Category: SL Tech

SL projects update week 47 (2): server, viewer, general items

Posted on by Inara Pey

Server Deployments week 47 recap

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

  • Tuesday November 19th: the Main channel received the maintenance package previously deployed to BlueSteel and LeTigre in week 46. This package comprises further infrastructure changes for the yet-to-be-announced Experience Keys (experience tools) project
  • Wednesday November 20th:
    • Magnum remained on the same maintenance project as deployed to it in week 47, but which features a further update to the grey goo fence, now only applies to objects which are both large and physical. This alteration is in response to BUG-4448, wherein it was reported that building rezzers were running up against the fence when attempting to rez complex builds
    • BlueSteel and leTigre received a new maintenance package comprising those changes deployed to Magnum in week 46, with additional bug fixes.
Server Beta Meeting (stock)
Server Beta Meeting (stock)

Notes on the Deployments

Commenting on the BlueSteel / LeTigre updates during the Server Beta meeting on Thursday November 21st, Maestro Linden underlined the last four bug fixes listed in the release notes, together with the final “new feature” item, as being newly introduced with the deployment.

With regards to the BlueSteel  / LeTigre fix for  “Vehicles containing a mesh are returned to the owner upon region crossing when destination parcel is full”, he added, “I believe the issues with region crossing on vehicles due to ‘parcel full’ should be fixed, though there’s still that bug about certain vehicles sometimes going crazy upon region crossing.”

A question was asked if the change to the grey goo fence (BUG-4448) might impact llGiveInventory object-to-object transfers. Apparently there were reports n the Advanced Scripters of Second Life that people were encountering a “give inventory failure: grey goo fence: rapid or recursive inventory transfer” warning on Magnum regions following the update.

Commenting on this, Maestro Linden said, “I checked with Simon about this one; the GGF change should only affect rezzing of objects; when you simply pass items around with llGiveInvenotry(), the object geometry data hasn’t been loaded, so it wouldn’t have the opportunity to apply a penalty. However, he thinks that if you hit the GGF for rezzing objects , the GGF may also prevent llGiveInventory() from operating.”

Maestro also indicated that new restart scripts were using during the RC deployment which displayed the restart messages in “big, bold letters”. Whether these changes are in addition to the restart message changes made by Simon Linden and deployed in September is unclear; Maestro also referenced the fact that restarts will now occur as soon as the last avatar departs a region, rather than waiting for the countdown to complete, and this was a change initially deployed in September.

Week 48 (Week Commencing Monday November 25th)

A reminder that there are no deployments / rolling restarts planned for week 48 due to it being Thanksgiving week in the United States (which also means the Server Beta meeting will not be taking place.

SL Viewer

The SL release viewer was updated on Thursday November 21st to version 3.6.11.283787 (dated November 15)  – formerly the GPU table updates RC. This release contained no functional changes to the viewer, but saw support added for the following GPU families:  newer nVidia GTX 700 series; AMD R7/R9; Intel Iris Pro  (download page, release notes).

Fitted Mesh Project Viewer

RedPoly
Redpoly Inventor, who first looked into the use of custom bones for mesh garment deformation in SL

Thursday November 21st also saw the release of the Fitted Mesh project viewer 3.6.11.283899. This viewer includes a new avatar skeleton with additional collision bones which allow mesh garments rigged to the collision bone structure to adjust with changes to an avatar’s shape using the Edit Shape sliders.

The system is modelled at the approach first mooted during the Closed Mesh Beta and later prototyped by RedPoly Inventor, and which has been subsequently employed in approaches such as Redgrave’s “Liquid Mesh” range of garments.

The official blog post on the release can be read here, and I was fortunate enough to be given preview access to the viewer a little ahead of the launch, and my own overview is also available.

This approach to fitting mesh garments is still at a project status, and those trying it are requested to file any issues they have via a JIRA to the Fitted Mesh project.

