Category: SL User Group Meetings

2018 SL UG updates #33/1: Simulator User Group – Animesh in viewer RC

Posted on by Inara Pey

Cloudbreak; Inara Pey, July 2018, on FlickrCloudbreak – blog post

Server Deployments

as always, please refer to the server deployment thread for the latest update.

  • The Main (SLS) channel was updated on Tuesday, August 14th with server maintenance package 18.07.20.518086, previously deployed to the RC channels and containing internal fixes.
  • On Wednesday, august 15th, all three RCs should be updated with server maintenance packager 18#18.08.10.518612. This comprises an update to the HTTP delivery of off-line IMs and notifications that should ensure group notices and Friend requests are correctly delivered.

SL Viewer

Animesh RC Viewer

The Animesh release candidate viewer arrived on August 13th, with the release of version 6.0.0.518579. For those not familiar with Animesh (anyone?) please see the viewer release notes and the links within them, or check my updates on Animesh, provided as a part of my Content Creation User Group meeting summaries.

Remaining Pipelines

Outside of the Animesh update, at the time of writing, the remaining SL viewer pipelines remain unchanged from the end of week #32:

  • Current Release version 5.1.7.517973, dated July 30th, promoted August 3rd. Formerly the Quinquina Maintenance RC viewer.
  • Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself):
    • BugSplat RC viewer, version 5.1.8.518305, August 7th. This viewer is functionally identical to the current release viewer, but uses BugSplat for crash reporting, rather than the Lab’s own Breakpad based crash reporting tools.
    • Second Life Voice RC viewer, version 5.1.8.518310, August 7th.
  • Project viewers:
    • EAM project viewer, version 5.2.0.518362, August 9th – improved region access control tools; see my overview for more.
    • Bakes on Mesh project viewer, version 5.1.7.518013 August 3rd.
    • 360 snapshot viewer, version 5.1.6.515934, June 6th.
  • Linux Spur viewer, version 5.0.9.329906, dated November 17th, 2017 and  offered pending a Linux version of the Alex Ivy viewer code.
  • Obsolete platform viewer, version 3.7.28.300847, May 8th, 2015 – provided for users on Windows XP and OS X versions below 10.7.

Region Crossings

Region crossing have been somewhat rougher recently than had been the case of late. Simon Linden had been poking at the code in the hope of making some updates, but has been diverted but other working, and is hoping to get back to things soon.

I know the viewer has very similar messaging code as the simulator and there are tweaks I want to make to that which  should help crossing issues caused by packet loss … it doesn’t always recover when a crossing goes bad, as we all know. We’re looking at that from two ways … ideally fix things so it doesn’t go bad. But if it fails, be more graceful about it … and there’s a certain amount of hope that the way we force the error is actually what happens in the random normal case.

Part of it now is even having the 2 regions and the viewer agreeing on what happens and how to deal with it … where an AV and vehicle end up and confirming all parties know the same state… I’m hoping this can at least get better if the target region can at least report to the viewer and 1st region a status for how it works out.

Simon Linden discussing region crossings at the Simulator User Group meeting, August 14th, 2018

The question was asked if part of a multiple region crossing (e.g. from the corner of one region to another, passing through the corner of a region adjacent to both) could result in the viewer talking to the “wrong” simulator, to which Simon replied, “I haven’t seen it have issues with talking to the wrong simulator, but then I’m not looking yet at the issue of a corner crossing that might quickly move to a 3rd region.”

So, no changes for the present, but the problem is still getting attention at the Lab, and there is an appetite for trying to improve things from the server-side of the equation, with Simon also noting, “It’s also a classic case of working on SL … we always want to fix things with a minimum disruption. Being able to make something better only by touching the server is a lot better than requiring a viewer update.”

 

2018 SL UG updates #32/3: TPVD meeting and ARCTan

Posted on by Inara Pey

Cloudbreak; Inara Pey, July 2018, on FlickrCloudbreak – blog post

The majority of the following notes are taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, August 10th 2018. A video of the meeting is embedded below, my thanks as always to North for recording and providing it. This was a short meeting – 24  minutes on the video, which includes some lengthy silences.

