OpenSim HyperGrid : Is the HypeGrid in Danger of being Fragmented into the Have's and Have not's ?

By Avatar JayR Cela

       I don't mean to sound gloomy, however the HyperGrid is currently facing a very serious dilemma. With the recent introduction of OS 0.9.1.x there is a HUGE incompatibility issue dealing with Viewers and wither or not you will be able to travel freely between 1 grid to another successfully. Let me rephrase that, yes you can still travel about, however how people see your Avatar when you arrive at your destination can be troublesome to say the least. I have been doing some testing using Singularity v.1.8.7.8193 as an example.

      I am able to log into my home grid 3rd Rock Grid with this viewer just fine, 3RG is based on OS 0.8.2.x and things work well for me as long as I remain in 3RG, (or travel to another OS 0.8.2.x grid) however if I HG out to another grid running OS 0.9.1.x and return to 3RG, that's when the trouble starts, my avatar (witch is non-mesh) simply will not rezz, it's gone!!! POOF!!!, you can see all of my mesh clothing but not my avatar and neither can anyone else. Conversely if I log into another home grid that is running OS 0.9.1.x and travel to another grid running OS 0.8.2.x I can see my avatar just fine, but to other people, they can see my mesh clothing only, I have coined the term as "The Hollow Man Effect" just like the old "Invisible Man" movie as he removes his bandage's. And it doesn't stop there, I have found my avatar to be completely trashed a few time's after experiencing this problem, and it has been an unnecessary pain in the ass to fix afterwards.

    Now we get the one of the most troubling aspect's of this, and that is the decision of the viewer developers, should they choose to support OS 0.8.x or 0.9.1.x ? or can they actually support both, that may or may not be possible, *note* the FireStorm viewer's project manager clearly pointing out this issue a few months ago with her decision to place OS FireStorm future development into a holding pattern at the 6.0.2.56680 version.

    The bad news is this problem may not be solvable, the good news is some of the major players in the OpenSim Dev field are aware of this, and OS 0.8.2.x proponent Shelenn Aires of Metaversedepot Grid  and uBit Marmanov the current lead dev of OS 0.9.1.x team are talking with one in other to hopefully find a solution.

     If this problem ends up be an unsolvable one, then I think we can kiss the HyperGrid goodbye as a usable platform.

    Unless every grid out there decides to upgrade to OS 0.9.1.x, and I seriously doubt that is going to happen any time soon.

JayR Cela :_)

OpenSim HyperGrid : Singularity Viewer Beta "Voice is now working" "YAY !!!"

By avatar JayR Cela

     I'm back back again with another update on the Singularity viewers current Beta status, as of version 1.8.7.8193, the Vivox Voice service functionality has been restored. LOL / I guess some folks actually read this rag from time to time after all :_))))

JayR Cela :_)

OpenSim : HyperGrid : Singularity Viewer Update

Hey there everyone.

     I'm back today to hopefully get some attention from the Dev's currently working on the Singularity Viewer.

     Vivox Voice Service is broken. It does not work, plain and simple, cut and dry, it does not work at all.

     And hey look everyone that ever reads my blog knows darn well I am a died in wool Linux person, and everyone also knows that Vivox dropped Linux support a long time ago, well screw that, I make it work using the WINE Windows compatibility layer via the Win64 .exe installer. I have previous versions of Singularity running just fine in this environment, and FireStorm, and CoolVL, they all work just fine, and if God Forbid  I actually boot into Windows10 for some stupid reason  Voice will work there also, but not with the current version of Singularity, it is broken.

    I sincerely hope someone on the Singularity Dev team reads this post.

JayR Cela

Open Sim HyperGrid : Windows 7 is Dead / Should you switch to Linux ?

Hi there everyone,

     I have to say this because I feel it is important for any Open Sim users. personally I am not a Windows user, I much prefer Linux as my Operating System. However Linux is not for everyone, if you are currently or until recently been using Windows 7, my recommendation is just take the FREE Upgrade to Windows 10, figure out how to turn off all the telemetry spy on you bullshit and install either Virtual Box or VMWare on your system in order to test various Linux distributions until you find one you feel comfortable with. If you take your time learning Linux ( and it's not really all that hard to do ) you will not find yourself in PANIC MODE when shit don't work.

