A note card containing a message from Nyx Linden is doing the rounds in-world concerning Server-side Baking / Appearance. The note card reads in full:
Greetings all,
Nyx Linden (stock)
Wanted to give everyone a quick update on the status of Server Side Appearance. First of all, thanks to all who helped participate in last week’s pile-on test, and a special thanks to those viewers who are already integrating the RegionHandshakeReply flag posted recently. We’ll likely be doing one more pile-on next week, targeting a smaller set of users (to avoid inventory limits that have caused attachments not to load, etc) next week. Let me know if you’d like to participate.
We currently are not aware of any major release-blocking bugs and are starting to look at scheduling the roll-out process. We have a number of QA passes and tests to run through before we can get the final greenlight to do so, so we are currently targeting July 9th as the earliest date at which we will enable SSA for a significant portion of the grid (a server RC channel). Please note that if we find additional bugs in the meantime, or run into other scheduling difficulties this date could be pushed back. We will not be going to RC before this date however.
Please consider this an official warning that this is imminent – We’ve been saying for a while that we’re getting ready for release. We hope with a solid date in mind, all viewers can start messaging to their users that they will need to update or they will start to see issues. There are a few methods by which we will be messaging to the SL community as a whole about this, but we highly encourage you to use your judgement in the best way to reach out to your users and transition them to SSA-compatible viewers.
As always, if you have any questions, or see any issues that could be worrisome if they are not fixed before release, please do not hesitate to reach out to me and/or file a JIRA. Thanks for all your work in preparing for this release!
Nyx Linden
[link and all emphasis mine]
If you want to avoid seeing increasing numbers of grey avatars and / or avoid people telling you, “you’re a cloud” when you appear perfectly fine to yourself, update to a version of a viewer supporting SSB/A
As previously noted in this blog, the plan from the Lab has been to deploy SSB/A gradually. Speaking on this at the TPV Developer meeting on Friday June 14th, Nyx indicated the deployment would be a small group of regions prior to moving to a Release Candidate channel (either in whole or in part) and then progress from there.
However, with the preliminary date for this work to commence, and given that almost all maintained SL viewers are now SSB/A-ready (Dolphin and Exodus are the only exceptions at the time of writing), there really is no excuse for people not to update their viewer. The choices are arleady available:
Those who prefer the v1-style of UI have the choice of Cool VL Viewer and Singularity
Those who prefer the V3-style have the choise of the SL viewer, Catznip, Firestorm, Kokua, Niran’s, and RLV.
In addition, the Lumiya, Meltabolt and Radegast clients are also SSB/A ready.
Update June 21st: A new Materials Support and Tips thread has been started by Creator Linden in the Building and Texturing Forum (with thanks to Daniel Voyage for the poke).
Server Deployments – Week 25
As always, please refer to the week’s forum deployment thread for news, updates and feedback.
Second Life Server (Main) Channel
On Tuesday June 18th, the SLS main channel received the interest list improvement project which have been previously deployed to Magnum (week 22) and BlueSteel and LeTigre (week 24).
Release Candidate (RC) Channels
On Wednesday 19th June, all three RC channels (Magnum, BlueSteel and LeTigre) received the same server maintenance package, designed to fix a number of crash modes and address an issue with neighbouring region visibility. In addition this package:
Contains the new LSL pathfinding property CHARACTER_STAY_WITHIN_PARCEL, and the new LSL object return functions designed to assist land owners with the return of objects under controlled conditions
Provides fixes for A fix for an issue in which LSL HTTP-in scripts would sometimes see the incorrect URL (BUG-2833) and for Bug 2850 (Cannot rez objects in Bluesteel and LeTigre parcels which disallow object entry).
The neighbour region visibility issue fixed by the deployment is for SVC-8019, which is related to issues with regions failing to communicate with their neighbours for up to an hour are a restart, causing communications issues (e.g. LSL chat) across region borders, rather than being related to the issue of diagonally adjacent regions not being visible to one another (SVC-8130), which is still an issue on the main grid.
