Release Notes

General

THESE ARE DRAFT RELEASE NOTES. THEY DO NOT APPLY TO ANY ACTUAL RELEASE.

Welcome to OpenSimulator 0.8, an open-source multi-user 3D virtual environment and metaverse server platform.

As ever, OpenSimulator is a highly complex piece of software. Various usage scenarios (standalone, grid, hypergrid, etc.) in combination with different dependencies (e.g. different versions of mono on Linux/Mac) can sometimes produce unexpected or unstable behaviour.

If you are upgrading from a previous verson of OpenSimulator, then we strongly recommend that you start off with the default configuration files and port over any changes you made to your older version of OpenSimulator.

As this is a wiki page, please feel free to update it with more information about migration or other issues as and when these come to light.

You can download this release of OpenSimulator from http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Download

Known issues

• Arbitrary key:value storage for regions has not yet been implemented for SQLite or MSSQL. This is necessary for temporary attachments settings to be persisted. This functionality is considered experimental.
• Regression in RLV functionality where objects given via the llGiveInventoryFolder() function with a folder name with the format #RLV/~gift are still placed in the #RLV folder but now with the name still as "#RLV/~gift" rather than just "~gift". This is being addressed in http://opensimulator.org/mantis/view.php?id=6311. Any help from viewer developers on this would be much appreciated.
• No form of prim equivalence is implemented for meshes.
• Loading scripts from the library section of inventory does not work properly.

Requirements

OpenSimulator requires:

• .NET Framework 4 when running under Windows.
• At least Mono 2.8 when running under Mono (Linux or Mac). However, we recommend using at least Mono 2.10 as Mono 2.8.x has been reported as less stable in some situations when running OpenSimulator. Mono 3 has also been reported as working well with OpenSimulator.

Backwards Compatibility Notices

• This release includes database migrations but these should be backward compatible with OpenSimulator 0.7.6/0.7.6.1 (i.e. one could rollback to the previous version of OpenSimulator if necessary without also rolling back the database). However, this is not a guarantee - please always backup your data before migrating from earlier OpenSimulator versions.

Changes with possible compatibility issues

General Server

OpenSimulator now requires .NET 4. For more details please see above.

Physics

As of this release, the default physics engine plugin becomes BulletSim rather than OpenDynamicsEngine. The BulletSim plugin is significantly better than the OpenDynamicsEngine one, both in terms of performance and in turns of support for physical objects and vehicles.

However, physics engines are very complex beasts and the behaviour between BulletSim and OpenDynamicsEngine will be somewhat different. If you want to use OpenDynamicsEngine instead, then please make sure this is selected in the physics paramter of the [Startup] section of your OpenSim.ini.

Please note that the OpenDynamicEngines plugin will not support varregions (see below) in this release.

Hypergrid

In this release, Hypergrid teleports can now be made over 16383 regions in X or Y directions rather than the previous maximum of 4095. All the most recent third-party viewer releases (Kokua, Firestorm, Singularity) will accomodate this. However, older releases of those viewers will crash if such a teleport is attempted. If you still want to retrict teleport distance from your OpenSimulator installation, then please set max_distance in the [EntityTransfer] section of OpenSim.ini.

Other Changes

General Server

• Unofficial support for PostgreSQL added to the persistence layer.

General Simulator

• OpenSimulator now supports Varregions. This is the ability to create square regions that are larger in size than the standard 256x256 (e.g. 512x512). These are an alternative to megaregions but require a fairly recent third-party viewer to use - other viewers may crash or experience unknown effects when teleporting to these regions. Currently, on the BulletSim physics plugin supports varregions. OARs have support for varregions. Please see the linked wiki page for more details and setup instructions.

Configuration

Services

Hypergrid

• Hypergrid users are now allowed into regions where a group they belong to has permission to enter.
• Much reduced issues where avatars are reported as "Unknown User" when travelling.

Objects

• Support added for particle ribbon, glow and blend.
• "rotate scene" console command added to rotate the position of all the objects in the scene around a given point. Does not rotate trees or terrain.
• "scale scene" console command added to rescale the size of all the objects in the scene.
• "translate scene" console command added to move all the objects in the scene.
• The name and description of a coalesced object set in inventory is now applied only to the first object rezzed rather than all of them.
• The permissions of a coalesced object set in inventory are now the lowest common denominator of all the contained objects.
• Changing a material on one face of a prim now only changes that face rather than the default material.

Mesh/Sculpt

Avatars

• Attachment point and positioning is preserved when an object preivously attached is rezzed into the scene.
• Fixed positioning of an attachment when the root prim is moved separately from the others.
• Mouselook now moves to the right location when sitting on the child prim of a linkset.
• The viewer camera no longer judders if an avatar sits on the child prim of a linkset and that linkset moves.
• Avatar stand positions are now directly in front of the avatar's sit position.
• If the avatar is held in place in the viewer (typically by holding down the space bar) then a stopped avatar will not fly or change position until it is released (they can still rotate). If the avatar is already moving then their movement will be reduced to half speed. If the avatar is flying then they will stop in place.
• The mouselook camera no longer shifts position when the avatar looks up or down.
• Sitting avatars can now cross between regions.
• Added missing viewer appearance parameters.

Teleport

• Users can now enter a region if a telehub is present but has no spawnpoints.

Physics

• The efficiency of the BulletSim plugin was increased.

Sound

Voice

Region/Estates/Parcels

Map

Instant Messaging

• The sender of an offline IM is now stored.

Friends/Profiles

• Editing notes fixed for built-in profiles support.

Archiving

• --displacement option added to the "load oar" console command. This is useful when loading smaller OARs into a varregion.
• --force-terrain and --force-parcel options added to the “load oar” command. These override the normal --merge behaviour of not loading terrain or parcel to facilitate loading of smaller OARs into varregions.
• --rotation and --rotationcenter options added to the “load oar” command. These apply a rotation around a given center before any specified displacement.
• --no-objects option added to the "load oar" command to allow loading of all parts of a region except its objects.

NPC

Inventory

Groups

Monitoring

Test

• A set of pCampbots generated in quick succession will now no longer perform identical 'random' actions.

Scripting

• Many LSL events will now generate syntax errors at compile time if given the wrong number of parameters. This has not yet been applied to all events.
• Errors in Windlight funtions fixed that could occur if the script's owner was not present in the region.

Acknowledgements

Many, many thanks to all the developers, testers and community members who contributed to this release and who help out with OpenSimulator generally. Your hard work makes this all possible.