Linden Lab have blogged; Second Life Improvements – What’s New & What’s Coming Soon! In this blog post they look to Asgard for inspiration in part with a really impressively named project, which has been entitled Project Valhalla.
So what exactly is Project Valhalla you may be wondering, well in short it’s an out with the old and in with the newish move, as explained in the blog post :
A new age of modern HTML5 content is upon us, and we’re overhauling the way shared media (aka “media on a prim”) works so that you can enjoy all kinds of modern web content within Second Life. Chromium Embedded Framework (CEF) is coming to replace the aging QTWebkit framework.
This is quite a big change, indeed it’s such a big change that the release notes tell us :
This long-awaited project replaces the aging LLQTWebKit system used in the Web media plugin with a shiny new one based on the Chromium Embedded Framework (CEF) that supports modern web technologies. In fact, we think this is such a big deal that we’re cranking the Viewer version number to 4.0.0.
Just to emphasise how big a change this is, the blog post tells us :
What does this mean for your Flash content? What about Quicktime? They may still work, but because both can only be viewed if the user has correctly installed a 3rd party plugin, we can’t promise support and you shouldn’t expect that it will work for everyone. Standard HTML5 is the way of the future and this Viewer will enable it for anyone.
Flash is no longer the saviour of the universe and this is also pointed out by the fact that the Second Life website will no longer be using Flash either.
The bottom line is that this should be a good move, if you’re interested in this then you may want to take a look at the Project Viewer that moves the Second Life viewer to version 4.0.0 and above, that’s how big a change this is. However please bear in mind that this is a project viewer, as the release notes point out :
This is the first iteration of a Project Viewer – which means that while a lot of the problems facing the old MOAP implementation should now become a distant artifact of the past, we are still cranking through the many new issues with our CEF-based solution. See a bug? If you don’t see it filed already – file a Jira! We look forward to your feedback. Thanks!
However this isn’t the only area where Linden Lab are planning improvements for Second Life.
Rendering complexity/Quick Graphics gets a mention and the meat on the bones here is the issue of how other avatars affect your Second Life experience. Some avatars can slow down your rendering of scenes in Second Life. How much of an issue this is depends upon how many avatars are around, the quality of your own hardware and other factors. However this new change is designed to put some more power in your hands, which is a sensible approach as some people are able to go around Second Life with the highest graphics settings and encounter few problems, whereas others crawl to halt. The blog post explains :
A new *Avatar Maximum Complexity* control lets you prevent expensive-to-render avatars from lagging you; any avatar over the limit is displayed as a solid color rather than rendering in full detail. A default limit is set based on the rendering performance of your system. You’ll also get a notice when your own rendering complexity changes, and an indication when you’re over the limit of too many of the avatars around you.
There’s also a good addition to this, a quick change option for the settings. This is useful because in some scenarios, these expensive to render avatars won’t be a problem, but at busy events they will be, so you may want to have a setting for busy events and a setting for the not so busy times. The blog post goes into a lot more detail about this, here’s a snippet :
Bundled together in this Viewer is a change that allows you to create and quickly change presets of your graphics settings, so as you go from a club to an art gallery, to the beach, or to your home, you can quickly adjust your settings to fit the scene.
I’m definitely a fan in theory of this approach. There’s a release candidate viewer available if you want a further look.
However that’s not all, the Aki Shichiroji inspired new notification system also gets a mention. I blogged about this back in July; Notification Project Viewer May Save You Time. In short this helps you to sort notifications into system, transactions, group notices etc. This is something that should help busy merchants and residents alike. There’s a Release Candidate Viewer for this too.
There’s more too, a Mesh Importer improvements, the HTTP project and more improvements to Inventory issues coming soon, which includes this gem :
Inventory loss is a dogged and complicated problem that we are constantly pursuing. A recent simulator change now prevents loss of no-copy items due to a failed rez. A number of other improvements to inventory robustness are in the pipeline and will be rolling out soon.
For a product that some people claim is dated and on its last legs, Linden Lab are making a lot of impressive looking improvements. How well they all work is something we’ll find out but Second Life is most definitely still around.
Sadly attachments being lost after teleports are still not solved and the truth is that is one of the most important issues any user wishes to be solved. Besides lately crossing sims is becoming a issue again when sailing or flying,even if not leading to crashes.
it is nice to know LL is still improving Sl but sad to see that the biggest issues are not still addressed.
Sim crossings have consistently proven to be challenging, I think it’s one of those features that they would love to be able to rip up and start again with but that’s simply not feasible.
Well i cant deny, there are lots of improvements on that area on last years.
A sim cross can become weird, but nowadays is hardly a reason for a crash and just last night, me and more then 30 sailing boats, did sail for over 1 hour without a single crash on the majority.