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June 2007
Memory Leak Fixes
apollo [slupdate] Mon 11th @ 08:15 EDT
client, patch comments
I can scarcely describe how happy this announcement makes me. In amongst the various fixes for this release are these gems:
Fixed VWR-966: Minor memory leak in llfloaterpreferences.cpp and a tiny leak in llstatup.cpp.
Fixed VWR-908: Various memory leaks in the group dialog.
Fixed VWR-364: Viewer memory leak.
Memory leaks are often a problem in complex software and can be one of the hardest things to track down, while also being one of the major offenders as far as lost performance is concerned. In simple terms, once the SL client consumes all the available physical RAM in a given computer, the Operating System has to use temporary space on the computer's hard drive in lieu of "real" RAM. Hard drives have much slower access times than physical RAM, so a PC afflicted in this way will begin to chug and churn and stutter and performance will be reduced to virtually nothing whenever the contents of memory has to be paged back and forth between RAM and hard drive.
Memory leaks contribute heavily to this state because RAM that should be freed up is in fact held onto and then more RAM is used on top of that and so on until there's none left. So fixing bugs like these should hopefully have a tremendously positive impact on viewer performance and hence a positive impact on the overall user experience.
January 2007
The Staus of Beta
apollo [slupdate] Wed 17th @ 19:18 EST
1.13.2.11, beta, first look, patch comments, sl patch
Given the huge list of fixes in the release notes for the update today you'd think I would be happy about this release. In many ways I am as bug fixes are ultimately never a bad thing, but sadly the "current at the time of writing" version of the First Look Viewer cannot log into this new version of The Grid and so I must use the regular SL client for the time being. That causes me some minor consternation because the new release version of the SL client does not have the new rendering tech found in the First Look Viewer.
Returning to the old rendering code only confirms that my initial thoughts about the FL client are indeed accurate for my specific computer system and I can't wait for a new FL release that's compatible with the 1.13.2.x Grid so I can get back to enjoying SL the way it should run on my PC.
I'm not really complaining here as much as trying to highlight just how fundamental this new rendering tech is and how it will positively affect your experiences in-world when that version of the codebase has been perfected and finally becomes the latest official release.
December 2006
The Morning After
apollo [blog] Sat 2nd @ 16:39 EST
lag, patch comments, sl patch, the grid
Well not literally, but a few days after the 1.13 patch things seem to be in an odd place lag-wise in SL right now. In the moments when the grid is not lagged I can see a large improvement and things are certainly moving back to the levels of performance we enjoyed several months back before the "Big Million" happened, but on the other hand, when things are lagged it seems worse than ever.
I always try to be optimistic and give people the benefit of the doubt and of course I have a lot of fun being in SL too so I want things to work out, so I'm really hoping over the next few weeks and beyond that the good days will outnumber the bad ones. I think that overall Linden Lab did a good job with this patch as far as lag reduction goes; we just need the grid to stay on the upside of that line I mentioned before.
November 2006
1.13.0.8 Patch
apollo [slupdate] Wed 29th @ 19:18 EST
musing, patch comments, sl patch
Well wow, the marginally delayed 1.13.0 patch is here with a long feature list and a hope to address some of the crippling database load problems that have been occurring in the last few weeks. I am looking forward to the added Friends List functionality, but I wish they would add collapsible grouping to the list too so I could enforce some kind of structure. Sure I can do that in my inventory with the Calling Cards, but I would love it if that could be mirrored on the actual list itself. Still, this is a step in the right direction.