SecondLife Preview 1.8.0(0) now open!

SecondLife Preview 1.8.0(0) now open!

The Preview grid is now open for testing. You will need to download a new viewer from http://secondlife.com/downloads/preview.php.

Second Life 1.8.0(0) Dec 2, 2005
==================================
Major Features:
* Point-to-point teleportation is now available in Second Life
- Residents may teleport freely to and from locations they are allowed to access
- The landing point on a parcel is determined by the location set by the land owner with the About Land > Options > Landing Point > Set button
- If no landing point is set on a parcel, the resident will be delivered as close to the location specified on the map as possible.
- Estate owners may choose whether to allow teleport via point-to-point or Telehubs
- The Z coordinate is honored; teleporting (or logging in) to your Castle in the Sky will now put you directly there!

Minor Features:
* Ripple effect for water can now be turned on in the Graphics preference pane
- Ripple water uses the graphics card's pixel shading to create more realistic looking water
- The functionality will only be available for machines with cards supporting pixel shading
- Turning on this feature will cause viewer FPS to drop to some degree, so it is not enabled by default

Scripting Changes:

** New LSL functions:
* llMapDestination(string simname, vector position, vector lookat)
- Shows a given location on the map.
- Works in attachments, or during touch events.
- The "lookat" value is currently not in use, but will be in a later version
* llAddToLandBanList(key avatar, float hours)
- Add an avatar to the parcel ban list for the given duration.
* llRemoveFromLandPassList(key avatar)
- Remove an avatar from the parcel pass list for the given duration.
* llRemoveFromLandBanList(key avatar)
- Remove an avatar from the parcel ban list for the given duration.

** Changed LSL functions:
* llAddToLandPassList(key avatar, float hours)
- Avatars can now be added to the parcel pass list with no time limit by passing 0 as the hours parameter.

** Future LSL functions:
* llTeleportAgent(key avatar, string simname, vector position, vector lookat) (?)
- Teleport an avatar at a location (requires agent permission)

Known Issues:
* Teleport should fail if you will be routed to a telehub farther away than your destination
* Agent should be positioned at the same relative height to the ground after arrival at destination

I dunno where else to post this but 1.8 so far is... screw 1.7 I am moving to the preview gid! I was getting 120fps in the sandbox and 40- 60 fps in lightly populated areas and 30 or so in heavy built areas. The ripple water is gorgious although not in every direction depending on the position of the sun. If this translates into the main grid..wooo! The point to point teleporting ... ok, If I had that kinda cash... 1 week stay at any bordello of their choice. Yehaw! It doth rock!

^ HAHAHA that sounds elatalicious... I am coming to take a look as soon as I finish my soup-in-a-mug.

At the risk of being a real drag, I should point out that the 1.7 preview was shiny and pretty too.

P2

Yup, as I qualified my statement with "if this translates to the main grid".

Is a certain version of pixelshaders needed for compatibility?

It won't, though.

Ok, ok — I'm not going to comment on the issue of p2p teleport, I've certainly have written enough on it, but only on the "minor feature", the water rippling effect

Minor...? Take a look for yourself! A static picture is nowhere near what it really looks like. "Awesome" is perhaps an understatement.

I've attached a small jpeg, which of course doesn't give you a good idea on how it looks like, and the large one directly from the screenshot.

In this picture, there is an underwater coral bank with fish swimming around. The "rippling effect" deals with that extraordinarily well — you can see here and there sparks from the tops of the "stalks" that are underwater, from the sun, etc.

Of course, a "static image" doesn't convey the feeling of "being there" as the waves gently roll along the coast, spewing some foam when they hit land, here and there flashing reflections of the sun... you don't even notice so much the "regularity" of the algorithm that generates the waves (which is quite visible on the images below).

All in all, this was quite well done, and totally unexpected as a new feature! Excellent work, Lindens

Now I only wonder why 1.8 is called like that with just two features?? One of it is labeled "major" — point-to-point teleport, which, seriously, is nothing "major" except in the sense that it will completely transfigure the landscape. Watch for AV traps though — every time I tp'ed I was stuck in some construction somewhere! Who was complaining about the roof at the Waterhead telehub...? This is going to be much harder especially because the map, of course, doesn't reflect 100% what is on the ground. "Clear" space is not always clear — stick to teleporting over rivers or the sea, at least there is a higher probability of not getting stuck into an AV trap (oldies know how to use the trick of sitting on top of roofs to avoid most traps, of course ).

But is this seriously a "major feature"...?

