Category: SL Tech

2019 SL User Groups 16/1: SUG – teleport disconnects update

Posted on by Inara Pey

Salt Water; Inara Pey, March 2019, on FlickrSalt Water – blog post

Server Deployments

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

  • On Tuesday, April 9th the SLS (Main) channel was updated to server maintenance package 19#19.04.09.526122, previously deployed to the main RCs in week #15, and comprising logging improvements related to teleporting.
  • RC deployments were still TBA/TBC at the time of writing; I’ll update when more information is available.

SL Viewer

At the time of writing, there had been no viewer updates to mark the start of the week, leaving the SL viewer pipelines as follows:

  • Current Release version 6.1.1.525446, formerly the Love Me Render RC viewer, dated March 26, promoted April 2 NEW.
  • Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself):
    • Estate Access Management (EAM) RC viewer version 6.2.0.526190, April 12.
    • EEP RC viewer version 6.2.0.526104, April 11.
    • Bakes on Mesh RC viewer, version 6.1.1.525409, March 26.
    • Teranino Maintenance RC viewer version 6.1.1.525401, March 20.
  • Project viewers:
  • 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.

It is anticipated the EAM release candidate viewer could be  promoted to de facto release status this week.

Teleport Disconnects and Region Crossing Issues

Following the Simulator User Group meeting on Tuesday, April 9th, the Lab asked those attending to engage in a stress test of teleports to help gather data on the ongoing disconnect issues. Commenting on the results at this week’s meeting, Simon Linden also reiterated what the Lab believe is happening:

We have some good info on the underlying causes and are working on fixes, but don’t have a real improvement yet. it usually fails as the viewer and 2nd region don’t start communication properly, so I’ve been digging through that code and all the ways it can fail … that’s my life lately … I’m sure I’ll have something new for testing in a day or two so hopefully next week’s updates will be better, or at minimum give better information.

When asked if the issues with vehicle crossings are related to the same potential cause, he added:

 I haven’t looked specifically at vehicles so I can’t say, but it’s possible, yes. I tried a boat trip around a new Linden Homes continent and it was a challenge, to put it politely.

In the meantime, new code that might help relieve the issue was deployed to the Cake mini-RC channel on Tuesday, April 16th. Those wishing to test crossings on this channel can do so on the following regions: Morris, Arnthrud, Croak, Gouda, Impeller, Kasba, Oak Bay, Sapars, Yongma. Constructive feedback can be sent via IM or note card to Simon Linden.

When testing, please wait around 2-3 minutes between each teleport to allow you to fully disconnect from the region you have just departed, particularly if you intend to just bounce back and forth between the same two regions (data is retained for a short time by a region you’ve just left, in case you want to rapidly want to TP back, and this data needs to be dropped during testing, as it can affect results).

 

 

 

2019 viewer release summaries week #15

Posted on by Inara Pey
Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation

Updates for the week ending Sunday, April 14th

This summary is generally published every Monday, and is a list of SL viewer / client releases (official and TPV) made during the previous week. When reading it, please note:

  • It is based on my Current Viewer Releases Page, a list of all Second Life viewers and clients that are in popular use (and of which I am aware), and which are recognised as adhering to the TPV Policy. This page includes comprehensive links to download pages, blog notes, release notes, etc., as well as links to any / all reviews of specific viewers / clients made within this blog.
  • By its nature, this summary presented here will always be in arrears, please refer to the Current Viewer Release Page for more up-to-date information.
  • Note that for purposes of length, TPV test viewers, preview / beta viewers / nightly builds are generally not recorded in these summaries.

Official LL Viewers

  • Current Release version 6.1.1.525446, formerly the Love Me Render RC viewer, dated March 26th, promoted April 2nd No Change.
  • Release channel cohorts:
    • Estate Access Management RC viewer updated to version 6.2.0.526190 on April 12th.
    • EEP RC viewer updated to version on 6.2.0.526104 on April 11th.
  • Project viewers:
    • No updates.

LL Viewer Resources

Third-party Viewers

V5/V6-style

V1-style

Mobile / Other Clients

  • No updates.