Other Items

Copying Large Numbers of Items to the Inventory of an Object

Many people are likely to be familiar with this issue: select  a large number of items from inventory and attempt to drop them into the contents of a prim in a single go, and part / all of the process may fail. This is a long-standing problem, and there had been something of a limit of around 42 items which could be successfully transferred into an object’s contents in a single go. However, there have apparently been renewed reports of problems, and a suggestion that the threshold for moving a large number of objects in a single go may now be around the 30 mark. Maestro Linden has updated a bug report from Dan Linden on the issue with this information in the hope it will assist in narrowing-down the possible cause.

Aircraft Region Crossing Issues

Yuzuru Jewell reported further issues with some aircraft encountering problems on attempting to cross regions. It takes the form of aircraft using mono scripts with collision detection  are failing to cross region boundaries. A similar bug has been reported for mesh vehicles – BUG-4084 is “Mesh car starts to bounce like pinball after sim crossing”, but the Lab has been having problems reproducing that issue.  One workaround that seems to prevent the problem is for the collision event to be moved to a separate script compiled as LSL2 rather than mono.

In the discussion Maestro noted this approach had also been put forward in dealing with BUG-4084, except that in that case, all scripts were being compiled as LSL2, possibly because the issue hadn’t been identified as perhaps being with collision event handlers. Maestro believes the pointer towards collision events may well  be an interesting lead and has requested that anyone able to reproduce the issue and show that specific events / functions are responsible, it will obviously make it easier to determine a resolution.

CtrlAltStudio gains Kinect support and is adapted for use by a university

Posted on by Inara Pey

CAS-logoDave Rowe contacted me earlier in the week to let me know that he’s updated his CtrlAltStudio viewer with both a variable walk speed and support for Kinect for Windows.

Commenting on the updates, which can be found in CtrlAltStudio release Alpha 5 1.1.0.34376 (Windows only), Dave explains:

In the time-honoured tradition of making things do that which they weren’t quite designed for, I’ve added a variable walking speed to the CtrlAltStudio Viewer, Alpha 5 1.1.0.34376. I’ve also added “spot standing” Kinect control of avatar movement for people to try out. These two items can be used with all display modes: normal, stereoscopic 3D, and Oculus Rift.

The variable walk speed came about as a result of some issues when walking / flying in-world when using the Rift, and Dave was pointed in the direction of a possible solution after reading a Firestorm JIRA raised by Adeon Writer requesting that the ability to more easily toggle between “full” and “quarter” speed movement when walking, running or crouching than solely by pressing and holding the spacebar.

Dave notes that his solution, which employs a slider in the Movement sub-tab of Preferences > Move and View, may not be ideal at present, and only affects avatar walking speeds.  He also notes it may not work properly on OpenSim Grids or with the SpaceNavigator (at least at present in the case of the latter).

The new variable walk speed slider and the Kinect options in CtrlAltStudio Alpha 5
The new variable walk speed slider and the Kinect options in CtrlAltStudio Alpha 5

In all the slider has five presets, from “slow” (left) to “normal” (right). When using the viewer, I found that with the mid-point “half speed” and the preset between it and “normal”, my avatar (on an uncrowded region) moved forward reasonably well and was relatively responsive when turning as I walked. Walking backwards was also OK, although if you enable the option to turn your avatar around when walking “backwards”, you may find your avatar’s movement becomes jerky and it constantly tries to turn and put its back to you; something which becomes more pronounced at the lower settings.

I found the “slow” setting to be somewhat akin to being caught in a heavy lag situation, but without any accompanying rubber-banding or sudden speed-ups with walking; my avatar moved very slowly and was subject to intermittent pauses and froze on a couple of occasions, requiring me to adjust the slider more to the right.

While this may not sound promising, do remember that this is only the first cut at the work on Dave’s part.

