the release candidate is out for 0.7.4 and the official release should follow soon
the amount of work that the OpenSim devs do is phenomenal and Justin Clark-Casey chronicles that on his blog
this is hardcore programming similar to what people do on commercial applications and make a living from. developing OpenSim code is true app development and it is very easy for us to take it for granted (“i’m a cloud“, “it took 5 seconds to cross the region boundary”, “my shoe is in my butt”, oops – that last one was an SL bug 5 years ago . . .)
the next time a prim poofs, or jumps to the side, rather than sighing and thinking “ugh”, i’ll be thankful that i can rez a prim and build all sorts of fantastical things! thanks OpenSim devs! =)
here are a few highlights that i could understand just from the last month! no particular order and this is a fraction of what they have done
these guys are seriously into coding! and OpenSim 0.7.4 should really be solid =)
- Melanie Thielker:
- started to implement temporary attachments, including scripted detach of temporary attachments
- stopped various memory leaks from OpenSimulator
- Oren Hurvitz:
- changed group ownership to none if objects are loaded from an OAR where the group UUID is not present on the simulator
- reconstruct parcel access lists if applicable when an OAR is loaded
- fixed a rare bug where saving anOAR will very occasionally fail on saving a large region
- copy the item description field when users give each other objects, rather than the original description it was first created
- Robert Adams working on OpenSimulator Bullet physics engine – improving fps calculation, linking & linksets, mesh, resizing, and flying and collision processing
- TBG Renfold added an osGetHealth() OSSL function which returns the amount of health that an avatar has
- SignpostMarv:
- implemented PRIM_LINK_TARGET more efficiently in commands such as llSetPrimitiveParams()
- support configuration of minimum sizes for physical and non-physical prims as well as maximum sizes
- implemented PRIM_SLICE for llSetPrimitiveParams() and similar LSL functions
- Mic Bowman added support for region modules to add their own constants to the script engine
- Kevin Cozens contributed a patch to send the group membership fee to a third party groups service when a group is created
- Justin Clark-Casey:
- added a SendPeriodicAppearanceUpdates option to the [Appearance] configuration section of OpenSim.ini.example.This will periodically (every 60 seconds) resend appearance information of in-scene avatars to other users
- fixed parcel ownership data so that it is saved in OARs
- added an “OpenSim object memory churn” statistic to measure how much memory the simulator turns over during operation (the memory is later reclaimed by the garbage collector)
- fixed a problem with using a Hypergrid standalone where a user could not access their home asset service when on a foreign simulator (stopping them rezzing inventory objects)
- allow newer viewers to create multiple calling card folder types within their parent “Calling Cards” folder
All updates are as important as the other. All core contributors are important.
That said, from 2 weeks ago, is (from Justins blog):
- “Robert Adams from Intel continued to work on OpenSimulator Bullet physics engine plugin, improving fps calculation, linksets, collisions and mesh among many other things (e7ad6ed).”
It is somewhat exciting that Intel is willing to commit a costly resource to Opensim. It bolsters confidence that there is is such broad support of the Opensimulator project.
Breen Whitman
30 Aug 12 at 2:39 pm
42 Thumbs Up :-D
Sarge Misfit
30 Aug 12 at 3:11 pm
Many, many thanks to all programmers. Don’t stop! NPC is also great. Thanks.
Nick – 3DLES education
Nick Zwart
30 Aug 12 at 4:01 pm
Indeed, I feel sometimes that the OpenSim devs get a bit taken for granted, especially now that a bit of the shiny may have worn off of having ‘our own’ virtual play space – and the major bonus of it being completely free (in every sense of the word). I have occasionally felt the awe described here of just stopping and being amazed at what people are willing to do together, for each other, simply for the sake of the result & the community it engenders. And really, I think we’ve all found the results to be far more than a sum of the parts. I for one am pretty blown away that OpenSim (and the various third-party viewers) even exists and is so ultimately useful AND useable.
The power of open development is something I wish more people could grasp the importance of. The world would be a much darker place without it. My gratitude goes out to all of you developers mentioned here, and even those contributors who aren’t, no matter how small the contribution. Without you we wouldn’t have the world(s) we have today!
That said, it boggles the mind to imagine what the 1.0 release will offer! ;)
CiderJack
30 Aug 12 at 8:49 pm
I’m using already the latest OSG build i think has most of this, the bug when saving orars i think its finnaly fixed and i still didn’t change the physics engine to the bullet one but cant wait to do so:)
Guess its time to set up test region with it enabled and see the effects!
But i can testify that rezzing has much improved on OSG as well as voice and streaming and overall stability, and it was already to good when i joined in in February!
ZZ Bottom
31 Aug 12 at 5:15 am