What IS server side baking?

[KarenMichelle Lane]

Dorn,

1) Linden Lab has been working on several major improvements to SecondLife, one of which involves avatar rendering. The new Server Side Baking code will be made available very soon on the LL servers servicing all regions. This is a critical update requiring all Client Viewers to be modified to support it.

2) The official LL SecondLife V3 Viewer will be updated to support this on a general release soon and is already supporting this on a limited beta release.

3) Third Party Viewer providers have been provided access to the test regions and source code for Server Side Baking [sSB] and are developing support for this important performance update. Many Third Party Developers have taken this time to drop support of older viewer technology such as The Phoenix group which has stopped support of their original Phoenix Viewer. However, they are fully supporting SSB and other server side updates in their Firestorm product.

4) In addition to this, many other Third Party Viewer developers have already incorporated the needed code into their offerings for that date when the general roll out of the Server code is complete.

The major benefit to SSB is no more cloud avatars. This is because the baking [rendering] of your avatar is moving to the Region Server  your Avatar is standing in. This new method of baking eliminates delays in passing rendered information to all viewing your avatar.

Currently your avatar is rendered on your PC with information then transmitted to the server to distributed to others viewing you. Avatar rendering performance in the past was tied to the quality of the Internet Connection to and the speed of the the Client PC.

Those who delay upgrading to a modern viewer will still see avatars as before with the exception that the textures rendered by the SSB code may be missing from them leaving a white mask on the prim/layer shape. In addition to the SSB code upgrades, several other updates will also be rolled out at this same time.

[KarenMichelle Lane]

Dorn,

1) Linden Lab has been working on several major improvements to SecondLife, one of which involves avatar rendering. The new Server Side Baking code will be made available very soon on the LL servers servicing all regions. This is a critical update requiring all Client Viewers to be modified to support it.

2) The official LL SecondLife V3 Viewer will be updated to support this on a general release soon and is already supporting this on a limited beta release.

3) Third Party Viewer providers have been provided access to the test regions and source code for Server Side Baking [sSB] and are developing support for this important performance update. Many Third Party Developers have taken this time to drop support of older viewer technology such as The Phoenix group which has stopped support of their original Phoenix Viewer. However, they are fully supporting SSB and other server side updates in their Firestorm product.

4) In addition to this, many other Third Party Viewer developers have already incorporated the needed code into their offerings for that date when the general roll out of the Server code is complete.

The major benefit to SSB is no more cloud avatars. This is because the baking [rendering] of your avatar is moving to the Region Server  your Avatar is standing in. This new method of baking eliminates delays in passing rendered information to all viewing your avatar.

Currently your avatar is rendered on your PC with information then transmitted to the server to distributed to others viewing you. Avatar rendering performance in the past was tied to the quality of the Internet Connection to and the speed of the the Client PC.

Those who delay upgrading to a modern viewer will still see avatars as before with the exception that the textures rendered by the SSB code may be missing from them leaving a white mask on the prim/layer shape. In addition to the SSB code upgrades, several other updates will also be rolled out at this same time.

[June Oh]

As I have a SpaceNavigator I have to use a TPV as only they have the FLY/Cam indicator Linden dropped this feature when they brought out V2 and in spite of JIRAs they refused to incorporate it, will this new V3 have the Fly/Cam feature restored?

Seems daft TPV are better than Linden viewers.

[Inara Pey]

Dorn,

I wrote an overview back when the project was starting to roll forward at the end 2012, which you may find useful (and which appears briefly in LL's video on the subject!). Please keep in mind the project has rolled forward since then, but the core information is still valid. Most maintained third-party viewers already handle server-side baking, and those which are maintained and currently don't, will support it shortly.

I also have a transcript of those responsible for the project answering questions when appearing on Designing Worlds which may also help, and where another new project from the Lab - Materials Processing - is explained.

Note also that "Server-side baking" has been known by a number of names: originally "avatar baking", then "server-side baking", and most recently. "server-side appearance". So if you hear any of these terms, they amount to the same thing.