Kinect Gesture Support

As well as the variable walking speed, Dave has also added gesture support for the viewer, which can be used via the Microsoft Kinect system.  The supported gestures allow you to set your avatar walking, stop it, turn it around and fly up and down or stop gesture-driven control. He’s produced a set of easy-to-understand drawings of the gestures for each, and notes that you can also stop gesture-driven motion by walking out of the Kinect’s sensor range, and also fly down by crouching.

Kinect gestures (image courtesy of Dave Rowe)

In discussing the use of the variable walk slider and the Kinect options, Dave notes:

The variable walk speed improves the usability of Kinect “spot standing” control, usable in Windows builds on PCs with Kinect for Windows sensors installed. You set a “home” position of zero movement, then once you move out of a dead zone around that position your avatar starts moving in the direction you’ve moved in. Avatar movement starts off slow and increases speed as you move further out, with the maximum being that of the walk speed you’ve configured. Except that for forwards movement you start running after the maximum walk speed.

Even if you don’t have either active stereoscopic glasses or an Oculus Rift headset, but you do have a Kinect system (with Runtime or Software Development Kit installed on your PC), you can still use the Alpha 5 version of CtrlAltStudio to try both the variable speed walk and the gesture controls out – just leave both the Stereoscopic and Oculus options disabled. Note you do not have to have Kinect in order to try-out the variable speed walking.

A further change with this release is the inclusion of a Prediction Delta slider with the Oculus Rift options.  Again, as Dave notes in his blog:

Sensor prediction helps reduce latency and you can configure how far into the future your orientation is predicted. With your Rift on, adjust the Prediction Delta value until moving your head feels most comfortable.

predict
the new Prediction Delta slider in the Oculus Rift section of the Display Output sub-tab for helping to reduce latency and configuring how far into the future your orientation is predicted for a more natural head movement when using the Rift.

You can find out about these , and the other updates within the Alpha 5 version of CtrlAltStudio via the release notes.

CtrlAltStudio Adopted and Adapted by St. Andrew’s University

Dave’s work on CtrlAltStudio has not gone unnoticed. None other than St. Andrews University in Scotland have adopted and adapted it as a part of their own work to create a new viewer they’ve called ACE.

Faculty members and students at the university have been using virtual environments for historical reconstructions as a part of their Open Virtual Worlds project for some time now, running their own dedicated OpenSim grid (which is hypergrid enabled, or people can access by creating a log-in account).

Project members have now taken Dave’s work with CtrlAltStudio viewer and combined it with their own Kinect bindings created as a part of their Chimera project in order to produce their own ACE (Armadillo Control Extensions) viewer. This can be used to explore and experience their in-world reconstructions using Oculus Rift and without the need for any physical device to assist them.

The ACE viewer also requires the installation of the Kinect Runtime or SDK to be installed on the host computer in order to work, but once these and the viewer are installed, it can be used to connect to any grid (OpenSim or SL).

A blog post on the ACE viewer is available on the Open Virtual Worlds blog, as is a video demonstrating it in use.

Related Links

CtrlAltStudio

Open Virtual Worlds Project

Kinect Runtime & SDK (required for Kinect use)

SL projects update: week 47 (1): server releases, viewer

Posted on by Inara Pey

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

Main channel: Tuesday November 19th

The Main channel received the maintenance package deployed to BlueSteel and LeTigre in week 46. This package comprises further infrastructure changes for the yet-to-be-announced Experience Keys (experience tools) project

Release Candidate Channels, Wednesday November 20th

BlueSteel and LeTigre should receive a new maintenance package comprising the update deployed to Magnum in week 46, with additional bug fixes. However, at the time of writing, testing was still ongoing, and Simon Linden noted at the Simulator User Group meeting on Tuesday November 19th that things were “down to the wire” in terms of getting the release out. If it does go ahead, the package will include:

