Category: SL Tech

UKanDo a whole lot more with 3.6.8

Posted on by Inara Pey

logoConnor Monaron released an updated UKanDo viewer on Saturday October 20th. Version 3.6.8.27869 brings the viewer up-to-date with the latest viewer release code from the Lab, including the “hot fix” to prevent crashes for those using the latest AMD Catalyst drivers (13.9, 13.10, and 13.11), and adds a lot of useful nips, tucks, tweaks and additions.

Download and Installation

The Windows installer remains unchanged at 28.7 MB in size, and installation was, as with the first version of the viewer I reviewed, smooth and without incident.  I ran a completely clean install out of curiosity, and the viewer again installed without a hitch, and AVG Pro didn’t hiccup over things like the voice plugin, etc.

Improved UI

One of the things I found a little hard with UKanDo last time around was the UI colours. The white-text-on-blue-buttons was not always easy to read (for me, at least on my 1440×900 monitor). I’ve no idea if the issue was widespread, or if Connor felt the same, but 3.6.8.27869 sees buttons with black text / icons by default (text turns white when the button is active), which I do find easier on the eyes.

Buttons and Placement

Version 3.6.8 brings with it a couple of new buttons – Quick Tools and Area Search (both of which are looked-at below), and sees UKanDo gain improved toolbar button alignment. As with some other TPVs buttons on the bottom bar can now be ranged to the left or right, and buttons to the left or right of the screen can now be ranged to the top or bottom – kudos, Connor!

Quick Tools

UKanDo Quick Tools
UKanDo Quick Tools

This release brings with it a Quick Tools floater (and associated toolbar button), which is similar to the “Quick Prefs” floaters found in other TPVs, providing rapid access to things like Draw Distance, Bandwidth, Max Avatars, Particle Count, the Windlight presets and so on. The list of options isn’t as extensive as some TPVs provide, but what is here is more than enough to allow users to make rapid-fire adjustments to core settings when necessary – such as when operating in a crowded environment.

Also with this release, and found in the Quick Tools, as well as in Preferences > UKanDo > Miscellaneous, is the ability to set Windlight cross-fading when moving between different Windlight environments / changing Windlight settings.

 Area Search

Another popular TPV capability is that of area search: being able to locate a specific object within a region using a range of criteria – object name, creator name, etc.  This makes its debut in UKanDo version 3.6.8.27869, and is likely to be a welcome addition among users. It can be accessed either via a dedicated menu button or via the UKanDo menu or by pressing ALT-A.

Area Search comes to UKanDo
Area Search comes to UKanDo

Context Menu Updates

A couple of the context menus in UKanDo get updates as well. The right-click avatar context menu sees options added to copy an avatar’s name, UUID or Profile SLurl to the clipboard. Additionally, and in the case of estate owners / managers / parcel owners, the avatar context menu includes options to Freeze / Unfreeze and Eject / Ban where appropriate.

Options to copy an avatar's name, UUID or profile SLurl can now be found of the right-click avatar context menu (l) and context menu in the Nearby tab of the people floater (r). In addition, both menus can offer estate owners / managers / parcel owners options to freeze / eject avatars
Options to copy an avatar’s name, UUID or profile SLurl can now be found of the right-click avatar context menu (l) and context menu in the Nearby tab of the people floater (r). In addition, both menus can offer estate owners / managers / parcel owners options to freeze / eject avatars

These options are also available in the right-click context menu within the Nearby tab of the People floater (with the freeze / ban options only appearing for estate owners / managers / parcel owners).

Other Additions, Tweaks and Touches

  • RLV is updated to 2.8.5.8
  • Toolbar Buttons floater New “Close” button
  • World Map New “Clear Selection” button
  • Help->UKanDo Support Group menu option will either open the group profile or, if you are a member of the group, start group chat
  • Allow Media to Auto-play is defaulted to off
  •  Play Sounds from Gestures is defaulted to off
  • Option to allow Chiclet bar and/or Notifications to be placed top or bottom right
  • Viewer gives audible warning when trying to shift-drag while in edit linked parts/select face mode & object remains locked in place
  • Plus more – see the release notes

Feedback

Version 3.6.8.27869 represents a tidy set of updates and tweaks to UKanDo. The addition of Area Search is liable to be popular, as is the arrival of a Quick Tools floater. I personally like the additional button ranging options (I like my toolbar buttons over to the right of the screen and out-of-the way), and the ban / eject additions to context menus may well prove useful to some!