The fix deployed to the Release Candidates does not address issues of diagonally adjacent regions failing to render to one and/or the other
Commenting on the latter issue while testing it with an alt during the Server Beta meeting on Thursday May 20th, Maestro Linden said, “It looks like some kind of false communications timeout in the remote region, where it disconnects your viewer.” Currently, there is no proposed fix for the issue, although the Lab keep poking at it.
Materials Processing
Objects using transparencies as rendered with ALM off in the materials viewer (click to enlarge)The same items rendered with ALM active in the materials viewer (click to enlarge)
The Materials Processing project reached a release status on Wednesday June 19th, with the release of Second Life viewer 3.6.0.277516.
However, problems continue to be reported with transparencies rendering as black when using the viewer, (see MATBUG-175, MATBUG-193 and a similar bug, MATBUG-186).
Two possible workarounds for these problems have been suggested, which may work, depending on the precise nature of the issue, if you’re experiencing it:
Going into Preferences > Graphics and unchecking Advanced Lighting Model (ALM) before click OK to apply, then going back into Preferences > Graphics and enabling ALM once more
If you have water reflections set to Minimum in Preferences > Graphics, try setting them to a higher value and then unchecking / rechecking ALM.
Some of these issues were known well in advance of the viewer reaching a release status, which promoted comments of surprise during the Open-source Developer meeting on Wednesday June 20th that the viewer had been released. Commenting on this, Oz Linden responded:
I’m not at all surprised that people found combinations of visual attributes we hadn’t tested that were busted, really. There are a staggering number of combinations – after you factor in all the possible settings changes on top of them, the number is absolutely not even close to something we could test. The “black issue” makes it sound simple…. we probably had a dozen bugs during development that had that same symptom for different reasons. I’m sure we’ll get it sorted out.
Update June 21st: Kokua version 3.6.0.28975 has been released, which include Materials Processing support.
Update June 20th: NiranV Dean has released a version of his “in development” Black Dragon SL viewer with Materials Processing support. See his blog post for details.
If you are already running the release version of the viewer (3.5.3.276452) and have automatic updates enabled, the new version of the viewer, you should be notified that the update is available. If not, or if you have not previously installed the SL viewer, but wish to try-out the new materials capabilities, you can download and install 3.6.0.277516 by following the above link to the official download page.
A katara created by June Dion showing surface detail and reflective qualities using materials properties
For those not in the know, Materials Processing adds normal and specular maps to the in-world tools capabilities of the viewer (using the new land impact accounting system in the process!), allowing much higher / improved levels of realism be obtained with textures used on prim, sculpt and mesh items (they do not work on avatar skin and clothing layers).
I provided an overview of the Materials Processing, including brief notes on normal and specular maps when the project reached a beta viewer release status at the start of June, and I refer you to that post for details.
As noted in that article and elsewhere, the materials capabilities introduce a revised Textures tab to the Build floater in the viewer, which allows you to add normal and specular maps to objects and object surfaces, as well as textures (referred to a diffuse maps).
Materials Build floater Texture tab: The diffuse (texture) option, showing the Alpha mode drop-down options (l); the normal map options, with map picker and default bump map drop-down (c); the specular map options, in which the Shininess drop-down displays the familiar low, medium & high shiny options (r)
Note, as well, that in order to see materials in action, you’ll need to enable the Advanced Lighting Model option in the Graphic tab of the materials viewer. Please also see the Materials FAQ for other information relating to Materials Processing.
Given the capabilities are now available in the release viewer, and allowing for pressing activities around Server-side Baking / Appearance, it is likely that we’ll start seeing more TPVs start to adopt materials in the coming weeks (for example, the Cool VL viewer already has materials support in the experimental branch).
In the meantime, the Lab has released a video demonstrating the capabilities, complete with a Torley Dancing SL10B bear!
Materials Processing represents a collaborative project developed and implemented by both Linden Lab and third-party viewer developers. Originally a proposal submitted by members of the Exodus viewer team in 2012, the project has included the direct involvement of developers from Catznip (notably Kitty Barnett) and Firestorm (notably Tonya Souther) as well as from Exodus (notably Geenz Spad) in the development of the viewer-side tools and capabilities, with the Lab working on the server-side of the capabilities.