SL Viewer

[0:24-4:50]

Bugsplat RC Viewer

Functionally identical to the release viewer, but used to test the Bugsplat crash reporting service (rather than routing crash reports to the Lab’s internal Breakpad based crash reporting mechanism), this RC is likely coming to the end of its test run, sufficient data having been gathered for the evaluation.

Voice RC Viewer

At least one more update is anticipated while this is at RC status. This will contain fixes for crashes within the SLVoice.exe (the viewer should detect the exe’s absence and automatically restart it). This update should appear in week #33 (commencing Monday, August 13th).

EAM Project Viewer

The EAM project viewer, version 5.2.0.518362, dated August 7th, includes revised and improved capabilities for handling region access control. See SL Estate Access Management project viewer – overview for more.

Upcoming Viewer Promotion and New RCs

  • The new release of the Animesh viewer due in week #33 will most likely see that viewer promoted from project to RC status.
  • A new Rendering Project RC viewer should arrive in week #33.
  • A new Maintenance RC viewer is in waiting, but its release is dependent upon a server-side update for handling group invites and Friend requests whilst off-line (and part of the overall move to HTTP delivery for off-line IMs / notices). These changes should be going to the simulator RC channels in week #33. The Maintenance viewer will be deployed once these updates have reached the SLS (Main) simulator channel.
  • [12:56-13:23] Viewer TCO project: this contains the updates to how the viewer handles texture caching, and should be entering the project viewer pipeline “soon”, together with some OpenJPEG fixes (also see the end of this report for more on OpenJPEG / KDU).

Project ARCTan

[5:26-9:20] This is the code-name for the project to re-evaluate object and avatar rendering costs to make them more reflective of the actual impact of rendering both. The overall aim is to try to correct some inherent negative incentives for creating optimised content (e.g. with regards to generating LOD models with mesh), and to update the calculations to reflect current resource constraints, rather than basing them on outdated constraints.

As I’ve previously noted, the Lab is sensitive to the implications of doing this, if it results in significant changes – particularly in the area of Land Impact for in-world objects. Should this be the case, steps will be taken to ensure users have advanced notification of changes that affect content, so they can assess what needs to be done and to make any necessary changes to their land / regions.

Part of this work will involve the Lab deploying simulator versions running both the current and the “new” calculations, allowing them to see the overall potential impact of any given set of changes (number of parcels / regions affected), ahead of making any actual change. This would allow them to avoid the kind of mass auto-return situation that has accidentally occurred in the past, and enable them to find a means to inform people of the potential impact.

A further option the Lab has been considering is to raise the land capacity on regions / parcels to compensate for any impact of revised LI calculations. So, for example, if the new calculations result in parcels going over the capacity limit by and average of (say) 10%, region LI might be increased by 15% to offer some compensation. Then, for those who still exceed their limit, there will be a period of grace when then can consolidate and bring their LI use within the limit of the revised calculations before the latter are enforced.

The important aspect of the LI work is that while values may change, they overall why they are being calculated my result in their meaning being different – so numbers might actually coming out “smaller” than is currently the case, resulting in no  need for physical changes to be made in terms of what people have rezzed in-world.

Overall, this is a long-term project, and no changes one way or the other will be occurring in the immediate future.

Environment Enhancement Project

[14:01-14:44] No significant news. The project is awaiting the current Inventory AIS updated to be completed on the main grid. There is also an inventory patch for EEP that needs to be deployed and tested on Aditi. Once this has been done, the way will hopefully be clear for EEP to appear on the main grid.

Other Items

OpenJPEG Images and KDU “Downgrade”

[10:33-12:54] : there is an issue with KDU which means that textures encoded using OpenJPEG may not display correctly. As a result, the Lab is rolling by KDU support from 7.10 to 7.9. This is a temporary measure to alleviate the problem whilst LL work with KDU to get a fix. In the meantime, Graham Linden has been working on potential means to avoid the issue is a fix is not forthcoming from KDU.

Second Life Scheduled Maintenance

[16:03-17:03] There will be a scheduled maintenance period on Monday, August 13th, commencing at 05:30 SLT (13:30 UK; 14:30 CET). This should be about an hour in length, but will see SL logins suspended. See: https://secondlife-status.statuspage.io/incidents/vrpczxqtk8ls for more.

JIRA Upgrade

[17:06-20:37] A new version of the Second Life JIRA is in testing. This will see several changes to the JIRA system, notably visually and when logging-in. The planned deployment of the new system is Thursday, August 16th. Part of this update will ensure JIRA refreshes a user’s e-mail to match the one provided for use with Second Life when logging-in.

