Category: SL Tech

SL projects update week 11/2: TPV Developer meeting + misc news

Posted on by Inara Pey

Armenelos, Calas Galadhon; Inara Pey, March 2015, on Flickr The Shire (Flickr) – blog post

The following notes are primarily taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, March 13th,  a video of which is included at the end of the article (my thanks as always to North for recording it and providing it for embedding), and any time stamps contained within the following text refer to it.

Server Deployments Week 11 – Recap

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

  • There was no Main (SLS) channel deployment on Tuesday, March 10th
  • On Wednesday, March 11th, all three RC channels received the same new server maintenance package comprising “internal improvements for premium users”.

SL Viewer

The Avatar Hover Height viewer reached the release channel on March 10th, with the release of an RC version (3.7.26.299635). Avatar Hover Height allows you to adjust the vertical position of your avatar within some preset limits. See the wiki page and my overview.

This brings the total number of RC viewers in the viewer release channel to four, however:

  • [0:41] It is unlikely the Maintenance RC viewer (currently version 3.7.26.299610, released on March 6th) will be promoted without further update, as it has been found to contain a significant number of additional bugs which require fixing
  • [0:51] As the Avatar Hover Height RC viewer has only just been released, it is unlikely that the Lab will have enough stats on it to judge whether or not it can be promoted to the de facto release viewer in the immediate future; it is therefore likely to remain at RC status for at least another week, although initial reports suggest it is stable and doesn’t hide any unpleasantness
  • [01:07] The back-end support for Experience Keys / Tools still isn’t ready for the service to go live, although the Lab is making further progress with whatever needed to be done; it is therefore remains unlikely the that Experience Keys viewer (currently version 3.8.0.299338, released on March 9th) will be promoted to the de facto release viewer until such time as the remaining back-end work has been completed.

Tools Update Viewer and XP Users

[01:20] This potentially means that the Tools Update RC viewer (currently version 3.7.26.299443, released on March 4th) may be promoted to the de facto release viewer in week #12.

When this happens, it will obviously mean that all future builds of the official viewer will be made using the new tool chain and autobuild process. This in turn means that any Windows version of the viewer built using the new tools set (which includes MS visual Studio 2013)  will not run on any version (32-, or 64-bit) version of Windows XP. To this end, the installer is being set so that it requires a minimum of Windows Vista with Service Pack 2 installed, in order for it to successfully install the viewer.

Note that this is not a deliberate attempt to block XP users from Second Life; it is purely the result of the Lab moving towards the use of up-to-date tools for building the viewer (and which will yield positive benefits elsewhere, such as with greater tool commonality between the Lab and TPVs), and some of these tools do not support windows XP due to its age and it no longer being actively supported by Microsoft.

[16:54] Some TPVs may investigate / opt to build the viewer somewhat manually using the new tool chain in such a way that it can be used on XP, but this is reportedly requires a “very large amount of work” to achieve, requires a lot of command line input, an avoidance of VS 2013, and is “really hacky”.

Project Viewers

    • [03:28] The Viewer-Managed Marketplace project viewer (currently version 3.7.25.298865, released on February 13th) is liable to be updated in week #12 as a result of further fixes and updates that came out of the last round of testing
    • [04:20] The Mesh Importer project viewer (currently version 3.7.25.298441, released on February 3rd), is currently undergoing further update with new fixes and will be updated as a project viewer in the near future.

 

Avatar Layers Global Limit

Vir Linden - working on the new wearable layers code
Vir Linden – working on the new wearable layers code

[04:41] In response to  BUG-6258, “Popularity of Mesh Attachments Facilitates Need For More Alpha Layers”,  the Lab is working to implement a new “global” limit to the number of system clothing layers an avatar can wear.

Under the current system, there are 12 types of clothing layers or wearables (alpha, tattoo, undershirt, shirt, jacket, underpants, pants, gloves, socks,  skirts, shoes, and physics), with (generally) up to 5 of each type of wearable able to be worn at the same time, giving a maximum of 60 wearables that can worn simultaneously.

