Category: SL Tech

SL projects update 33/3: TPV Dev meeting: HTTP, avatar height offset

Posted on by Inara Pey

The following notes are taken from the TPV developer meeting of Friday August 15th. A video of the meeting, provided by Chakat Northspring is included below. This report represents an overview of items discussed at the meeting which are liable to have the broadest interest among users. Timestamps are given against items and paragraphs for ease of referencing what was said within the video for those who wish to listen to the entire conversation on a given subject.

Note that subjects are not necessarily presented chronologically when compared to the video, but has been grouped under common headings.

My thanks, as always, to North for her recording of the meeting and linking to this blog post.

SL Viewers

[00:30] There have been few visible changes with the RC and project viewers this week. The library refresh viewer and the experimental log-in viewer remain unchanged, and while the Experience Keys project viewer has been updated, this has yet to appear in the Alternate viewers wiki page.

Oculus DK2 and Project Viewer Updates

Oculus Rift: the Lab now has the DK2, so work will be resuming on the project viewer
Oculus Rift: the Lab now has the DK2, so work will be resuming on the project viewer

[00:50] The lab has received around half-a-dozen of the Oculus Rift DK2 headsets, and so it is anticipated that further work will be progressing with the project viewer, and updates will be emerging over time. As noted in week 32, there are some substantial differences between the DK1 headset and the DK2, which currently make the project viewer largely incompatible with the newer headset.

Texture Statistics Logging

[19:15] With the roll-out of the 3.7.7 the Lab unfortunately broke the texutre stats reporting debug option LogTextureDownloadsToSimulator. As this is off by default (set to False) it has not been noticed by most users. However, the recommendation is that users do not set this option to True, as it will cause the viewer to immediately crash on start-up, at the next attempt to run it. This issue is common to all viewers using all code releases subsequent to 3.7.7 as well.

Viewer Build Process

[40:24] The Lab is shortly going to commence the process of upgrading the tool chain they use in the viewer build process (e.g. switch to Visual Studio 2013 for Windows and Xcode 5 for Mac) and switching over to the new version of autobuild. This work may also eventually help pave the ay for 64-bit builds of the official viewer. However, this is not currently the focus of the changes, as no decision has made as yet within the Lab on producing 64-bit builds of the viewer; the current aim of these changes is to improve the overall viewer build process.

[47:23] There are two points of note here. The first is that the new autobuild process includes changes which self-compilers must adhere to if they are using it, and details are available on a wiki page. The second is that it is probable that Windows viewers built using Visual Studio 2013 will not run on Windows XP. The Lab has already dropped Windows XP support, which is as much as it will currently say in terms of future viewers built using the new tool chain running on XP.

Group Chat

[02:00] The work on group chat has temporarily halted due to those working on it either being on vacation or working on other projects. Given this, and with a degree of ironic timing, there have been increasing reports of group chat issues over the last several days, including one chat server apparently becoming completely non-responsive.

It’s not clear to the Lab as to what may be causing the problems, but they have been noted. In the meantime, informal advice is that if your group chat is consistently failing, to contact support, provide them with the information on your group (name, etc.), and the issues you’re having, and request the chat server is restarted.

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SL project updates week 33/2: server recap, inventory, region crossings

Posted on by Inara Pey

Le Botanique, Mirriam Brown; Inara Pey, July 2014, on FlickrLe Botanique, Miriam Brown, July 2014 (Flickr)

I’m busy playing catch-up due to a number of things going on at the moment, so my apologies for late-running reports. The following notes were taken from the Server Beta meeting of Thursday August 14th.

Server Deployments week 33 Recap

  • On Tuesday August 12th, the Main (SLS) channel was updated with the server maintenance release previously deployed to the RC channels in week 32, so placing all four channels on the same simulator version
  •  There were no RC deployments for the week.

HUDs Detaching / Reattaching Following Teleport

Following the week 32 report on HUDs detaching / reattaching following a teleport and issues with attachments scripted to use llDetachFromAvatar to detach on a region change being reported as “worn on invalid attachment point” by the viewer, JIRAs have been raised on both issues (BUG-6925 and BUG-6908 respectively). Maestro Linden has been looking into both, with mixed results.