SL UG updates #32/2: CCUG summary with audio

Posted on by Inara Pey
A razzle of raptors? Animesh

The following notes are taken from the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting, held on  Thursday, August 9th, 2018 at 13:00 SLT.  These meetings are chaired by Vir Linden, and agenda notes, meeting SLurl, etc, are usually available on the Content Creation User Group wiki page.

The choppiness in some of the audio segments where Vir’s voice drops out is due to issues with SL Voice.

Animesh

Project Summary

The goal of this project is to provide a means of animating rigged mesh objects using the avatar skeleton, in whole or in part, to provide things like independently moveable pets / creatures, and animated scenery features via scripted animation. It involves both viewer and server-side changes.

Resources

Server-Side

As of the SLS (Main channel) grid deployment on Tuesday, August 5th, the server-side support for Animesh is now grid-wide.

Animesh Viewer

Vir has completed work on the next update to the viewer, which includes a number of fixes and tweaks. This is currently with the Lab’s QA team. If all goes according to plan, this could see the light of day as a Release Candidate viewer. In particular, this update should include a fix for the bounding box / LOD issues previously reported in these summaries.

General Discussion Points

  • The LI accounting aspect of Animesh is considered “complete” for the initial release, and no further changes beyond the accounting values Vir has published via the Animesh forum thread are expected.
    • However, there may still be future revisions to the overall Animesh costs (complexity) as a result of the Project ARCTan work to overhaul all of the complexity calculations in order to make them more reflective of the actual costs involved in rendering, etc., different objects. This work has apparently been on hold recently.
  • Land Impact: streaming costs / LODs: there was further discussion on the 50% bounding on LODs.
    • Concerns have been raised at the disparity between the 50% cut-off between the high and medium models compared to the GLOD (Global LOD) cut-off of around 30% (so 70% discarded). Other concerns relate to the 50% between the medium and low models disincentivising creators from trying with a low model. An overall concern is that people will continue to look purely at land impact, rather than considering complexity and optimisation as matters of improved performance.
    • Vir admits the approach taken with Animesh is something of a trade-off between trying to encourage considered use of LODs and implementing a system that “scares people off” because of its demands. As such, it is something that may be revisited as a part of ARCTan, after more data has been gathered as a result of Animesh being released in the meantime.
    • A major difference with the “new” system is that it no longer considers scale. This means that creators who animate their creatures using a combination of multiple models and using alpha masks to hide the “unseen” versions and who reduce the “unseen” models to avoid them raising a creature’s LI, will no longer be able to do so.

  • Per-bone scale animations: having the ability to use per-bone scale animation, which could be particularly useful for non-human bodies (and now Animesh) has been  a request since Bento.
    • Currently, the SL animation format doesn’t allow scales to be specified, so an overhaul of the animation system would be required to make this possible.
    • A further problem is scale animation can conflict with any use of the shape sliders, when used to modify an avatar shape (one of the items under consideration for a future update to Animesh is support for a body shape and the use of sliders).
    • The benefits with scale support include:
      • The ability to create a single creature body and use it in different species of that creature without the need to develop new animations and new rigged attachments (so a “dog” body could be used for a Labrador or a Chihuahua or Dashhound).
      • The ability to have “young” creations (babies, puppies kittens, hatchlings….) “grow” over time.
      • The ability for creators to develop a broader range of different NPCs and different creature types without having to rely on the avatar shape / slider system, which is inherently biased towards human forms.
    • An alternative to animation scaling (and subject of a feature request) that was initially made during Bento, was to have an overall body size slider that could proportionally adjust the entire size of the shape associated with an avatar (and Animesh, if shape and slider support is added to Animesh in the future).
      • One issue with implementing this at present is that the message format use to communicate slider parameters may not support the level of messaging required to communicate an overall rescaling that affects every joint and bone position at once (which would require updates to the Appearance  and Bake services as well, so this would require an overhaul.
      • A further issue is that of locomotion:  the same overall locomotion graph is used regardless of size, so in a single stride, a very tiny avatar made using a “size slider” could  appear to move the same distance as a “normal” sized avatar, which can result in it appearing to move really quickly;similarly a really tall avatar created using a “size slider” could appear to hardly move at all each time it takes a step. So, the locomotion graph would need to be overhauled.
    • Use of per-bone animation scaling hasn’t been ruled-out, with Vir pointing out that even adding body shape and slider support to Animesh is complex, requiring further updates to the Appearance and Bake services in order to work. So it might be something to consider alongside of considering shape / slider support once the initial Animesh project is released.