  • Bug Fixes
    • Fixed “Sim crossing on vehicle fails when parcel at opposite sim border is full.” (BUG-4152)
    • Fixed a case in which a viewer with a high draw distance would not connect to distant regions which are within the draw distance area
    • Fixed some crash modes
    • Fixed “Vehicles containing a mesh are returned to the owner upon region crossing when destination parcel is full”
    • Fixed “Temp Attachments are sometimes not removed on the viewer when detached from a region change event.”
    • Fixed “Avatars inside a private parcel can see other avatars 2 regions away” (BUG-4356)
    • Fixed an issue with object return to inventory on test grids
  • New Features
    • Objects which are rezzed by sat-upon or attached scripts no longer inherit the temp-on-rez or auto-return timer of the parent object
    • Estate managers and region owners are now prevented from being teleported by llTeleportAgentHome()
    • Estate managers and region owners are no longer affected by scripts which use ESTATE_ACCESS_BANNED_AGENT_ADD
    • The grey goo fence is now stricter for large physical object rezzes
    • More robust handling of inventory management within objects
    • Cleanup of controls-grabbing in LSL scripts (no functional changes)
    • Parcel owners are now prevented from being teleported by llTeleportAgentHome()

Magnum should remain on the same maintenance project as deployed to it in week 47, but which features a further update to the grey goo fence change made in week 46, but which now only applies to objects which are both large and physical. This alteration is in response to BUG-4448.

Thanksgiving Code Freeze

Week 48 (commencing Monday November 25th) is Thanksgiving week in the United States, so there will be no server-side releases during the week. Sever updates will resume in week 49.

SL Viewer

No updates as yet in week 47 to the SL viewer.

Default Object Permissions

A number of TPVs include the ability to specify the default permissions applied to a new prim object (cube, cylinder, torus, etc.) on creation. A similar capability is being developed for the LL viewer (STORM-68) by Jonathan Yap, a long-time contributor to the viewer. Currently, the work is awaiting some server-side capabilities tweaking which will likely be done by Andrew Linden. This work is unlikely to be completed ahead of Thanksgiving, so there is no date as to when the new capability might appear.

Default Region Restart Sound and Notification

Jonathan is also working on STORM-1980 (“Improve awareness of region restarting message”) to add  a default region restart sound added to Second Life. This would be played automatically by the viewer on receipt of a region restart message, adding an additional warning of an approaching restart for those who may miss the pop-up notices, giving them time to take the appropriate action prior to logging-out. The work on this is also progressing, with a modified notification which includes new colours and a countdown. again, further work is required on this, so there is currently no timescale as to when it will be showing up in an RC viewer.

Viewer release summaries 2013: week 46

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: November 17th, 2013

Official LL Viewers

  • Current Release version updated on November 12th to version 3.6.10.283403 (dated November 6th) – formerly the Maintenance RC viewer comprising finer access control for estate/parcel owners; CHUI: toggle expanding conversations by clicking on icon; GPU table update + more (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):
    • GPU Table Update RC updated on November 16th to version 3.6.11.283787 – GPU table updates only, no functional changes (download and release notes)
    • “Project Interesting” RC 3.6.11.283895 released on November 14th  – more viewer-side control of which objects are loaded in memory at any given time; more aggressive scene caching; faster scene load when visiting a region never previously visited; expanded performance metrics (download and release notes)
  • Project viewers:
    • None at present

LL Viewer Resources

Third-party Viewers

V3-style

  • UKanDo updated on November 14th to version 3.6.10.27888 – core updates: LL 3.6.10 code base; SLShare (Facebook) integration, updates to area search, toolbar button icon updates, Advanced Build Options floater, + more (release notes)

V1-style

  • Cool VL updated on November 6th to:
    • Stable version: 1.26.10.1
    • Experimental version: 1.26.8.38
    • Release notes (both) core updates: FMOD Ex updated to v4.44.26; added Advanced menu option to save both default and current settings globally and per-account; Improved shared media handling; Backport of minor speed optimisation to alpha rendering from Singularity; numerous updates and improvements & pruning of dead code
  • Singularity updated on November 14th to version 1.8.4.5433 and then on November 16th to version 1.8.4.5434 after an issue with the camera controls was discovered in 1.8.4.5433 – core updates: materials and updated particle rendering support (ribbon, glow), Google Breakpad for crash reporting; assorted menu updates; inclusion of context menus; + more; Windows 64-bit release (release notes)

Text Clients

  • Group Tool updated on November 7th to version 2.2.23.0.