Under the new code being developed by Vir Linden, a new “global” limit of 60 wearable layers is being set per avatar, and users will be able to wear any number / combination of layers up to that limit (so you could opt to wear 60 jacket layers if you wanted, or 10 each of alpha, shirt, pants, gloves, jacket and socks, for example).

This update requires changes to both the viewer and to the server-side Appearance (SSA) service. The viewer-side changes are updates to the viewer’s logic, so it is purely checking the number of worn layers against the global limit of 60, rather than limits set for individual layers. The SSA changes will similarly support the new “global” use of clothing layers, but will also continue to support the 5-per-layer limit for viewers that do not adopt the newer code, or require a longer lead time in order to adopt the new viewer code, once it is available, thus providing a measure of “back compatibility”. The viewer code is expected to appear in a project viewer once it, and the back-end changes have cleared the Lab’s QA team.

Group Chat

[09:29]  As noted in my recent updates, changes made to the group change service in the last two weeks unexpectedly resulted in up to 20% of messages failing to be delivered correctly. Simon Linden spent a fair amount of time during week #10 stabilising things and delivering further updates to try to correct the problem. As a result, in what has been called an “educational” two weeks for the Lab, the situation has been largely reversed, although some problems still remain.

The Server Beta User Group meeting on Thursday, March 12th, saw a further set of updates from Simon undergo testing on the Beta grid, and during the TPV Developer meeting on Friday, March 13th, Oz indicated that the Lab will probably undertake a further round of “serious” upgrading of all the technology associated with group chat before they declare the project in any way “finished”. This will likely involve putting the back-end service support group chat on more up-to-date hardware and OS environments.

Continue reading “SL projects update week 11/2: TPV Developer meeting + misc news” →

Black Dragon 2.4.1.9: “volumetric lighting” and more

Posted on by Inara Pey

Blackdragon logoOn Tuesday, March 10th, NiranV Dean released version 2.4.1.9 of his Black Dragon viewer, which includes his recent work on volumetric lighting for Second Life, which I reported on at the start of March.

The update also includes a number of other fixes to some long standing rendering issues that Niran has been attempting to fix. Taken together, they are part of a larger update Niran has been planning, but as he comments in the release notes, he wanted to get these particular changes out to show people, and will save the rest for his upcoming version 2.4.2 release.

Graphics Memory Changes

The first of the changes Niran has made relates to the way in which graphics memory is used with textures. Generally, the viewer has one slider for setting a limit on the amount of texture memory, which encompasses everything you see in the viewer, including all of the UI elements.  The is generally set to 512 Mb by default.

Up until the 2.4.1.9 release, Black Dragon, like most viewers, offered a single slider for setting the amount of video memory which could be dedicated to texture processing by the viewer
Up until the 2.4.1.9 release, Black Dragon, like most viewers, offered a single slider for setting the amount of video memory which could be dedicated to texture processing by the viewer

With the 2.4.1.9 release of Black Dragon, Niran has split how graphics memory is used between “global” textures – which include all the UI elements, etc., and the graphics memory currently being used to render the current scene – what you are actually seeing in-world at any moment in time.

The idea here is to provide the scene textures with their own “pool” of graphics memory, so they are no longer competing for graphics memory with all the other textures obtained from the region and the viewer’s UI textures, and should thus result in fewer issues of visible textures being “thrashed” (e.g. constantly switching between blurry and clear as they are swapped into and out of memory due to lack of space).

With Black Dragon 2.4.1.9 , Niran has attempted to "split" how video memory is used by the viewer into two adjustable "pools", one for global textures (which include UI elements), and one just for just the current scene textures
With Black Dragon 2.4.1.9 , Niran has attempted to “split” how video memory is used by the viewer into two adjustable “pools”, one for global textures (which include UI elements), and one just for just the current scene textures

As I’m not a graphics or viewer rendering expert, I can offer no opinion on this approach. However, do note Niran’s recommendation to set texture memory to 512 Mb (the default upper limit for SL viewers, set several years ago to avoid OpenGL issues which might occur when setting large memory allocations) and the scene memory to 256 Mb.