Additional TPV Resources

Related Links

2019 SL User Groups 15/3: TPV Developer Meeting

Posted on by Inara Pey

Green Acres; Inara Pey, March 2019, on FlickrGreen Acres – blog post

The following notes are taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, April 12th, 2019. A video of the meeting is embedded below, my thanks as always to North for recording and providing it. This was a relatively short meeting, with several periods of audio silence and text chat. The key points of discussion are provided below.

SL Viewer

  • The Estate Access Management (EAM) RC viewer updated to version 6.2.0.526190 on Friday, April 12th, 2019.
  • As noted in my CCUG summary, the EEP viewer updated to version 6.2.0.526104 on Thursday, April 11th.

All other viewer in the pipelines remain as:

  • Current Release version 6.1.1.525446, formerly the Love Me Render RC viewer, dated March 26, promoted April 2 NEW.
  • Release channel cohorts:
    • Bakes on Mesh RC viewer, version 6.1.1.525409, March 26.
    • Teranino Maintenance RC viewer version 6.1.1.525401, March 20.
  • Project viewers:
  • 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.

With the necessary back-end updates now made, it looks likely that the EAM RC viewer will be the next viewer to be promoted to de facto release status.

Teleport Issues

Teleport Disconnects

  • The Lab continues to try to understand the root cause(s) of the teleport disconnects. So far, they can only confirm it is not specific to any single viewer.
  • As previously indicated in my updates, the root cause of the issue is a race condition / timing issue – something that could be exacerbated by the distance of a user from the Lab’s servers (the grater the distance = the more time required for communications = the greater the chance of a timing issue / race condition).
  • Similarly, a high packet loss between viewer and simulator(s) might increase the chances of a disconnect occurring.
  • The problem remains in trying to identify precisely what has changed to cause any race condition / timing issue.
  • As noted in this week’s SUG meeting summary, there was a server RC deployment on Wednesday, April 10th – version 19#19.04.09.526122,. This included additional logging to help capture further data on the teleport disconnects, particularly capturing where the region handshaking may be failing.
  • Multiple regions have been replicated on Aditi, and having further enhanced logging enabled on them. This additional logging capability may be deployed to Agni in week #16, but not necessarily enabled, due to the performance impact it will have. However, the code will be in place should it be required.

Attachment Loss on Teleport

  • The Lab now has a “solid” repro for this issue. As anticipated, much of the problem appears to be related to having too many scripted attachments stacked on the same attachment point (e.g. the right hand, the default attachment point, and often used by default by mesh clothing makers).
  • However, the work on developing a fix has slowed as a result of resources being moved over to the teleport disconnect issue.

Asset UDP Messaging Deprecation

As noted in my SUG summary, it appears the code for the Asset UDP messaging deprecation didn’t work as anticipated, likely the result of one code element failing to merge correct. There will be a be a further RC deployment in week #16 with the corrected code.

A reminder that assuming the deployment is made and the code works as anticipated, anyone using very old viewers still reliant on UDP messaging for assets and which do not have support for HTTP messaging will not be able to receive any updates for the following: animations, body parts, clothing, gestures, landmarks, meshes and sounds whilst connected to regions on any RC channel.

In Brief

  • The are reports of issues with the EEP code interfering with Interest List culling, with Draw Distance having little effect on scene rendering (BUG-226752). This is being investigated.

 

2019 SL User Groups 15/2: Content Creation summary

Posted on by Inara Pey

Maderia Springs; Inara Pey, February 2019, on FlickrMaderia Springs– blog post

The following notes are taken from the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting, held on Thursday, April 11th 2019 at 13:00 SLT. These meetings are chaired by Vir Linden, and agenda notes, meeting SLurl, etc, are usually available on the Content Creation User Group wiki page.

Environment Enhancement Project

Project Summary

A set of environmental enhancements allowing the environment (sky, sun, moon, clouds, water settings) to be set region or parcel level, with support for up to 7 days per cycle and sky environments set by altitude. It uses a new set of inventory assets (Sky, Water, Day),  and includes the ability to use custom Sun, Moon and cloud textures. The assets can be stored in inventory and traded through the Marketplace / exchanged with others, and can additionally be used in experiences.

Due to performance issues, the initial implementation of EEP will not include certain atmospherics such as crepuscular rays (“God rays”).

