Category: SL Viewer

Lab issues Fitted Mesh release candidate viewer

Posted on by Inara Pey

Update January 22nd: As per the comments below, Oz Linden has posted the correct region restart sound to STORM-1980, and the sound is now included in the boday of this report.

On Thursday January 16th, Linden Lab issued a release candidate version of the Fitted Mesh viewer. Given the changes made to the avatar skeleton, the  release sees the viewer’s release number increment by 1, so the Fitted Mesh RC is version 3.7.0.285178.

The upgrade of the project to a release candidate status had been expected to come relatively early in 2014, given that Oz Linden gave a “last call” for issues in which he indicated that a release candidate would be forthcoming “after the holidays”. Speculation that the RC was at the status of Real Soon NowTM was heightened at the Open-source Developer meeting on Wednesday January 8th, when Oz further revealed that as far as the Lab was concerned, there were no further outstanding issues.

It is currently not clear as to how long the viewer will remain as a release candidate prior to promotion to the de facto release viewer.

STORM Contributions

As well as the Fitted Mesh updates, the new release candidate includes a number of open-source contributions from Jonathan Yap and Ansariel Hiller.

Jonathan’s contributions notably include the following, but please refer to the viewer release notes to see all of them:

STORM-1975: IM windows occasionally report false typing status – an annoyance to many for some time has been the situation whereby, during an IM conversation, the recipient of an IM will see the “…. is typing” message (where “…” is the other person’s name), even though the other person isn’t actually sending a message. This update should fix this issue.

STORM-1980: Region Restart Warning Changes – described in the release notes as “World-shaking improvement to region restart warnings”, STORM-1980 is designed to improve the awareness of region restarting message and add a default region restart sound. The sound is designed to be played automatically by the viewer on receipt of a region restart message, adding an additional warning of an approaching restart (for those with their viewer’s sound on!).

STORM-1981: Changes to Tracking Beacons – alters the behaviour of three types of tracking beacon: the avatar tracking beacon, the landmark tracking beacon and the beacon shown as a result of clicking on the map. Under these changes:

  • Beacons begin at a height of 0 metres and extend up to the maximum unassisted flight ceiling (5,020 metres)
  • The beacon colour is blue from 0 metres to the base height of the object being tracked, and red from 5,020 metres down to the height of the object being tracked
  • Users can optionally set the beacon to pulse towards the target object using the CheesyBeacon debug setting (Advanced->Highlighting). The blue beacon will pulse up towards the object, the red beacon will pulse down towards the object.

Ansariel provides two contributions in this release aimed at fixing a couple of issues in the UI:

  • STORM-1979: Groups count in groups list does not display if the floater is resized
  • STORM-1984: Mousing over UI elements does not make them light up.

Related Links

Fitted Mesh: “last call” for issues; release candidate “after the holiday”

Posted on by Inara Pey

secondlifeThe Lab’s Fitted Mesh project viewer has been out for a month, and has seen some good feedback from those who have been trying it out.

Already one update to the viewer has been released, correcting a number of problems, and the Lab has been working with content creators and users who have been providing feedback through the FITMESH project reporting on the JIRA.

However, Lab is keen to start progressing the project in the New Year, and so a “last call” for issues has gone out.

“If you’ve been seeing any issues with the current fitted mesh project implementation, or anything that needs to be added/changed, please make sure that the issues are filed by now, or as soon as possible,” Nyx Linden said at the Content Creation User Group meeting on Monday 16th December.

For those who missed the original announcement, Fitted Mesh is a means by which mesh garments are rigged to the collision bones of the avatar skeleton, allowing them the be resized as the avatar’s shape is changed using the Edit Shape sliders. In essence, it is the same approach as has been seen within Second Life and variously referred to as the “RedPoly method” or “Liquid Mesh”.

The technique uses both the existing bones in the SL avatar and an additional set of bones in order to work, and you can read more on it in my original preview article, if you’re not already familiar with the approach.

Oz Linden, also at the meeting, underscored the “last call”, saying, “To emphasise what Nyx said earlier … get your comments and issues in on Fitted Mesh ASAP so that we can do a release candidate after the holiday break.”

