SL projects updates 17/3: TPV developer meeting

A TPV developer meeting took place on Friday April 25th. The core items discussed in the meeting are reported below, with timestamps in the relevant paragraphs indicating the point at they are discussed in the video embedded here. My thanks as always to North for the latter.

Release Candidate Status

Interest List, Sunshine and Maintenance RC Viewers

[01:02] All of these RC viewers have been rebuilt during the week to use the current release viewer code base (version 3.7.6.289164, formerly the VoiceMO RC), and all look to be performing reasonably well. However, none have been in the release channel for long enough for significant stats to be gathered.

SL Share 2

[01:26] The SL Share 2 viewer was issued as a release candidate viewer on Friday April 25th, version 3.7.7.289497 (download and release notes). This viewer provides options to upload Tweets and snapshots to Twitter and / or snapshots to Flickr, and includes optional post-process filter capabilities which can be applied to snaps being uploaded to Flickr, Twitter and / or Facebook. See my review of the project viewer for further details.

Snowstorm Viewer

[02:30] The next Snowstorm viewer, featuring third-party code contributions from the open-source community (including Ima Mechanic’s BUG-1831 LSL syntax highlighting work, developed with the help of Cinder Roxley and Oz Linden), is now with LL’s QA team, and it is hoped this will be appearing as a project viewer in week 18 (week commencing Monday April 28th), assuming no issues are uncovered during the QA process.

Oculus Rift Viewer

[04:05] Other than bug fixes, the  current Oculus Rift closed beta viewer is not expected to go through any significant updates for the time being. However, it is anticipated that there will be further work on the viewer once the Lab has access to the new Rift SDK, and that this may well be “very significant”.

Zipper Project Viewer

[04:30] It is anticipated that the faster installation “zipper” viewer (currently version 3.7.5.288507 – download and release notes – dated March 28th) will become a release candidate viewer “very soon”.

Mac / Cocoa Update

[06:48] There is still no single project at the Lab which is focused on Mac Cocoa issues. However, fixes are being developed and are starting to appear as a part of overall viewer development and release process.

The current release viewer (version 3.7.6.289164), includes a Vivox update to the 4.6.x libraries, and so should resolve Mavericks-related voice issues (among other voice issues). Also, the Maintenance RC (version 3.7.7.289405) has a number of Mac / Cocoa fixes, including: MAINT-3135 “Cocoa Viewer: Mac Maximizing the viewer leaves garbage on the screen”; MAINT-3288 “MAC – Fullscreen mode issue in Viewer 3.6.7 (281793)”; MAINT-3506:  “Copy & Paste on mac viewer often generate undesired special characters at the end of the pasted line sometimes leading to crash “; and MAINT-3642 “Mac viewer can no longer export textures to TGA format”. However, as there is no over-arching project for Mac / Cocoa fixes, it is a case of checking the release notes for new RC and project viewers as they appear.

The infamous ALT-camera Cocoa bug (see FIRE-12241 (MAINT-3171) is an issue the lab has been looking at but have so far been unable to work out  why it is happening. Oz Linden invited TPV developers to consider poking at it and contributing code if they felt it is something they might be able to resolve.

Webkit Update

[12:01] Webkit is a third-party library used within the viewer for a number of tasks. For example,  it powers the built-in web browser, and is used to display profiles (unless you’re using a viewer supporting legacy profiles). It is also used with Media on a Prim (MOAP) and many in-world televisions.

There have been an increasing number of issues with webkit. The libraries used within SL are out-of-date, for example, something which has caused the Lab and TPVs a considerable amount of pain (see BUG-4763 and FIRE-12642, and FIRE-11057). Given these problems, Monty Linden has been focusing on trying to improve matters, notably by creating a new lqtwebkit library repo, which he describes as “extremely experimental”.