Resources

Current Status

The EEP RC viewer updated to version 6.2.0.526104 on Thursday, April 11th. A significant addition to the viewer with this release is the Personal Lighting floater.

When opened, this floater takes a “snap” of the current shared environment (parcel or region / estate) you are in, and present you with a number of controls that allow you to make quick modifications to the environment that only you can see in your viewer, including Sun and Moon positions, ambient lighting cloud and sky colours, etc. These changes will persist until you log out or select World > Environment > Use Shared Environment, so you can close the floater once adjustments have been made.

The new EEP Personal Lighting floater, designed with SL photographers and machinima makers in mind.

This floater has been added in response to concerns raised that where No Modify EEP asset settings are applied to a location, photographers cannot alter the environment lighting, etc., in a manner to suit their needs, and as they’ve been accustomed to being able to do with windlight tools such as Phototools.

Rider notes that this is a first pass at providing photographers / machinima makers with a suite of options that do not claim an unreasonable amount of screen real estate and fulfil the above requirement. However, if there are specific options photographers feel are needed, and which cannot be otherwise tweaked for EEP settings that are No Modify, please submit them as feature requests.

Specularity Issues: the most recent versions of the viewer (nightly builds and the new RC update) contain an unwanted level of specularity, across objects and on Linden Water. Reports have / are being filed on this.

The latest EEP RC has some issues with specularity rendering on objects (l) and circled right (compared with the same terrain mesh seen on the default viewer, centre).

Bugs: Graham Linden continues to try to deal with the remaining shader bugs and clear them.

Bakes On Mesh

Project Summary

Extending the current avatar baking service to allow wearable textures (skins, tattoos, clothing) to be applied directly to mesh bodies as well as system avatars. This involves viewer and server-side changes, including updating the baking service to support 1024×1024 textures, but does not include normal or specular map support, as these are not part of the existing Bake Service, nor are they recognised as system wearables. Adding materials support may be considered in the future.

Resources

Current Status

Anchor Linden is attempting to characterise a couple of viewer bugs that might also require back-end updates as well. The viewer is also awaiting a merge with the latest release viewer (formerly the Love Me Render RC viewer).

Materials and BOM: Bakes on Mesh does not naturally support materials, as the basking service does not support materials, per the project outline above). However it is possible:

  • To manually apply materials directly to the mesh face in additional to BOM applying a worn composite.
  • To apply materials to a mesh via a scripted means. This involves using a script to take the UUID for one of the new universal bake channels (e.g. AUX_1), and pointing it to a normal map, then wearing a universal wearable that uses the same bake channel (e.g. AUX-1). This results in the normal map then being applied to the universal. It’s also not an approach the Lab recommend, and probably won’t be treated as a supported technique.

Animesh Follow-On

Vir has been working on impostor extents see BUG-226359). When impostors are enabled, they can get oddly cropped due to their bounding box size.

The obvious fix is to increase the bounding box size for impostors; however, doing so comes at a performance cost when the viewer renders them – thus potentially negating their purpose (to reduce the render cost / performance hit in rendering complex avatars / Animesh). This likely means that any fix is going to be something of a balance between “padding” (enlarging) impostor bounding box sizes and allowing some truncation to avoid too big a viewer performance impact (fps) when rendering them.

2019 SL User Groups 15/1: SUG; teleport disconnects

Posted on by Inara Pey

Sol Farm; Inara Pey, February 2019, on FlickrSol Farm – blog post

Update, April 10th: as per Bugsly Linden’s forum comment, the RC regions are receiving a maintenance update – 19#19.04.09.526122, which contains additional logging to help capture data on the region crossing issues.

Server Deployments

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

  • On Tuesday, April 9th the SLS (Main) channel was updated to server maintenance package 19#19.03.28.525781, comprising the simulator operating system update and EEP.
  • RC deployments – at the time of writing, there was a degree of conflict here:
    • The deployment thread states there is no planned deployment to the three main RC channels, and all three should remain on server maintenance package 19#19.03.28.525781.
    • At the Simulator User Group meeting, Simon Linden indicated there will likely be two deployments, stating:

We’re doing last-minute discussions but will likely have updates out tomorrow in the RC channels. One won’t have any visible changes, but has some logging that might help sort out the region change issue [teleport disconnect?].

