Tag: TPVD meetings 2016

SL project updates 16 22/2: TPVD, Bento, TLS 1.2

Posted on by Inara Pey

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.

Bento is now on the main grid for more widespread testing
Bento is now on the main grid for more widespread testing

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.

SL project updates 16 20/2: TPV Developer Meeting

Posted on by Inara Pey
Alki
Alki – blog post

The following notes are taken from the  TPV Developer (TPVD) meeting held on Friday, May 20th, 2016. A video of the meeting is embedded at the end of this report, my thanks as always to North for supplying it, and time stamps in the text relate to this recording.

SL Viewer

The current official viewer status is as follows:

  • Current Release version: 4.0.5.315117 (dated May 11), promoted May 18th – formerly the Quick Graphics viewer with avatar complexity and graphics presets – see Avatar Complexity and Graphics Presets in Second Life for more details
  • Release candidates:
    • Inventory Message RC viewer, version 4.0.5.315019, released on May 16th – removes deprecated and unused UDP inventory messaging mechanisms from the viewer
  • Project viewers:
    • Project Bento (avatar skeleton extensions), version 5.0.0.314884 dated May 5th
    • Oculus Rift project viewer, version 3.7.18.295296, dated October 13th, 2015
  • Obsolete platform viewer, version 3.7.28.300847, dated May 8, 2015 – provided for users on Windows XP and OS X versions below 10.7.

Release Viewer Issues

[02:40]  There are reports that installing the current release viewer on Mac systems will set the Avatar Maximum Complexity setting (Preferences > Graphics) to “No Limit” on both clean and “dirty” viewer installs. JIRAs have been requested if encountered.

There have also been some reports of the viewer crashing following update. The likely best way to overcome this should you experience it, is to perform a clean install of the viewer.

Oculus Rift

[02:08] Testing of the updated viewer is being carried out. There are still “a few” issues to be resolved, and it is hoped that the update will be available (still as a project viewer) in a couple of weeks.

Project Bento

[08:15] The next iteration of the project viewer may be released in the next week, and while I missed the Bento User Group meeting, I believe enabling the back-end support for Bento on Agni is still planned for week #21 (week commencing Monday, May 23rd).

This version of the viewer includes a “reset skeleton” feature which allows you to fix an avatar which may be rendering incorrectly as a result of joint positions getting scrambled when switching between avatar forms.

64-bit Viewer Project

[01:36] It is hoped that work will shortly resume on the 64-bit versions of the viewer after manpower was diverted away onto other projects and needs.

QuickTime Replacement

[01:37] There has been healthy discussion between the Lab and TPV developers about replacing Apple QuickTime in the viewer. As I noted in April Apple deprecated QuickTime for Windows without offering patches for a couple of potentially serious vulnerabilities, leading to the recommendation that Windows users uninstall QuickTime.

[11:43] As a result the Lab is looking to completely replace QuickTime across all flavours of viewers, and feel they now have a strategy for doing so, which is described as coming along “reasonably well”.  However, it is likely that there will be some QuickTime media types that will never be rendered again (e.g. .MOV format).

Other Items

Viewer Stats

[05:52] The Lab isn’t currently collecting stats on what Avatar Maximum Complexity settings people are using, although they may do do. The can currently collect stats on the complexity of avatars and how many are being rendered as Jelly Dolls.

Voice Drop-Outs

[15:00] Issue with Voice dropping out across SL are still being experienced. As I reported in early April, many of the drop-outs are the result of DDoS attacks aimed at the Vivox services, rather than any issues within SL. The Lab is currently working with Vivox to improve the speed of recovery for voice services once Vivox have recovered their systems from these attacks.

Firestorm Release

There are currently a couple of blockers preventing the release of the next version of Firestorm (which has been merged with the Avatar Complexity code and is currently undergoing debugging as a result of that merge). The blockers are related to the recent HTTP updates, made by the Lab. One is a bakefail issue which is known the the Lab and is being worked on; the other is a  crash on the 64-bit version of the viewer which occurs whenever the voice coroutine is launched.

SL project updates 16 18/2: TPV Developer Meeting

Posted on by Inara Pey

Osprey Ridge; Inara Pey, April 2016, on Flickr Osprey Ridge – blog post

The following notes are primarily taken from the  TPV Developer (TPVD) meeting held on Friday, May 6th, 2016. A video of the meeting is embedded at the end of this report, my thanks as always to North for supplying it, and time stamps in the text relate to this recording.

