Category: 2013 Project Updates

SL project news 9 (1): servers, SSB, materials and Aditi

Posted on by Inara Pey

Deployments for Week 9

It’s a “lightweight” week for deployments, with all channels receiving one of two maintenance packages.

Server Life Server (Main) Channel

Region restart notifications: the "old" stayle (top), and the "new" style (bottom)
Region restart notifications: the “old” style (top), and the “new” style (bottom)

On Tuesday February 26th, the Second Life Server (SLS / Main channel) received the server maintenance project which was on all three RC channels last week.  This project has miscellaneous bug fixes, along with an impoved restart notification (which will only be apparent when this new version restarts for the next update) – see the image on the right.

While this is much better than the previous notification, it does suffer from the fact it will still fade from the viewer’s window and become a chiclet whether or not the OK button is clicked – and thus can still be missed if attention is not on the screen when it appears. To help avoid this, it is possible to set a sound for the alert using the Debug Setting UISndAlert, which requires the UUID of the sound, which coule be one you’ve uploaded to inventory yourself (Firestorm additionally has UISndRegionRestart, which can be set through Debug Settings or Preferences > Sound & Media > UI Sounds 2).

This release  means the until the RC channel deployments take place (see below), almost the entire grid is running the same server code – the only exceptions being a few “special” regions (such as the Linden Realms regions) – release notes.

Release Candidate Channels

On Wednesday February 27th, all three Release Candidate channels should receive a new server maintenance package which includes a fix for a crash mode – release notes (BlueSteel).

As always, there is a forum thread for discussing the deployments.

Server-side Baking

Following-on from his initial feedback given at the TPV Developer meeting on Friday 22nd February, Nyx Linden gave a further update on the recent Sever-side Baking (SSB) pile-on / load test when chairing the Content Creation User Group meeting on Monday 25th February

Thanks all for everyone who helped out with the pile-on test of server appearance last Thursday. The results tended to be that when the system worked, it was nice and speedy, however there were a number of issues that prevented it from working for everyone all the time. We got a good bit of data on the bugs we knew were there as well as a couple new ones. we’ve been crunching on the results and are starting to attack the issues, so it was definitely successful in achieving what we wanted: more data :). There will be future rounds, so thanks in advance for anyone who comes back to help us test again.

Z-offset Issue and SUN-38

As noted in the comments following my quick SSB test using currently available TPVs with SSB enabled, there is an issue with the “Z-offset” capability common to many third-party viewers, which allows 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.

The problem was reported to Nyx in week 8, and SUN-38 was subsequently raised by Henri Beauchamp on February 24th to officially log the matter. Commenting on the problem during Content Creation meeting, Nyx Linden stated. “It hasn’t escaped our notice. We’re considering a couple different approaches … we’re considering a few different options. Suggestions appreciated, but we haven’t officially settled on an approach we’re going to commit to publicly just yet.” He also suggested that any questions on the subject be asked again next week, presumably by which time LL will have had time to consider the problem in detail, and hopefully consult with TPV developers.

Interest List Updates

Andrew Linden is continuing to work on the interest list code, with more refinements to come, as well as looking at a number of bug fixes. The updates about to go to LL’s QA include changes which should make scenery load faster  / more correctly when first logging-in to SL or teleporting to a region.

Aero Pines Park
Future updates to the interest list code should see scenery in your world view rezzing a lot faster

Continue reading “SL project news 9 (1): servers, SSB, materials and Aditi” →

Playing with SSB and viewers (quick test)

Posted on by Inara Pey

Update February 24th: Henri Beauchamp has filed a SUN JIRA on the Z-offset issue mentioned in comments following this article. Z-offset is an opton found in many TPVs which allows the vertical height at which an avatar stands / kneels / sits / lays to be adjusted through the viewer, allowing users to compensate for their avatars appearing to float in mid-air. The SSB code effectively “breaks” this capability. The JIRA description carries a comprehensive description of the issue for those unfamiliar with the problem.