Bakes On Mesh

Project Summary

Extending the current avatar baking service to allow wearable textures (skins, tattoos, clothing) to be applied directly to mesh bodies as well as system avatars. This involves server-side changes, including updating the baking service to support 1024×1024 textures, and may in time lead to a reduction in the complexity of mesh avatar bodies and heads.

This work does not include normal or specular map support, as these are not part of the existing Bake  Service.

Resources

Current Status

There do not appear to be any blockers within the project preventing it from moving forward. However, as indicated at the July 27th TPV developer meeting, there are some changes being made to the AIS system, and the updates to inventory required in support of Bakes on Mesh (which also requires updates to the Appearance and Bake services as), are currently awaiting that work to be completed.

Environment Enhancement Project

Project Summary

A set of environmental enhancements, including:

  • The ability to define the environment (sky, sun, moon, clouds, water settings) at the parcel level.
  • New environment asset types (Sky, Water, Days that can be stored in inventory and traded through the Marketplace / exchanged with others.
    • Day assets can include four Sky “tracks” defined by height: ground level (which includes altitudes up to 1,000m) and (optionally) 1,000m and above; 2,000m and above and 3,000m and above, plus a Water “track”.
  • Experience-based environment functions
  • An extended day cycle (e.g a 24/7 cycle) and extended environmental parameters.
  • There are no EEP parameters for manipulating the SL wind.
  • EPP will also include some rendering enhancements  and new shaders as well (being developed by Graham Linden), which will allow for effects such as crepuscular rays (“God rays”)
    • These will be an atmospheric effect, not any kind of object or asset or XML handler.
  • The new LSL functions for finding the time of day according to the position of the windlight Sun or Moon have been completed,and are more accurate than the current options.
  • EEP will not include things like rain or snow.

Resources

Current Status

EEP remains on internal testing at the Lab, although as I noted in my previous CCUG summary, Rider has been teasing us with images in the forums. According to Dan Linden. the viewer UI is “pretty much” complete, and work is focused on some of the back-end messaging, which appears to be holding things up. There may be a further update on status at the next TPV Developer meeting on Friday, August 10th.

Other Items

  • Transparency shadow casting from rigged items: there is an issue with rigged / static meshes using transparencies (blended or masked), which causes shadows cast by them to render incorrectly (shadow rendering conforms only to the geometry silhouette).  This is still within Graham Linden’s pile of work.
  • Next Meeting: the next CCUG meeting for August 2018 will take place on Thursday, August 23rd.

2018 SL UG updates #32/1: Simulator User Group

Posted on by Inara Pey

Ravenwold; Inara Pey, July 2018, on FlickrRavenwold – blog post

Server Deployments

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

  • On Tuesday, August 7th, the SLS (main) channel was updated with server maintenance package 18#18.07.20.518082, containing the server-side Animesh support, and “logging tweaks”. This release was previously deployed to the LeTigre and Magnum RCs.
  • On Wednesday, August 8th:
    • LeTigre and Magnum will be updated to server maintenance package 18#18.07.20.518086, previously deployed to BlueSteel.
    • BlueSteel will remain on  18#18.07.20.518086, which contains Animesh support and internal fixes.

The SLS (main) channel deployment saw regions off-line for a longer than usual time between being taken down for the simulator code deployment and being brought back up. This was expected. According to the deployment thread, several people saw their regions restarted at least twice; this isn’t the first time this has been reported, and the situation has been referred to the Second Life Ops team.

SL Viewer

In week #31 the Quinquina Maintenance RC viewer, version 5.1.7.517973 and dated July 30th, was promoted to de facto release status on August 3rd.

As a result of this update the RC viewers were updated on Tuesday August 7th, as follows:

  • Bugsplat RC viewer: updated to version 5.1.8.518305.
  • SL Voice RC viewer: (originally released on August 1st) updated to version 5.1.8.518310. This viewer updates SLVoice with new codecs, fixes some problems with selecting audio devices, and other voice related bug fixes. It should be noted that the SLVoice executable in this viewer is not compatible with most older viewers and should not be copied to such viewers.