Horizon and Other Rendering Fixes

One of the visual irritants in Second Life when running the view with the Advanced Lighting Model option (which Niran still refers to by its more technical name of “deferred rendering”), those living at altitude in-world (or flying at a few hundred metres above sea level), is the way in which the line of the horizon between “sky” and “sea” forms a concave curve across the screen, rather than a flat line as one might expect.

The familiar concave horizon line between "sky" and "water" seen when running the viewer in "deferred" mode (ALM enabled) ...
The familiar concave horizon line between “sky” and “water” seen when running the viewer in “deferred” mode (ALM enabled) …

With Black Dragon 2.4.1.9, Niran has addressed this, and a few other horizon-related rendering issues so that – and again when running the viewer with Preferences > Display > Deferred Rendering (ALM) enabled, the horizon now appears as a horizontal line, as shown in the two images shown here, taken from Rebeca Bashly’s When Life Gives You Apples … Run.

Images of all the horizon rendering adjustments Niran has made can be found in his blog post on the release, linked to at the top and end of this article.

Niran's revised horizon line between "sky" and "sea", seen in Black Dragon 2.4.1.9 with deferred rendering (ALM) enabled
Niran’s revised horizon line between “sky” and “sea”, seen in Black Dragon 2.4.1.9 with deferred rendering (ALM) enabled

Continue reading “Black Dragon 2.4.1.9: “volumetric lighting” and more” →

SL project news week 11/1: server, viewer, group chat

Posted on by Inara Pey

Armenelos, Calas Galadhon; Inara Pey, March 2015, on Flickr Armenelos, Calas Galadhon (Flickr) – blog post

Server Deployments Week 11

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

  • There was no Main (SLS) channel deployment on Tuesday, March 10th
  • On Wednesday, March 11th, all three RC channels should receive the same new server maintenance package comprising “internal improvements for premium users”.

When asked during the Simulator User Group meeting on Tuesday, March 10th whether the “internal improvements for premium users” was related to the change to the in-world receipt of off-line IMs, as mentioned at the last SBUG meeting, Simon Linden could only say, “I’m not supposed to announce anything, so I can’t go into details … but one thing we’re looking at this year is ways to make premium accounts better. This may or may not do something like that eventually.”

SL Viewer Updates

A new Maintenance RC viewer, version 3.7.26.299610,was released on March 6th. This includes multiple fixes and improvements as listed on the release notes and download page.

The Experience Keys viewer updated to version 3.8.0.299338 on Monday, March 9th, maintaining parity with the current release viewer.

Experience Tools

Although the Experience Tools viewer has been updated (see above), there is still no news on when Experiences might be fully deployed. In order to help build interest in Experiences a suggestion has been put forward to enable Experiences to be rated in terms of the number of people actively joining them (see BUG-6911), which could be optionally shown (at the Experience creator’s discretion in things like search listings, allowing people to judge Experiences by their popularity.

The Lab has considered allowing users to rate Experience themselves in a future update – but as point out in the JIRA comments, such a system could be open to gaming, much like the old avatar popularity ratings. BUG-6911 has been imported by the Lab, but it is currently unclear if the idea will be carried forward.

Group Chat

As also noted in my last updates, recent changes to the group chat service have seen up to a 20% failure rate in delivered messages. Simon Linden spent a fair amount of time during week #10 stabilising things once more, and notes that the situation taught the Lab more about how things might fail. He currently has a set of updates which may further improve things, and these are liable to be tested at the next Server Beta User Group meeting.

Other Items

Names Vanishing from Ban Lists

There have been reports of avatars added to a region / estate ban list or have been previously muted suddenly dropped from the list without an action on the part of the list owner. This might be connected to the old issue of bans made using radar on some older versions of v1-style viewers (notably Phoenix) failing to “stick”, or it may be something else, such as a failure to correctly update a ban / mute list.