Performance-wise, this version of UKanDo is right up there with the last, and faces-off very well compared to the SL release viewer upon which it is based. In my PC, with ALM enables, ambient occlusion and shadows (Sun/Moon + projectors) enabled, and a couple of others on my home region, I was again hitting an average FPS of around 68-70.

I did find one or two things at odds in my version compared to the release notes (RenderVolumeLODFactor is reported as defaulted to 4.00, but in my clean install, I found it set to 1.25), but these were very minor issues and easily fixed. One thing I would recommend, however is that the icon for the Quick Tools button is revised. It is currently the same as the icon used on the Preferences button, and when operating with the buttons in Icon Only mode, it could lead to confusion.

I’d still like to see the media filter added to UKanDo, just for the added comfort when wanting to fiddle with media on other land; having something like Will Weaver’s Phototools appear in UKanDo would also be a blast – but these are purely personal preferences. As it is, UKanDo is a perfectly useable viewer, and for those looking for something sitting between the SL viewer and TPVs with all the bells and whistles, it’s worth taking a look at.

Related Links

Viewer release summary 2013: week 42

Posted on by Inara Pey

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 Viewer Round-up 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
  • By its nature, this summary will always be in arrears
  • The Viewer Round-up Page is updated as soon as I’m aware of any releases / changes to viewers & clients, and should be referred to for more up-to-date information
  • The Viewer Round-up Page also 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.

Updates for the week ending: October 20th, 2013 (with extras)

Official LL Viewers

  • Current Release updated on October 16th to version 3.6.8.282367 – core updates: Catalyst RC viewer with a start-up crash on latest AMD Catalyst drivers: 13.9, 13.10, 13.11 (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):
    • Maintenance RC release on October 18th,  version3.6.9.282553 – core updates: finer access control for estate/parcel owners; CHUI: toggle expanding Conversations by clicking on icon; GPU table update + more (download and release notes)
    • “ShareStorm” RC viewer released on October 18th, version  3.6.9.282535 – core updates:  combines SLShare functionality (formerly 3.6.8.282036) and Snowstorm contributions (request teleport feature, et al – formerly 3.6.8.281997)  – (download and release notes)
  • Project viewers:
    • None at present

LL Viewer Resources

Third-party Viewers

V3-style

  • Black Dragon updated on October 15th to version 2.3.3 Alpha  – core updates: Machinima Sidebar overhaul; greyscale and posterization post processing options (unfinished) – (release notes)
  • UKanDo viewer updated on October 21st to version 3.6.8.27869  – core updates: AMD Catalyst driver hot fix; RenderVolumeLOD defaults to 4; RLV updated to version 2.8.5.8; numerous fixes and additions (release notes)

V1-Style

  • Cool VL updated on October 19th to:
    • Stable version: 1.26.8.34
    • Experimental version: 1.26.9.34
    • Release notes (both) core update: major bug fix for the “.32” releases. please update if you are running either one)

Additional TPV Resources

Related Links

SL projects update week 42 (3): viewer, AIS v3, HTTP

Posted on by Inara Pey

The following notes are taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday October 18th. A video, courtesy of Northspring, can be found at the end of this report. The numbers in braces after each heading (where given) denote the time stamp at which the topic can be listened-to in the video.

A typical TPV dev meeting gathers (stock)
A typical TPV dev meeting gathers (stock)

SL Viewer Release Pipeline Updates

The Catalyst RC viewer (version 3.6.8.282367) was promoted to the de facto release viewer on Wednesday October 16th. This viewer was essentially a “hot fix” to address a start-up crash on viewers using the latest AMD Catalyst drivers (13.9, 13.10, 13.11).

At around the same time, the Maintenance RC viewer RC 3.6.8.282335 noted in part 1 of this report as being released on October 14th was withdrawn. It was subsequently superseded on Friday October 18th by a new build,  RC 3.6.9.282553, comprising the same updates: finer access control for estate/parcel owners; CHUI: toggle expanding Conversations by clicking on icon; GPU table update + more.

“ShareStorm” Viewer

Also on Friday October 18th, the SLShare RC (3.6.8.282036) and the Snowstorm contributions RC (3.6.8.281997) were withdrawn and superseded by a new “ShareStorm” RC viewer, version 3.6.9.282535, containing the updates from both.

