Update February 24th: Metabolt 0.9.64.0 (Beta) was released on February 23rd to address the issue of nearby objects not being recorded following theserver-side interest list updates.
Update February 22nd: Radegast 2.8 has been released, which both provides support for server-side baking and resolves the interest list releated issue of failing to correctly report nearby objects noted in the first poart of this report.
Week 8 Main (Second Life Server / SLS) Channel Deployment
The expected Main channel (SLS) deployment took place on Wednesday 20th February, as anticipated. The SLS channel deployment came a day late as a result of the Presidents Day holiday in the US – Main channel deployments will be back to their normal Tuesday slot from week 9 (week commencing Monday 25th February.
Issues
- There is a report that both the Radegast and Metabolt text clients are either incorrectly seeing local objects, or failing to see them at all, possibly as a result of the interest list code deployment.
- There is a bug in the interest list code which means that child prims within a linkset do not always render from a distance – you need to cam in towards them for them to appear, and they can then vanish again on camming away. A fix for this is expected in the “next round” of interest list updates.
Week 8 Release Channel Deployments
There have been signficant changes to the RC channel deployments occurring on Thursday 21st February (again a day late due to Presidents Day).
Due to a last-minute bug being found in Baker Linden’s large object rezzing code updates, the package intended for both BlueSteel and LeTigre has been pulled. Instead, these channels will receive the code targeted for Magnum, together with the updates made to the Main channel.
Diagonal Region Rendering Issues
I’ve reported on this on a number of occasions recently, and JIRA SVC-8130 is still open on the matter. The incidence of occurrences seems to be on the increase, with more people having anecdotal evidence of problems. Following his comments in the second part of my week 7 report, Simon believes a fix is in the works, with Simon reporting at the Simulator User Group meeting on Tuesday 19th February that it is, “With QA now.”
Region Crossing Issues
Numerous problems are being reported with region crossings, some of which appear to be on the increase of late.
Content “Warping”
I first reported on this in week 48 of 2012, as one of a number of region crossing issues being reported. When crossing between regions, the contents of the region you’ve just left suddenly “warp” into the region you’ve just entered, appearing for a time and perhaps somewhat deformed.
When the matter was first raised, Andrew Linden thought it might be more a server-side issue than a viewer-side problem – although all the issues raised at that time seemed to be split between possible issues within the server code and the viewer code.
In looking at the problem as a server-side issue, Andrew had hoped that the matter would be resolved via the interest list code roll-out. However, it has persisted despite the interest list code having been deployed to an RC channel, and is now largely regarded as a viewer-side issue. The status of any fix for the problem is unclear.
Camera Position Lost on Region Crossings
There has ben a return / increase in issues of the camera position getting “messed up” when crossing between some regions in a vehicle. This can take a variety of forms, most notably with the camera suddenly shifting to show a side view of the vehicle while driving, rather than the usual forward-looking view SVC-7684 provides the details, complete with a video demonstrating the issue. It appears that fixes for this problem have thus far been on a per-region basis, as there is no clear indicator as to the underlying issue – although it is recognised enough such that Motor Loon now incorporates a scripted workaround for the problem in lieu of a fix, which forces the correct camera positioning to be re-applied on a script crossing. The Lab have been trying to investigate the issue, but are having a hard time reproducing it in a consistent manner. Those routinely experiencing the problem on given region crossings should consider filing a JIRA specifying the issue and region crossings where it occurs and reference SVC-7684.
Increase in Crossing Disconnects and Other Issues
The Simulator User Group meeting on Tuesday 19th February saw an increase in the number of other region crossing issues, with people reporting several issues, ranging from a disconnect on attempting a region crossing through to an increase in teleport failures when moving between issues and getting stuck in the corner of a region and spinning during a region crossing. Again, it is unclear what may be causing these issues, some of which have been reported as increasing somewhat sharply over the last 2-4 weeks.
Sudden Region Lag
It has been a while since I last updated on this issue, as reported in both a forum thread by Toysoldier Thor and others and in a JIRA BUG (BUG-355). In sort, the problem remains, with live event venues reporting issues, and the Lab uncertain as to the cause. When the issue was raised at the Simulator User Group meeting, Simon Linden replied, “Hmm, that sounds like it needs a fresh look. It seems like there’s a spike in networking traffic, performance goes bad and thus all sorts of things don’t work well.”
Interestingly, the four regions of the recent OBR in SL event did not suffer any such issues, despite a constant and high volume of traffic, although these had apparently received additional attention from the Lab to help ensure problems might be minimised.
Server-side Baking Load Test
A final reminder that there will be a Server-side Baking load test on Aditi on Thursday February 21st, following the Server Beta meeting. For details, please see my original announcement.