Update, February 23rd: The Catznip team (which includes Kitty Barnett, have added a post to their blog on the subject of RLVa and SSB. Be sure to read it! 

Following the recent Server-side Baking (SSB) pile-on / load test, I took a little time out to try-out the various viewer versions which are starting to appear which provide SSB support. This was not intended to be an extensive break test or anything – just something to sate my own curiosity on a number of points.

As such, the tests I conducted were simple, and as they were performed on Aditi, they may have been influenced by some of the inventory issues being experienced there. For the tests, I used my main account, and my CTA – Crash Test Alt, which routinely gets used when testing experimental viewers, etc.

Testing covered the Cool VL experimental branch, Singularity Alpha release with SSB support and Radegast 2.8. Throughout the tests, my CTA was running the official Sunshine (SSB) project viewer 3.4.5.270409. Testing did not include Lumiya, which has SSB support implemented. The reason for this is that I remain unable to log-in to Aditi with Lumiya.

I started with a couple of baseline tests to remind people of what is going to happen once SSB is deployed to the main grid.

The three faces of SSB:
The three faces of SSB:On the left, what is seen when running a viewer which does not support SSB: the viewer user looks fine, but everyone else is a grey ghost. In the centre, what is seen when looking at someone who is using a viewer which does not support SSB: they are a cloud. Right: what is seen when both parties are using a viewer with SSB support: properly rendered and dressed avatars (remember: SSB does not affect prims / sculpts / mesh, hence why these render OK in the non-SSB viewer)

Following this, I switched to using Singularity first and then Cool VL.Results wer as expected – both accurately rendered outfits and outfit updates without any significant issues.

SSB on Singularity:
SSB on Singularity: Top: as I render in Singularity with SSB, as seen by myself (l) and with the official SSB viewer (r). Bottom: as I appear after an outfit change to both myself in Singularity (l) and the official SSB viewer (r).

Testing Radegast 2.8 also generated the expected results: outfits rendered correctly in both the Radegast 3D viewer, and in the SSB viewer, as did any outfit changes made via Radegast. Furthermore, and as expected, outfit changes made using one viewer were accurately reflected when logging into another viewer (so outfit changes made in Singularity were accurately rendered by Radegast, for example).The only issue I actually encountered was that footwear would not render correctly – which is not an SSB issue.

baking-rad
Baking on Radegast: (top) outfit changes on an SSB-enabled region render correctly in Radegast and (bottom) are also correctly rendered in other SSB-enabled viewers

SSB and RLVa

While carrying out these tests, I also took a look at RLVa on SSB, and confess to not finding any obvious issues when using Singularity or Cool VL (which uses RLV). All RLV/RLVa options functioned as expected:

  • Items “locked” as non-detachable remained undetachable until “unlocked”
  • Restrictions applied through RLV/a all functioned as expected (e.g. map restrictions prevented access to the World or Mini-Map; inventory denial prevented inventory access, etc.)
  • Remote access to #RLV Shared Folders worked as expected (i.e. remote changes of outfit worked and were accurately rendered)
  • Remote (HUD-based) access between avatars worked as expected
  • Control zone restrictions applied / released as anticipated.

This does not necessarily mean that RLVa is not “broken”. I actually have no idea if the Cool VL experimental or Singularity Alpha contain specific updates for RLV/RLVa outside of any work Kitty Barnett may be undertaking for RLVa and SSB.Aslo, just because the basic functionality of RLVa appears unaffected by SSB does not means that there are deeper, more subtle issues which need to be addressed in order to ensure all of RLVa continues to function correctly under SSB.

