SL project updates 42/1: server, viewer

Tavana Island – blog post

Server Deployments for Week #42

As always, please refer to the server release thread for updates and the latest news.

• On Tuesday, October 17th, the Main (SLS) received the server maintenance package,  17#17.10.06.509394, previously deployed to the Magnum RC channel, comprising “internal fixes”
  
• On Wednesday, October 18th, the RC channels should be updated with a new server maintenance package, #17.10.13.509701, also comprising internal fixes.

Neither of these updates should have user-visible changes.

SL Viewer

The former Maintenance RC viewer, version 5.0.8.329115, was promoted to de facto release status on Friday October 13th., and a new Maintenance RC viewer, version 5.0.9.329464 was released. Otherwise, the SL viewer pipeline remains unchanged from week #41:

• Release channel cohorts:
  • Voice RC viewer, version 5.0.8.329552, dated September 1.
  • Wolfpack RC viewer,version  5.0.8.329128, dated September 22 – this viewer is functionally identical to the release viewer, but includes additional back-end logging “to help catch some squirrelly issues”.
  • Alex Ivy 64-bit viewer, version 5.1.0.508209, dated September 5.
• Project viewers:
  • 360-degree snapshot viewer version 5.1.0.506743, dated June 29th – hands-on overview
• Obsolete platform viewer version 3.7.28.300847, dated May 8th, 2015 – provided for users on Windows XP and OS X versions below 10.7.

Pathfinding Bug (?)

Pathfinding hasn’t been particularly successful since its introduction. However, with work progressing on animated mesh (Animesh – see my Content Creation User Group updates), there has been renewed interest in using Pathfinding alongside of Animesh. However, it has recently been noted that any call to llCreateCharacter on a Full region causes 8-12% performance loss (Homestead regions do not appear to be affected), regardless of whether the region is actively using Pathfinding or not, and / or whatever else is in the script – see BUG-41385.

This appears to be a recent issue, but it is not clear how widespread it might be, as the issue has thus far only been reported in one estate. However, when it does occur,  one character in a region seems to be enough to cause the hit, additional characters don’t cause any significant increase in the loss of performance.

Commenting on the issue at the Simulator User Group, Simon Linden said:

Pathfinding is a big chunk of complex code (that we didn’t write) so I’m sure there’s some significant change between having nothing to do and processing one character. I’ve spent a few days looking into this … Believe me, I’d like to fix it … I’ve tried and couldn’t fix it so far.