Maestro has difficulties in reproducing the HUD detaching / reattaching issue (BUG-6925) and so is working from logs supplied by the reporter. However, one line of thinking is that higher ping rates to the server might be indicative of the problem – those who have high ing rates (and those “longer” update times seem to be more readily able to reproduce the issue than those with lower ping rates.

The belief at the lab is that the BUG-6908 issue is likely to be a race condition, and investigations are continuing.

Gestures, Calling Cards and Region Crossings

During the discussion about BUG-6925, Maestro pointed-out that having a large number of active gestures associated with your avatar might be a contributing cause of region crossing issues. This is because the information on each active gesture has to be handed-over from one simulator to the next, and this might slow things down / interfere with things, possibly exacerbating things like HUDs dettaching / reattaching during a region crossing, etc.

While there was a degree of uncertainty as to whether it is the case or not, Calling Cards might also contribute to region crossing problems as they are updated between regions with the online / offline status of other avatars. Simon Linden is best placed to speak to whether this is the case, but he is currently on vacation.

Large numbers of active gestures (and Calling Cards) can also slow-down the log-in process (hence the often-given advice to delete unwanted Calling Cards from inventory).

 Inventory and Inventory Updates

A correlation between large “flat” inventories (i.e. inventories with relatively few folders beyond the system folders,  and each folder containing a lot of items) and log-in issues has been recorded. Oz Linden’s recommendation to reduce such issues is to have a relative deep tree of folders, with each folder containing fewer items.

As the inventory “skeleton” (which contains your inventory folder hierarchy) is only fetched by the viewer when you log-in, “flat” inventory structures don’t impact regions crossings. However, if you do feel you are experiencing a long log-in period, and you have a large, relatively flat inventory structure, you might want to consider re-organising things and seeing if that helps to improve matters.

A forthcoming viewer update, STORM-2034, contributed by Jonathan Yap, will provide support for “older than” inventory filtering, allowing users to filter their inventory either before or after a given age. This should make locating older inventory items a lot easier when it comes to wanting to delete or box items which are no longer used. There’s currently no ETA on when this change is liable to appear, but there is another Snowstorm viewer iteration due, so it might be in that, depending on the code’s current status.

The existing inventory filter options (l) and the proposed update to the time-based filtering option (r)
The existing inventory filter options (l) and the proposed update to the time-based filtering option (r)

Other Items

Avatar Bakes and  Rigged Mesh

A question was asked at the Server Beta meeting on whether it would ever be possible to apply to other objects, which quickly focused-down on using them in conjunction with rigged / fitted mesh. Responding to the question, Maestro Linden said:

It would be cool if you could stack layers of diffuse textures on objects, but it would be a pretty big project. Hmm. I guess that would depend on how it’s implemented … If you just had a way for an attachment to reference its owner’s currently baked texture, then that may not be too difficult, but I think that if you were to say “any object face can have multiple textures, which use the baking service, such that you can have up to ~150k baked textures in a region”, that would be a whole other beast :).

A suggestion was made to limit the number of bakes that could be applied, in the same way as texture layers are constrained on the avatar at the moment, prompting Maestro to agree, “if the object faces are just referencing the same textures which are already baked on an avatar, you could even implement that as a viewer-side change: ‘if object diffuse texture is $magic_uuid, render its owner’s upper-body baked texture on it (or maybe default to grey if the bake is unavailable)’.”

Avatar bakes are currently limited to 512×512. Whether that would be regarded as sufficiently high enough for use on rigged mesh is open to question. n the meantime, a JIRA proposing something similar, aimed at the removal of scripted appliers (BUG-5893) has already been triaged and accepted by the Lab for further investigation.

SL Go: SL Share for Flickr, Twitter and Facebook also now included

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.

On Friday August 15th, I posted about OnLive announcing that their SL Go viewer for Android devices & low-end computers  / laptops had been updated with a fix to enable it to render fitted mesh items correctly.