Quite when that release candidate will appear is unclear; there is a lot going on at the Lab, and several projects are likely to be vying for room in the release channel (although some will hopefully go to project viewer status first and give the rest some elbow room).

However, if you have been looking at the current Fitted Mesh viewer and wish to have input to the project, now is very much the time to do so. Similarly, if it is something which has been on your “to do” list, now is the time to move it to the top, or risking seeing your chance ot have input to the project, and influence on the Lab, vanish.

Related Links

“Project Interesting” arrives as a release candidate viewer

Posted on by Inara Pey

The long-awaiting “Project Interesting”  viewer has finally made it to release candidate status with the arrival of version 3.6.11.283895 of the viewer on Thursday November 14th.

This viewer represents the last stage in the current work on improving interest list functionality, the code which controls how the data relating to your in-world view is handled by both the server and the viewer. This includes what is sent to the viewer, what is retained by the viewer for reuse and things like the order in which objects are rendered when you log-in to SL or teleport (so that the “interesting” objects which are closer to you or which are particularly large should render first, for example).

The vast majority of the interest list work has already been delivered, and everyone should already be enjoying the broader benefits. However, the final phase of the current batch of work has been focused on both server and viewer changes, and the latter have been somewhat delayed due to a number of bugs, some of which were the result of the need to further tweak things server-side which in turn adversely affected the viewer’s behaviour, while others were bugs which appeared to have been dealt with, only to return in a later build.

AS-12_001
The “project interesting” viewer updates should further improve scene loading for users through improved caching of region and object data, better use of memory, etc.

The core changes within this viewer relate to what can be cached locally. This should allow the viewer to store more information on objects and regions than is currently the case, enabling it to re-use object / region data without having to rely on the server to re-send the information, improving rendering times when you are exploring a region / teleporting back to a region previously visited.

One of the bugs which delayed the arrival of the “project interesting” viewermeant that some objects would not render (as is the case with the house in this image). Unlike the recent “missing prims” issue, no bounding box, etc., was loaded by the viewer, so right-clicking where the house should be would not resolve the issue – a relog was required (image courtesy of Whirly Fizzle)

There are other improvements to further assist with scene loading as well. For example, when teleporting into a region never before visited, the viewer can now tell the simulator that it has no data for the region cached, and the simulator can in turn simply get on with prioritising the data and downloading to the viewer, rather than it having to repeatedly ask the viewer if it needs the data, as is currently the case. The result of this is that “several seconds” can be shaved from scene loading times for uncached regions. Also, the viewer will no longer load objects from cache into memory if they are completely by scene geometry, thus reducing unnecessary memory use.

The viewer is currently a release candidate, which means it will be downloaded and installed for some users who have indicated a willingness to participate in the release candidate programme through their viewer Preferences (Set-up > Willing to update to release candidates). Those who wish to manually install the viewer can read the release notes and download it from the link below.

The Lab issued a blog post to accompany the viewer release (which I initially missed), which includes a video demonstrating the changes, narrated by Torley Linden.

Related Links

Cocoa updates impact OS X 10.6 users

Posted on by Inara Pey

Update October 5th: The downgrade to viewer 3.6.4.280048 for those on OS X 10.6 has been made optional rather than mandatory, as the latest de facto release viewer (3.6.7.281793) contains fixes which address some of the issues users on OS X 10.6 were encountering. Those still encountering issues may wish to revert back to 3,6,4,280048.

Recent Cocoa updates to the Mac version of the viewer have led to problems for those running Mac OS X 10.6. Because of this, the Lab has opted to roll users on that version of the operating system back to an earlier release of the viewer – specifically version 3.6.4.280048 (August 20).

Commenting on the problems at the Open-source Dev meeting on Monday September 30th, Oz Linden said:

We found some obnoxious problems with the newer releases for users still on OSX 10.6. We’re working on getting them fixed … but in the mean time we decided that 10.6 users would be better off on the older version. We’ll be watching how many users it would affect, I’m sure.  Newer versions of OSX have significantly better crash rates, so if a user can upgrade, they definitely should.

