On May 31st, 2018 Linden Lab updated the Love Me Render Release Candidate, viewer version 5.1.5.515811 to de facto release status.
Unfortunately, during the release process, there was an error defining the location of the Windows 32-bit version of the Second Life viewer download, which meant Windows users downloading the viewer when first released received the 64-bit version, regardless of which version of the operating system they are running.
While the issue has been addressed, it did leave some 32-bit Windows users found their systems stuck in a loop of trying to install the 64 bit version of the viewer. As I noted at the time, instructions were issued on how to break out of the loop. However, it appears some 32-bit users may still be encountering problems.
To this end, the Lab has released the “Unloop” Release candidate viewer, version 5.1.6.515965, which as the release notes state:
…is a special release just for Windows 32 bit systems who were caught in an endless loop of 64 bit viewer updates between 5/31/2018 and 6/1/2018. Except for its incremented build number, it is in every other way, identical to the last release.
So, if you are a 32-bit Windows user and are still having issues as a result of the promotion of the Love Me Render release, you might want to try a fresh installation of the Unloop viewer.
Update, June 6th: for those 32-bit Windows users still experiencing problems with this issue, the Lab has issued the Unloop RC viewer.
On May 31st, 2018 Linden Lab updated the Love Me Render Release Candidate, viewer version 5.1.5.515811 to de facto release status.
Unfortunately, during the release process, there was an error defining the location of the Windows 32-bit version of the Second Life viewer download. Because of this error, all Windows users downloading the viewer received the 64-bit version, regardless of which version of the operating system they are running.
While the issue has now been fixed so that 32-bit Windows users will receive the 32-bit version of the viewer, anyone running 32-bit Windows who downloaded the viewer during the 24 hours when the incorrect location was available (12:00 noon SLT on Thursday, May 31st, 2018 through 12:00 noon SLT on Friday, June 1st, 2018) may now find their system is stuck in a loop of trying to install the 64 bit version of Second Life.
Because of this, Kyle Linden issued a forum post on how to correct the problem for those caught in the loop, and I’m reproducing those instructions below for those who may have missed the forum post:
Linden Lab has promoted the latest Maintenance RC to de facto release status. The viewer follows the Lab’s convention of naming their maintenance updates for the viewer after popular alcoholic beverages and aperitifs.
This release includes a range of updates and improvements to the viewer which are worth highlighting, and which will be finding their way into third-party viewers as time goes forward (if they are not already present). Including the following.
Installation and Log-in Improvements
The “Your account will not be available until” login failure message has now been removed, as it is no longer meaningful.
The GPU Benchmark test no longer causing issues when installing the viewer or when setting viewer defaults.
Non-English versions of the viewer can now be installed into non-default paths without causing incorrect fonts to be loaded, corrupting the text of the Terms of Service display in the viewer.
Mac OS updates:
Incorrect VFS (cache) creation time no longer shown in “help>about SL”.
Full version of the build in the applications is now displayed after install on Mac.
Avatar Appearance Updates
A new option added to the Appearance Editor right-click menu: Wear Only This Outfit.
The Edit Outfit panel in the Appearance Editor no longer displays “Loading…” when there is nothing to load.
An avatar’s hairbase is now correctly rendered in Appearance mode when ALM is enabled, and the alpha mask will correctly hide the default hair in the Outfit Editor.
A seated avatar’s rotation is now correctly updated when the object the avatar is sitting on is changed via the build floater X, Y, Z spinners.
Object position (and sometimes size) no longer greyed out when editing avatar parts or attachments.
Temporary attachments can now be detached via gear menu in Appearance >Wearing.
UI Improvements
Abuse Report floater clean-up.
Error messages no longer doubled (the first being generic, the second being accurate).
It is no longer possible to delete an inventory folder while trying to rename it by holding down the Delete key a little too long.
Chat scroll bar now properly displayed after a panel resize.
“Walk/run/fly” toolbar button no longer turns off “fly mode” once per session.
Received Items improvements:
The “New” icon in the Received Items folder now correctly disappears when navigating with keys.
The “New” tag now appears in front of folders when searching.
“Properties” menu item disabled for multiple selection in Object content, because it was causing Received Items to disappear.
The Donation check box no longer covered by the Purchase button when buying land from a group you’re already donating to.
