SL projects update 25 (3): Nyx Linden announces SSB/A “imminent”

Posted on by Inara Pey

A note card containing a message from Nyx Linden is doing the rounds in-world concerning Server-side Baking / Appearance. The note card reads in full:

Greetings all,

Nyx Linden (stock)
Nyx Linden (stock)

Wanted to give everyone a quick update on the status of Server Side Appearance. First of all, thanks to all who helped participate in last week’s pile-on test, and a special thanks to those viewers who are already integrating the RegionHandshakeReply flag posted recently. We’ll likely be doing one more pile-on next week, targeting a smaller set of users (to avoid inventory limits that have caused attachments not to load, etc) next week. Let me know if you’d like to participate.

We currently are not aware of any major release-blocking bugs and are starting to look at scheduling the roll-out process. We have a number of QA passes and tests to run through before we can get the final greenlight to do so, so we are currently targeting July 9th as the earliest date at which we will enable SSA for a significant portion of the grid (a server RC channel). Please note that if we find additional bugs in the meantime, or run into other scheduling difficulties this date could be pushed back. We will not be going to RC before this date however.

Please consider this an official warning that this is imminent – We’ve been saying for a while that we’re getting ready for release. We hope with a solid date in mind, all viewers can start messaging to their users that they will need to update or they will start to see issues. There are a few methods by which we will be messaging to the SL community as a whole about this, but we highly encourage you to use your judgement in the best way to reach out to your users and transition them to SSA-compatible viewers.

As always, if you have any questions, or see any issues that could be worrisome if they are not fixed before release, please do not hesitate to reach out to me and/or file a JIRA. Thanks for all your work in preparing for this release!

Nyx Linden

[link and all emphasis mine]

If you want to avoid seeing increasing numbers of grey avatars and / or avoid people telling you, "you're a cloud" when you appear perfectly fine to yourself, update to a version of a viewer supporting SSB/A
If you want to avoid seeing increasing numbers of grey avatars and / or avoid people telling you, “you’re a cloud” when you appear perfectly fine to yourself, update to a version of a viewer supporting SSB/A

As previously noted in this blog, the plan from the Lab has been to deploy SSB/A gradually. Speaking on this at the TPV Developer meeting on Friday June 14th, Nyx indicated the deployment would be a small group of regions prior to moving to a Release Candidate channel (either in whole or in part) and then progress from there.

However, with the preliminary date for this work to commence, and given that almost all maintained SL viewers are now SSB/A-ready (Dolphin and Exodus are the only exceptions at the time of writing), there really is no excuse for people not to update their viewer. The choices are arleady available:

  • Those who prefer the v1-style of UI have the choice of Cool VL Viewer and Singularity
  • Those who prefer the V3-style have the choise of the SL viewer, Catznip, Firestorm, Kokua, Niran’s, and RLV.

In addition, the Lumiya, Meltabolt and Radegast clients are also SSB/A ready.

With thanks to mona Eberhardt

Published by Inara Pey

Eclectic virtual world blogger with a focus on Second Life, VR, virtual environments and technology.

7 thoughts on “SL projects update 25 (3): Nyx Linden announces SSB/A “imminent””

  2. Thanks for the advice looks like I as a Phoenix user will have a couple of weeks left to play SL then.
    Been a good 6 or so years with SL.

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    1. “Only a couple of weeks left to play in SL”?

      That’s a terribly negative view on things because of the loss of one (already out-of-date) viewer.

      If you prefer to use the V1-style interface, there is still the choice of Cool VL viewer and Singularity, both of which are SSB/A-enabled, and each of which in its own way offers many of the features found in Phoenix as well as supporting a lot more of the other under-the-hood improvements made to SL this year, such as much improved http communications, better texture fetching, and which will be supporting other new features such as materials, and which also incorporate the latest changes to the rendering code, interest list updates, etc. Pretty much all of which are missing from Phoenix / will be missing from Phoenix.

      Both of these viewers are potentially a lot less bloated than Phoenix in terms of TPV “extras”, so if it’s a worry that you can’t run a v3-style viewer on your hardware, either one should keep your hardware happy and possibly run somewhat better than Phoenix.

      If you don’t have hardware issues with v3-style viewers, and can adjust to the UI (which actually isn’t that hard – many thousands have managed it) – then you have a raft of choices: Catznip, Dolphin, Exodus, Kokua, Niran’s and RLV in addition to the SL viewer, all of which offer many and varied TPV “extras”, and some of which offer font and skin improvements if you have visual issues with the default v3 UI.

      And, of course, lastly, if you’re able to run v3, and are willing to forgive the very few areas where it cannot be made 100% Phoenix-like, you have the v1 / Phoenix mode with Firestorm. This gives you everything you already have with Phoenix, and with some very minor exceptions, presented in a v1- / Phoenix-style look.

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