JayR Cela :_)

OpenSim : HyperGrid / Singularity Viewer UPDATE : current status

Happy Holiday Season to everyone.

    You should be aware of the fact that the Singularity team is very active again and the previous post (below) is no longer accurate. The main Singularity web page
  http://www.singularityviewer.org/home 
no longer lists the former Test viewer, you can still use the link I have listed in the previous post, as it is still working. Why you would want to do that is purely your decision. Numerous changes under the hood and a good bit of progress has been made since those versions were released to the public.

    Visit the main Singularity web page and select the nightly build option then choose the Alpha or Beta flavor, If you are currently using the last "stable" version Singularity Alpha 1.8.7.6994, then you will want to download the current Singularity 1.8.7.8008  >  Beta version so as not to disturb your existing 1.8.7.6994 Alpha installation.  ** the nightly alpha-beta's differ in name only **

    Anyways here is the download's page you want to visit.
http://www.singularityviewer.org/kb/nightly-builds

***Note*** currently Windows only.

    If you would like to get some greater depth of info on the current state of progress, take a look at their Bamboo page. https://build.alchemyviewer.org/browse/SV-ALPHA/history


    My personal feeling's so far about this are very positive, the viewer feels fantastic on OS 0.9.0 > and really seems to shine with OS 0.9.1x > / it does however stutter a bit with the OS 0.8.2.x versions of OpenSim, the issue I have found is my avatar may not be able to move upon initial login / either until the cache is fully loaded and my surroundings are fully rezzed, or I teleport to another region ( or Grid ) and then back again, once I do that everything works just fine. However you may have some issues with the Vivox voice service, not quite sure why but it seems to only work when it feels like it.

     So if you are a Singularity fan, I hope you have as much fun as I have / LOL

JayR Cela :_)

OpenSim : HyperGrid / an Older Viewer is Back : Singularity / Updated Dec. 23 2019

******** UPDATE*******UPDATE********

  Happy Holiday Season to everyone.
You should be aware of the fact that the Singularity team is very active again and the previous post (below) is no longer accurate. The main Singularity web   http://www.singularityviewer.org/home 
no longer lists the former Test viewer, you can still use the one I have posted below, as it is still working. Why you would want to do that is purely your decision. Numerous changes under the hood and a good bit of progress has been made since those versions were released to the public.

    Visit the main Singularity web page and select the nightly build option then choose the Alpha or Beta version, If you are currently using the last "stable" version Singularity Alpha 1.8.7.6994, then you will want to download the current Singularity 1.8.7.8008  >  Beta version so as not to disturb you current x.6994 installation. ** the nightly alpha-beta's differ in name only **

    Anyways here is the download's page you want to visit.
http://www.singularityviewer.org/kb/nightly-builds

***Note*** currently Windows only.

JayR Cela :_)
     
********************************************************************************

  Hello there everyone, it's been a while since I last spouted off an opinion or two, haa so here goes. The V1 Style Singularity Viewer is back, that's right in all it's glory and it has been updated. There are Windows, Mac and Linux versions available, sadly the Linux version lacks a Missing CEF plugin workaround or anything to enable it to function, this is just dumb and I fail to see why this very important plugin is not included in the the tar Ball. So I have been using the Windows .exe versions via the WINE compatibility layer in Linux and it does work correctly. Is not hard to do, as a matter of fact the 32bit version runs right out of the box with a proper set up of adding a PPA to Ubuntu or a distribution fork, this has allowed me to get Voice in OpenSim to work again since Vivox decided to stop supporting the Linux platform sometime in late 2018. The 64 Bit versions run fine as well once you manage to set up WINE properly, it's time consuming EDIT (and not really worth the effort), EDIT
It is worth the effort if you are so inclined, have at it.