Additional TPV Resources

Related Links

November 18th: Firestorm to commence blocking of older versions

Posted on by Inara Pey

firestorm-logoOn Monday November 18th, Firestorm will commence blocking older versions of the viewer from accessing Second Life.

This is a move that has been coming for some time, and has been announced on a number of occasions through the Firestorm blog, through Firestorm user meetings and Q&A sessions, and which has been repeated through various blogs, including mine.

As it is, there are a good number of users still running versions of Firestorm that pre-date the introduction of Server-side Appearance (“avatar baking”) and some which even pre-date mesh rendering. Not only does running such versions lessen the user experience and increase the workload Firestorm support volunteers have in trying to assist people on older versions of the viewer.

Nor are the Firestorm team doing this entirely off their own backs. For obvious reasons, the Lab would like to see more users benefiting from the broad range of improvements which have already been rolled-out to SL (and those still being deployed in terms of further viewer-side updates), including SSA, interest list updates, improvements to the rendering pipe, improvements to viewer / server communications, and so on, all of which should improve the user experience, even for those on older hardware.

Given that Firestorm does have the lion’s user of active users, just under 65,000 of whom are still logging-in to Second Life on versions of the viewer pre-dating the more recent SL updates such as SSA, the easiest way to encourage them to update is to block older versions of the viewer.

Many Firestorm users are on version pre-dating SSB and mesh rendering
Many Firestorm users are still on versions pre-dating SSB and mesh rendering

This being the case, once the block comes into force, it means only users on Firestorm 4.4.0 through to the current version(s) will be able to access Second Life. As such, from November 18th, the following versions of Firestorm will be blocked from Second Life (numbers of people still using each version given in brackets):

  • 4.3.1.31155 (40,451)
  • 4.2.2.29837 (14,120)
  • 4.2.1.29803 (60)
  • 4.1.1.28744 (3334)
  • 4.0.1.27000 Beta (4585)
  • 3.3.0.24882 maintenance release (606)
  • 3.3.0.24880 hotfix release (571)
  • 3.2.2.24336 (881)
  • 3.2.1.24179 (166)

For those who feel they may be unable to run later versions of Firestorm, the recommendation is to give a later version a go and to contact Firestorm support teams for assistance or try the Firestorm troubleshooting wiki pages, as issues encountered may be fixable. For those who have genuine issues in trying to run later versions of Firestorm, Linden Lab’s Third-party Viewer Directory offers a list of self-certified alternative viewers you might want to try.

For further information, please refer to the Firestorm blog announcement.

Please note: I cannot address technical questions relating to Firestorm through this blog. Please contact the Firestorm support groups if you have specific technical questions.

Related Links

Singularity 1.8.4: materials, particles, 64-bit Windows and more

Posted on by Inara Pey

singularity

Update: Singularity 1.8.4 was updated with release 1.8.4.5434 on November 16th, after an issue with the coamera controls was discovered in the 1.8.4.5433 build. Not other changes were made, and the functions / updates described in this overview remain current for the the 1.8.4 release.

Thursday November 14th saw the release of Singularity 1.8.4.5433, which brought to the v1-style viewer a 64-bit Windows version to sit with the existing 32-bit Windows version, and alongside the 64-bit Linux offering.

The new release adds a good number of Lab-driven updates to the viewer, including materials processing support (which has been available in various pre-release / alpha versions of Singularity for a while), inclusion of Google Breakpad for better crash reporting, support for the GetMesh2 capability for improved mesh object downloading and inclusion of support for the new LSL particle options. The release also brings with it a host of TPV updates and improvements, either from the Singularity team or which have come by way of other viewers.

