A new day

Thanks to Olivier, New World Grid is now running on OpenSim version 0.7.1.1. There are a few things that are broken, most notably landmarks and, until yesterday, llHttpRequest (now fixed -- thanks, Olivier!), but it is very early days and the crucial aspect is that regions and inventory are functional. The llHttpRequest script function is used by a number of my gadgets and presumably also by the HGURL boards that I often use for hypergrid jumps as these are also temporarily broken (now working again after a fashion).

Although mesh is supported in this version of OpenSim, it is not compatible with current viewers and the Linden Lab version rolled out recently. You can upload mesh with Kirstens S21r7 viewer (an old release). However, when you view with SL Viewer 3, only the mesh bounding box is present (the avatar bumps into an invisible prim) and nothing else renders, not even the markers normally present in viewers that do not support mesh. If you want to use mesh (and I've only played briefly), you have to use Kirstens S21r7 to view as well and even then the bounding box does not resize when you change the size of the mesh. The bounding box also seems to persist after the object is deleted so that a region restart is required to remove it. In short, I think mesh is best left alone for the present.

While many of the problems I reported previously have been resolved (my avatar now rezzes in Series 1, 2 and 3 viewers, I can access my main sim from those viewers and shared media works), the hypergrid remains an issue. That said, osTeleportAgent appears to work so I can now use a scripted teleport to get to Wright Plaza on OSGrid as OpenSim versions 0.7.1.1 and 0.7.2 both use the same Hypergrid version. FrancoGrid has also made the transition and I briefly visited the Orion sim on that grid. The viewer map is also non-functional in the viewers tried thus far though map searches do work.

I've been using SL Viewer 3, Kirstens S21r9 and Dolphin 2. At the moment I am leaning towards Dolphin 2 which is simpler than some and feels less laggy too though slightly more prone to crash during scripting. It handles shared media and has a grid manager I can configure. It lacks mesh but that's no longer a major prerequisite. One slight annoyance when building is the absence of support for prim dimensions greater than 10 m.

Another option would be Firestorm which is apparently due out with a grid manager and mesh in the next two weeks but I really have to make a decision before that.

Although some things that were broken now work and, to a lesser extent, vice versa, my general feeling is one of definite progress and things coming together, both for me personally and for the wider OpenSim community.

Given that mesh is a no-show for molecular structures, I decided to play a little with those I already have. I used Pipemaker to build a pathway round the multi-sculpted LysinB model. The model is phantom and the pipe is hollow so an experienced, sensible-sized avatar can walk and fly it. It's probably not the last word in such things as it is actually very hard to navigate, the problem being one of disorientation and steep climbs with twists that require jumps or flight. It's quite easy to double back on yourself so I set a feature that colours a prim. Anyway, a good test of camera and avatar control, a bit of fun and maybe I can build some science into it too.