The water rippling effect, by contrast, seems to be much more attractive! It looks really like some of the best water effects from recent 3D games I've watched. It will make people value land at waterfronts much more, which is a neat side-effect. I understand that not everybody will be able to see those effects and perhaps that's why it was labeled a "minor" feature...? Well, I guess I'm lucky then. My old PowerBook draws the effects smoothly and I can't notice a visible difference in terms of fps. After all, we all know how fast the Preview grid always is, and when getting 20+ fps or so, if it drops slightly to 19 with rippling effects, it's well worth it! I'll have to see what happens on the main grid although I must admit that the latest 1.7.X version is giving me the same performance again as the 1.7 Preview, which is definitely a good sign — ie. around 15 fps on my old computer without lighting on, which I was told that was broken, and often 20+ fps even on many busy sims with good texture design (ie. not 1024x1536 textures everywhere, even for tiny doorknobs).

If the ratio of improvement will continue on the 1.8 main grid, well, what can I say? This is getting better and better Perhaps even the lighting effects get a revamp or a bug fix or whatever it takes to make them work like on 1.6 with the same speed. Or perhaps we'll have to wait until 2.0 comes out?

In any case — aren't there more features planned? Are these two all we get? Should we wait until the next Town Hall meeting with the Project Managers of LL to understand what will come next in terms of future developments?

WTF, has LL turned into Capcom? Add a feature, call it "Turbo"?
Where is HAVOK, MONO, and HTML?
When do we get the new permission system that was promised a year ago?

Crap.

I misunderstood.



I read that as "to the landing point as close to the location as possible".

The default for parcels should be "no landing points" not "anywhere is a landing point".

That has its advantages and disadvantages, you can set a landing point if you want all people to enter at a certain point, the downside of that is if you have a large peice of land or a mall then a single landing point will send all landmarks on that land to the landing point so you may want to clear the landing point and allow people to arrive anywhere on the land

this is all great fine and dandy, but they still have a long list of crap they never came out with in 1.7 so what i hear is bla bla bullsheet maby 2 of those features might be installed =/

(From http://secondlife.com/vote/get_feature.php?get_id=695)

I take that to mean that 1.8 is one of the first "smaller, more rapid" releases. It contains the first major feature that got done (p2p teleport) and some minor ones (water ripples, etc)

aka instead of doing something we have been saying for many versions like havock objects writing data, a linux client.. we are gonna do something ez just to shut the forum ppl up
(altho i do like p2p) sorta like in 1.6, nevermind most ppl cant log in we fixed hovertext

No. AKA "Not everything takes the same amount of time to implement"

As they already said, P2P is coming soon because it is easy to do and it gives a large expected benefit.

It's not a matter of "instead of". Do you seriously think they could finish implementing Havok 2 or a linux client in the same amount of time, even if the same people were working on it (which, as they said in the quoted bit, isn't the casE)? And even if they could, do you think it'd help as much to retain new users (something which is obviously crucial to them)?

Most of the p2p code was actually left in the client, and used by lindens who could always p2p teleport, for this they have just had to clean it up abit since it was used back when it was a fee paying option.

The reason it has gone to preview is they need to test all the various ways the teleports work, with land options and landing points, these new script options and combinations of that, and the more people that test them in preview the more reliable product you get on the main grid.

no i just wish they would stick with a gameplan i generally dont like seeing new major feartures when theres a backlog of them already, what if something unexpected goes wrong with p2p, will it be finished or will it get added to the list of maby somedays, but till then here is new feature 34c

Has anyone had problems getting in? I have tried several times thru out the day only to get the same error message each time -

Nope, just tried it for you and logged in fine, make sure you uninstalled preview 1.7 just incase they are getting mixed up and do a fresh install

Nope a completely diff PC to when I had 1.7 preview. *shrug*

Hiro, did you use the automatic updater or did you download the installer EXE? I used the updater and got the same problem as you. I also noticed that the version on the splash screen still said 1.7.something. When I tried the installer EXE, it said 1.8 and I was able to login fine.

Fair enough. "anywhere" should be a legitimate option for the landing point.

The default should still be nowhere.

No I did download installer.exe, and it says the version is 1.8.0. Tried again this morning, still the same message

P2P is sweet!

Hiro, I'm getting the same thing.

I've wiped 1.7 from the best of the laptops at my disposal, a Dell D600 (Mobility 9600) running Windows 2k, and installed the 1.8.0 preview. Every single time I try to connect to the preview grid, it stops in "Verifying protocol version..." and then bounces me out with the dialog box Hiro cited.

First time I left 1.7 installed, hoping I could keep both on the system. Is there something in the registry I need to twiddle before this will work properly? I've since expunged both versions, rebooted, waved a dead chicken over the laptop, reinstalled just the preview, and still no joy.

OTOH I downloaded the Mac preview client and it just works a treat. Well, except for the fact that the machine in question (867MHz TiBook, Radeon 9000) is almost unusable...

It sure would be swell if somebody could share the magic incantation...