Category: SL Tech

SL projects update 27/1: server updates, HTTP, group chat hardware updates

Posted on by Inara Pey

Server Deployments – Week 27

As always, please refer to the server deployment thread in the technology forum for any latest news, updates, issues on this week’s deployments.

As many noted on Tuesday July 1st, there was no Main (SLS) deployment, although there was a period of grid-wide maintenance.

There will be no deployments on the BlueSteel and LeTigre RC channels on Wednesday July 2nd. As such, these channels remain with the following simulator releases:

  • Main channel: inventory updates (AIS v3) – 14#14.06.13.29103 (release notes)
  • Bluesteel and LeTigre: LSL support for materials (normal and specular maps, and diffuse texture alpha mode) – 14/#14.06.20.291351 (release notes  – Bluesteel; LeTigre is the same).

On Wednesday July 2nd, the Magnum RC should receive updates to the Experience Tools project, intended to provide, “user facing fixes to address both UI and long-standing HUD updates included in this build.” – release notes.

SL Viewer

There will probably not be any viewer promotion from RC to de facto release this week. The sole RC in the snowstorm RC, version 3.7.11.291465 has yet to generate meaningful stats. Current SL viewers are as listed on the Alternate Viewers wiki page and on my Current Viewer Releases page.

HTTP Pipelining Viewer

Monty Linden has been continuing to work on the HTTP side of things, directing his efforts towards HTTP pipelining, which should yield further benefits in rendering texture and mesh, and in generally efficiency of HTTP connectivity between the viewer and the SL servers. As a part of this, and while it is not formally publicly available as yet, he has produced a viewer using HTTP pipelining.

This has been undergoing testing among a group of SL users, and is showing considerable promise in terms of texture rendering improvements, and a similar level of improvement is anticipated with Mesh.

Whirly Fizzle has produced a video comparing texture rendering between the HTTP pipelining viewer and the current release viewer, with the tests carried out under identical conditions.

Experience Tools

The new Experience Tools project will be officially announced on Wednesday July 2nd, with a blog post, video and the release of a project viewer.

Group Chat

Oz Linden: SL's Technical Director talks about coming updates to Group Chat
Oz Linden: SL’s Technical Director: work is continuing on group chat issues, including hardware upgrades for the service

“We have been looking much more deeply into why the problems which exist than we ever have before,” Technical Director for Second Life, Oz Linden stated at the Firestorm The Future of Second Life meeting on Wednesday July 2nd, in reference to group chat issues. “We’ve added a lot of instrumentation to the way it’s implemented, and we have learnt a lot from that.”

He went on to cover the fact that the Lab has begun to make changes as a result of this data-gathering which are starting to have an impact, although he emphasised that while this work is going to continue in the coming months, there is unlikely to be a single update which will be “the” dramatic change which instantly “solves” group chat lag. Things are liable to be a lot more in the way of incremental improvements (no doubt due in part to the sheer complexity of the chat service).  given this, he also suggested that there may be some fundamental work required in the future which could affect the viewer side of things as well.

He went on to say, “We’re going to be upgrading the hardware that the group chat servers run on, I believe this week or possibly next. We won’t announce when that is, because it would be bad science to tell anybody when it’s happened. We want to watch the stats, we now have very good visibility to what performance and failure rates are. So we have the way to measure what’s going on.”

Viewer release summaries 2014: week 26

Posted on by Inara Pey

Updates for the week ending: Sunday June 29th, 2014

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

  • Current Release version: 3.7.10.291134 June 23rd (formerly the SL Share 2 RC – ability to upload Tweets and snapshots to Twitter and / or snapshots to Flickr) (download page, release notes)
  • Release channel cohorts (See my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself):
  • Project viewers:
    • Group Ban project viewer updated to version 3.7.11.291394  June 24th – allows certain group members to ban avatar from a group or from joining a group  When an existing group member is banned, they are also automatically ejected from the group (download and release notes)

LL Viewer Resources

Third-party Viewers

V3-style

  • Black Dragon updated to version 2.3.9.9(B) on June 28th – core updates: bug fixes; ability to invert pitch controls (change log)