The update saw the viewer updated to Linden Lab’s 3.7.12 code base, and while the OnLive e-mails didn’t mention this, it meant the viewer also gained some additional capabilities and updates. Perhaps the most notable of these is the inclusion of the SL Share 2 feature for sharing photos directly to Facebook or Twitter or Flickr, together with the default post-process filters.

I had been a little curious as to whether this would work or not (I did wonder if there would be an authentication issue, given everything is running via the OnLive servers). However, now I’ve had a chance to give things a go, I can say that they do indeed work as expected. Well, at least where Flickr and Twitter are concerned;  I don’t use Facebook, so have been unable to test that side of things, but there is no reason to assume it won’t work.

Testing the Flickr upload from SL Go, on FlickrTesting the Flickr upload from SL Go – a quick snap of the house in SL, August 2014, using the snapshot floater’s vignette filter  – click for original

That said, trying to authenticate SL Go with Flickr did admittedly have an initial hiccup; I got stuck on Flickr’s “Bad Panda!” (aka, “oops, something stuffed up, sorry”) page the first time. However, second time around, it worked as expected, and I was duly connected. Given the issues with Flickr over the last couple of days (as those using Firefox or Internet Explorer may well still be muttering about), I point the finger at Yahoo as the cause of the hiccup.

After that little problem, everything worked as anticipated. I was able to upload a snapshot  (using the Spotlight filter, as shown above), which quickly appeared in my photostream.A follow-up test with Twitter so no problems in authenticating, and the snap (this time using the Sepia filter) and text uploaded fine.

Some might notice a couple of rendering issues in the images. These are not related to the uploads. In particular, because access to the Advanced menu is disabled in SL Go, RenderVolumeLOD is locked-in at a relatively low number (1.25?), so some sculpts refused to render properly, and can be seen semi-rendered in the images. As this was just a quick-fire test of the uploads, I wasn’t that fussed about arranging things so the sculpts were properly “popped-out”.

And the same shot from SL Go uploaded to Twitter, but using the Sepia filter

There is still no capability to save snapshots locally. This isn’t surprising, given SL Go is a streamed service, rather than something running locally with access to the local hard / flash drive, and so is likely going to take a lot more banging on things before it works – if it can be made to work. In the meantime, the SL Share options (particularly Flickr) might at latest offer an additional alternative for saving photos alongside the existing inventory, profile and (my preferred method with the SL Go) e-mail.

Although the viewer is listed as based on the 3.7.12 code base from the Lab, it does not include the Group Ban functionality, which reached official release status on August 4th, 2014. However, as a 3.7.12 based release, it should include all of LL’s updates to the viewer code up to 3.7.12.

All-in-all, a tidy little update which sees a major glitch (fitted mesh) corrected, and the addition of a useful feature in the shape of SL Share 2.

SL Go: viewer update fixes fitted mesh issue

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.

Dennis Harper, Senior Product Manager at On Live has been slipping out word that the company’s SL Go product has been updated.

On August 14th, e-mails were sent to those SL bloggers who previewed SL Go ahead of the launch, announcing that the update resolves the fitted mesh issue which saw any fitted mesh items distorted and stretched to the 0,0,0 point in a region when viewed in the initial release of the viewer. Dennis’ e-mail to me announcing the update reads:

Hi Inara,

This is not a huge announcement, but we finally got an update to SL Go that is compatible with the new ‘fitted mesh” feature.  I’d like to get the word out there to SL Go users, and hopefully to some the used SL Go but cancelled due to this bug.

SL Go is still alive and kicking here at OnLive.  This code merge took way longer than anyone expected, but now we have a clean version representing the latest code from Linden.  Now we get to work on the cool stuff.  We have some great plans for the near future that I’m sure you will be excited about.

If you have any questions, please let me know.  Thanks again for all your support.

-Dennis Harper-

Sr. Product Manager – SL Go by OnLive

The SL Go viewer now supports fitted mesh, as this screen capture of me wearing one of LL's new default mesh avatars demonstrates
The SL Go viewer now supports fitted mesh, as this screen capture of me wearing one of LL’s new default mesh avatars demonstrates

Dennis recently contacted me concerning the need to continue to enhance and refine the SL Go product, and asked if I could help spread the word about the company being willing to offer viewer developers paid contract work in order to help them achieve this goal.

