I'm sure a lot of folk's out there in SL Avatar Land will be happy to hear this news. You know when you try to log in and are stuck as a cloud, or are grey, or your Avi's textures keep getting blurry and you are constantly forced to do the Rebake Textures routine. Well some time in mid February the LL server team will be doing a major overhaul on the SL servers. Officially called Project Sun Shine ( or Server Side Baking ) Removing the current burden of having the Viewer do the Bake routine for avatar textures, is being moved Server Side.
In other words, all the heavy lifting burdens that control your avatars textures coming into view will be removed from the SL Viewer, and be placed under the control of the Server Hardware instead. Using tried and true HTTP as opposed to the current unreliable UDP protocol to send the necessary information out to the client. This is a huge change in the Client to Server communication relationship, and I believe
( Hopefully - cross's fingers - Lol ) that after a few initial hiccups, it will make all of our experiences in SL much more enjoyable for everyone.
However it will also entail some major code rewrite's on the Client side of things as well. What does that mean ? Viewer 1.x pretty much will be almost complete history, V1.23.5 if you are still using it simply will cease to work as will the Phoenix viewer, the reason being that neither one of them are no longer being actively developed. But you will have some choice's if you are a died in the wool V1.x user, Henri Beauchamps Cool Viewer, and Siana Gearz of Singularity both of which are V1.x based Client's, should be OK. I say this with about 90% confidence because so far both of them have miraculously somehow managed to back-port just about every V3 feature currently available so far, and they are both very dedicated to the V1.x platform. If for some reason neither chooses to do so, FireStorm has an excellent V1 skin available. If you are a rabid Phoenix user, forget about it ! The Phoenix / FireStorm team is no longer developing for the former any longer.
This also means that all of the current V3 based TPV's will need to comply with the correct updated code, and ingrate it into their current offering's, or they simply will not work any longer. Once the final Server Upgrade hit's the Main Grid full time, you will be forced to update, wither you like it or not !
Now before you panic and scream out Oh Shit ! DON'T !
LL is working very closely with all of the TPV's in order to make sure things go as smoothly as possible. Everyone want's to make this work, especially LL, they simply cannot afford to piss off so many customers still devoted to using V1.x Client Software, as is evident here. This picture was taken yesterday at Nyx Lindens office hours meeting.
I have never seen so many Lindens and TPV - Dev's together in the same place together at once, EVER ! And this was just at the start of the meeting, the place really got packed as the discussion's progressed. Zoom in on the photo and just see how many names you can recognize, all of the Who's Who involved with SL development were there, including Oz Linden.
If you are currently using the stock LL SL Viewer, you have absolutely nothing to be concerned about, all other SL residents really owe it to yourselves to view this recent Phoenix / FireStorm Hour originally broadcast live December 15 by Jessica Lyon, Product Manager of the PH / FS team. She did an excellent job of putting everything into lay-mans terms. You can watch the archive here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HueOLnF7sW8&feature=youtu.be
If you are a staunch Phoenix user, please read her prepared explanation as to why the PH project has been terminated as well.
http://wiki.phoenixviewer.com/phoenix_firestorm_office_hour_dec_15
In closing, I would like to add this. No matter what Viewer you consider to be your favorite, join their User Group, sign up on their Blog Post, join their Forums and get actively involved !
JayR Cela :_)
2 comments:
Does this mean no more logging in at safe zones to reload your inventory if you rez in as a cloud and cannot bake?
Is this also the end of ruthing as we know it?
Why does the little birdie inside of me say another viewer nightmare is at hand?
Hi there Eddi,
Actually I think with the amount of co-operation between LL and the TPV's, after some to be expected initial problems, I believe this will work out very well, I wish I had saved a transcript of the Monday meeting I attended, I'll take a look later on today.
I would highly recommend that you view the Video I have the link to / It's from Jessica Lyon and is about 1 hour and 20 minutes, she does not really get to the meat and bones of the issue untill about half way through, but that should clear up a few things for you.
Actually I proposed exactly what the Lab is now attempting over 4 years ago, that they switch from UDP to HTTP, rather then push the very un-reliable UDP protocol witch has no error checking what so ever onto the Viewer ( client side ) where it is prone to massive errors causing the data to have to be resent in an out of order stream that the client ( viewer ) has to reassemble is just plain idiotic / UDP is the oldest data transmission protocol out there it dates back to the 1960's, and was abandoned by just about every major large Data Center age's ago because it is unreliable, why not do everything on the Server side in HTTP. That way the data only needs to be sent once, as opposed to multiple times.
Of course I was laughed out of the meeting. All you have to do Eddi is Google UDP vs HTTP and do a lil bit of research, you will see what I mean.
I am definitely expecting some problems at first. But in reality, unlike the disastrous MESH debacle LL can not afford to fuck this one up
Thanks for taking the time to post your comment Eddi Happy Holiday Season to you and yours.
*Bigg Huggs* Byeee
JayR :_)
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