SL project news: week 43/4: server updates

The llSensor() issue was primarily noticed with breedable animals, although it also impacted combat and other systems as well. “As a result,” Simon Linden explained at the Simulator User Group on Friday 26th October, “Some SL pets had trouble finding their food, and some, umm, partners to make other SL pets…” According to Oskar Linden, speaking at the Beta Server User Group on Thursday 25th October, the particular way in which llSensor() was being used where these issues occurred was “undocumented”, and so was not tested against prior to the code being deployed.

As the Magnum RC deployment was rolled back, there was a risk that the Group Services updates from Baker Linden (already delayed several times) would not reach the main grid for further testing. To prevent this, the code was deployed to the Snack RC channel, which is available for circumstances such as this. The code is therefore available for testing on four regions, and requires the Group Service project viewer. Full details on this, including the Snack regions and licks for obtaining the project viewer, can be found in my report on the deployment.

Deployments for Week 44

Speaking at the Simulator User Group on Friday 26th October, Simon Linden outlined the upcoming deployments for the week commencing Monday 29th October.

• The main channel will receive the code currently on BlueSteel and Magnum. As mentioned above, the code has no externally visible changes but has some system level adjustments
• LeTigre will receive a further update for the code currently running on it, which will include a number of bug fixes
• Magnum should be receiving the code planned for this week (the llSensor() problem has been fixed) which will include Baker Linden’s Group Services code currently on Snack, and which will hopefully start / help to address a couple of issues:
  • The sudden and dramatic performance drops in regions with large numbers of people / when live performances in progress
  • Regions suddenly failing to grant capabilities to users (such as the ability to return prims to someone).
• BlueSteel should get the same code as is on LeTigre.

Interest Lists and Object Caching

Andrew Linden continues to work on this, although progress is slower than he’d like. The new code is currently running on Ahern region on the Aditi (beta) grid, but is currently suffering an issue whereby some linksets are missing child prims on rezzing, a problem which is still being worked on. He’s also encountered an issue whereby sim performance “went bad…by about 100%” on a region with around 32 avatars, although that has now been fixed.