The request resulted in my drafting and publishing a press release / article on behalf of OnLive in early June. So far as I’m aware, the company is still seeking support and assistance with the project, so if you are a TPV developer, and you’d be interested in helping OnLive carry the product forward, adding additional features (and even advising them on features), tweaking the UI and so on, please refer to that article and drop Dennis an e-mail at: dennis.harper@onlive.com.

In the meantime, the fitted mesh update is now live, and should be available to users the moment they log-in to Second Life using the SL Go viewer (obviously, as the viewer is streamed as a part of the service, there is no need to download and viewer update). Congrats to Dennis and the team.

SL projects update week 33/1: SL news and BCU exploit

Posted on by Inara Pey

Server Deployments

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

It’s another lightweight week in terms of deployments.

  • On Tuesday August 12th, the Main (SLS) channel received the server maintenance package deployed to the RC channel in week 32, which primarily includes the JSON issue “Valid JSON numbers like 0e0 no longer valid after 14.06.26.291532″ (BUG-6657).  As noted in week 32’s report, this “fix” in fact roll backs the fix for an earlier JSON issue (BUG-6466) which appears to have triggered the more recent issue. A fix for both problems is now currently in the works
  • There are no RC channel deployments for week 33.

SL Viewer

As I reported here, a new version of the experimental log-in viewer arrived on Friday August 8th. Version 3.7.14.292660 has yet to appear on the Alternate Viewers wiki page, but displays a revised log-in screen which has the log-in credentials moved to the top of the screen.

The new log-in splash screen sees the removal of the Create Your Account option and the placement of the log-in options at the top of the screen in a new header area
The new log-in splash screen sees the removal of the Create Your Account option and the placement of the log-in options at the top of the screen in a new header area

In addition, for users logging-in to Second Life for the very first time using the viewer (or who have performed a completely clean install), a very simple log-in screen is displayed, which explains to users that they’ll be logged-in to a Learning Island, where they’ll have to find their way to the exit portal in order to proceed to a Social Island (both the Learn Island and Social Island being elements introduced to the new user experience in July 2013).

All other SL viewer versions remain as per the Alternate Viewers wiki page  / my Current Viewer Releases page.

Simulator User Group Meeting

There was no Open-source Development meeting on Monday August 11th or Simulator User Group meeting on Tuesday August 12th, as the Second Life technical team are all attending a planning / brainstorming session. These meetings will resume as usual in week 34, with the Server Beta meeting on Thursday August 14th the next scheduled User Group meeting.

Other Items

Windows BCU Exploit

This isn’t a project update or notification from Linden Lab. I’m including it here for ease of reference.

A note card is circulating from the United Content Creators of SL relating to an exploit using the  Browser Configuration Utility (BCU) which can be found on Windows systems.

BCU is described as a “Search Hook Addin is an Internet Explorer URL search hook that redirects search results when an address or search keyword is entered into the web browser.” Among other things, it is sometimes bundled with Gigabyte motherboards, although there have been reports that it can also be shipped with Asus and other main boards. It’s been a known source of potential annoyance since mid-2009.

According to the UCCSL note card, some people are using BCU as a phishing exploit using profile weblinks, streaming media, media on a prim and perhaps even via bots wearing transparent prims with streaming media. To quote the note card:

This Exploit redirects your Viewer to another website other than SL that will display the normal SL login screen, then tell you that your login credentials are incorrect.   while it is telling you that your login credentials are incorrect, it is collecting your login data. At this time we have found hundreds of web resources that are transmitting this infection, and a large number of user profiles with these links in them.

Apparent signs of infection are that the viewer takes a lot longer to initialize when you try to start it, and it fails to recall your user name, if saved, and the note card refers to an EULA being displayed, which I assume is a reference to the ToS.