Firestorm have re-worked webkit for themselves, updating to version 5..2.1 for Windows, which seems to be resolving issues. They’re working to do the same with Linux and Mac, although there is a problem with the latter where buttons embedded in a Flash video will not work.

As reported last time, a further problem here is that the qtwebkit (on which lqtwebkit is based) has been deprecated by QT, so the Lab is faced with a decision as to what to do going forward. One option may be to go with CEF, but which direction the Lab will take has yet to be decided.

SL projects updates 17/2: Group chat, group bans

Server Deployments week 17 – recap

There was only on server deployment in week 17, and that was to the Magnum RC. It comprised the same server maintenance package as deployed to it in week 16, but with an additional fix for BUG-5763 (“AGENT_MOUSELOOK flag is often incorrect when llGetAgentInfo() is called within control() event”). There have been no reports of further issues, so it is anticipated that this package will be deployed to the other channels in week 18 (week commencing Monday April 28th).

SL Viewer

Updates

On Thursday April 24th, the Sunshine / AIS v3 RC viewer updated to version 3.7.7.289441, (download and release notes), while the SL Share 2 project viewer updated to version 3.7.7.289468 (download and release notes).

LSL Support for Materials

This has been an oft-requested feature, and has been under informal review within the Lab. However, some confusion was caused when the release notes for the SL release viewer version 3.7.6.289164 (promoted on Monday April 21st, and formerly the VoiceMO RC), apparently listed MAINT-3531 (“Feature Request: LSL support for material texture maps”) as resolved.

However, this is an error. So far, there has still been no actual work on the capability.

Group Chat Optimisation

There was a further test of Simon Linden’s ongoing group chat optimisation work at the Server Beta meeting on Thursday April 24th. This followed the usual pattern of multiple messages being sent by those at the meeting across two chat groups, with people sending message from different regions as well as Morris, where the Server Beta meeting is held. From my own perspective, I had no noticeable issue in switching between local chat and one of the group chat sessions, even with a lot of messages passing through the latter, and didn’t appear to result in any message loss or significant delay.

However, the second group did cause the viewer to lock-up for up to 20-30 seconds at a time when switching to it, and appeared to be linked to the fact that one test participant was repeatedly pasted a veritable wall of text in to the group chat (which, while pushing the viewer, was probably not representative of how most people engage in group chat sessions). Both Simon and Maestro Linden believe the extended pauses were viewer-side, rather than anything in the back-end chat servers, with Maestro observing, “My guess is that the typesetting of all that text, profile icons, etc., is taking a lot of time.”

There’s still no news on when testing with larger groups will commence on Agni, although Simon hopes this will be “soon”.

Group Bans

Baker Linden, ironing-out the remaining issues with Group Bans
Baker Linden, ironing-out the remaining issues with Group Bans

Baker Linden has been working on the group ban functionality – notably the viewer-side code, although there have been some server-side updates as well. He had a new test viewer available for people to poke at during the Server Beta meeting, and which includes the latest updates found in the release viewer, as well a various fixes.

One of the latter is a fix for the issue whereby only the first name on a list of people being invited into a group would be checked to see if that person had been previously banned (and thus prevented from joining); anyone else further down the list would had been previously banned would be allowed to re-join on receiving the invitation.

Baker also noted a message has been added as well for these situations, “so you should get a notice saying some people in your invite list are banned from the group and weren’t sent an invite,” he said prior to testing. “I’ve noticed this to be a pretty sporadic thing, but I don’t think it’s something I can easily fix — the code showed that it was sending every time.”

While no formal testing was carried on with the latest updates to the viewer, it was noted that there appears to be an issue with the people picker option, in that it failed to locate people for banning – even when they were standing alongside the person with group ban powers. This will doubtless be looked into further.

Those wishing to test the group ban functionality can do so by downloading the test viewer and running it on Morris on Aditi.