Viewer Promotions – Time Frame

Due to the volume of work backed-up prior to the implementation of the new viewer release process by the Lab, RC viewers were initially being promoted  to a release status on almost a weekly basis. This has slowed a little more recently, with a promotion to release occurring around once every two weeks (with the exception of the Catalyst RC “hot fix” viewer mentioned above). Barring further situations like the Catalyst RC, the plan is to try to promote an RC to release status around every two weeks.

Interest List Viewer

[01:20 – 22:18]

Richard Linden attended the TPV Developer meeting on Friday October 18th to discuss the upcoming viewer-side changes for the interest list project. He started by giving a high-level overview of the work.

The primary focus of this work has been on scene loading – how things are presented to you when you log-in or teleport to a region. Historically, most of the work related to the interest list has been driven by the simulator. This is not the most optimal way of doing things, and could mean, among other things, that when arriving in a region, you’d start to see things far away from you rezzing first before those much closer to you – so if you arrived inside a house, you’d see the buildings and trees outside of the house appear before the walls of the house would pop into view.

Recent work on the interest list has been aimed towards improving scene loading in the viewer
Recent work on the interest list has been aimed towards improving scene loading in the viewer

So the first part of the work focused on the server end of things. Most of this has already been deployed to the grid, and the benefits can already be felt. There is more structure in how the server sorts and prioritizes data to be downloaded to the viewer, so that when you arrive in a region, the objects which are closer to you or are bigger than others should render first (e.g. when you arrive in the house mentioned above, the floor, walls and ceiling appear before those things outside of the house).

The upcoming viewer changes take this work a stage further, but in more subtle ways.  What is classified as a “cacheable” objects has been changed, for example, allowing the viewer to potentially store more information on objects locally, rather than perhaps depending on the simulator for information relating to them. Additionally, the viewer will be able to retain more overall information relating to a region than is currently the case – fewer “killobject” messages are sent by the simulator telling the viewer to remove objects from cache, allowing them to be re-used rather than the viewer necessarily having to request data on them from the simulator once more.

There are other improvements within the code to assist with better scene loading, such as when you arrive in a region you’ve never visited before (and so have nothing cached). Under the current system, the simulator will send queries to the viewer about every object in the region, because it has no way of knowing if the viewer has data for the region already cached. Under the new code, as the viewer connects to the simulator it will tell the simulator it has no data cached. The simulator can then get on with prioritising the data and getting it downloaded to the viewer, with the result that “several seconds” are shaved from scene loading times.

In other words, to borrow from Richard put it, the updates put the viewer far more in the driving seat with the interest list.

Continue reading “SL projects update week 42 (3): viewer, AIS v3, HTTP” →

SL projects update week 42 (2): server, group ban list

Posted on by Inara Pey

Server Deployments – Week 42

As always, please refer to the week’s forum deployment thread for the latest news and updates.

Tuesday October 15th saw the Main channel updated with the server maintenance project previously on all three RC channels in week 41.

The planned deployment of a new server maintenance project to all three RC channels was threatened at the 11th hour by the discovery of a bug  which took time to resolved, and left the package teetering on the edge of whether it would pass QA testing in time to make the deployment cut-off.

Maestro Linden's disco-themed Server Beta meeting venue (stock)
Maestro Linden’s disco-themed Server Beta meeting venue (stock)

Speaking at the Server Beta meeting on Thursday October 17th, Maestro Linden expanded on this last-minute bug. He explained that it took the form of objects failing to vanish from a user’s field of view after being de-rezzed, and would instead remain as a ghosted object until touched, because the user’s viewer wouldn’t get the update message that the object had been de-rezzed. The problem for the Lab was that the issue would occur in some places but not in others, and seemed to be dependent on things like camera position and draw distance, making it hard to reproduce consistently.

Andrew Linden finally worked out that the problem would only occur in regions with a neighbour to the east and if the user’s viewer was connected to that region. So depending on the region, the object’s position, your camera position and draw distance, the bug might or might not trigger.

While the issue was successfully addressed and the update package successfully deployed on schedule, the Lab are still uncertain as to why the bug should only occur when there is a neighbouring region to the east; however, it’s fair to say that this is not the first “east related” bug to have been found.

Group Ban List

Baker Linden is continuing with internal testing with the new code, using Maestro and Caleb Linden as his guinea pigs. Apparently, the server-side code is hung-up in LL’s internal QA, possibly awaiting resources there. As such, it has yet to become visible and there are currently no regions available on Aditi which include the server-side updates.