V1-style

  • Cool VL viewer updated on June 21st – Stable release to version 1.26.12.5 and Legacy version 1.26.8.63 – core updates: please refer to the release notes

Mobile / Other Clients

  • No updates

Additional TPV Resources

Related Links

SL project updates week 26/2: group chat

Posted on by Inara Pey

Server Deployments Week 26 – Recap

  • On Tuesday June 24th, the Main channel was updated with the inventory / AIS v3 project, previously deployed to BlueSteel, which requires the current release viewer. See the release notes for more
  • On Wednesday June 25th, the three RC channels were updated as follows:
  • BlueSteel and LeTigre received a new server maintenance project with the new LSL functions to view and modify materials (see my notes) – release notes
  • Magnum remains on the Experience Tools project, but should additionally receive the inventory / AISv3 update deployed to the Main channel – release notes

Group Chat

Simon Linden is again working on improving group chat, with further tests being carried out during the Server Beta meeting on Thursday June 26th. Currently, the emphasis is on further improving reliability when engaged in group chat and moving between regions (either via teleport or directly by crossing between regions). A couple of people reported their chat windows appeared to freeze a lot less when switching between group chat sessions or following a teleport. Whether this was actually the case or a placebo effect is unclear, as Simon indicated he couldn’t see why it might be any different at this point in proceedings.

Other Items

Magnum llAttachToAvatarTemp Bug

An odd bug has been discovered on Magnum, which may be related to the Experience Tools code. It is defined in BUG-6438, “Objects attached via llAttachToAvatarTemp to object owner detach when script is removed from prim inventory”.

Essentially, using a script in an object which uses llAttachToAvatarTemp to attach an item to attach itself to the creator of the object, and which uses llRemoveInventory(llGetScriptName()) to remove the script from the object, results in the object itself detaching and being deleted. If the object is used by someone other than its creator, it will attach and the script will be correctly removed without detaching the object as well. It’s not clear if this happens with objects with multiple scripts in them or not, as it has only been tested against objects with the temp attach script in them.

Investigations are continuing into a fix, but in the meantime, it is believed that the Magnum code won’t be moving to the Main channel in week 27.

 ALM and Viewer Log Spamming

There is a viewer rendering issue, which can make itself particularly known when using the LSL functions for materials, where the face of an object will not be rendered, and the viewer will receive a lot of log spam (see BUG-6187). While things got sidetracked so he couldn’t expand on things, Maestro Linden did indicated at the Server Beta meeting that the issue is continuing to be looked at.

SL project updates week 26/1: server, viewer, Content Creation UG

Posted on by Inara Pey

Server Deployments Week 26

Main (SLS) Channel

On Tuesday June 24th, the Main channel was updated with the inventory / AIS v3 project, previously deployed to BlueSteel, which requires the current release viewer. See the release notes for more.

Release Candidate Channels

On Wednesday June 25th, the three RC channels should be updated as follows:

  • BlueSteel and LeTigre should receive a new server maintenance project with the new LSL functions to view and modify materials (see my notes) – release notes
  • Magnum remains on the Experience Tools project, but should additionally receive the inventory / AISv3 update deployed to the Main channel – release notes

SL Viewer Updates

The release viewer updated on Monday June 23rd to version 3.7.10.291134 (formerly the SL Share 2 RC – ability to upload Tweets and snapshots to Twitter and / or snapshots to Flickr).

The Group Ban project viewer updated to version 3.7.11.291394 on Tuesday June 24th.

Other SL viewers remain as per my Current Viewer Releases page.

Content Creation User Group

The regular Monday Content Creation User Group meetings came to an end on Monday June 23rd. Also at the meeting, as he has been for the past few weeks, doubtless getting up-to-speed with things as a part of his new role in heading-up the SL development team, Oz Linden indicated content creation issues could in future be raised at either the Simulator User Group meeting (which generally has a strong cross-over of attendees with the Content Creation UG meeting) or the Open Development meeting.

Commenting on the change to the meeting, Nyx said:

I’m moving on to other projects and haven’t been able to keep up with the details of content creation tasks as well as I used to be able to … I’ll still be inworld from time to time, and will be helping Oz whenever any avatar issues come up or with any other pieces where I can assist of course.