SL projects update: 17/1: server, viewer

Running slightly behind in weekly updates due to the small matter of RL house decorating. I long for the day when I can take a colour swatch and simply drag my choice from the swatch onto the wall and see the wall instantly painted…

Server Deployments: week 17

The Main (SLS) channel and the LeTigre and BlueSteel RC channels all have no scheduled deployments for the week.

On Wednesday April 23rd the Magnum RC received the same server maintenance package as deployed to it in week 16, but with an additional fix for BUG-5763 (“AGENT_MOUSELOOK flag is often incorrect when llGetAgentInfo() is called within control() event”). This bug was a regression in the original update, and which affects certain guns that only allow some actions when they think the user is in Mouselook and certain vehicle that change control behaviour when in Mouselook. Early indications are that the fix has been successful.

SL Viewer Updates

On Monday April 21st, the VoiceMO release candidate viewer, version 3.7.6.289164 ((download page, release notes)  was promoted to the de facto release viewer. This viewer pulls in Vivox 4.6.x libraries instead of 4.5 for improved stability and to address Mac Mavericks issues as well as fixes for accurately detecting Merchant status and improves recovery for Merchant Outbox errors. It should also removes the Windows crash reporter pop-up notification.

The Maintenance RC updated on Tuesday April 22nd to version 3.7.7.289405 (download and release notes). This RC includes over 50 MAINT category fixes broadly covering:

  • Multiple fixes to Mac viewer
  • GPU table updates
  • Fixes in Recent tab, Chat, LSL editor, land management, etc.
  • Help system update
  • Crash fixes
  • Performance improvements

The interest list RC updated on Wednesday April 23rd to version 3.7.7.289461 (download and release notes).  I’ve still not found the time to have a play with this viewer.

The sunshine RC should update as well, most likely before the end of the week. Please refer to my current viewer releases page for updates on SL viewer versions and TPVs listed by LL.

STORM-1831: LSL Syntax Updates

STORM-1831 is the work mainly undertaken by Ima Mechanic (with assistance from Oz Linden and Cinder Roxley) to improve syntax highlighting in the viewer’s LSL editor by allowing the viewer to obtain the information required for syntax highlighting directly from the simulator the viewer is connected to. This should eliminate issues with the current manually updated files used to manage syntax highlighting falling out-of-synch with new LSL syntax as new functions and parameters, etc., are added. Folded-in to this work should also be a change to the source code text allowance in the viewer’s LSL editor, increasing it from the current 65,000 characters to around 256,000.

The server-side support for this commenced deployment in week 2, but the viewer work has been subject to delay for a variety of reasons (not the least of which has been the number of RC and project viewers in the release and various project channels). However, it is hoped that a project viewer with this work (and possibly other STORM contributions) will be appearing either this week or in week 18, and Oz hopes to see some testing carried out using it once it does so.

 Group Chat Optimisation

Little to report on this, other than the Lab is “working out some kinks”. Further details on the status of Agni testing may be available at the Server Beta meeting.

SL projects updates week 16/2: server update, misc items

Server Deployments – recap

There were no deployments to the Main (SLS) channel or the BlueSteel and LeTigre channels during week 16.

On Wednesday April 16th, the Magnum RC received a new server maintenance package, which included a fix for BUG-5533 (“llTeleportAgent() and llTeleportAgentGlobalCoords() can break any script in any attached object that contains a change event.”).

Commenting on the latter at the Server Beta User Group meeting on Thursday April 17th, Maestro Linden said:

Unfortunately, after the roll we discovered that there was a regression in the Magnum update,  which was BUG-5763 (“AGENT_MOUSELOOK flag is often incorrect when llGetAgentInfo() is called within control() event”), which apparently affects certain guns (which only allow some actions when they think you’re in Mouselook) and certain vehicles (which change control behaviour when they think you’re in Mouselook).

The good news is that Kelly [Linden] came up with a fix for it yesterday, which is out on Aditi now. I gave it a whirl, and it looks like this bug is fixed. But if you have content that was broken by that bug, I’d encourage you to test it out on Aditi, in case there are any additional problems.