The other is a maintenance release, the most interesting thing there is some additions to llGetObjectDetails() that give Animesh information.

    • I’ll update should the deployment thread be refreshed with new information.

UDP  Asset Messaging Deprecation

It was indicated in the week #14 deployment notes that 19#19.03.28.525781 would contain the removal of UDP Asset message handling from the simulator code, meaning that anyone using very old viewers still reliant on UDP messaging for assets will not be able to receive any updates for the following: animations, body parts, clothing, gestures, landmarks, meshes and sounds.

However, testing after the deployment of this package suggests that UDP messaging is still being handled through older viewers (notably the SL Linux Spur and Obsolete Platforms viewers) and on regions on any of the RC channels or the SLS (Main) channel. Whether this is due to a back-end issue (a stale cache?) or something else, is unclear. Commenting on the situation, Simon Linden noted:

I’m not sure what’s going on … it was _supposed_ to be disabled with the update that went to the full grid today.

SL Viewer

There have been no updates to the current SL viewer pipelines, leaving things as follows:

  • Current Release version 6.1.1.525446, formerly the Love Me Render RC viewer, dated March 26th, promoted April 2nd.
  • Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself):
    • Estate Access Management (EAM) RC viewer, version 6.2.0.525891, April 4th.
    • EEP RC viewer version 6.2.0.525808, April 1st.
    • Bakes on Mesh RC viewer, version 6.1.1.525409, March 26th.
    • Teranino Maintenance RC viewer version 6.1.1.525401, March 20th.
  • Project viewers:
  • Linux Spur viewer, version 5.0.9.329906, dated November 17th, 2017 and promoted to release status 29th November, 2017 – 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. This viewer will remain available for as long as reasonable, but will not be updated with new features or bug fixes.

Teleport Disconnects

Teleport disconnects continue to be a problem, and the Lab is continuing to investigate, having issued a blog post on the matter on April 8th. Commenting on the situation at the Simulator User Group meeting, Simon Linden said:

Currently we know that the 2nd region and the viewer aren’t communicating as they should when it fails … it seems like you get transferred to the 2nd region OK, but the viewer just doesn’t get connected properly … The first region thinks all is well and it’s done, the 2nd gets the TP data but never starts talking right with the viewer.

Following the Simulator User Group meeting, a stress test was attempted, with groups of people teleporting between a group of three regions, with mixed results (some reported disconnects, others had no issues).

15-minute Disconnects

Older viewers have additionally been suffering with “regular” disconnects roughly every 15-minutes, which may be related to the deployment of the latest simulator operating system updates, and might be getting conflated with the teleport disconnects to some degree. However, for Singularity users, there are fixes in the works, and the suggestion is that, if possible, people try installing one of the more recent nightly builds.

2019 viewer release summaries week #14

Posted on by Inara Pey
Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation

Updates for the week ending Sunday, April 7th

This summary is generally published every Monday, and is a list of SL viewer / client releases (official and TPV) made during the previous week. When reading it, please note:

  • It is based on my Current Viewer Releases Page, a list of all Second Life viewers and clients that are in popular use (and of which I am aware), and which are recognised as adhering to the TPV Policy. This page includes comprehensive links to download pages, blog notes, release notes, etc., as well as links to any / all reviews of specific viewers / clients made within this blog.
  • By its nature, this summary presented here will always be in arrears, please refer to the Current Viewer Release Page for more up-to-date information.
  • Note that for purposes of length, TPV test viewers, preview / beta viewers / nightly builds are generally not recorded in these summaries.

Official LL Viewers

  • Current Release version 6.1.1.525446, formerly the Love Me Render RC viewer, dated March 26th, promoted April 2nd NEW.
  • Release channel cohorts:
    • Estate Access Management (EAM) RC viewer updated to version 6.2.0.525891 on April 4th.
    • EEP RC viewer updated to version 6.2.0.525808 on April 1st.
  • Project viewers:
    • No updates.

LL Viewer Resources

Third-party Viewers

V5/V6-style

  • No updates.

V1-style

Mobile / Other Clients

Additional TPV Resources

Related Links