A word of caution when trying the Second Life Viewer 2 Beta with current OpenSim
Hi folks. Just a brief blog post to remind people to take care when experimenting with Linden Lab’s Beta Second Life Viewer 2 with the current OpenSim builds. I’ve seen mixed reports of how well it works with OpenSim at the moment (some people seem to suffer a crash almost immediately while others seem to be able to use it to some extent).
However, according to John Hurliman the version of the OpenMetaverse library currently being used by OpenSim has a problem dealing with at least one of the new inventory packets in the 2.0 Viewer. This means that it’s not impossible that using the viewer with OpenSim today could inadvertently destroy some of your inventory items.
This is certainly not deliberate in any way - it would be a result of the mismatch between the viewer’s expectations of the server-viewer communications protocol and OpenSim’s (via libOpenMetaverse).
John says there are also issues with the viewer no longer shipping with default terrain textures, making OpenSim regions using those textures appear all white (if only it were still Christmas). So it sounds like experimentation is best done with an alt avatar for now.
The viewer itself looks very interesting and I look forward to trying it out when I next get an opportunity. Not sure how long it will take to get support in OpenSim but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if people aren’t already working on it. John himself says he’s looking to get various issues resolved though it’s not at the top of his priority stack at the moment.
Any idea why the latest Emerald builds (1.23.5.1585 and 1.23.5.1628 RC) are having similar problems resolving textures in OpenSim (specifically, OSGrid), even though the previous version (…1101) didn’t?
I have seen the same thing (white textures) when switching between regions running a straight 64 bit OpenSim.exe and the 32 bit launcher with Hippo viewer w/o clearing the viewer cache. Some of the alpha textures on plants are white.
[...] “Some people seem to suffer a crash almost immediately while others seem to be able to use it to some extent,” said OpenSim core developer Justin Clark-Casey. [...]
[...] A word of caution when trying the Second Life Viewer 2 Beta with current OpenSim | justincc.org [...]
@Lalo - I’m afraid not.
@Bluewall - interesting.
I tried the SLViewer2 beta myself today on Linden Lab’s grid. Don’t care much for the UI but the ’shared media’ interactive web page on a prim feature is really good. Lots of people have been asking for that and I doubt that the required OpenSim implementation work will be all that difficult.
@ Justin .. I too have tried out the new viewer today and the shared media is a great idea. Glad to hear you think it may be possible to implement that in Opensim without too much work.
The 2 extra clothing layers (tattoo and alpha layers)presumably wouldn’t be that hard to do either except for amending the appearance database table to accomodate them. As this table is about to get replaced as part of the Robust refactor, it occurs to me this may be a good time to add the extra columns now. That way it saves changing the table now and again later for the extra layers. Frequent database changes are disruptive as Melaine pointed out at the London Meetup. What do you think? Is It worth you suggesting that to your fellow devs (Diva and Melanie)?
Of course they may have already designed the new replacement appearance table in the Robust refactor to have a variable number of layers to aid future expansion, in which case adding columns for these 2 new layers is not required as variable would cover this and any future extra layer that the SL or any other viewer cares to handle.
I must be losing touch. I have been following Snowglobe etc, and bam! Lindens Viewer 2 is out(in beta) with features that move linden into the next gen: good lip sync and web on a prim. Not just rendering a page but interactive scrollbars etc. The true wearable alpha textures and invisible mask functions will create a myriad of possibilities for avatar creation.
@Bob - I agree that it should be analyzed if the required database changes can already be implemented as part of the current refactoring. The advantage would be, that we would have just on bigger change ahead.
When you have a closer look at the new viewer, you recognize that Linden Labs did focus on usablity for new users, while trying to reduce the number of changes required on the server side to a minimum. Thus it should be quite easy to get OpenSim ready for this new viewer generation.
The following features seem use slightly extended the libOpenMetaverse protocol and/or require additional database fields:
- interactive web content on prim faces
(including packet to synchronize URLs, but not scroll bar positions
or even login info)
- new avatar clothing layers for tattoos and alpha
- links as new class of inventory items
(new inventory packet type)
The rest is simply the same the old viewers did provide, but with a more modern look.
The one feature, that I think would be the best to add to os would be the shared media feature on prim. I help teach classes on sl and starting to on os. The feature has come in extremely handy and I think would be a well deserved addition to os.