Those wishing to test the fix can do so on the Aditi regions Ahern, GC Test 10, and Tehama.  GC Test 10 is probably the most convenient to test on, as it mostly allows anybody to build and run scripts.

Week 17 Deployments

While the final details of deployments for the week commencing Monday 21st April will not be determined until the start of that week, it currently looks as though there will again be no deployments to with the Main (SLS) channel or the BlueSteel and LeTigre RCs, while Magnum will gain the BUG-5763 fix.

Commenting on the lack of high-profile server updates of late, Maestro pointed to the fact that the Lab has been engaged in a series of “invisible updates” recently, notably infrastructure improvements.

Group Chat Update

There were no further tests on Simon Linden’s group chat work, and Maestro indicated that testing on Agni may commence in week 17. An idea initially discussed for testing these optimisations on the main grid had been to use a single large group (the Firestorm Support group, due to both its size and frequency of use). However, commenting on the work, Maestro Linden said, “since the group chat changes are in the backend service, this would mean that … around 1/16 of groups would be on the group chat stuff.”

Other Items

HTTP-in Failures

Some people are noticing an uptick in issues relating to in-world scripts acting as HTTP servers (notably with HTTP-in functions). There has been a known bug with these (non-public BUG-2564)  wherein all http-in URLs and all capability URLs for connected users are dropped simultaneously, all the connected users get logged out, and HTTP-in scripts cannot be contacted. However, some of the issues people are experiencing appear to be occurring since the most recent HTTP updates were made. Lucia Nightfire describes the problems as, “random URL loss and instability is common esp after the http changes.” she goes on to note that she has had to “change http protocol and add heartbeats to some apps since the HTTP changes.” She further goes on:

Sometimes after I crash then relog into a region, its like my caps are reset and re-evaled and  in-turn all my HTTP devices all of a sudden cannot request URLs until the caps are reset or it is [a] repeat URL request failure. Long story short, if your viewer crashes, don’t log into your home region if you have servers there, or you risk interruption.

Maestro’s thinking on the matter is that it may be linked to a server crash – particularly given Lucia confirms the problem does occur as a result of a region crash – as there is nothing specific to a viewer crash which should upset things like HTTP-in functions. Further testing has been suggested to see if a precise cause can be identified.

SL projects updates 16/1: Server and misc news

Server Deployments – Week 16

  • Main (SLS) channel: no deployment.
  • BlueSteel and LeTigre RCs: no deployments and remain with AIS v3 enabled
  • Maganum RC: should receive a new server maintenance package on Wednesday April 16th. This comprises a crash mode fix, and a fix for BUG-5533 (“llTeleportAgent() and llTeleportAgentGlobalCoords() can break any script in any attached object that contains a change event.”).

SL Viewer

The SL Share 2 project viewer, which includes the new options to upload text and snaps to Twitter and snaps to Flickr, complete with post-processing filter capabilities, and with the updated Facebook snapshot upload tab (also with the filters), was updated on Tuesday April 15th to version 3.7.6.288806.

Other Items

AIS v3 Inventory Outfit Links Issue

For those who use the Outfits folder in inventory, a useful option is that of being able to create links to no Copy items, allowing them to be “shared” among multiple outfits. This capability was originally introduced in Viewer 2, and has been popular among a number of TPVs.

While testing the new AIS v3 code, Henri Beauchamp noticed that when creating a new link in  inventory in an AIS v3 region and when using an AISv3 compatible viewer, the AIS server reply is not properly parsed, resulting in a failure to sync the viewer-side inventory (and its cached list) with the server-side inventory.

He has filed a JIRA (SUN-129) relating to the issue, although it is not clear if the issue is unique to Cool VL viewer, which uses a different algorithm to create the COF links, or whether it may affect other viewers still using links.