If you encounter any major issues with the viewer, such as alpha issues, severe problems with texture rendering as black, etc., please make sure you file a JIRA on the issue, with any screen shots you can provide in addition to details of your system (Help > About Second Life > COPY button to copy / paste system information).
As always, please refer to the week’s forum deployment thread for news, updates and feedback.
Second Life Server (Main) Channel
On Tuesday June 18th, the SLS main channel received the interest list improvement project which have been previously deployed to Magnum (week 22) and BlueSteel and LeTigre (week 24). This includes:
A fix for excessive AvatarAppearance packets being sent to the viewer [in which the simulator would send many unnecessary AvatarAppearance messages to the viewer]
A final fix for the “meeroo problem” whereby animations on Meeroos and other animals fail to update correctly when camming around.
Release Candidate (RC) Channels
On Wednesday 19th June, all three RC channels (Magnum, BlueSteel and LeTigre) should receive the server maintenance package briefly deployed to BlueSteel and LeTigre in week 24. to fix a number of crash modes, addresses an issue with neighbouring region visibility, and adds new LSL pathfinding capabilities and object return capabilities:
The new pathfinding property CHARACTER_STAY_WITHIN_PARCEL, which can be used with llCreateCharacter() and llUpdateCharacter(), and is intended to help with keeping characters within parcel boundaries – see my week 19 report for details
The new object return functions I reported on in week 23, namely llReturnObjectsByOwner and llReturnObjectsByID, are intended to provide an automated means of returning objects to their owners – see my full update on these functions for details.
This package also includes the following:
An update to llReturnObjectsByID() to prevent it from returning other objects which are owned by the parcel owner or estate owner/manager
A fix for an issue in which LSL HTTP-in scripts would sometimes see the incorrect URL (BUG-2833)
A fix for Bug 2850 (Cannot rez objects in Bluesteel and LeTigre parcels which disallow object entry) – which caused this deployment to be replaced by the Magnum RC package in week 24.
SSB/A Pile-on Test Update
Nyx Linden (stock)
On Friday June 14th, a Server-side Baking / Appearance pile-on test was conducted on the main grid (see my report on events). The Lab is still going over the results of the test and all JIRA filed and log files submitted. Giving a preliminary summary of the test at the Content Creation User Group meeting on Monday June 17th, Nyx Linden said:
We actually just recently got through looking at the bug reports that were filed. Things are looking good, if you know anyone who saw anything major during the pile-on test please encourage them to file a bug ASAP if they have not already done so.
The system seemed to work quite well for most people, and we’re looking closely at the people who were having trouble resolving to try to figure out exactly what happened. The baking service was doing fine, there were some other services that weren’t used to that many people changing their outfits that close together (hence some attachments had difficulty resolving, etc). If anyone knows of failure cases for SSA (aside from those reported if you log in with very old viewers), please let us know asap.
The test did not include a minor update intended for the viewer-end of things, or the code change to help avoid SUN-74. However, as mentioned in my last SSB/A update, the former isn’t required prior to SSB/A starting its deployment across the grid, while the safest way to avoid encountering problems with non-maintained viewers / viewer without the necessary SSB/A updates is to upgrade your viewer. Now.
Viewer News
Materials Processing
The final beta release (3.6.0.277409) performed well over the weekend, with a crash rate “comfortably under” 9%. The code has been merged with the release viewer and is in its final QA testing ready for deployment. Providing nothing unexpected happens, it should appear on the viewer download page as the release viewer very soon.
Viewer Release Process
Work is continuing on the new viewer release process, which may go live later in week 25 or early in week 26. In the meantime, and as reported in week 24, a viewer source repositories page has been produced on the wiki. There is also a further wiki page explaining the release process, although it is still under development. You can find it listed as the Viewer Integration and Release Processes.
