Countryside, Habitat Springs – blog post
The following notes are taken from the TPV Developer (TPVD) meeting held on Friday, June 3rd, 2016. A video of the meeting is embedded at the end of this report, my thanks as always to North for supplying it. Time stamps in the text relate to this recording.
Server Deployments
As always, for the latest information, please refer to the server deployment thread.
- On Tuesday, May 31st, the Main (SLS) channel was updated with the same server maintenance package previously deployed to all three RC channels, which included a server crash fix.
- On Wednesday, June 1st, all the RC channels were updated with a new server maintenance package, comprising the addition of mnemonic names to be used in LSL scripts when attaching to the new attachment points on the Bento skeleton extensions and minor internal changes.
The next RC deployment, scheduled for Wednesday, June 8th will including further anti-griefing measures, one of which will be if you try to rez a group of coalesced objects which between them have more the 10,000 items within their contents, the rezzing will fail on regions on the RC channels once this update has been deployed.
SL Viewer
Release Candidates
[00:45] there are currently two RC viewers in the release channel:
- Maintenance RC viewer, version 4.0.6.315551, dated May 23rd
- Inventory Message RC viewer, version 4.0.6.315555, dated May 23rd – removal of deprecated and unused UDP inventory messaging mechanisms from the viewer
[01:05] The Lab is hoping that TPVs will be picking-up the changes on the Inventory Message RC viewer ASAP, as they are hoping to be able to deprecate and removed the back-end support for the old messaging mechanisms completely as well, so that all inventory operations will go via AIS (Advanced Inventory System).
This will provide the Lab with a single point of enforcement for things like which folders in inventory are mandatory and cannot be deleted; which folders cannot be moved inside other folders, etc), in order to help eliminate points of potential inventory issues users may experience.
There are concerns over remaining bugs within the AIS system.
[12:14-17:20] BUG-9506, for example, remains open, although a fix which may help in part with in, relating to how AIS operations are threaded in the viewer, in the current Maintenance RC release, together with fixes for both BUG-10391 and BUG-11929. However, it may be that to deal specifically with the likes of BUG-9506, further tests are to be carried out to see if it still occurs on in the Inventory Message RC viewer, and if so, it may be that it might be merged with the Maintenance RC to see if issues can be resolved that way. The Lab will also re-examine what fixes have been recently made and where they reside within the viewer development pipeline.
Oculus Rift Project Viewer
[05:54] The Lab is still working on the Oculus Rift project viewer, but there are still assorted bugs to be dealt with. The time frame for this project viewer, which will support the latest SDKs and the consumer version of the headset, appearing remains as “pretty soon”.
64-bit Viewer Versions
[24:00] Work on the 64-bit versions of the official viewer is still “on hold”.
QuickTime Replacement
[24:09] A version of the viewer without any QuickTime support may be appearing in the next couple of weeks. This is as a result of Apple deprecating QuickTime for Windows without offering patches for a couple of potentially serious vulnerabilities, leading to the recommendation that Windows users uninstall QuickTime. As a result of this, the Lab has decided to completely replace QuickTime across all flavours of viewer. When made available, it will likely be called the Project VLC viewer, as some of the media handling will be through libVLC
Project Bento
With the move of Bento to the main grid, Bento User Group meetings will now take place at the Hippotropolis Campfire Circle at 13:00 SLT on Thursdays. Unfortunately, I was unable to make the meeting on Thursday, June 2nd, so there is no dedicated report in this blog for this week.
The male and female avatar skeletons have also been updated to support the most recent changes to Bento, and can be downloaded from the Bento Testing wiki page.
Work is continuing on bugs and issues, such as BUG-11538 (“Front legs crossing on Bento Mesh quad(animal) avatars”), and while new appearance shape sliders have been considered out-of-scope for the current iteration of Bento, issues have been raised with scaling limb sizes when trying to produce avatar add-on, rather than full avatars, which may in fact be in part solved through the use of a set of generic sliders. Further discussion on these ideas will likely come through the Bento forum thread, and potentially at the in-world meetings.
[05:15] Regardless of thoughts on slider sets and overall project scope, Bento will be progressing at its own pace, rather than trying to meet any specific deadline. There are a number of known issues still to be addressed, and it is anticipated that further issues are likely to be reported now Bento is available for more widespread testing.
Other Items
TLS 1.2
18:25] As per a blog post from the Lab, which I also reported here, users are being advised to update (if necessary) their web browser and their SL viewer to a version that supports TLS 1.2 by June 15th, 2016. After that date, any web browser or viewer that does not should TLS 1.2 will no longer be able to access Second Life cashier services to send, receive, or exchange L$.
The change is apart of the Lab’s efforts to improve its compliance needs for handling money, but some confusion has remained over exactly what will be affected in terms of L$ transactions, which still persists around matters of in-world purchases. The confusion prompted Oz Linden to comment during this meeting:
I believe that it will affect being able to purchase items in-world and to send and receive Linden dollars to other avatars, because it’s all interactions with the cashier.
So again, if you are using an older version of the viewer, it is essential you check to ensure it is TLS 1.2 complaint before June 15th.
To do this, use the viewer’s built-in web browser to visit How’s My SSL? and check the Version information displayed in the top left of the page. You may also wish to check your web browser as well, if you are using an older version of a browser and wish to ensure you can continue to make SL Marketplace transactions, etc. However, do be aware that some ad blockers can prevent the TLS 1.2 checks performing correctly.
In order to further confirm what may “break” as a result of this change, it has been suggested the Lab enable some form of testing on Aditi. This will be looked into.
“Feature Surprise”
[6:35] A further hint of an upcoming “feature surprise” was given at the meeting. I’m assuming this is actually the Visual Outfits Browser, designed to provide a means by which users can store and browse images associated with their outfits in inventory, simplifying the act of identifying an outfit prior to wearing it.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 