Jump to content

Support for Mesh upload on Linux viewers: clarification needed


arabellajones
 Share

You are about to reply to a thread that has been inactive for 2761 days.

Please take a moment to consider if this thread is worth bumping.

Recommended Posts

This started, for me, with the latest version of Firestorm, but the "explanations" suggest a deeper problem, affecting all viewers using a Linux OS/ Briefly, the Linux versions of the Firestorm viewer do not provide Mesh upload or pathfinding map editing, and the claimed reason is that this is because Linden Lab no longer pays for a Linux license for the relevant Havok components.

If this is true, eventually no Linux user will be able to upload Mesh.

It has been suggested that I use the WINE package to run a Windows viewer. This does work for some software, I use some that does this, but nobody seems to know whether this will work. It's one of those rather generic answers, much like relogging or rebooting a modem, which works often enough to be worth trying, but there's only one way to find out.

Does the SL Viewer for Linux still support mesh upload?

If it doesn't, does the Windows version get tested againt WINE on Linux (and which WINE version)? Is there any third-party viewer that gets such a test?

(Secondary point here: what chance of full Linux support for Sansar?)

To be honest, I am not sure I trust anyone on this. The Firestorm people have put the blame on Linden Lab, and Linden Lab are saying nothing. As usual, there seems to be a convenient dose of "Somebody else did it",

And, while I use Linux and I use some software with WINE, I don't feel confident enough to install a Windows viewer using WINE to get around this problem. Nobody who suggests it mentions having actually done it, and the thought of being the first terrifies me.

(And maybe we are in something of an hiatus with the promise of the 64-bit viewer.)

I am trying not to worry about Microsoft buying Havok last year.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

First, the idea that the Lab stopped paying for a Linux license from the Havok people or other providers may or may not be true. Whither it is or not, their purchase would likely not cover third party use in any case. The functionality is delivered to third parties by the Lab building libraries that use the licensed code. They were for the Lab’s use but they shared.

There are some legal restrictions on use of those libraries including Havok. That is why third party viewers used on grids other than the SL grid have no Havok features, at least not via Havok’s code or the Lab's libraries.

Oz Linden, SL Project Manager, has talked about the Linux issue. Several of the Third party developers have too. The Lindens decided that supporting Linux was not worth the the Lab's time. There just aren’t that many SL users running Linux. So, they stopped compiling the Linux viewer libraries which were used by third party developers. That means third party dev’s have to come up with their own.

The lack of Havok does not mean Linux users won’t be able to upload mesh items. What it means is their viewers will not be able to build LoD and physics layers. The designer will have to manually create those layers just as they do for third party viewers on all other grids.

As far as I know the Linden viewer is NOT tested against WINE. But, you could go to Oz Linden’s Open Development meeting and ask. If you do, remember you are coming late to the conversation. I suspect such testing on WINE would have to meet the same ‘return on investment’ Linux fails, not enough users to justify it.

I can understand the FS people pointing at the Lab. Not knowing what they told you, I can only suspect that it is reasonably accurate as the FS peeps I know are good guys. The Lab is not making the libraries they need for Linux. The FS people already buy the Kakadu JPEG2000 library for their viewer. Buying the Havok library and building a duplicate of the libraries used by the Lab is likely too expensive in terms of money and time.

As to the Lab not talking… Oz Linden explained in the Third Party Developer’s meeting why they were dropping Linux viewer development, too few users. It isn’t that they don’t answer questions, it’s that you have to know who to ask what and how.

The 64-bit viewer is in progress. Until it is in the RC stage of development it’s a stepchild, meaning they work on it when they can with most other things taking precedence over it. So, 64-bit dev is unlikely to be in the way of any Linux development.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, that's that.

Going through the usual Help function, the Wiki and the knowledge base, there is nothing.

There's nothing to indicate there has been a meeting with users on the topic since 2011. although the actual web page for Open Development has been updated since then.

If something was put in the Viewer Release notss, I haven't found it yet.

So I tried running Windows versions of the SL Viewer and Firestorm under WINE.

The installers work. The programs don't, they just hang there, doing nothing. As far as I can tell, they just seem to use large amounts of RAM.