Week #18 Server Deployments – Recap

On Tuesday, May 3rd, the Main (SLS) channel received the same server maintenance package originally deployed to the three RC channels in week #17, comprising a crash fix and minor internal improvements. There was no RC deployment during the week.

Week #19 Attachment Inventory Limits

There will be a new RC deployment in week #19 (commencing Monday, May 9th). This will include new limits, I believe, on the total number of assets which can be contained on worn attachments. The exact limits aren’t clear to me. However, in-world objects cannot be rezzed if they contain more that 10K inventory individually, or 30K in the case of linksets, so I suspect similar limits will apply to attachments, and any attempt to attach objects that exceed these limits will fail. More on this next week.

SL Viewer Updates

Release Viewer

[03:40] The Maintenance RC viewer, version 4.0.4.314579, released on April 28th, was promoted to the de facto release viewer on Thursday, May 5th.

Quick Graphics Viewer

[03:50] The Quick Graphics RC viewer (currently version 4.0.4.314426, dated April 26th) is now “perilously close” to being promoted to release status, and apparently only needs to be merged with and tested against the new release viewer code.

[04:55] The next update to this viewer will refer to rainbow avatars as “Jelly Dolls”, in keeping with the new popular term for solid-colour avatars, which has been “adopted with enthusiasm” by the Lab.

[05:20] There is also a new control added to the viewer screen for making quick adjustments to the Max Avatar Complexity setting.

Project Bento

The Project Bento viewer updated to version 5.0.0.314884, also on Thursday, May 5th.

This build contains several updates related to joint offsets and meshes:

  • Joint offsets will be ignored if they define a position identical to the default position for that bone. We use a 0.1 mm tolerance to determine whether a position has changed, so to force the offset to be applied you can make an invisibly small tweak to the bone in your modeling tool.
  • Along with this, we provide some log message feedback during upload to show which joints will have active offsets.
  • Meshes can now have multiple skeleton roots – for example, you could have a model rigged to both hands without including any bone that both hands are descendants of.
  • Joint offsets are now enforced during shape editing.

Slider changes:

  • We include a fix for a long-standing bug with female torso muscles
  • The male “package” slider can now be supported in mesh models by weighting to mGroin. (note that the currently available test models do not have this weighting yet).

[04:15] The Lab believes the project is now stable enough to be “close to” moving to the Main grid.

Oculus Rift Viewer

[04:26] The Lab is continuing to work on the Oculus Rift viewer. The next release, which will remain at project status, is expected “real soon now”, but will support the latest Oculus VR SDK, etc.

64-bit Viewer Project

[07:13] The 64-bit viewer project has been temporarily suspended recently while the developers working on it were assigned to other tasks, including the ongoing QuickTime remediation project.

Upcoming Viewers

In September 2015, I wrote about the Lab’s plans for further improvements to inventory management and handling within the viewer. Part of this work involves the removal of older UDP paths / mechanisms for inventory handling are properly deprecated / removed and replaced by newer and more robust mechanisms, and that all older mechanisms which have already been replaced are properly removed.

[05:45]  This work had been on hold pending the recent HTTP work. It is now expected that an RC viewer containing these updates will be appearing shortly. Once these updates have reached release status and been fully validate through their active use, the associated UDP support for the deprecated paths and mechanisms will be removed server-side.

 Aditi and Agni Inventory Caches

As I’ve previously reported, the new Aditi inventory syncing process created local inventory caching issues (see also BUG-11651). A fix for this was proposed by the Lab, which would allow the viewer to create separate inventory caches for Agni and Aditi, with the correct cache being automatically selected depending on which grid a user logs-in to (see here for more).

This update was incorporated into the Maintenance RC, and so is now a part of the de facto release viewer, and so should also be appearing in TPVs as they adopt the 4.0.4 code base from the Lab.

The current release viewer, version 4.0.4.314579 including the new Aditi / Angi local inventory caching capability to prevent local inventory caches being incorrectly merged when logging between the main and beta grids
The current release viewer, version 4.0.4.314579 including the new Aditi / Agni local inventory caching capability to prevent local inventory caches being incorrectly merged when logging between the main and beta grids

Other Items

Double Posts in Chat

There have been reports of users experiencing double posts of their own text chat (local or IM) appearing in their viewer (although other people only see their comment displayed once. The Lab has requested that the problem be tested using the their own viewer, and a JIRA raised stating the precise circumstances when the issues occurred, as soon as possible after it has occurred, together with all relevant data – logs, viewer About information, etc., and further occurrences are similarly logged against that JIRA.

