Category: SL Tech

Update: Magnum and LeTigre did not see a deploy on Wednesday, January 23rd, leaving them on server maintenance package 18#18.12.05.522294.

Server Deployments

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

• On Tuesday, January 22nd, 2019 the SLS (Main) channel was updated with server maintenance package 19#19.01.09.523003, comprising logging to gather baseline information on simulator performance in various areas of interest together with additional logging.
• On Wednesday, January 23rd, 2019 the RCs will be updated as follows:
  • BlueSteel will receive server maintenance package 19#19.01.18.523336, comprising the simulator support for the Environment Enhancement Project (EEP), and which will see the Snack channel currently used for EEP rolled into the BlueSteel RC.
  • Magnum and LeTigre were still TBD at the time of writing. I’ll update this article when more is known.

Region holders who wish to test EEP can contact support and ask for their region to be moved to an RC channel once the deployment has been made. Rider Linden currently has a request to have the SL wiki updated with the LSL functions for EEP, and has offered to provide a forum post on them, if required.

Remember, to work with EEP, you need the EEP project viewer, available from the Alternate Viewers wiki page.

SL Viewer

There have been no SL viewer updates to start the week, leaving the pipelines, at the time of writing, as follows:

• Current Release version 6.0.1.522263, dated December 5th, promoted December 13th. Formerly the Spotykach Maintenance RC viewer – No Change.
• Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself):
  • Love Me Render RC viewer, version 6.0.2.523177, January 16th.
  • Estate Access Management (EAM) RC viewer, version 6.1.0.522564, December 19th.
  • BugSplat RC viewer, version 6.1.0.522614, December 18th. This viewer is functionally identical to the current release viewer, but uses BugSplat for crash reporting, rather than the Lab’s own Breakpad based crash reporting tools.
• Project viewers:
  • Environmental Enhancement Project (EEP) viewer, version 6.0.2.523088, January 16th.
  • Bakes on Mesh project viewer, version 6.0.1.522127, December 7th.
  • 360 snapshot viewer, version 5.1.6.515934, June 6th (see my hands-on update).
• Linux Spur viewer, version 5.0.9.329906, dated November 17th, 2017 and promoted to release status 29th November – offered pending a Linux version of the Alex Ivy viewer code.
• Obsolete platform viewer, version 3.7.28.300847, May 8th, 2015 – provided for users on Windows XP and OS X versions below 10.7.

General

The SUG meeting was dominated with questions when upcoming features – grid-wide experiences,  new premium benefits, etc – may appear, and when the Lab anticipates completing the migration to the cloud. As always, and given the fact that SL is a dynamic environment with a lot going on, the replies were more-or-less “when they are ready”.

Update: The Bluesteel RC channel was updated with server maintenance package 19#19.01.09.523003, comprising logging to gather baseline information on simulator performance in various areas of interest together with additional logging. 

Server Deployments

As always, please refer to the server deployment thread for the latest information and updates.

• There was no deployment to the SLS (Main) channel on Tuesday, January 15th, 2019.
• There will be at least one RC channel deployment on Wednesday, January 16th, 2019. This will have extra back-end logging, but nothing visible to users.

SL Viewer

At the time of writing / publishing, there have been no updates to any of the viewers in the current pipelines at the start of the week, leaving things as follows:

• Current Release version 6.0.1.522263, dated December 5, promoted December 13. Formerly the Spotykach Maintenance RC viewer – No Change.
• Release channel cohorts:
  • Estate Access Management (EAM) RC viewer, version 6.1.0.522564, December 19.
  • BugSplat RC viewer, version 6.1.0.522614, December 18. This viewer is functionally identical to the current release viewer, but uses BugSplat for crash reporting, rather than the Lab’s own Breakpad based crash reporting tools.
  • Love Me Render RC viewer, version 6.0.2.522531, December 18.
• Project viewers:
  • Environmental Enhancement Project (EEP) viewer, version 6.0.2.522550, December 18.
  • Bakes on Mesh project viewer, version 6.0.1.522127, December 7.
  • 360 snapshot viewer, version 5.1.6.515934, June 6 (see my hands-on update).
• Linux Spur viewer, version 5.0.9.329906, dated November 17, 2017 and promoted to release status 29 November – offered pending a Linux version of the Alex Ivy viewer code.
• Obsolete platform viewer, version 3.7.28.300847, May 8, 2015 – provided for users on Windows XP and OS X versions below 10.7. This viewer will remain available for as long as reasonable, but will not be updated with new features or bug fixes.