Bottom part of “Filter” button at Snapshot window can now be properly clicked.
World Map no longer shows first friend location after searches.
Unicode correctly appears in the Windows viewer display name.
Arrows ‘Navigate back’ and ‘Navigate forward’ had wrong state.
Profiles now have a Back button.
Debug setting AvatarHoverOffsetZ will work regardless of whether Set Hover Height modal has been opened.
Efficiency & Performance Improvements
This viewer uses the new off-line messages capability to correctly fetch off-line IMs following log-in, hopefully resolving the issue of lost off-line messages.
Viewer no longer attempting to load file/mesh/LOD indefinitely in case of most failures.
Advanced Lighting Mode (ALM) improvements
Normal and specular maps no longer downloaded when ALM is disabled.
Local Textures for Advanced Lighting Projectors now keep the selected texture.
Particles attached to the muted avatars no longer render.
Texture animation flicker at certain frame rates has been removed.
Sculpties should no longer appear as spheres before their shape data has been received by the viewer.
Scripts memory usage should no longer return incorrect values in the Estate Tools.
Unneeded exception handling from LLAppViewer::frame() removed.
ExportCharts for performance analysis re-enabled.
Mods to allow nVidia nSight to capture frames of Viewer rendering have been added.
Deprecated and unused private memory pooling removed.
Various translation updates.
Media Updates
(MAC only): viewer Media Browser no longer doubles entered Cyrillic capital letters.
Magnify glass button no longer returns camera to avatar after select other nearby media in “Start/Stop ALL Media” tab.
Scrollbar should decrease when the number of displayed media decreases.
The viewer no longer sends multiple GET requests against prim media when PRIM_MEDIA_AUTO_PLAY is enabled.
Social floaters launch a somewhat different version of the internal browser.
Crash Fixes
The viewer includes a range of crash fixes, as detailed in the release notes.
Downloads
The viewer can be downloaded from the viewer’s release notes page, if preferred.
According to the deployment thread, on Tuesday, April 24th, 2018, the Main (SLS) channel was updated with server maintenance package 18#18.04.09.514272, previously deployed to the RC channels and containing internal fixes and a fix for BUG-214702. However, a check on the simulator release via Help > About in the viewer reveals the simulator version to be 18.04.13.514504, which doesn’t appear to have associated release notes.
According to the deployment thread, there was no deployment to the three main RC channels – LeTigre, Magnum and BlueSteel – on Wednesday, April 25th, which reportedly remain on server maintenance release 18#18.04.09.514272. However, as with the Main (SLS) channel, these channels report as being on simulator version 18.04.13.514504.
Region Crossing Updates
On Wednesday, April 25th, the Snack RC was updated with a release designed to assist with region crossings.
“We’ve made some changes on the back-end with respect to message reliability,” Rider Linden stated at the Simulator User Group meeting on Tuesday, April 23rd. “We are hoping makes the transitions [from one region to the next] a bit more reliable … mostly it was a number of internal changes dealing with how agents get passed between simulators during a crossing or teleport.”
The simulator regions with the updated messaging code are:
Blake Sea – Atlantic
Blake Sea – Galilee
Blake Sea – Cattewater
Blake Sea – Crows Nest
Blake Sea – Mizzen
Blake Sea – Nelson
Blake Sea – Thunderer
Blake Sea – Hawser
Blake Sea – Indefatigable
Blake Sea – Jones Locker
All of these can be accessed via the Blake Sea Half Hitch rezzing zone for those wishing to access them. I addition there is a block of region centred on “Est Full2” on Aditi that also have the updated region crossing code.
SL Viewer
There have been no updates to the viewer channels so far, leaving them as follows:
Current Release version 5.1.3.513644, dated March 27, promoted April 13 – formerly the media update RC.
Release channel cohorts:
Love Me Render RC viewer, version 5.1.4.514437, April 13.
Ouzo Maintenance RC, version 5.1.4.514434, April 13.
Bakes on Mesh project viewer, version 5.1.3.513936, March 30.
360 snapshot viewer, version 5.1.3.513006, March 6 (this version can have significant rendering issues, see my hand-on update).
Linux Spur viewer, version 5.0.9.329906, dated November 17, 2017 and promoted to release status 29 November – offered pending a Linux version of the Alex Ivy viewer code.