Note that the new process does not mean there will be multiple versions of the release viewer available for download (although there will potentially be multiple project / beta / release candidate versions available for download).
Should two projects reach a point of being ready to go to a release status at the same time (such as with “project 1” and “project 2” in the diagram above), a decision will be made by the Lab as to which should go first. That viewer then changes status to release, with the code pulled back to the viewer-release repository. The second viewer awaiting release will then merge with the changes and put out a further release candidate, and will then move to a release status from there.
For ease of reference, the viewer download page and the Alternate Viewers wiki page remain the default places for most users to obtain versions of the SL viewer.
Other Bits
Object Contents Loading
We’re all familiar with using prims as storage for other items (e.g. “boxed” items sold through the Marketplace or using a prim to store items in inventory we don’t frequently use). when a prim has a large number of items in it, there can be a noticeable delay in seeing the contents listed in the Contents tab of the Build floater. In addition, adding objects can be prone to a slow response as well – and can cause problems such as the loss of No Copy items when dropping more objecting into the Contents tab while the system is already copying / adding items to a prim’s contents. I
n terms of the slow loading issue, some have reported times of 30-40 seconds when trying to list the contents of a prim with 100 or so items, and a question was asked at the Simulator User Group meeting on Tuesday June 18th on whether there was any particular reason for this.
Replying to the question, Andrew Linden started with a cautionary note, “Sure, people can create that many items in contents, but I wouldn’t rank it as a good idea.” He then went on, “I don’t know the exact nature of the bottleneck there, but 30 seconds sounds too long. I’m pretty sure it could be sped up, but I’d have to dig around to see why it is slow.”
Kelly Linden then added: “Object inventory transfer from server to viewer uses one of the oldest legacy methods in Second Life. Updating that is probably a good idea but would require a joint viewer and server version change, or some acrobatics on managing compatibility.”
While agreeing this might be the case, Andrew went on, “The UDP protocol should be able to transmit 300 items in much less than 30 seconds. I’ll try to look around to see what is limiting that. However, I should note… I won’t be attending next week. I’ll be on vacation.”
So, there may be further updates on this in the future.
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: June 16th, 2013
SL Viewer updates:
Materials Processing beta updated to version 3.6.0.277285 on June 12th and then to 3.6.0.277409 on June 14th (release notes)
A Beta Maintenance viewer, version 3.5.4.276827 was release on June 14th – core updates: lots of fixes and improvements (incl. updates to the ongoing ultra-high resolution snapshot issues, mesh improvements, etc.) – release notes
Catznip released version R8 on June 8th (missed from last week’s summary as a result of a website redirector error) – core updates: SSB/A and pathfinding – release notes
Littlesight Android client updated to version 1.4.0.1 on June 12th, no release notes
Lumiya updated to version 2.4.6 and then 2.4.7 on June 12th – core updates: general bug fixes; support for multiple attachments and clothing layers; in-world hovertext display; search places; updates SSB/A support; improved support for emotes in chat – release notes
Mobile Grid Client updated to 1.20.1185 on June 10th (and slipped into the week 23 report as a result) – release notes
Pocket Metaverse updated to 1.8.1 on June 10 (and slipped into the week 23 report as a result) – release notes
Depreciated / Discontinued Viewers
SL Development viewer – depreciated as of version 3.5.2.274629 April 24, 2013
Zen Viewer – discontinued by developer and no longer available, January 27th, 2013
Phoenix viewer – development and support ended on December 31st, 2012
SUN-74 – Asset Corruptions With Non-SSB/A-enabled Viewers
I’ve recently reported on the issue of BUG-74 in relation to server-side baking / appearance. This affects some non-maintained viewers which do not have SSB/A support and which might result in some worn modify assets (skin, hairbase and eyes) being corrupted – see here for details. The issue was finally repro’d successfully by the Lab in week 23. Since then, investigations have been ongoing.
Commenting on the situation during the TPV Developer meeting on Friday 14th June, Nyx Linden said, “we have a technical solution for SUN-74. I have tested it against 1.23[.5], and the old behaviour is no longer reproducing. So hopefully that will mean that once we get it in a place where we can test against Phoenix there should be no more asset corruption.”