Whether this can be taken to mean Nyx is moving on to the new platform project is open to speculation. However, that the Content Creation meeting has now ended as an entity in its own right should not be seen as any indication that the Lab is starting to raise the drawbridge. Meetings over the pass few months have, for the most part, had a low attendance (with occasional sharp rises), and opportunities remain to discuss issues in other venues.

Experience Tools

Thanks to my getting a bullet point in the wrong place in my overview of Experience Tools, the article gave the impression that whitelisting experiences on mainland would only be possible with grid-wide experiences. This has been corrected. Experiences can be run at the parcel level on the mainland.

 

Viewer release summaries 2014: week 25

Posted on by Inara Pey

Updates for the week ending: Sunday June 22nd, 2014

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

  • Current Release version: 3.7.9.290582 June 16th (formerly the MemShine RC – combining the MemPlugs memory leak fixes and sunshine AIS v3
  • Release channel cohorts (See my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself):
    • SL Share 2 RC viewer updated to version 3.7.10.291134 on June 19th – ability to upload Tweets and snapshots to Twitter and / or snapshots to Flickr (download and release notes)
    • Snowstorm viewer prompted to RC and updated to version 3.7.10.291042 on June 19th – numerous code contributions including STORM-1831 Obtain LSL syntax table from simulator so that it is always up to date; STORM-1966 Block installation on old and unpatched versions of Windows  and STORM-68 Allow setting of default permissions on creation of objects, clothing, scripts, notecards, etc. (download and release notes)
  • Project viewers:
    • Group Ban project viewer version 3.7.8.290887 released on June 17th – allows certain group members to ban avatar from a group or from joining a group  When an existing group member is banned, they are also automatically ejected from the group (download and release notes)

LL Viewer Resources

Third-party Viewers

V3-style

  • Black Dragon updated to version 2.3.9.9(A) on June 17th – core updates: please refer to the change log
  • Restrained Love Viewer updated to version 2.9 on June 18th – core updates: new RLV camera commands (release notes)

V1-style

  • Cool VL viewer updated on June 21st – Stable release to version 1.26.12.4 and Legacy version 1.26.8.62 – core updates: please refer to the release notes

Mobile / Other Clients

  • No updates

Additional TPV Resources

Related Links

SL projects update: week 25/3: server and TPV meeting

Posted on by Inara Pey

Server Deployments Week 25 – Recap

  • On Tuesday June 17th, the Main (SLS) channel was updated with the group ban project server code – release notes
  • One Wednesday June 18th, the RC channels were updates follows:
  • LeTigre received a new anti-griefing measure – release notes
  • Magnum remained on the Experience Tools project, but also received the group ban server code and the anti-girefing measure – release notes.
  • BlueSteel remain on the Sunshine / AIS v3 project, and the  but also received the group ban server code and the anti-griefing measure, the viewer for which was promoted to the de facto release viewer on Monday June 16  – release notes.

There has been some interest voiced at both the Simulator UG meeting and the Server Beta UG meeting, in the “anti-griefing measure” deployed to the three RCs this week. Commenting on this at the Server Beta meeting on Thursday June 19th, Maestro Linden said, ” I think I’ll be able to discuss the change next week,” (after it has been deployed to the Main channel as well). ” But right now, some people would unfortunately use the information as a how-to-grief instructional.”

Upcoming Deployments

The LSL functions for materials may be set to arrive on an RC in week 25. This depends on how this week’s RCs continue to perform, but assuming the anti-griefing measure on LeTigre is promoted to the Main channel, then that RC would theoretically be available for the LSL functions for materials, assuming no significant bugs are filed against it as a result of Aditi testing.

TPV Developer Meeting

A TPV developer meeting took place on Friday June 20th. The core items discussed in the meeting are reported below, with timestamps in the relevant paragraphs indicating the point at they are discussed in the video embedded here.

As has been noted elsewhere, the meeting was attended by Ebbe Linden, who took an impromptu Q&A session at the end of the meeting. This commences at around the 51:00 mark in the video. While this report does not cover that Q&A session, information on his comments about the Lab’s in-development new virtual world platform can be found in Ebbe confirms: “we’re working on a ‘next generation’ platform” (with audio).