Commenting on the subject at the Simulator User Group meeting, Simon said, “we’ve heard reports of that and have looked into it … if you ever can narrow down an instance of that happening, please note it in a JIRA … Our logs will record info about those changing but we have to know where and when to look

“I’m making wild guesses, but I think it would be either the viewer or the simulator making an update to the ban list, and somehow having bad data.   Perhaps an incomplete list gets into the picture, and using that as a basis for the update it drops people.   Our logs will show events like “MrNoisy was added” and “MrGoodBehaviour was removed” but finding the event is the missing part of the puzzle.

“If you have multiple regions in the estate, there’s another issue of having the changes sent out to all the regions.   We’ve seen failures there and I know it’s been worked on a few times (and suspected in some of these reports).”

So, if you do encounter a situation involving an apparent ban list failure, and can log the exact circumstances / details, please consider raising a bug report.

Firestorm TTT: clean install revisited

Posted on by Inara Pey

firestorm-logoIn the Firestorm Tool Tip Tuesday video for Tuesday March 3rd, 2015, Jessica gave a rapid-fire overview of performing a clean install. In trying to keep the video to around 5 minutes in length, the result, while informative, came across as rushed.

Given people did feel the first video did feel hurried, and that clean installs can be a necessary part of viewer life, the latest Tool Tip Tuesday video from Jessica might be referred to as “Clean installs: the Director’s Cut”.

With a running time a little under 13 minutes, the new video provides greater information and clearer instructions on:

  • Saving your chat and IM logs to a custom location on your PC
  • Using Firestorm’s backup capability to save and restore your viewer’s global and per-account settings
  • Performing a clean install.

The video both complements the original clean install video, and stands as an instructional guide in its own right, providing a lot more explanation and background. So, if you were confused by the speed of delivery in the original video, this revisit may well be for you!

OnLive announce pilot L$ payment programme for new SL Go users

Posted on by Inara Pey

SL go logoImportant note: The SL Go service is to be shut down on April 30th, 2015. For more information, please read this report.

OnLive, the company providing the SL Go service, announced on Monday, March 9th, that new users signing-up to the service can now pay for their use of the service with Linden dollars via a pilot scheme involving secure in-world payment booths offered through OnLive’s SL Go support island.

The news came via a statement from OnLive that reads in part:

You’ve probably heard of SL Go, the viewer that streams Second Life from the cloud in ultra-rich graphics, right to your tablet or low powered computer.  You might have wanted to try it, but hate giving out your credit card info and personal information.  Well, we now have a great solution for you!
If you sign up for SL Go with a NEW USER account you can buy weekly subscriptions in-world using Linden Dollars (L$). There is a private sign up booth where you can create your free SL Go account, and then pay for subscriptions using L$. Each week is only L$650, and you can buy up to 4 weeks at a time.  Also, you can return and renew or extend your subscription in-world at any time.

Dennis Harper, OnLive’s Product Manager for SL Go contacted me to provide a few extra details. “This move will initially be for a limited number of new users,” he said. “The fact is, while payment in Linden Dollars has been frequently requested, we just don’t know how the community will use this new feature. Hopefully, given Linden Dollar payments have been so requested, this will be wildly popular.  If so, we will take the cap off and offer it to all SL Go user and subscribers.”

Part of the problem here is that payment via L$ can only be made on a non-recurring basis; so there is a risk that people could end-up signing-up to use SL Go for a week, and then never renewing, which would not be particularly good for OnLive’s business model or for SL Go itself. Hence the pilot programme, which allows OnLive to test the water.

The new SL Go in-world payment centre - new users can use this to sign-up for an SL Go account, and renew their payments
The new SL Go in-world payment centre – new users can use this to sign-up for an SL Go account, and renew their payments, with Dennis Harper (centre) and Jersey and Robby (to the right) from OnLive

However, if the pilot does prove successful – and Dennis and OnLive believe it will be – then paying for your subscription to SL Go via L$ will become a standard payment option provided by OnLive, and the company will implement a means by which existing SL Go users can transition to paying for their  use of the service with Linden Dollars if they so wish.