TLS 1.2

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$.

SL project updates 16 16/2: TPV Developer meeting

Posted on by Inara Pey
The golden Delta, Fantasy Faire 2016
The Golden Delta, Fantasy Faire 2016

The following notes are primarily taken from the  TPV Developer (TPVD) meeting held on Friday, April 22nd, 2016. A video of the meeting is embedded at the end of this report, my thanks as always to North for supplying it, and time stamps in the text relate to this recording.

Server Deployments – Recap

There are no scheduled deployments for week #16. The next deployment should be to the RC channels in week #17 (week commencing Monday, April 25th). This is liable to include at least one fix to help prevent simulator crashes.

SL Viewer

[0:40] There have been no further updates since my part #1 report.

  • The Maintenance RC viewer is progressing well, with no backwards compatibility issues
  • The Quick Graphics viewer now has “almost all” of the pending changes made to it. with Oz noting:
    • There is still a shiny rendering issues with muted avatars which has yet to be resolved
    • The account properties for materials have yet to be added. Testing for this in terms of the cost multiplier, etc., is in progress
    • However, the viewer could ship with these “as is” and then have them incorporated later
    • A further RC build is in progress and is expected to be made available in week #17
    • The favoured unofficial term for muted avatars at the Lab at the moment is “rainbow people”
    • It is hoped that this viewer will go to release status in “significantly less” than a month
  • A further update to the Bento project viewer is anticipated ahead of the project moving to the main grid, after which the viewer will progress through project to release candidate to de facto release over time
    • Work continues to try to resolve or improve some pre-existing issues with animation handling, etc., all of which may or may not be completed as a part of the Bento project
    • There is no definitive time frame as to when the project will move to the main grid, although the aim remains for this to occur in Q2 2016
    • See my weekly Bento updates for more information
  • The Oculus Rift viewer is reaching a point where it “almost” works
    • It now works with the latest SDK
    • Very precise graphics settings are required, and it is likely that it will be updated and issued with a notice it will only work decently with these graphics settings
    • There are still some UI issues to be dealt with
    • The Lab will be watching usage stats for this viewer closely once available
  • [14:22]  64-bit viewers: The Lab has been testing 32-bit builds against their updated libraries, which are now in a position to support 64-bit builds
  • [15:22] A contributed fix for issues around modifier keys on the Mac viewer has passed LL’s QA, and should be in the next Maintenance RC viewer to be released

Apple QuickTime

[10:52] As I recently noted, Apple have deprecated support for QuickTime on Windows, leaving some critical vulnerabilities unpatched, leading to advisories that windows users uninstall the package from their systems.

As the QuickTime SDK has tended to be a part of the viewer build process, there has been an ongoing discussion within the opensource-dev mailing list as to how to replace it. Currently, the Lab is testing what happens if the QuickTime plug-ins are completely removed from the viewer, and trying to handle media which used to be handled by the plug-ins directly by CEF. However, it is unlikely that a version of the viewer without QuickTime will be appearing in the immediate future.

Teleport Web Widget

[13:25] As noted in my last TPD update, there is a new web widget to handle SLurls and map URLs into Second Life from the web. The should be making an appearance soon via the wiki, and in things like the Destination Guide. There will hopefully be a blog post outlining the widget and how to use it appearing as well in due course.

The SL Viewer and RLV

[27:22] The RLV (restrained love viewer) extensions for the viewer have a mixed reputation. Initially conceived to help make certain adult activities more life-like, they have also been shown to have a range of much broader applications (e.g. enabling  “portal” like teleporting of avatars, controlling camera movement, etc).

Some of these types of capabilities have been mirrored through the introduction of Experiences. While the Lab has no intention of adopting RLV or RLV/a “as is” or in a manner that’s compatible with the existing RLV API, they are considering possibly folding some more RLV-style functionality into the Experience set of capabilities as a longer-term project.

 

SL project updates 16 14/2: TPV Developer Meeting

Posted on by Inara Pey
Light Thoughts 2, LEA20 - blog post
Light Thoughts 2, LEA20 – blog post

The following notes are primarily taken from the  TPV Developer (TPVD) meeting held on Friday, April 8th, 2016. A video of the meeting is embedded at the end of this report, my thanks as always to North for supplying it, and time stamps in the text relate to this recording.