Obsolete platform viewer, version 3.7.28.300847, May 8, 2015 – provided for users on Windows XP and OS X versions below 10.7. This viewer will remain available for as long as reasonable, but will not be updated with new features or bug fixes.
Other Items
A recent back-end change made to PRIM_MEDIA_CURRENT_URL reportedly broke a lot of content (see BUG-216032), causing a lengthy debate during the Simulator User Group meeting. As a result of this discussion, Oz Linden provided an update on the change and on a further change the Lab has made which they hope will assist those experiencing issues as a result of the original change.
We installed an important security patch, which happened to no longer infer http for a URL that had no scheme (in my opinion a good change). That broke some scripts that had used the field for a URL but left off the scheme (e.g. “myserver.example.com/myapi”) so those were broken. In order to get those slightly sloppy but legit uses working again, we added the scheme for them (but used https because everyone always should).
Storing data in that URL field was never intended to work.
The fact that we broke uses that were never legit is unfortunate, but not something I feel an obligation to maintain compatibility with. We’ll try to help you recover data that’s trapped there, but we won’t change it so you can keep doing that. If you have scripts that you need to get the data back out of, let us know and we’ll try to work with you.
Those still experiencing issues should report them via the JIRA.
On Tuesday, April 17th, 2018, the Main (SLS) channel was updated with server maintenance package 18#18.03.29.513939, previously deployed to the RC channels and containing internal fixes.
On Wednesday, April 18th, 2018, the major RC channels, BlueSteel, Magnum and LeTigre should all be updated with the same server maintenance package 18#18.04.09.514272, containing internal fixes and a fix for BUG-214702.
SL Viewer
With the exception Animesh project viewer (see below), there have been no updates to the current SL viewers thus far in week #16, leaving the pipelines as follows:
Current Release version 5.1.3.513644, dated March 27, promoted April 13 – formerly the media update RC – NEW
Release channel cohorts:
Love Me Render RC viewer, version 5.1.4.514437, April 13.
Ouzo Maintenance RC, version 5.1.4.514434, April 13.
Project viewers:
Bakes on Mesh project viewer, version 5.1.3.513936, March 30
360 snapshot viewer, version 5.1.3.513006, March 6 (this version can have significant rendering issues, see my hands-on update).
Linux Spur viewer, version 5.0.9.329906, dated November 17, 2017 and promoted to release status 29 November – offered pending a Linux version of the Alex Ivy viewer code.
Obsolete platform viewer, version 3.7.28.300847, May 8, 2015 – provided for users on Windows XP and OS X versions below 10.7.
Animesh Project Viewer Update
The Animesh project viewer updated on Monday, April 16th. Version 5.1.4.514468 brings the viewer to parity with the current release viewer. In addition this viewer has revised streaming cost/land impact formula for Animesh objects, which are also reflected in ARC (avatar rendering cost) calculations for Animesh items.
In summary, the updates are:
Animesh attachment limit = 1: only one Animesh object can be attached to an avatar at a time. This is unchanged from the original estimates.
Triangle Count Limit = 100,000: an animesh object (linkset) can have at most 100k triangles, where the count is based on the estimated size of the largest LOD (normally this is the high LOD). This includes all mesh triangles, static or rigged.
Land Impact: streaming cost = 15.0 + 1.5 * ktris + cost of non rigged prims: for a rigged mesh prim in an animesh linkset, the streaming cost will be 0.0015 * effective_tri_count – that is, 1.5 per thousand triangles. The value for effective_tri_count is derived from the estimated triangle count of the various LODs in the prim as follows:
High LOD: all of the estimated triangle count included in the effective_tri_count.
Medium LOD, Low LOD and Lowest LOD: the allowed number of triangles can be up to ½ of the LOD above, or 64, whichever is larger (i.e. Medium can be up to ½ of High, or 64, whichever is larger). If there are more triangles than this limit, that excess will be added to the effective_tri_count.
See Vir’s explanation in the Animesh updated limits and cost formulas forum thread for a complete explanation of these limits and how they have been arrived at.
An important point to note is that these formulas only apply to Animesh; there is a second, and longer-term project – ARCTan – a re-evaluation of all object and avatar rendering costs (and which may see further changes to Animesh calaculations). It is hoped that overall, ARCTan will improve viewer-side performance and provide creators with positive incentives to build more performant content.
