New Firestorm Viewer Update, Promises To Fix Some PBR Issues

 

After Firestorm released their PBR viewer in June, while there was praise for it as it allowed people to see what could be done with this new feature in Second Life, there were also numerous complaints about lag and crashes. In August, Firestorm announced they were making a change to their three-viewer policy and keep the last viewer before PBR, 6.1.17, around permanently, recommending those who were having serious issues temporarily downgrade, or adjust their viewer Preferences, while they were working on an update. A few days ago on Tuesday September 17, they announced that their new viewer update, one that would deal with some of the issues caused by the PBR technology, was ready. 

...a significant minority of our users have been struggling with the higher performance demands of the last release (7.1.9). We have been in discussion with Linden Lab since that release, and, as you can read in the Second Life Blog post linked at the top of this section, there is a significant focus on making the viewer more capable and performant on lower spec and older machines. These updates are being delivered in phases, and this release delivers the first batch (aligning us to the Second Life release known as Atlasaurus). It does not mark the end of those improvements, Linden Lab has laid a roadmap of at least two further releases (DeltaFPS and ExtraFPS) that specifically focus on performance.

This release fixes a swathe of issues, those of you plagued by crashes after TP were almost certainly victims of the “mirror at home” bug. This bug was fixed soon after the release and has been tested throughout our beta phase for this update. the crash rate for this viewer is far far lower than for the 7.1.9 update. Performance too, the performance updates, should see most of you enjoying better, more consistent frame rates and where you had high rates already, simple seeing more consistency as you move around the world.

Also, the viewer was the first to be able to use Second Life's new Voice technology, WebRTC, Linden Lab switching away from Vivox.

This viewer release ushers in a new-era of voice services in Second Life. Linden Lab has been working on a replacement for the ageing Vivox “SLVoice” solution for some time now. The new voice system is based upon open standards, notably WebRTC. The new voice services significantly improve voice quality over the legacy voice system, offering up to 48Khz CD-quality audio. They are directly embedded inside the viewer, removing the dependency on an external support process (slvoice.exe) and hopefully increasing voice stability. Linden Lab has also used the migration to WebRTC to enhance security and reduce “data leakage.” WebRTC point-to-point calls will all route through a Second-Life-managed proxy service, ensuring that your IP address and identity are always protected.

For those used to using the SL-provided voice morphing, this will no longer be available. The team at Linden Lab has put together a FAQ page to help you resolve any questions. Importantly, WebRTC is not compatible with SLVoice. Moreover, the back-end services that support voice cannot co-exist so once Linden Lab roll out the new WebRTC services across the grid, the older voice services will cease to work.

To make it very clear, when Linden Lab rolls out the WebRTC backend across the grid, SLVoice will cease to work FOR ALL VIEWERS. This is not something Firestorm or any TPV can alter/fix/workaround.

For the blogpost in full, Click Here. 

Grand Theft Auto Online Player Gets $10,000 For Fixing Long Loading Time

 

Grand Theft Auto Online, like the previous games in the series, has proven a popular game since it's release in 2013. But there was a problem. The game has a long loading time. One 2020 Reddit poll of 271 players had almost half taking three to six minutes and some were needing over fifteen. Finally, one player calling himself T0ast decided to look into the problem. He found the cause was badly optimized code and bottlenecking from the came loading from just one CPU. After some fixes, he found he loading time was reduced by almost 70 percent. He uploaded the fixed code, though pointed out it was more of a "proof of concept" than a solution, and called on the game's producers at Rockstar to fix the code, "the problems shouldn’t take more than a day for a single dev to solve."

Word soon spread about T0ast's fix, and eventually Rockstar took a look, and concluded, "After a thorough investigation, we can confirm that player t0st did, in fact, reveal an aspect of the game code related to load times for the PC version of GTA Online that could be improved. As a result of these investigations, we have made some changes that will be implemented in a forthcoming title update."

T0ast would state he was awarded $10,000 USD from Rockstar, sayng amounts of this size were usually given out for helping with security and privacy issues, but were making an exception with him, "Thanks to R* for taking the time to look into this and the generous bounty!"

Source: PC Gamer 

Hat Tip: Spooked Dreamscape, Khyra Ares

Bixyl Shuftan

Video Game Collecting: Part 3 - Get Consoles For Cheap

Today, Cyfir (Cyfiremmerich Resident) has the third part of his series of video game collecting. The obvious problem with collecting older game units is that much of what's out there is broken. But instead of throwing away consoles that don't work or pay someone huge amounts of cash to fix one, another option is learning to reapair them yourselves. While some are no doubt beyond the ability of all but more experienced repair artists, once you set your mind to it and get the right tools, you'll find some are surprisingly easy to get working again once you learn a few things.

Read Cyfir's article in Other Grids, MMOs, and Games.

Cartoon of the Day

Vehicles in Second Life can be a bit tricky. When things go wrong, is it because of a bugged script in the engine, or is it lag?

By Bixyl Shuftan

Sunday Cartoon: WW2 RP Area

By Bixyl Shuftan