My thanks, as always, to North for the video.

SL Viewer Updates

[0:01:18] The SL Share 2 viewer, providing Flickr and Twitter upload support and the snapshot filtering capabilities for both and for snapshot uploads to Facebook was updated to version 3.7.10.291134 on Thursday June 19th, bringing it to parity with the current release viewer code base

The Snowstorm viewer, released as a project viewer on June 12th was updated to version 3.7.10.291042 on June 19th, bringing it to parity with the current release viewer code base, and issued as a release candidate viewer. This has had a significant bug reported against it, which is currently being fixed. As such, it is unlikely that this RC will be in the running for promotion until after it has been refreshed with the fix and the updated version has been in the viewer release channel sufficiently long enough for the Lab to obtain meaningful statistics on its performance.

Avatar System Clothing Layers

[0:4:00] BUG-6258, “Popularity of Mesh Attachments Facilitates Need For More Alpha Layers” is a request to raise the number of alpha layers which can be concurrently worn (at the moment this is 5).

Rather than increasing the number of an individual layer which can be worn (such as alphas), the Lab is considering setting a global limit – so as with attachments, an avatar can wear as many clothing layers in any combination, up to the global limit (with attachments, this is set to 38).

The Lab is still investigating this approach in terms of feasibility and what the upper limit for clothing layers might be for an avatar.  Until they do make a final determination on the issue, they have requested TPVs do not arbitrarily add to the existing layer limits, as there is a risk that anything the Lab does do on this front may conflict with alternatives put in place by TPVs.

SL Experience Tools

[0:07:10] The major technical announcement of the TPV meeting was that the long-awaiting Experience Tools will be entering a beta test phase in the very near future. You can catch-up on this in my initial Experience Tools overview .

Z-offset Height Adjustment Proposal

[0:39:06] One of the issues with the introduction of Server-side baking is that it broke the “Z-offset” capability common to many third-party viewers. This allowed the vertical height of an avatar above the ground to be adjusted, such that sits and kneels don’t leave the avatar apparently floating in the air, and which allow those with very tall / giant avatars or very small / petite avatars and those wearing full body mesh to similarly adjust their vertical placement relative to the ground / floor.

In response to the issue being raised as a bug report (see SUN-38, “As users of kneel/lay/sit animations and tiny/giant avatars, we need a way to change the body size in SSB sims”), the Lab, via Nyx Linden, introduced the hover feature, which allows an avatar’s standing height to be adjusted to some degree via an appearance slider.

sitting
Jessica Lyon demonstrates part of the avatar height offset issue: when seated using her preferred sitting pose, her avatar floats above a chair, and she has no means of adjusting the height so that she appears to be sitting in the chair

However, as a solution, it has a number of limitations (your shape has to be modifiable, it won’t work in cases where you are trying to adjust your avatar’s default sitting / kneeling pose height to prevent floating, as the hover option requires the avatar to stand in the default shape edit pose, etc).

In order to try to revisit the problem and possibly gain a more thorough solution, Zi Ree from the Firestorm team has written a proposal document entitled Height offset Proposal.

This clearly explains the issues in not having a more flexible approach to adjusting height offset, and also offers a couple of suggestions on what might be done to improve things. This was presented to the Lab at the TPV Developer meeting, together with a concise demonstration by Jessica Lyon of some of the issues.

Obviously the Lab hasn’t at this point committed itself to tackling the matter, but those from the Lab at the meeting were appreciative that the proposal has been written and the issues  / possible approaches clearly laid out. There has been an agreement to look into further, and there might be some feedback at the next TPV Developer meeting (scheduled for July 18).

Cocoa Issues

[0:48:20] The Lab continues to work on the Cocoa issues affecting Mac users and there is some good news from them and Firestorm:

  • The Lab has a fix for the ALT-cam bug, which is expected to be in the next Maintenance RC viewer
  • Firestorm has a fix for the issue of severe typing lag when in a location with several other avatars (see: FIRE-12172). If successful, this is likely to be contributed to the Lab, and once in a Firestorm release, may see version 4.4.2 of that viewer blocked.