As noted in several of my TPV Developer meeting updates, Linden Lab are trying to improve viewer caching – starting with the texture cache. Commenting on the work, Oz Linden said, “We’re experimenting with a number of different changes. Some that you might think (I did) would make things better turned out not to, but we’re making progress.” It’s not clear if / when any project viewer utilising any new texture caching capability will be available for general use.
LlRequestUserKey and LlName2Key
The Lab has released two new LSL functions: llRequestUserKey and llNameToKey, both of which are in connection to the upcoming return of Last Names (see this blog post and this blog post for more):
llRequestUserKey:
Requests the Agent ID for the agent identified by name from the dataserver. The name given may be either the current name of an avatar or a historical name that has been used in the past. If no agent can be found with the supplied name this function returns the value NULL_KEY.
It returns a handle (a key) that can be used to identify the request when the dataserver event is raised.
Note that agent being searched for with this function does not need to be signed on to Second Life.
Returns a key the Agent ID for the named agent in the region. If there is no agent with the specified name currently signed onto the region, this function returns the value NULL_KEY. Names are always provided in the form “First[ Last]” or “first[.last]” (first name with an optional last name.)
If the last name is omitted a last name of “Resident” is assumed. Case is not considered when resolving agent names.
Uses a different mechanism to look up agent information to the older llKey2Name().
360 snapshot viewer, version 5.1.3.513006, March 6 (this version can have significant rendering issues, see my hand-on update).
Linux Spur viewer, version 5.0.9.329906, dated November 17, 2017 and promoted to release status 29 November – offered pending a Linux version of the Alex Ivy viewer code.
Obsolete platform viewer, version 3.7.28.300847, May 8, 2015 – provided for users on Windows XP and OS X versions below 10.7.
Bakes on Mesh
This is the project to extend the current avatar baking service to allow wearable textures (skins, tattoos, clothing) to be applied directly to mesh bodies as well as system avatars. This involves server-side changes, including updating the baking service to support 1024×1024 textures, and may in time lead to a reduction in the complexity of mesh avatar bodies and heads.
This work does not include normal or specular map support, as these are not part of the existing baking service.
As noted in my last CCUG update, the project viewer, version5.1.3.513936, arrived on March 30th, 2018 (see the Bakes on Mesh JIRA filter for reported issues). There is a forum thread on the project, which carries a degree of misinformation on the project. Siddean Munro has sought to clarify things in a blog post, and Cathy Foil has produced an introductory video as well.
Environmental Enhancement Project
This is the project to create a set of environmental enhancements including the ability to define the environment (sky, sun, moon, clouds, water settings) at the parcel level; new environment asset types (Sky, Water, Days – the latter comprising multiple Sky and Water) that can be stored in inventory and traded through the Marketplace / exchanged with others; Experience-based environment functions and an extended day cycle (e.g a 24/7 cycle) and extended environmental parameters. The work involves simulator and viewer changes, and includes some infrastructure updates.
Rider Linden is working on EEP, and he reported, “I’ve been dealing with a little bit of a tangent having to do with internal inventory. Turned out to be a bit more complex than I anticipated when I said: “Sure, I’ll just knock that off as part of EEP”. It is almost resolved and then I can get back to direct EEP development.”
He also revealed more on how EEP will be “layered”: “EEP will have four different altitude layers. (Right now I’m operating with ground, 1km, 2km and 3km.) … The use case I see for the layers isn’t so much skyboxes, more for landing areas for RP sims that may want their own atmosphere; orbiting space stations , etc. (and the layers need to be set by the parcel owner.)”
Aditi Inventory Sync
Usually, sync on inventory from Agni, the Main grid, to Aditi, the Beta grid is designed to take place during a routine syncing operation run at around 2:00am PST daily, triggered by an Aidit log-in (see here for more).
However, as most of those who routinely log-in to Aditi will know that the system isn’t working correctly, and often, a ticket is required to get your Aditi inventory correctly synchronised with your Agni inventory. Commenting on the situation at the Simulator User Group, Mazidox Linden said, “We’ve got a dev working on the inventory sync to Aditi. We’re making some interesting progress, hopefully more news soon.” Oz Linden further indicated that a fix is in the pipeline.
On May 31st, 2018 Linden Lab updated the Love Me Render Release Candidate, viewer version 5.1.5.515811 to de facto release status.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 