MAINT-535 Viewer URI Name Space

Viewer URI Name Space is a means of specifying URIs in a format the SL viewer can understand and use. For example, “secondlife///app/teleport” can be used to display a teleport link in local chat, IM or from a browser such that when the link is clicked, the user is automatically teleported to the destination. For example: “secondlife:///app/teleport/ThisPlaceHere/71/6/22” would display a link “Teleport to ThisPlaceHere” in chat / IM which when clicked, would teleport the user directly the destination.

However, because the capability can include an innocuous label, rather than displaying the actual SLurl, there have been concerns that the capability could be abused. For example “[secondlife:///app/teleport/GoHereAndGetBanned/3/4/56 CLICK FOR FREE STUFF!]” would be displayed in chat or IM as “CLICK FOR FREE STUFF!”

Because of this risk, Linden lab updated things such that the use of Viewer URI Name Space causes the official viewer to display a warning:

SLurl warning

A couple of side effects of this are that all SLurls which use Viewer URI Name Space can be impacted, and other uses of the capability can also be affected as well, as is the case with BUG-5702.

To address the issue with teleports, the Lab has introduced Maint-535 (currently in the Maintenance RC viewer, version 3.7.6.288799. This works by opening a dialogue box which displays the actual destination, together with button for the user to either teleport or ignore the offer, as shown in the example below.

tp-warn
MAINT-535 causes teleport links which use Viewer URI Name Space to generate a dialogue box displaying the destination, regardless of any label used to disguise it (click for full size)

Do note that all of this is only relevant to SLurl which use Viewer URI Name Space, Slurl from the map, landmarks, etc., do not see any change in behaviour.

Some concern was raised at the Simulator User Group meeting on Tuesday April 15th that because the dialogue box is displayed for all teleport offers using Viewer URI Name Space, even those that display the destination (e.g. “Teleport to ThisPlaceHere”, and that it might cause annoyance among people as a result of the need to confirm a teleport.

MAINT-535 also doesn’t address issues such as BUG-5702, where the “untrusted browser” message continues to be displayed.

SL projects updates week 15/3: TPV developer meeting: webkit, Cocoa, Oculus

A TPV developer meeting took place on Friday April 11th. The core items discussed in the meeting are reported below, with timestamps in the relevant paragraphs indicating the point at they are discussed in the video embedded here. My thanks as always to North for the latter.

Release Candidate Viewers Status

[00:34] The VoiceMO RC (version 3.7.6.288881) combines the former SL Voice RC (3.7.5.288516) and the former Merchant Outbox RC (3.7.5.288408), both of which have now been withdrawn from the release channel. Both of these RCs were performing well, and it is hoped that by combining them, they’ll both have an accelerated path through to formal release status.

The Lab is keen to see the Vivox updates for voice gain wider traction in viewers, as these not only improve people’s voice experience, they also lighten the load on the back-end servers.

The Interest List RC updated to version 3.7.6.288879 and the Sunshine / AIS v3 RC updated to 3.7.6.288822, both dated April 10th, and appearing on the wiki page on April 11th.

These, together with the Maintenance RC (version 3.7.6.288799), released on Wednesday April 9th, are now the four remaining release candidate viewers in the release channel. As these are all recent updates, data is still being gathered on all four, so it is unlikely that any of them will be promoted to the de facto release viewer in week 16 (week commencing Monday April 14th).

Google Breakpad Reporting and Issue

[01:40] The Google Breakpad changes mean that all viewers with the updated Breakpad code have the marker files for crash reporting created much sooner in the initialisation process and deleted much later in the viewer shutdown process. This means that more crash stats are being collected, but it also means that the crash rate measurement has gone up slightly as a result.