Hover Height / Vertical Positioning Issue

The hover height / vertical position issue that has seen tiny and very small avatars incorrectly hovering above the ground since November 2018 – see BUG-225893 – should now hopefully be fixed.

The problem lay within changes made to the back-end Back Service, which manages the overall avatar appearance. The Lab had been working on trying to locate the root cause of the problem for some time, hampered by the fact a consistent reproduction of the issue when tweaking things to see what might be the cause proved difficult.

However, a fix was developed in week #2, and passed to the Lab’s QA team for testing. The fix was deployed on Monday, January 14th, 2019. As per the notes on the update, “any avatars experiencing issues with hover height will need to change outfits in order to help you stand on the ground.

Environment Enhancement Project

It is anticipated that a broader server deployment of EEP (currently on a limited deployment on the Snack channel) will occur in week #4 (commencing Monday, January  21st, 2019). This will hopefully see EEP go RC-wide on the main grid, and will be accompanied by a viewer update with further UI tweaks, bug fixes and (hopefully!) the additional render updates to enable things like crepuscular rays (“God rays”). rider will also be updating the LSL documentation on the SL wiki as it pertains to EEP.

Resources

• Project definition document.
• Project summary (this blog).
• Full EEP Documentation.
• Project Viewer – via Alternate Viewers wiki page.
• EEP testing region: secondlife://Aditi/secondlife/EEPTesting/247/44/23
• EEP Feedback forum thread.
• EEP sneak peeks forum thread.
• EEP Jira filter.

Other Items

Puppeteering

is a topic that often comes up for discussion. While Animesh has potentially opened the door to better means of controlling NPC, creatures, etc., there are cases where on-the-fly control of your own avatar would be a help  (e.g. having more control over a  hug).

The pupeteering project was originally started to provide such a means of additional animation control. This reached the point where the results would have been confined to the user’s own world view (so not seen by others), but if followed through, it would have also included the network layering so that the result of pupeteered avatars would have been seen by all. However, this work was eventually put aside in 2011.

A more recent project, based on code contributed via the Black Dragon viewer is in progress, but (I believe, as I’ve not looked into it to any great depth) this will be more constrained in scope.

Some at the Lab have been tossing around ideas, but it should be noted these are only ideas, not a project, as Simon Linden mentioned at the meeting:

The hover height is an interesting little AV position mod … we’ve been brainstorming (warning – I think there was beer involved) with ideas like extending that, so for example you could adjust a hand position during a static pose. This is all just playing with ideas, however.

However, any in-depth work on the animation system is liable to require something of a deep dive into the system’s foundations – which probably won’t be easily countenanced at the moment.

In Brief

• Animesh: Simon indicated there has been further internal discussions on what might be included in any Animesh follow-on project, with feature request BUG-22815 “Much needed Animesh specific constants for llGetObjectDetails()” being looked at in particular. LI for Animesh humans continues to be a concern; while it is noted a “reasonable” Animesh character can be made for around 28 LI, those using Bento can range around the 80-90 LI mark, possibly higher – which could limit their use. These discussions will likely continue through the “regular” forum for Animesh discussion: the Content Creation User Group.
• OS Updates: work is still progressing on updating the operating system used by LL’s servers. This will not only bring them up to a more up-to-date OS version, but is also seen as foundation work for moving services to the cloud.