SL Server Deployments  – Recap

There was no scheduled deployment to the Main (SLS) channel this week. All three RC channels received the same server maintenance package, comprising a fix for (non-public) BUG-11163 llHTTPRequest returns 400 from some sims and not others, and some minor improvements. Assuming nothing goes sideways with this update, it should be promoted to the Main channel in week #15 (commencing Monday, April 11th).

As of the Server Beta User Group meeting on Thursday, April 7th, it seems that there will not be any RC deployment in week #15.

SL Viewer Update

Maintenance Viewer

One of the changes within the new Maintenance RC sees the When I Spend Or Get L$ notification tick box (Preferences > Notifications) split into two options
One of the changes within the new Maintenance RC sees the When I Spend Or Get L$ notification tick box (Preferences > Notifications) split into two options

A new Maintenance RC viewer, version 4.0.4.313759, arrived on Friday April 8th. This includes fixes for a range of issues related to viewer crashes, memory leaks, input/cursor issues, graphics bugs, formatting, notifications, etc.

This Maintenance viewer sees invisiprim texture UUIDs revert to their “old” behaviour: they will mask whatever they are covering (feet, water in dry docks or in boats, etc) when ALM is disabled, and are ignored when running with ALM enabled (see here for further background on recent changes to how these texture UUIDs are handled by the SL viewer).

The familiar situation with invisiprims
The Maintenance RC viewer sees the return of the “old” invisprim texture UUID behaviour: masking items (e.g avatar feet in shoes; Linden water in dry docks – above – or boats, etc), when ALM is disabled (left) and being ignored by the rendering engine when ALM is enabled

During the TPVD meeting, Grumpity Linden described this as a “partial” fix [11:35, in text], and Oz Linden indicated that the Lab has not reached a final decision on how these textures should be handled in the future [18:35]. both of these comments suggest further work is yet to come with how invisiprims are handled.

Quick Graphics Viewer

[00:50] The Quick Graphics viewer, version 4.0.2.312297 at the time of writing, is being merged with the current release viewer code, but still has some remaining bugs to be resolved. It would therefore seem unlikely this viewer will be promoted to release status in the immediate future.

[31:44] Testing has shown that this viewer is relatively successful in preventing people wearing mesh graphics crashers from crashing it. While those using this viewer can experience a drop in frame rate in the presence of such crashers, they tend to remain connected to the simulator.

Change in how Avatar complexity is calculated means that other avatars such no longer appear as "Jelly Babies" when the slider is set to Umlimited
Change in how Avatar complexity is calculated means that other avatars such no longer appear as “rainbow avatars” when the slider is set to Unlimited

[33:24] A further change to the view means it no longer uses attachment geometry when calculating avatar complexity. This should prevent situations where setting the Avatar Complexity slider in the viewer to Unlimited still results in some avatars still appearing as solid colours.

[35:00] However, the recommendation is that if you want to have avatars mostly rendered normally but still have protection against like graphics crashers, you set the Avatar Complexity value to 350K rather than Unlimited.

[36:05] Avatars rendered as solid colours have been informally referred to as “Jelly Babies”. However, as this is actually a trademarked name (Bassett’s / Cadbury-Schweppes / Mondelēz International), the Lab prefers that it is no used, and are informally referring to solid colour avatars as “rainbow avatars” and more formally as “muted avatars”.

Oculus Rift Viewer

[06:49] The Lab is still committed to getting the Oculus Rift project viewer, version 3.7.18.295296 and dated October 2014 at the time of writing, updated. Progress has been slowed due ongoing changes in the Oculus SDK. However, the plan remains to have this viewer support the consumer release version of the headset.

64-viewer

[28:48] The Lab has started building 64-bit versions of their Windows and Mac viewers. There is no firm date on when these will appear as project viewers, but the progress to date has been relatively rapid.

SL Voice

[07:40] The recent HTTP / Vivox release viewer (version 4.0.3.312816) contains a number of updates to improve issues like Voice quality, drop-outs, connection failures, etc. The Lab has suggested TPVs might want to investigate dropping the updated voice package into their own viewers, if not about to update to the 4.0.3 code base, so users can benefit from the newer Voice package.

Widespread Voice Drop-Outs

[08:40] There have been instances of widespread Voice drop-out across SL recently. These are apparently the result of DDoS attacks aimed at the Vivox services, rather than any issues within SL. Vivox are working to reduce the impacts of these attacks and improve service resumption following them, but the current updates provided to the Lab obviously won’t help when these issues occur. However, an upcoming version of the Voice package should over improvements when reconnecting to the Vivox services after problems have occurred.