[03;30] Whirly Fizzle has identified an issue occurring with both the Maintenance RC and the current viewer release (3.7.5.266464) which appears to be linked to the Google Breakpad updates. BUG5707, “While logged in, crash reporter pops up, sends in a crash report but the viewer does not crash”. Whirly describes the issue in part as:

The crash reporter window does not just sometimes flash up briefly at viewer launch or viewer close, the crash reporter stays on-screen and appears to be actually sending in crash reports – I see the “Sending to server…..” window, which stays onscreen for some time.
Often I have more than one “Sending to server….” window open – often as many as 3 of them will all open at the same time.

This is happening on viewer launch, on viewer close and even while logged in.
When it occurs while logged in, the viewer does not crash, I am still logged in and the viewer appears functional.

Commenting on the situation, Oz Linden said, “Yeah, we’ve got people looking at some of the Google Breakpad crash reporting issues … I’m not really sure what that’s about … we’ll see if that can get some refinement.”

Oculus Rift

An update to the Oculus Rift project viewer, currently on closed beta, is expected in the next week. The lab is still accepting applications from those who have the hardware to join the closed beta the requirement being that applicants actually have the Oculus hardware. Applications should be addressed to sl_oculus_beta@lindenlab.com.

Further updates to this viewer are expected, particularly once the Lab received the SDK2 headsets, although these are not anticipated to be arriving for another couple of months. The viewer most likely won’t be opened-up publicly until after these latter updates have been made, so TPVs will not be able to integrate the code for some time to come.

SL Share

[05:26] Merov Linden was on-hand to talk about the recent changes to the SL Share capability in the SL viewer – notably the updates which allow people to post pictures to Flickr, post text and images to Twitter and once again post images to Facebook. It is likely that this viewer will be progressing to release candidate status in week 16.

As I’ve previously noted, an important thing to remember about SL Share is the all of the capabilities are opt-in. No-one is forced to use them, and the Facebook option in particular has nothing to do with trying to “push” SL users to Facebook, and while Facebook may not allow people to have accounts in their avatar names, there are a lot of people who are happy using it to connect their SL account with their real life account on Facebook.

One issue that did cause a problem was the inclusion of SLurls with photos being uploaded to Facebook, which caused the image upload capability to be blocked by Facebook. The SL Share updates have removed the “include location” option in the photo upload tab of the Facebook floater, and as a result, Facebook have removed the block once more.

The SL Share photo upload panel as it was prior to the change (l) and as it appears in the SL Share project viewer and some RC viewers since the change
The SL Share photo upload panel as it was prior to the change (l) and as it appears in the SL Share project viewer and some RC viewers since the change (r)

The issue here was not so much that SLurls were being included in uploaded photos, but the fact that they were being added automatically as a part of the automated processing of snaps during the upload process. Apparently, a requirement in using the Facebook API is that all text uploaded or appended to images must be manually entered by the user …

As well as restoring the upload capability, Facebook also restored photos with SLurl include which had been uploaded prior to the block coming into effect, again apparently because of the SLurls being automatically added.

One of the most interesting parts of the new capabilities is that of the preset filters within the upload panels for Facebook, Twitter and Flickr, and the ability for people to create their own filters.

When SL Share 2 appeared, questions were asked on various blogs on whether the filter capabilities would be added to the viewer’s snapshot floater, so that they could be used with the snapshot options there – most notably with the profile feeds option.

A preview example of a snapshot using one of the SL Share built-in filters
A preview example of a snapshot using one of the SL Share built-in filters

I took the opportunity at the TPV developer meeting to ask, and Oz Linden replied:

The SL Share project doesn’t include putting the filters in to the snapshot floater, but Niran [NiranV Dean, creator of the Black Dragon viewer] is working on that. So we may get that as another open-source contribution.

Merov then added:

It’s not overly difficult to do that. Actually, I did it for a demo once, so it’s pretty easy to add. I didn’t do it because the snapshot UI on the official viewer has plenty of … how can I put this nicely? …. Oddities, let’s say … so if I really wanted to do it, I’d have to re-do everything …. so I went to the designers and said, “You know, we should really re-do all this,” and they said, “Yes, but not now.” so I’m not working on that just now. but yes, it’s possible … so if you want to put it into your own snapshot floater, I won’t be offended!”