Summary

SSB is beginning to find its way into TPVs and appears to be working well – which is not to say that there are not bugs and issues still to be resolved with the service as a whole. Doubtless, we’ll find out more on this as LL continue to analyse the results of the initial pile-on test, and further tests are undertaken in the future. As a result of this quick-and-dirty play with the service over a number of viewers, I’m certainly curious to know if some of the issues encountered during the pile-on / load test (such as a noticeable slow-down in the time needed for outfits to render after a change) might be indicative that the system still needs tweaking in order to handle larger numbers of outfit changes, rather than all the problems being related to other issues on Aditi itself.

In terms of potential RLVa issues, I draw no conclusions; as mentioned above, the fact that the most obvious RLVa functions worked OK for me is not to say RLVa and SSB are without issues; there is much which goes on “under the hood” with RLVa which could very well be affected by the arrival of SSB which requires code refactoring but which does not result in outright / obvious breakages.

If you’d like to have a play with SSB for yourself, use the links below.

Related Links

SL projects week 8 (3): Viewer, materials and SSB load test

Posted on by Inara Pey

SL Viewer Updates

Release and Beta Viewers

The release and beta version of the viewer are effectively on a par with one another at this point in time, following the roll-out of SL viewer 3.4.5.270263 on February 14th. There is currently nothing “in” beta at the moment in terms of specific SL projects.

Development Viewer and CHUI

The development viewer and the development version of the CHUI (Communications Hub User Interface) project viewer are also pretty much on a par, and it is anticipated that the CHUI code will be merged-up to viewer development “any minute now”, to use LL’s parlance, although a date has not been indicated. The viewer development code branch is pretty much waiting for this to happen, and CHUI remains in pole position as far as LL’s code merge plans are concerned, so potentially there could be more news on this in week 9.

Project Cocoa

Work is progressing on Project Cocoa within LL. This is a rarely talked-about project to update LL’s Mac support to the Mac OSX Cocoa API specifically for OSX 10.8 support, and remove dependencies on old Mac APIs which are not well-supported any more. The overall goal of this project, as commented on by Widely Linden is to, “Get people building cleanly with 10.8,” although OSX 10.6 will continue to be supported, although it will no longer be possible to build a Mac viewer using 10.6 once this project has been deployed. Widely also commented that there is a project viewer and source code for this work, which interested parties “should snag.”.

Vivox Update

Work is underway to update the SLvoice plugin to use the latest release of Vivox. This should bring with it a number of benefits including: security updates, stability improvements (although perhaps not improved connection reliability), better echo cancellation and – anecdotally, at least – better voice quality. There is no ETA on when this project will be deployed.

FMODex

Linden Lab continue to work on utilising FMODex as a replacement for FMOD.

Materials Project

There has been significant progress in fixing the known outstanding issues on the project which are standing in the way of a public project viewer and viewer code appearing. Speaking at the TPV Developer meeting on Friday 22nd February, Oz Linden said, “Our list of things which must be fixed before we can hand it out to people is now down to one.” However, there is still no estimated date as to when a project viewer and source code will actually appear Real Soon NowTM, which appears to put them both closer than Pretty SoonTM and Real SoonTM on the LL scale of things :).

Materials processing: with one remaining issue to fix, a project viewer now really should not be that far away. In the meantime the server code is fully deployed to the main grid
Materials processing: with one remaining issue to fix, a project viewer now really should not be that far away. In the meantime the server code is fully deployed to the main grid

As has been reported in my server-side news for the week, the server code for materials is deployed to the whole of the main grid, and so the system will be usable as soon as project viewer surfaces.

Server-side Baking

What is likely to be the first in a number of Server-side Baking load / pile-on tests took place on Thursday February 21st. Results were, at best, mixed, for a variety of reasons.

The test was held in the Sunshine project test regions on Aditi, immediately following the Server Beta User Group meeting. Those participating were asked to use the latest iteration of the official project viewer, which had been set-up for LL to do a certain amount of data logging. Anyone encountering issues was asked to raise a JIRA under the SUN project, listing issues encountered, with the viewer session log attached.

the test was in two parts:

  • Part one: performed on a region still running on a region using the current baking system, this saw people change between three of four outfits so that some baseline data could be obtained at the LL end of things. As this was using the current baking system, the usual baking issues were apparent
  • Part two: performed on a region running the new baking service, this again saw people changing between a number of outfits, this time monitoring and reporting on their own experiences.