    Anyways head on over to the Singularity website and pick yourself up a copy. Don't get me wrong here, if it's not for you then that's kool, use what you like the best.

https://virtual-nexus.xyz/down/

There's the link
 Have Fun :_)

OpenSim - HyperGrid : Some of the Major Player's Discuss OpenSim Viewers among other Issues regarding OS 0.9.x

By Avatar JayR Cela

     Last weeks OpenSim Developers meeting has some not to surprising opinions expressed about the future of OpenSim based viewers and a downplay on the viability of FireStorm  moving forward. In other words, there has been a loss of faith in FS, and finally some serious discussion about throwing support behind some of the minor players in this shrinking field. You can read the entire transcript here : http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Chat_log_from_the_meeting_on_2018-10-23

    I have below several of the FireStorm comments discussed.

     1.  Have the syntax errors in FS been reported to them?
     2.  good luck with that :p
     3.  you have to write a JIRA
     4.  me? no thanks.. been there.. no more
     5.  for all practical purposes FS is now a department of LL
     6.  like we have to do Mantises?
     7.  im out looking for viewer devs
     8.  if any viewer dev wants to really support opensim, they should talk to us
     9.  just as a matter of interest is there any viewer out there that sort of maybe might be semi-up
          -to-date wrt. opensim?

    This is long overdue in my personal opinion, as I do not care for FS when using anything OpenSim, I much prefer to use the Singularity Viewer, sadly that may soon become a thing of the past as can be witnessed by Siana Gearz  ( creator - maintainer of Singularity ) recent outreach for Patreon funding : https://www.patreon.com/sianagearz/overview
 
    I personally am not a developer, but I do attend these weekly meetings from time to time, when I am unable to attend I keep up with what is happening by reading the weekly Chat Logs located here : http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Office_hours 

JayR Cela

OpenSim : HyperGrid : Google + Shutting Down - Damm ! Is AMD eating Intel for Lunch ?

By Avatar JayR Cela

    I have to admit I was caught by surprise the revelation that G+ will be shutting down sometime next year, that's a real bummer. I refuse to use Face Book for any reason, having deleted my account several years ago, and I don't really care for Twitter much. Oh well :_(

    On the hardware side of things it seems to me that we finally have a two horse race again in the CPU - APU side of things with AMD taking the lead this past quarter. This should be great news for most people considering a new Rig for Desktop or Server use. I have not used any AMD products for quite some time, but now with the new Ryzen based Thread Rippers and some really interesting APU's it should now be possible to piece together an affordable powerhouse box, for a considerably lower  price than my usual Intel-Nvidia solution's.

JayR Cela :_)

OpenSim HyperGrid : Using FireStorm or Singularity :

By Avatar JayR Cela

    Ok look here at what we have, two excellent viewers, depending on which version of Singularity you are using, you defiantly want the Alpha-x86_64-1.8.7.6994 release available here.
http://alpha.singularityviewer.org/alpha/

    Let's face the facts, mostly these are the only 2 viewers you should even be using if you are on a Linux or Windows box. Both of them are outstanding examples of what can be done on the OpenSim platform. Personally I prefer Singularity for design and prim building, however I really like quite a bit of the extra functionality built into the FireStorm entry. If you happen to be on a Mac I hear that the Kokua viewer is nice, the Alchemy viewer project has seen no activity for quite some time, and we always have Henry's Cool Viewer, you gotta hand it to Henry, he always surprises us by doing things that LindenLab claimed to be impossible with the Viewer 1 code base.

JayR Cela :_)

The Ubuntu 18.04.1 point release is out : Should you UpGrade from 16.04.5 ?

By Avatar JayR Cela

    As a long time Debian / Ubuntu user I have to say a definite NO !

    There are so many things that are completely broken at this point in time it is a total waste of your time. Samba is broken, Cpufreq is broken, GKSU has been depreciated and this has led to a number of broken links when you upgrade, then you toss in the fact that the Nvidia-39x series of video drivers are completly screwed up with no way back to revert to the 38x series,  and the list goes on and on. Now I am talking about the Desktop, I have no idea what the hell is going on with the server side, I do know this much though they are still using Mono 4.x instead of 5.x /sheesh

    Save yourself the grief and wait until the end of October when 18.04.2 is released.

JayR Cela