Security / Privacy Improvements

[10:25] In addition to the above, the Lab and Vivox are also working on various security and privacy improvements around Voice. When these are available, they will form a new version of the SL Voice package which will not be backwards compatible with older viewers.

Continue reading “SL project updates 16 14/2: TPV Developer Meeting” →

SL project updates 16 10/2: TPVD meeting

Posted on by Inara Pey
Heritage: Wrecks
Heritage: Wrecks – blog post

The following notes are primarily taken from the  TPV Developer (TPVD) meeting held on Friday, March 11th, 2016. A video of the meeting is embedded at the end of this report, my thanks as always to North for supplying it, and time stamps in the text relate to this recording.

RC Viewers

[00:00] All three RC viewers currently in the release channel have been updated as follows:

  • The HTTP / Vivox RC updated on Wednesday, March 9th to version 4.0.2.312094
  • The Maintenance RC viewer updated on Thursday, March 10th to version 4.0.2.312269
  • The quick Graphics RC viewer updated on Friday, March 11th to version 4.0.2.312297

All three of these viewers are now showing lower crash rates than the current release viewer, so one is mostly to be promoted at the new de facto release viewer early in week #11 (week commencing Monday, March 14th). [00:50] However, this is unlikely to be the Quick Graphics RC viewer, as there is at least one remaining bug which is in line for fixing prior to the viewer being promoted.

Project Viewers

[01:40] Work is progressing on updating the Oculus Rift project viewer, but problems have been encountered with the latest Oculus SDKs which are proving to be non-trivial to correct. The Lab hasn’t given up, but it does mean any update to this viewer is liable to be a little later rather than sooner.

[02:30] Working is also continuing with the final definition of the Bento skeleton, as well as investigations into hooking the skeleton into some of the shape sliders. This work is liable to see a further release of the viewer with the further skeleton updates before it hopefully moves fully into a bug fixes phase (which could be extensive).

64-bit Viewer Update

[13:21] The lab is making good progress on the Windows and Mac 64-bit versions of their viewer. This has been thanks in part to the work completed in updating the viewer build tool chain during 2014/5. As a result, it is possible that 64-bit project viewers might be appearing in the next few weeks, allowing for an update to the Havok libraries.

TLS Update

[02:58] Beehu Linden requested all TPVs ensure they are able to support TLS 1.2. The Lab is now actively engaged in removing support for all earlier version of TLS (which includes all versions of SSL).

As previously noted, this work is being carried out in respect of compliance requirements. It means that once complete, anyone who is using a viewer that does not have the requisite TLS 1.2 code updates (already in the 4.0+ versions of the official viewer and all viewers utilising the code base from the Lab’s 4.0 viewers) will not be able to do any interactions with cashier or anything that involves money and Second Life.

The next release of Firestorm, tentatively scheduled for around the mid-week of week #11 will have TLS 1.2 support.

Other News

New Registration API

[06:10] As I’ve recently reported, and Ebbe Linden indicated in his VWBPE address, there has been a delay in the roll-out of the new trial community Gateway programme due to issues with the new user registration API (one of them being a user signing-up through it cannot pick their avatar, they are given either the default male or female Character Test avatar).

These issues are being addressed, and an updated registration API is due to be released later in March or early in April. However, this version will not have the new feature set indicated by Ebbe in the VWBPE address, but will work “better” than the current API.

The new features as indicated by Ebbe are still expected to be released, but will come after this initial update, and currently do not have a firm ETA, although it is not anticipated there will be an extended delay between the initial update and an update with the new feature set.

Grid Status RSS Feed

[07:13] The Lab is updating  the Grid Status page RSS feed. This involves a new feed format, and a test URL has been available (http://beta.status.secondlifegrid.net/feed) has been available for those who may poll the RSS feed for updates (e.g. to display grid status updates on viewer log-in splash screens or on a web page, etc) to be able to test they can receive and display the new feed. This work as part of a switch the Lab is making to a new hosting provider for a number of their web services (e.g. the knowledge base).

There is no confirmed ETA as to when the cut-over will occur; the Lab is waiting on feedback from the hosting provider, but the hope is the switch will be made around mid-April, possibly earlier. When it does happen, there will be no need to change any URLs, because the Lab will point their DNS to the new location.

FMOD Studio

[19:30] The Lab has traditionally utilised FMOD (up until its demise) and more latterly FMOD Ex within the sound system for the viewer. However, as a part of the 64-bi viewer build, they may dip into using the full FMOD studio.