Another reason for not offering L$ payments immediately to existing users is that of technical complexity; there’s a lot involved in providing the means for users to switch over to a L$-based payment plan. As such, it makes sense for the company to trial the system with new users first.

The payment centre provides teleport disc to three secure sign-up areas ...
The SL Go in-world sign-up and payment centre provides up to three teleport discs to three secure sign-up areas (the number available may vary, depending on whether some / all of the sign-up areas are currently being used – they will accept only one avatar at a time)

“Solving the transition issue is difficult and will take some more time,” Dennis told me. “We need to figure out how to ‘stack’ payments via Linden Dollars upon an existing recurring subscription end-date, and implement a means by which their existing recurring can be cancelled, without it impacting their use of the service.”

He continued, “And then what happens if a user decides payment via L$ isn’t for them, and they’re happier using a recurring subscription? How do we facilitate switching them back, again without impacting on their use of the service or making them sign-up all over again? So it’s much more complex, both technically and from a user-experience angle, to provide Linden Dollar payments to existing users.

“But, if the pilot programme works out, it is something we’ll be working towards providing!”

Once at a sign-up centre, a new user can operate the TV screen to view the OnLive SL Go wesbite securely (no-one else can see it) and register a new OnLive account for themselves. The orb next to the TV can then be used to made their first payment of L$650
Each of the sign-up areas provides instructions on how to sign-up for an OnLive account using the television, how and how to download the OnLive client (PC / Mac) and app (iOS / Android). A payment sphere is also provided for your initial payment (made to OnLiveBanks Resident), which is a minimum of L$650 for one week

In the meantime, those wanting to give SL Go a try, but who might have fought shy of the idea due to the need to supply credit card and personal information can now do so by visiting the in-world sign-up and payment centre at SL Go Island. Signage at the centre will walk you through the sign-up process (which you only have to complete once; after that, you can renew your use of SL Go via the payment orbs located on the ground level of payment centre).

Please note that, for obvious reasons – including the potential to game the system – users signing-up via the in-world payment method will not have the 7-day free trial period offered to them (it can, for example, be too easily gamed).

If you haven’t tried SL Go yet, and would prefer to pay via subscription, you can still sign-up via the SL Go website, which is still offered with the  free 7-day trial period. Existing users can obviously sign-up for a new OnLive account using the in-world method if they wish, but will then be paying for two OnLive accounts until such time as they cancel one or the other.

Once you have created an account in this way, you can conitnue paying for the service via the payment globes at the ground level payment centre - there is no need to teleport to the secure areas in order to make further payments
Once you have created an account in this way, you can continue paying for the service via the payment globes at the ground level payment centre (payments made to OnLiveBanks Resident) – there is no need to teleport to the secure areas in order to make further payments

Remember, SL Go isn’t for everyone. But if you have a need to access Second Life while on the go from either an iPad or Android tablet (using the SL viewer only at present), or if you have a low-end computer on which you’d like to run Second Life in all its full richness (using either the SL viewer or Firestorm), then SL Go may well be for you.

2015 viewer release summaries: week 10

Posted on by Inara Pey

Updates for the week ending: Sunday, March 8th, 2015

This summary is 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.

Official LL Viewers

LL Viewer Resources

Third-party Viewers

V3-style

  • No updates.

V1-style

  • Cool VL Viewer
    • Stable branch updated to version 1.26.12.34 – March 7th
    • Experimental branch to 1.26.13.2 – March 7th
    • Legacy branch to 1.26.8.90 – March 7th
    • Release notes

Mobile / Other Clients

  • LittleSight for Android updated to version 1.6.1.0 on February 22nd – core update: changing the default log-in to a user’s home location to avoid log-in failures.

Additional TPV Resources

Related Links