SL Server Deployments week 15 – recap

There were no deployments.

Upcoming Releases

As noted in part 1 of this report, week 16 should see a server maintenance update deployed which includes a fix for BUG-5533, “llTeleportAgent() and llTeleportAgentGlobalCoords() can break any script in any attached object that contains a change event.”

Commenting on this at the Server Beta User Group meeting on Thursday April 10th, Maestro Linden said:

Kelly found some race conditions which likely lead to the breakage, and the fix appears to work. Right now it’s on Aditi, in the DRTSIM-251 channel. Ahern is on that channel, though I found out that almost all of Ahern’s parcels have scripts disabled. However, “Tehama” is also on that channel, and does allow scripts on some of its parcels. It’s public access, so that’s a good place to check the fix out if you’re interested.

SL Viewer

On Wednesday April 9th, the Lab release the VoiceMO release candidate viewer, version 3.7.6.288881 (release notes), into the viewer release channel. This RC combines the updates found in the Voice RC viewer (3.7.5.288516) and the Merchant Outbox RC viewer (3.7.5.288408), both of which at present also remain in the release channel for the time being.

Also on Wednesday April 9th, the Lab issued a new Maintenance viewer RC, version 3.7.6.288799, which includes some 54 MAINT fixes from the Lab – see the release notes for details. However, this does include a fix for the Male Avatar Chest Rendering Broken / Mesh Clothes Breaking on Male Avatars (BUG-5537) issue I covered in week 13. The fix for this is given as “ Male Avatar chest rendering broken – chest shows bigger for onlookers, than to oneself – effects attachments and all worn mesh types”. This update also includes a change to remove the “Start Second LIfe now?” dialogue which is displayed after installing the viewer, and which resulted in the viewer being started with system Admin privileges on Windows systems.

Commenting briefly on things viewer, Simon Linden indicated that he’s also fixed the bug where terrain textures aren’t updated if you change the heights or textures, although I gather this has yet to reach a viewer.

Group Chat

A further Group Chat test was run on Aditi. “I’m looking into the overhead for group chat on maintaining that list of people in the chat,” Simon explained as the test kicked-off. “I think it becomes heavy load in a group with a lot of people on-line.” The test proceeded along similar lines to those carried out previously.

Group Bans

Baker Linden reports that most of the viewer-side bugs related to group bans have been fixed. however, Caleb Linden found an ugly bug in the back-end code 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.

A fix has yet to be written, but Baker doesn’t see it as a hard task to do, “My fix will check each one and if you’re banned, it will gracefully skip the banned agent’s invite,” he said when describing how things will work. Other Items

Aditi Log-in Issue / Inventory Update Issue

The script which should synchronise people’s passwords and inventories between Agni (the main grid) and Aditi (the beta grid) is not functioning correctly (see BUG-5563). As I’ve previously reported, this means that following a password change, people are finding they must continue to use their old password to access Aditi and are not seeing their inventory update. Commenting on the issue, Maestro Linden said, “We’re not sure why it’s not working – the script which is supposed to synchronize the accounts says that it updates them on Aditi.” So at the moment any fix is dependent on the Linden carrying out further checks to ascertain what is going on.

Feature Request: Hide All Objects Outside Parcel

A request for a parcel control feature which, when set, would cause the viewer to ignore and not render all objects outside of a parcel has been put forward (see BUG-5671) and is drawing strong debate.

On the one hand, people feel this could greatly enhance performance when entering regions that are massively loaded with objects and textures (because the viewer would simply ignore everything outside of the parcel where the option is enabled).

On the other hand, some people feel that such an option could negatively impact the feeling of SL as a place (imagine teleporting around regions and all you see are the objects on the parcel you’re in, the rest is just terrain).

One suggestion put forward is that rather than making this a parcel option (and thus forced on anyone entering a parcel where it is enabled), such a capability is, if possible, made a viewer-side option, so that people get a more flexible choice as to what is rendered / what they see. I have to say that this potentially offers the most attractive option were such a capability to be taken-up by LL.