Results were, it is fair to say, mixed. They were also not helped by the fact that Aditi itself has significant issues with inventory, etc., which made the test considerably more complicated than perhaps needed to be the case (for example, people were getting “object failed to rez”-style messages and other errors as items could not be fetched from inventory, etc.).

SSB load test: mixed results (image courtesy of Latif K
SSB load test: mixed results (image courtesy of Latif Khalifa

As an overall load test on the service itself, this should have generated some interesting numbers for LL with at least 40 people participating in the test at its peak. Commenting on the test on Friday 22nd February, Nyx Linden said, “A big thank you to everyone who participated in the pile-on yesterday. We got a lot of data out of it, [and] it looks like the majority of the issues were inventory-related, and we’re going to be digging into those. Anecdotal evidence suggests that when the system worked, it worked pretty darn well; but there were some people who had more trouble than others … We are looking into the remaining issues; we’re going to be fixing them as quickly as possible.”

While Nyx indicated that the majority of problems were inventory-related, he also stated that he and his team were still digging into the data to see if the problems were purely related to the known issues with Aditi’s inventory handling, or whether some of the issues are apparent in the inventory system itself, either on the server-side of things or within the viewer itself.

Continue reading “SL projects week 8 (3): Viewer, materials and SSB load test” →

SL project news 8 (2): servers and issues

Posted on by Inara Pey

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.”

Missing regions: bug fix on the way ...
Missing regions: bug fix on the way …

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.

warp-4
Sometimes on crossing between regions, objects from the region you’ve just left seem to appear “warp” into the region you’ve just entered, and may appeared deformed…

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.

...only to disappear after a few seconds / as you approach them
…only to disappear after a few seconds / as you approach them

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.

Nyx confirms SSB load test

Posted on by Inara Pey

Nyx Linden has sent out an e-mail confirming the Server-side baking load test scheduled for Thursday 21st February, and which I’ve posted about on a couple of occasions recently.

The e-mail reads in full:

Nyx Linden - SSB load test call
Nyx Linden – SSB load test call

Greetings all,

In preparation for rolling out server-side avatar appearance, we’ll be running a short test tomorrow afternoon. If you are available, or know someone who is, please come to the server user group (http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Server_Beta_User_Group) with the latest sunshine viewer (http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Project_Sunshine-Server_Side_Appearance  version number 270409). We will run the test after the server meeting, for those able to stick around. You will need several outfits that your avatar can switch between and will do so both on the old system and the new system. Also please clear your cache before attending.

Please use our latest viewer as it has additional statistics gathering code that will allow us to calculate load patterns and measure the improvements expected for later releases.

Let me know if there are any questions!

Nyx Linden

If you are interested in participating, please check my report on the test announcement, which outlines the aim of the test, what is likely to be taking place, and what is required.

You should check your ability to log-into Aditi well in advance of the test, and confirm you have a number of outfits (preferably with multiple layers) in your Aditi inventory.

Additional Information

SL project news – week 8 (1): server releases, viewer, SSB load test, interest lists

Posted on by Inara Pey

Server Deployments – week 8

The deployments scheduled for the week commencing Monday 18th February are detailed below. Please note that due to Monday 18th being a holiday in the United States (Presidents Day), the deployments will be taking place one day later than usual.

Main (Second Life Server / SLS) Channel

The Main channel should receive the following two projects:

  • The Interest List Improvement project, which has been on the Magnum RC channel for the past few weeks
  • Server-side support for materials processing.

Note that there is still no publicly available project viewer to take advantage of the materials project code, although there may be news on this later in the week.

This deployment should take place on Wednesday 20th February – release notes.