Other Items

A problem has been noted following-on from the recent updates to prevent people from using recursive rezzing to grief regions (see my week 35 and week 37 reports). As a consequence of this, some engaging in combat in Second Life have encountered issues wherein combat vehicles in regions with short auto-return times can have their ordnance immediately returned when a weapon is fired, and any temp vehicles are unable to rez attachments, even when sat upon.

Commenting on the situation, Maestro agreed the use-case is legitimate and that some exemption should be made for sat-upon vehicles / objects in these circumstances. He’s agreed to put the matter to Simon and Andrew Linden for further discussion on the best way to approach and resolve the issue.

SL projects update week 42 (1): Server, viewer updates, misc news

Posted on by Inara Pey

Server Deployments – Week 42

As always, please refer to the week’s forum deployment thread for the latest news and updates.

Second Life Server (Main Channel) – Tuesday October 15th

The main channel received the server maintenance project previously on all three RC channels in week 41. This project includes a fix for a group notice delivery issue, introduces a missing JSON operation to LSL, and includes preparatory work for an upcoming viewer with scene loading (interest list) improvements.

Second Life RC BlueSteel, RC Magnum, and RC LeTigre – Wednesday October 16th

All three RC channels should receive a new server maintenance project.  However, at the time of writing, it is unclear whether the RC deployment will occur due to a last-minute bug being identified. Speaking at the Simulator User Group meeting, Andrew Linden indicated that while it had been fixed, it has yet to pass internal QA.

Assuming it does go ahead, the deployment includes fixes for the following issues:

  • “Group member access to parcels fails when ‘Sell passes to’ is enabled” (BUG-3992)
  • “‘Ghost’ avatars and vehicles sometimes appear to an observer at the sim border” (BUG-3872)
  • “Vehicles which exit a region with a passenger are incorrectly auto returned and become ‘ghost shapes’ in the physics engine” (BUG-4024)
  • A performance issue with avatar loading speed in the experimental ‘viewer-interesting’ viewer.
Simulator User Group meeting, Tuesday October 15th 2013
Simulator User Group meeting, Tuesday October 15th 2013

In addition, extremely high Avatar Render Weights reported to the server are now capped at 500,000 (BUG-4010)  – so the server will take any report over 500k and treat it as 500k.  Simon explained that this cap had been arrived through a process of observation and data-gathering he undertook himself or resident supplied to him, all of which suggested the average for ARW among users is around 100K. In describing the cap in general, he went on:

You should consider anything close to 500k as just “way too high”. The system is a compromise that’s needed because some people will try to game it You should not trust the values too much. They are from viewers, which (don’t take this personally, anyone) cannot be trusted to be accurate 500k is at the very high-end of usage.

Really, anyone near that in a public place is hogging your viewer display power if you’re up by 500k – you’re using roughly 5x the viewer render resources as everyone else Also remember that SL is not doing anything with this data. It’s up to scripters and land owners to react.  So I can imagine a popular club maybe sending a warning IM to someone who’s really complex.

 I hope some people can find it useful within its limitations.   As it currently works, it should give scripts a good idea if some people are extra-costly.   It’s up to the scripter to handle that well or not.

SL Viewer Updates

Two new release candidate viewers were deployed to the release channel on October 14th and 15th. These are the Catalyst Viewer and a further Maintenance Viewer.

Maintenance Viewer

Release on October 14th, Maintenance RC 3.6.8.282335 includes:

  • finer access control for estate/parcel owners
  • CHUI: toggle expanding Conversations by clicking on icon
  • clean up messaging & notifications
  • fix crashes & hangs
  • GPU table update

Catalyst Viewer

Release on October 15th, the Catalyst RC, release 3.6.8.282367, is intended to address a start-up crash on latest AMD Catalyst drivers: 13.9, 13.10, 13.11.

Interest List

Not much to report here, the viewer-side code has yet to emerge as an RC, but Andrew Linden has been working on comparisons with scene loading in the hopes of producing a film to demonstrate the improvements. He’d recorded the “before” footage a while ago, and has been focusing on the “after” footage.