Nyx Linden (stock)
It’s not clear when this will happen, but it seems likely the updates will be deployed to the “closed beta” regions where TPV testing of the SSB/A code has been ongoing for the last couple of weeks, and tests will be taken there to ensure non-SSB/A viewers will not be negatively impacted when moving between SSB/A-enabled and non-SSB/A regions during the initial deployment of Server-side Baking / Appearance.
However, this does notmean that people on older, non-maintained viewers no longer need to update to an SSA/B-compatible viewer.
Regardless of the fix for SUN-74. people on non-maintained viewers will start to see increasing numbers of grey avatars around them as SSB/A is rolled out, and willfind that others see them as a permanent cloud. So the only way to be sure of being ready for the deployment of SSB/A is – update or upgrade your viewer if you have not already done so.
Additional Viewer Patch
A side effect of the work carried out on this issue is that the Lab will also be producing a small viewer-side patch which is not any kind of “bug fix” for SUN-74, but which will help viewers get their own appearance messages “just a little bit faster” than is currently the case.
While TPVs are encouraged to incorporate the patch once it becomes available, it is not seen as a mandatory requirement ahead of SSB/A being enabled on the main grid. As such, TPVs have been encouraged to integrate the patch once it becomes available and as it best fits their own release schedules.
Grid-wide Deployment
When asked about how the Lab plans to deploy SSB/A server-side at the TPV Developer meeting on Friday June 14th, Nyx replied:
Carefully. Definitely carefully. We are doing a lot of testing, and as most of you know, we’re doing an Agni pile-on [see later in this report] … and we have been doing a lot of load testing and we’re pretty confident we have enough hardware on the back-end to handle the load.
[So] We’re going to start with a small group [of regions] and go to an RC channel, and then more, and then take over the entire grid.
Whether “go to an RC channel” means enabling SSB/A across an entire RC channel (Magnum, BlueSteel or LeTigre) or enabling across a portion of regions on the selected RC channel is currently unclear. That decision doesn’t rest with Nyx, but will be dependent upon on number of factors including how well the initial steps in the deployment go.
In light of things like the pile-on test (see the next section) and readying the SUN-74 patch, the Lab remains unwilling to commit to specifying a date by which SSB/A deployment might be expected to start. This is understandable as there is still no guarantee that further issues such as SUN-74 won’t be uncovered as a result of either the pile-on test or as a result of further closed beta testing, which the Lab continues to monitor.
Main Grid Pile-on Test
On Friday 14th February pile-on test was conducted across a number of regions which had been specifically set-up to stress test Server-side Baking with some “real world” avatar numbers. Some fifty or so people turned up for the tests using various viewers with Appearance debugging enabled, including a version of the official viewer which had been pre-set with debugging enabled. The test was in three parts:
Baseline testing on regions using the current avatar baking mechanism
Testing on regions in the Snack RC channel running a version of the SSB/A code
Testing in the “closed beta” region specifically set-up for TPV testing running the SSB/A code
The precise differences between the code on the Snack regions and the code on the TPV test region (the Testylvania Sandbox). Questions were asked in open chat, but the nearest answer which seemed to be given was that the Testylvania region was the one the Lab “cared about the most”.
Testing on the current baking mechanism saw familiar issues of slow clothing / skin rendering and the need to use manual rebakes to try to encourage non-blurred appearances. Things appeared to be a lot better on the SSB/A-enabled regions (I personally experienced no issues in changing skins / clothing layers and found rendering of both fast and error-free, for example). However, some did report issues with rendering, and filed JIRAs / provided log files as a result.
There were multiple reports of attachment rezzing failures as of the asset service coming under pressure as a result of so many outfit / look changes going on simultaneously and in rapid succession. Whether these will see further work undertkaen on the inventory system (some work has already been carried out in a wider context by the Sunshine team), remains to be seen.
Expect more on the tests once LL have had time to chew on the data gathered and review the logs of those who did encounter issues.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 