Affected users should be automatically “rolled back” (so to speak) to this viewer release via the viewer update system. However, if you’re running OS X 10.6, experiencing issues and are running a later version of the viewer, you can manually download it here.

Lette Ponnier: “The three hours that can change your SL”

Posted on by Inara Pey

Letter Ponnier, one of the core support staff on the Firestorm viewer, runs her own blog, which often focuses on Second Life, the user’s experience and more. Obviously, as a member of the Firestorm team, many of her posts are Firestorm-centric – but this doesn’t make them any less a worthwhile read. When it comes to understanding SL and the viewer in general, Letter has much to say that is very much worth taking the time to read.

In a recent post, she covered The Three Hours That Can Change Your Second Life. As many know, the Firestorm team run regular classes throughout the week focusing on many aspects of Firestorm and getting to grips with it. In her blog post, Lette points to four lessons the team run, three of which could lead to anyone, regardless of their viewer preference, to enjoy their SL experience a lot more and gain a deeper understanding of the intricacies of the viewer and Second Life.

These classes are:

  • Preferences 2 – covering the Graphics and Network & cache tabs – which is definitely of use to anyone using SL, regardless of viewer
  • Lag – a mini-class which explains the major types of lag and dispels many of the myths surrounding lag – once again useful for anyone who has ever felt their SL is suffering as a result of “lag”
  • Basic Troubleshooting – which may be useful to anyone who experiences issues and problem, again regardless of their viewer
  • Reporting Bugs, Requesting Features – which is more Firestorm-centric, but can still be useful for those using any viewer which has a JIRA-based bug reporting system.

Details on when these lessons are held can be found on the Firestorm wiki.

As well as the blog post, which provides an overview of each of the classes, Lette has provided an audio recording for those who can multi-task and wish to listen while doing over things. You can find the recording at Vocaroo.

If you are at all interested in making your SL experience more enjoyable and / or in getting to grips with your viewer, I recommend three things – take a read of Lette’s post or listen to the audio, read Lette’s blog (you’ll also find a link in my blogroll, right), and try popping along to the Firestorm lessons.

Related Links

With thanks to Lette Ponnier.

Facebook support coming to the SL viewer

Posted on by Inara Pey

Eagle-eyed (or given his avatar, should that be owl-eyed? :)) Daniel Voyager spotted a pointer that a degree of Facebook support is coming to the SL viewer for those who already have a Facebook account.

The new capability is called Second Life Share, which is being aimed at the viewer 3.6.6  code base (although it isn#t a part of the latest Materials RC viewer, 3.6.6.280797 released on September 11th).

When it does appear, the capability will be opt-in, an important point to remember. Nothing happens vis-a-vis the viewer and Facebook unless you want it to happen (and you have a Facebook account). It will apparently consist of a new viewer floater, itself comprising a number of tabs:

  • Account Tab: will allow those with a Facebook account to connect their SL account to it for the purposes of posting from SL to Facebook
  • Check-in tab: will allow someone to share the SLurl for their current in-world location via Facebook, together with a short comment on the location and a map image if they wish
  • Status tab:  will allow someone to share a text comment with friends via Facebook
  • Photo tab: will allow someone to upload a snapshot to their FB account. As with the current Profile Feed option in the snapshot floater, the resolution of the image can be selected at upload (minimum 800×600), and an optional SLurl / comment can be included with the image.

Details on the capabilities are outlined in Viewerhelp on the wiki, which also references a new Knowledge Base entry, Second Life Share. Unfortunately, clicking the link generates a 404 error, and a search of the Knowledge Base at the time of writing did not yield and further relevant results. I’ve included the link here in anticipation of the issue being fixed by LL.

Whether the title of the new functionality is “Second Life Share” is indicative that it may be extended to include other social media options remains to be seen. It will also be interesting to see what it might mean for the future of the snapshot floater – if anything at all – if this is the case.

I’ll follow-up on this post once the new functionality is visible.