this in the release notes themselves at the time of writing.
SL Viewer
Work continues on the viewer development side of things with further updates an merges and new versions appearing almost every other day, but little is currently filtering through to the beta viewer code branch at present.
Similarly, the CHUI developement viewer is going through a rapid series of updates, reaching 3.4.4.269264 on Tuesday 22nd January, although updates from the last series of development releases have yet to reach the CHUI project viewer.
Work has been promised to update the Sunshine (avatar baking) viewer code, whether this has been done or not is unclear as there was no Content Creation meeting on Monday 21st January due to Martin Luther King’s birthday; however, the current release of the project viewer remains 3.4.4.268071 at the time of writing.
Merges are also still awaiting on the Mesh project viewer in order to bring that back into line with more recent viewer-dev code updates.
It’s been a while since the last Singularity update, and the team have been hard at work updating the viewer and making in-depth changes to a range of functionality as well as providing new features and options.
Version 1.7.3.3624 was released on Sunday January 20th, 2013, which saw the viewer gain, among other things:
Merchant Outbox support
Large group management support
HTTP communications updates in line with recent v3 viewers.
Download and Install
The Windows download remains roughly the same size at previous releases, a touch under 23.9Mb. The release notes don’t explicitly mention the need for a clean install, but given I’m looking at the viewer for review purposes, I did my usual and removed the previous version (1.7.2) and all support files prior to installing. The installation process was, as ever, smooth and error-free.
HTTP Updates
Large Groups fully supported under HTTP in Singularity, in line with recent LL-driven changes (the SL Beta group has over 21K members)
Much work has been carried out on HTTP communications within Singularity in order to bring it into line with ongoing HTTP-based projects underway within the Lab.
Perhaps the most obvious evidence of this work is that this update incorporates Baker Linden’s Group Service code changes to support the management of large groups – which will now load successfully in Singularity and avoid the 10K members cap imposed on the UDP code for handling groups.
Additional work has been carried out on support of HTTP communications which is designed to both improve stability when using HTTP within the viewer and to pave the way for full support of further enhancement of LL’s HTTP services, including the upcoming new server-side avatar baking service.
Merchant Outbox
Version 1.7.3 of Singularity brings with it Merchant Outbox support (World -> Merchant Outbox). As with V3-style viewers, the outbox forms a separate floater, allowing folders to be dragged and dropped from Inventory with the same ease as v3-style viewers.
Right-clicking on objects in the Merchant Outbox provides the usual options of renaming / deleting them, together with an additional option to send them to your Marketplace store (allowing individual items / folders to be sent, rather than the entire contents of the Outbox see comments at the end of this article).
Snapshot Floater
The snapshot floater has been completely overhauled with this release, which now includes an option to upload images to your profile feed at my.secondlife.com.
The new (l) and old (r) Singularity snapshot floaters (click to enlarge)
The new floater is larger when opened-out, but offers a better snapshot preview, and is also somewhat context-sensitive with options; the temporary upload option is disabled, for example, when sending a snapshot anywhere other than to inventory. Aspect ratios have also been improved upon within the new floater as well, providing further flexibility when creating images.
Unfortunately, this release of Singularity does not appear to include the snapshot tiling fix (MAINT-628). I’m not sure if that is because of issues with the code fix or an oversight. However, increasing the images size to anything over my screen resolution when running in deferred mode immediately produced tiling lines – and actually did so on-screen.
Snapshot tiling issue still present: My screen resolution is 1440 x 900. Increasing the image resolution beyond this (in this case 1920×1200) when in deferred mode displays the familiar tiling lines (slick to enlarge)
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: 20 January, 2013
SL Viewer updates:
Release version rolled to 3.4.4.268864 on January 15th – release notes
Development rolled to 3.4.6.269073 on January 15th, then to 3.4.6.269108 on January 17th and 3.4.6.269229 on January 20th
CHUI project viewer rolled to 3.4.4.268981 on Janunary 15, while the development version rolled 3.4.4.268994 on January 14th, then 3.4.4.269171 on January 17th and 3.4.4.269254 on January 20th
Dolphin rolled to 3.4.10.27205 on January 15th – core updates: viewer no longer freezed briefly on opening Places floater for the first time after logging-in; prims rotate correctly even when not looking at them (Henri Beauchamp), updated to latest viewer-dev codebase; release notes
Niran’s Viewer updated to version 2.0.7 on January 17th – core updates: rendering updates – release notes
Cool VL updates – three versions for the time being, all updated on January 19th:
Stable version rolled to 1.26.6.6
Legacy version Legacy (v2.6 renderer) rolled to 1.26.4.49
Singularity released 1.7.3.3624 on January 20th – core updates: major updates to HTTP communications (Aleric); rendering updates (Shyoti / Siana), including motion blur and vignette; Image pipeline update and tuning (Siana); updates snapshot system (Aleric); Merchant Outbox implemented (Inusaito and Aleric); Large group management support (Inusaito); Inventory cut’n’paste support for folders (Inusaito); UI setting changes; fixes – release notes
Phoenix officially reached end-of-line for SL on December 31st – read more here
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 