They formally decided that Project Sansar would be called Sansar, with a trademark, but the only purpose of www.sansar.com is to get the email addresses of people using expensive software. It doesn't tell you anything about Sansar.

RTFM is pretty useless if there isn't a manual.

And I have a computer, decently powerful, that I can create content with, but it seems I can't upload some of the content to Second Life. There some instructions, badly organised, but they assume that all viewers are the same.

I did find out that LL has a Director of Global Communications, named Peter Gray. He seems to be about as much use as a bacon sarnie in a synagogue.

Sansar is looking less and less appealing. Will there be anything there, or will it be an endless waste of no-content, populated by the bewi[dered, trying to figure out what to do?

I expect somebody will accuse me of being negative, but what the hell else can I be?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As a linux user it's important to repeat that this is NOT killing mesh upload, but only the automated lod 2, 3, and 4 generation plus the automated physics model (which was never great). There are a few options here:

 

(1) Grab a copy of any other TPV apart from Firestorm and use it to Autogenerate the lower LODS. Because the other TPVs don't block like Firestorm you can likely do the auto generation for a very long time.

(2) Save your last version of Firestorm and use it until it's blocked.

(3) Ignore that it's removed and use the lesser quality auto LOD/Physics option. (This is not a good neighbor path, but it's fine for draft copies and personal stuff)

or

(4) Do it properly and make the 3 lower LOD files yourself.

 


arabellajones wrote:

(Secondary point here: what chance of full Linux support for Sansar?)

Likely zero support, especially as the Lab are not opensourcing the viewer code. Because of this, the terms of the GPL will mean zero linux support.

But Sansar is not something that is for most people in SL. It's an unrelated development and billing platform for virtual world developers - along the lines of Unity. Just the fact it uses only Maya will rule out linux to even begin with.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So everyone has been telling me that I need to use a Havok-enabled viewer to upload mesh, and suddenly I don't? The Firestorm blog is either mistakenly conflating Havok with mesh uploading, or you're wrong. ("Linux because there are too few users who use Havok for mesh uploads or Pathfinding" is what they say, and no mention of it being a consequence of an LL decision.)

Who do I trust?

And having to go to a third party site to watch a video of a meeting to find out what Oz Linden said about an issue that nobody cares to document? It doesn't look all that trivial from here. It's maybe minor, there's so much that Linux viewers can still do, but not even mentioning it?

And the way the whole internet is going, I'm wondering if I should have chosen a different account name, something such as "DeathEaterMasterMan". Is it really doing it wrong to expect software to work as advertised, and how it was doing before an upgrade?

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites


arabellajones wrote:

So everyone has been telling me that I need to use a Havok-enabled viewer to upload mesh, and suddenly I don't? The Firestorm blog is either mistakenly conflating Havok with mesh uploading, or you're wrong. ("
Linux because there are too few users who use Havok for mesh uploads or Pathfinding" is what they say, and no mention of it being a consequence of an LL decision.)

Who do I trust?

And having to go to a third party site to watch a video of a meeting to find out what Oz Linden said about an issue that nobody cares to document? It doesn't look all that trivial from here. It's maybe minor, there's so much that Linux viewers can still do, but not even mentioning it?

And the way the whole internet is going, I'm wondering if I should have chosen a different account name, something such as "DeathEaterMasterMan". Is it really doing it wrong to expect software to work as advertised, and how it was doing before an upgrade?

 

On the same blog thread that your, ahem, friend, Wolf posted his complaint about the lack of Havok, Whirly Fizzle of Firestorm pointed out several times that Havok isn't necessary to upload mesh. The Firestorm blog said few Linux users use Havok for mesh uploads.

I occasionally buy packaged salads that include a plastic fork. Perhaps someday the maker will stop including it and say, "We're not including the fork anymore because too few people used it to eat the salad." That doesn't mean that the salad will become inedible though.

XOXOXO,

SaladEaterMistressGal

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You are about to reply to a thread that has been inactive for 2761 days.

Please take a moment to consider if this thread is worth bumping.

Please sign in to comment

You will be able to leave a comment after signing in



Sign In Now
 Share

×
×
  • Create New...