The recommended means of dealing with the issues is to:

  • Use the Windows Task Manager’s Process tab to see if your computer is running BCU.exe*32 and BCUService.exe (make sure you use Show Process from all users if more than one person uses your computer)
  • BCU can generally be removed from a computer without affecting its performance or use, so you may want to check your system and remove the utility altogether, either via the Control Panel > Programs and Features or manually (the utility should be around 356-357 KB in size according to DirectVM)
  • Go to the SL website at http://www.secondlife.com, and use the account section of your dashboard to change your password. Logout and log back into the website to confirm your updated password

As further precautionary measures, disable your viewer from playing media automatically and from playing media attached to other avatars (both under Preferences > Sound and Media). Also, if you have a viewer with the media filter installed, make sure you have it enabled so you can check audio streams – but remember the filter doesn’t provide any safeguard against media on a prim, so always be wary of untrusted MOAP sources. Finally, don’t click on links in the profiles or people you don’t know / trust.

Lab issue viewer with a revised log-in screen

Posted on by Inara Pey

The Lab has been experimenting with a revised log-in screen for the official viewer. The viewer, version 3.7.14.292660, is referred to as offering  “a simple and clean login screen for new users.”

In actual fact, the viewer offers two log-in screens, although one of them (shown in the image below) will only be displayed the very first time a new user runs the viewer (or if an existing users performs a completely clean install of this release candidate).

The log-in splash screen new users will see when launching the viewer for the first time (or existing users will see following a clean install)
The log-in splash screen new users will see when launching the viewer for the first time (or existing users will see following a clean install)

Those who have previously logged-in to Second Life (or have not performed a clean install) will see a more familiar log-in screen on starting the viewer, and will immediately notice that the log-in credentials area has been relocated to the top of the screen (see the image below).

The keen-eyed may also notice that the Create Your Account option that used to appear over on the right of the log-in credentials area, and which was introduced as the Lab were making the viewer available through Steam, has been completely removed.

The new log-in splash screen sees the removal of the Create Your Account option and the placement of the log-in options at the top of the screen in a new header area
The new log-in splash screen most users will encounter sees the log-in credentials area moved to the top of the screen and the removal of the Create Your Account option

The new header area offers three independent log-in options:

  • At last location – as  most users will be familiar with, logs you in to your last location; you’ll also be logged in to that location if you type-in an avatar’s name and password and tap ENTER as per the current viewer log-in screen
  • My Favourite Places – a drop-down which lets you choose to log-in to your home location, or any landmark you have dragged and dropped into the viewer’s Favourites Bar / the My Favourites folder in your Inventory
  • The familiar Type a Location text entry box, allowing you to type-in the name of a specific region / sim to which you want to log in.

Note that if you have the grid selection drop-down active, it appears to the right of the log-in options, as shown in the enlarged view, below.

A closer look at the revised log-in area and the three separate options
A closer look at the revised log-in area and the three separate options

Relocating the log-in area like this certainly makes it a lot more attention-grabbing for new users, although existing users are likely going to have to go through a period of muscle memory re-training to get used to things, assuming this progresses to the status of being the de facto release viewer.

I suspect the three log-in options, with their separate buttons may generate a mixed response among existing users; I’m not altogether convinced by them myself. I assume that things have been done this way due to the addition of the My Favourites drop-down, combined with feedback from new users as to what they’d like to see. However, when taken as a whole, the approach comes over as clumsy and potentially less than intuitive, particularly when compared to the older version, which offered a logical left-to-right flow of information.

Outside of the log-in screen updates, this version of the viewer doesn’t appear to contain any additional functional updates, but does include a fix to prevent the viewer crashing when opening Preferences.

One thing I did notice while fiddling with this version of the viewer, is that if you already have landmarks in your viewer’s Favourites Bar / in the My Favourites folder, they may not actually appear in the drop-down in the log-in area until  after the first time you’ve used the viewer to log-in to SL. Similarly, should you subsequently log-in with another version of the SL viewer, you will need to log-in to SL at least once with this viewer to get your Favourites to again be displayed in the drop-down. Given most users don’t hop between different versions of the same viewer that often, this shouldn’t be a problem for those opting to grab a copy of this viewer and take it from a run.

At the time of writing, the viewer has yet to be added to the official Alternate Viewers wiki page, as it is experimental. I suspect it will appear there soon if the project is carried forward. In the meantime, please use the link to the release notes and download options at the top of this page if you wish to look at the viewer yourself.