“I brought the regions up on some old simulator code from before any of the latest interest list work… from Dec 2012. Andrew Linden: and I was reminded as to how poorly the scene used to load;  everything arrived in mostly random order,” he said during the simulator User Group meeting, “I found a very small room in one of my test regions. So I logged out while standing in this closet, cleared my cache, and logged back in… On the old simulator code you could see the world streaming in and then BAM! the walls of the room would obscure everything. On the new code… the walls are there as soon as the login curtain raises. Not that the scene loading is perfect now, but some of you may remember… it used to be much worse.”

Hopefully we’ll be able to see the video soon, and Andrew will be able to avoid further plays on him coming out of the closet…

Group Ban List

Again, not a lot to report at the moment. Appearing at the Simulator User Group meeting, Baker Linden said:

I wanted to give an update on group bans:  I’m currently working through the bugs found by internal QA testing, trying to fix them as quickly as I can. Later today I’ll be doing another round of code reviews, and hopefully everything there will go smoothly.

Firestorm meeting and Q&A, October 12th: video and transcript

Posted on by Inara Pey

firestorm-logoOn Saturday October 12th 2013, the Firestorm team hosted another informal question-and-answer session. While the meeting was recorded, the Firestorm team are aware that many of their users have hearing difficulties, and / or prefer to read text. It is because of this that this transcript has been provided. When reading it, please remember:

  • This is not a word-for-word transcript of the entire meeting. While all quotes given are as they are spoken in the video, to assist in readability and maintain the flow of conversation, not all asides, jokes, interruptions, etc., have been included in the text presented here
  • If there are any sizeable gaps in comments from a speaker which resulted from asides, questions to other etc,, these are indicated by the use of “…”
  • Timestamps are provided as guidance should anyone wish to hear the comments in full from any speaker on the video
  • Questions were asked in chat while speakers were talking. This inevitably meant that replies to questions would lag well behind when they were originally asked. Therefore, to provide context between questions and answers, questions in the transcript are time stamped at the point at which each is addressed by a member of the Firestorm team, either in voice or via chat.

Please note: This transcript is provided for informational purposes only. As such, questions on technical issues relating to Firestorm and  / or project-specific questions cannot be answered here unless one of the Firestorm team drops by.

The TL;DR Summary

The numbers in braces are timestamps which refer to the section of this transcript where more details can be read, and to the section of the video recording where the relevant comments can be heard.

  • Current status for Firestorm, and potential time frames for the next release: end of October – unlikely; early December – possibly; early 2014 – if early December is missed, due to no change windows) [0:00:44-0:02:33]
  • Status with regards to LL’s viewer projects:
    • SSA updates (AISv3) – unlikely to make it into the next release and why [0:02:33-0:03:42]
    • SLShare (sharing with Facebook accounts) – possibly in next release, but low priority [0:03:42-0:04:22]
    • Group ban list – what it is and hopefully in the next release [0:04:22-0:06:30]
    • Interest list updates – unlikely to be in the next release and why [0:06:30-0:08:08]
    • Chat history capabilities from CHUI [0:18:50]
  • The hoped-for refactoring of the Preferences floater will not be in the next release [1:02:09]
  • What will be in the next release:
    • Materials, support for new particle capabilities, export features [0:08:08]
    •  Firestorm will include export capabilities, the majority of which have been in development in-house for a while, but which will include Singularity’s .DAE export capability. All export options will respect the SL permission system, so you will only be able to export things which are wholly your creation [0:09:57-0:16:14]
    • Linden Lab have introduced new particle capabilities, including a ribbon particle capability and a new means of dealing with particle griefing by right-clicking on particles to mute their source. These abilities will be in the next release of Firestorm [0:16:42-0:17:39]
  •  Firestorm may be getting a means for IM encryption in the future which will be more secure than OTR. This has arisen out of Firestorm being used as the default viewer for MOSES, the US Army’s Military Open Simulator Enterprise Strategy [0:23:50-0:28:50]
  • Firestorm is unlikely to gain 64-bit builds in the near future. So far, few advantages have been shown to exist with 64-bit builds compared to 32-bit builds utilising LAA, and 64-bit builds could present added complexity in trying to manage the project [0:33:28-0:41:39]
  • Firestorm and TPVs are experiencing much improved co-operation with the Lab, although striking a balance between openness and managing complex projects is hard to achieve and this leads to compromises [0:48:16-0:58:21]
  • The remainder of the meeting was more in the way of an open Q&A session covering a range of topics, and the transcript should be referred to for further details.

With thanks to North for the video.

Continue reading “Firestorm meeting and Q&A, October 12th: video and transcript” →