One of the aspects of the SL Share 2 capability that didn’t get to be in this initial update is a filter editor capability such that the filters can be more easily combined to create custom filters. Oz invited any TPV developers who might like to take this on to do so and to consider contributing it back the Lab should they do so.

The authentication aspect of the SL Share capabilities is all handled by the Lab’s back-end to the capability, so that the viewer-side code can be taken by TPVs and amended without any risk of users’ private information being leaked or tracked.

Webkit Woes

Monty Linden
Monty Linden

[15:48] Webkit is a third-party library used within the viewer for a number of tasks. For example,  it powers the built-in web browser, and is used to display profiles (unless you’re using a viewer supporting legacy profiles). It is also used with like Media on a Prim (MOAP) and many in-world televisions.

There have been an increasing number of issues with webkit. The libraries used within SL are out-of-date, for example, something which has caused the Lab and TPVs a considerable amount of pain (see BUG-4763 and FIRE-12642, and FIRE-11057).

Monty Linden has been poking at the problems, and gave a further update on his work:

I’m doing a bunch of damage, and then trying to move forward, just to get to 4.7.4 first, and then the 4.8 a little bit later on. I’m just about at the end of that … my goal is to kill the current third-party lqtwebkit library repo and I’ve created a new one that’s a little healthier and working a little bit better.

It’s not clear at the moment when Monty’s work will appear in a release stream. A further problem here is that the qtwebkit (on which lqtwebkit is based) has been deprecated by QT, so the Lab is faced with a decision s to what to do going forward. One option may be to go with CEF, but which direction the Lab will take has yet to be decided.

The Firestorm team have reported they have re-worked webkit for themselves, updating to version 5..2.1 for Windows and are looking to do the same for Linux and Mac. This work appears to have fixed issues with Media on a Prim and it is hoped it may also resolved the YouTube issue of videos failing to play on in-world TVs, etc.

Firestorm are going to liaise with Monty with regards to the work they’ve done. currently, the Windows updates are still subject to internal testing by Firestorm, although they plan to make the work visible to all once they are confident enough that it behaves as expected.

Mac / Cocoa Update

[22:45] There has been some progress in addressing the Mac / Cocoa issues, with some fixes now in the Maintenance RC release, including:

  • MAINT-3135 Cocoa Viewer: Mac: Maximizing the viewer leaves garbage on the screen
  • MAINT-3288 Mac: Fullscreen mode issue in Viewer 3.6.7 (281793)
  • MAINT-3642 Mac viewer can no longer export textures to TGA format
  • MAINT-3674 Mac: “Hide NewApplication” under Second Life menu, should be “Hide Second Life”

Referring to Cocoa issues in particular, Oz again confirmed that “all of them” are on the Lab’s to-do list, but not all of them are getting done as yet. In particular, there is no news on the long-standing ALT-cam bug.

Other Items

We’re all aware that there are options within the viewer to run more than one instance (so if your computer doesn’t grind to a halt, you can run two versions of the official viewer or two versions of Firestorm, etc). However, what some people may not be aware of is the fact that while the viewer can allow multiple instances, this is not actually a supported feature. It should also be remembered that because of the way voice is handled, it is currently not always possible to run two instances of a viewer (or two different viewers at the same time) with voice enabled without encountering significant issues and potential lock-ups (although Singularity has a fix for this).

What also may not be realised is that because some of the viewers use different mechanisms to detect how many instances they are running, it is possible to encounter conflicts and issues when running, for example, the SL viewer and the Firestorm viewer simultaneously on a computer.

So if you are running multiple instances of the same viewer or multiple viewers on the same computer, and start experiencing unexpected issues, try shutting all but one instance / viewer down and seeing if the problems go away before seeking support assistance.