Bluesteel and LeTigre Release Candidate (RC) Channels

Baker Linden in a change from his usual rooster avatar
Baker Linden in a change from his usual rooster avatar

Bluesteel should receive Baker Linden’s object rezzing code changes, which were reported here in week 1. These updates have nothing to do with the interest list code changes. Baker describes the aim of the work as, “Hopefully significantly decreasing lag spikes when rezzing large, complex objects. Large does not necessarily imply size, but size of the files being read. When an object is rezzing, we have to parse the object / mesh files and create our in-world objects with that data.”

Until now, reading and parsing of any files related to objects which require rezzing has been on the main thread. When several such objects requiring rezzing at the same time, the simulator stalls. Baker has been moving the reading / parsing operation to a background thread in the expectation that rezzing multiple “large” (again, in terms of file size, not the size of the object itself) objects will not choke the simulator, causing performance issues.

These deployments should take place on Thursday 21st February – release notes (Bluesteel).

Magnum Release Candidate (RC) Channel

Magnum should receive the same maintenance server update deployed in week 7 to LeTigre, intended to fix miscellaneous crash modes.This deployment also includes the following:

  • An improvement to the rolling restart notifications so that they appear in an alert format (as with manual region restarts) rather than an easily missed notification. This change will only be apparent in restarts following the code deployment restart (as per JIRA SVC-7759)
  • A fix to an encroachment / return problem:  if you’re banned from the neighbour’s parcel, you couldn’t select  / return items that encroached on your parcel (see JIRA SVC-496)
  • Instant messages are now truncated to 1024 bytes to prevent certain types of delivery failure. Currently, the IM database supports larger messages than the delivery system can handle. This change will enforce a limit of 1024 bytes when processing messages coming into the database as well as those being sent out.

This deployment should take place on Thursday 21st February – release notes.

SL Viewer News

The release version of the SL viewer moved to the 3.4.5 code base on the 14th February, with the release of viewer 3.4.5.270263 (release notes). At the same time, the Server-side Baking project viewer received its second update with the release of version 3.4.5.270409, od which more below.

The CHUI viewer received a further update to the development version, reaching 3.4.6.270520 on February 18th. This project is currently the next in line to merged into the viewer-dev code base (development viewer) and then into the beta code base.

Server-side Baking Load Test

Serer-side baking - load test February
Serer-side baking – load test February 21st

A reminder that if all goes according to plan, there should be a special load test for Server-side Baking on Thursday February 21st, and volunteers are being sought to assist.

This will take place on the SSB test regions on the beta grid (Aditi), immediately following the Server Beta User Group meeting which take place at 15:00 SLT on Thursdays in  Morris, also on Aditi with the aim of placing the SSB code under a stress test representative of the loads it will face when deployed to the main grid, with people routinely changing outfits, updating their appearance, enter / leave regions running the SSB code (given that the grid will, for a time, be running both the current avatar baking service and SSB as the latter is initially deployed), and so on.

Test Requirements

While final details of the test have yet to be confirmed, key requirements for those wishing to participate in the test are as follows:

  • Participants must be able to log-in to Aditi and attend the Sunshine test regions from 16:00 SLT onwards (participants can attend the Server Beta UG meeting ahead of the test if they wish)
  • Participants must be running the latest version Server-side Baking project viewer (version 3.4.5.270409 or later) – this viewer has been specifically configured to report statistics required by LL for the test
  • Participants should have a number of outfits of system clothing, preferably with multiple layers, which they can swap between during the course of the test. Library outfits are acceptable, but LL are keen for people to use their own outfits to add greater weight to the tests
  • Clearing the viewer cache prior to the test is suggested, but not an absolute requirement.

“if you have specific failures we’ll ask for your viewer logs, otherwise just running through the test will help us gather data,” Nyx added when explaining what is required by way of feedback from those opting to take part.

Further details can be found in my SSB Load Test announcement.

Continue reading “SL project news – week 8 (1): server releases, viewer, SSB load test, interest lists” →