The following is a rapid-fire overview for the release, rather than an in-depth review. As always, for a complete list of updates and changes together with all attributions for originators / contributors, please refer the official release notes.

Materials, Particles, Breakpad

Materials arrives in the Singularity release viewer
Materials arrives in the Singularity release viewer

Materials processing support has been available for a while with pre-release and alpha versions of Singularity, and with 1.8.4.5433, they arrive in the release version. For those familiar with using materials (diffuse, normal and specular maps), the Texture tab on the Build floater presents the expected options in a familiar layout.

A couple of nice additions with materials are the Synchronize Materials check box in the main build floater, and the carry-through of the UUID field from the texture picker to the normal / specular map pickers. The former makes it a simple one-step process to keep parameter changes between the different maps on the face of an object in synch, while the latter makes it easy to apply maps using their UUID if known.

The particles support sees Singularity able to support the latest particle parameters, including ribbon particles and particle glow. However, while testing the viewer, I found that it does not appear to support the particle muting capability LL also introduced, whereby right-clicking on a particle stream will mute the corresponding emitter.

The Google Breakpad crash reporting system is enabled by default on first installing release 1.8.4. Providing such reports allows a TPV team to better understand and deal with potential crash modes within a viewer and identify and eliminate potential errors which can result in crashes, and users are therefore encouraged to keep the option enabled. However, if you don’t wish to send any reports, or don’t wish to be asked prior to a report being sent should you crash, you can change the crash reporting setting through a drop-down menu in Preferences > General (shown below).

Google Breakpad enables crash reporting to the Singularity team, and can be configured through the Preferences > General tab
Google Breakpad enables crash reporting to the Singularity team, and can be configured through the Preferences > General tab

 

Menu Updates

Singularity adds some nice little touches to the use of the pie menu, and adds the option to switch between using the pie menu and context menus.

  • Shift-clicking on the central “hole” in the pie menu will either step you back through levels (if you have been using the More > option), or close the pie menu
  • The pie menu can be displayed when in Mouselook by holding the ALT key and right-clicking. It can be cleared by holding the ALT key and left-clicking
  • For those who, like me, prefer context menus, they can be enabled in place of the pie menu via Preferences > System > Use Context Menus instead of Pie Menus.

Other Updates of Note

This release of Singularity also includes the following updates:

  • Inclusion of the latest fixes for the latest ATi/AMD Catalyst drivers
  • Addition of the default camera presets to the Quick Preferences panel
  • Several improvements to the instant message panels
  • Improved reliability of the texture cache
The mini-map gets updated with additional options on the right-click menu
The mini-map gets updated with additional options on the right-click menu
  • Mini-map updates:
    • right-click option to hide or show objects
    • Ability to show Whisper, Chat and Shout range rings (hat rings aware of OpenSim chat range settings)
    • MiniMapPrimMaxAltitudeDelta and MiniMapPrimMaxAltitudeDeltaOwn debug settings added to allow customisation of objects displayed on the mini-map based on proximity
  • Linden tree animations re-enabled  (Advanced > Rendering > Animate Trees)
  • Clicking on clock toggles display of local time
  • Grid URLs can be entered directly into the login panel’s grid field, bypassing the need to open the Grid Manager
  • OpenSim / Aurora sim updates, including:
    • Support for variable-sized regions
    • More OpenSim conformity
    • Issue with teleport failures and saving scripts taking a very long time on OpenSim regions run in the same simulator instance fixed
  • And more, again, please refer to the release notes for details and for the code attributions of all updates.

Windows 64-Bit

The 1.8.4 release of Singularity sees the arrival of a Windows 64-bit version. There is a known issue with this version of the viewer, which lacks support for the  Quicktime plugin, so certain types of parcel media will not play. However, this does not affect streaming music and media on a prim (MoaP).

While my tests are far from conclusive, I have spent time running the 64-bit version on the SL Aditi (beta) grid and have encountered no problems or crashes.

Related Links