Also at the end of week #31 the Bakes on Mesh project viewer updated to version 5.1.7.518013, on August 3rd.

At the time of writing, the remaining viewers in the official viewer pipelines are unchanged:

  • Project viewers:
  • Linux Spur viewer, version 5.0.9.329906, dated November 17th, 2017 and promoted to release status 29 November – offered pending a Linux version of the Alex Ivy viewer code.
  • Obsolete platform viewer, version 3.7.28.300847, May 8th, 2015 – provided for users on Windows XP and OS X versions below 10.7.

EEP Delay?

The Environment Enhancement Project (EEP) appears to have had a slight delay…

EEP is moving forward. There was a last-minute hiccup on the back-end and I’m tightening up some last-minute things about parcels specific settings. Rider Linden: I’m eager to get this into people’s hands.

– Rider Linden on EEP progress.

Those unfamiliar with the project, which it to provide parcel and region windlight management, as well as some additional server-side goodies, can find out more in Second Life Windlight environmental enhancements. I also provide update summaries via my Content Creation User Group summaries.

Attachment Limit Increase – Premium Perk?

It’s been indicated in some recent meetings that the Lab is hoping to reach a point where the attachment limit for avatars can be increased (currently set to 38 items). If and when this happens, it might be made a Premium membership perk.

It most likely will only be for Premium. but we’re still not ready to increase it anyway, so it’s still moot. It’s unusual for anything to be “set in stone” until it’s in the past (and not always then), but improving Premium is a major strategic goal for us, so … 

Oz Linden, commenting on the attachment limit increase at the Simulator User Group meeting,
Tuesday, August 7th, 2018

 

2018 SL UG updates #31/1: Simulator User Group

Posted on by Inara Pey

[Smash]; Inara Pey, July 2018, on Flickr[Smash] – blog post

This is a short SUG meeting update, because there was no SUG meeting on Tuesday, July 31st. Presumably Lindens are still recovering from the Linden Summer of Love Palooza Extravaganza Fête Conference Thingy (aka “SL summit”) held last week 🙂 .

Server Deployments

as always, please refer to the server deployment thread for the latest update.

  • There was no Main (SLS) channel roll on Tuesday, July 31st. However, those regions on the channel that were on their 14-day cycle were restarted.
  • On Wednesday, August 1st, at least the BlueSteel RC channels should be updated as follows:
    • BlueSteel should update to server maintenance package 18#18.07.20.518086, containing internal fixes.
    • LeTigre and Magnum  should be updated to a new server maintenance package, 18#18.07.20.518082, comprising Animesh and logging tweaks (note that at the time of writing, this update was not correctly chronologically listed for  LeTigre).

SL Viewer

The Quinquina RC updated on Monday, July 30th to version 5.1.7.517973. At the time of writing, there have been no other updates, leaving the official viewer pipelines as:

  • Current Release version 5.1.6.516459 and dated June 15, promoted June 21 – formerly the Pálinka Maintenance Release Candidate – No Change
  • Release channel cohorts:
    • BugSplat RC viewer, version 5.1.7.518003, released July 20. This viewer is functionally identical to the current release viewer, but uses BugSplat for crash reporting, rather than the Lab’s own Breakpad based crash reporting tools.
  • Project viewers:
  • Linux Spur viewer, version 5.0.9.329906, dated November 17, 2017 and promoted to release status 29 November – offered pending a Linux version of the Alex Ivy viewer code.
  • Obsolete platform viewer, version 3.7.28.300847, May 8, 2015 – provided for users on Windows XP and OS X versions below 10.7. This viewer will remain available for as long as reasonable, but will not be updated with new features or bug fixes.

Content Creation User Group Meetings

The schedule for the Content Creation Meetings has been updated for August 2018:

  • No meetings on Thursday August 2nd (week #31) and Thursday August 16th (week #33).
  • Meetings on Thursday, August 9th (week #32), Thursday, August 23rd (week #34) and Thursday, August 30th (week #35).

 

2018 SL UG updates #30/3: TPV Developer meeting

Posted on by Inara Pey

Strawberry Lake; Inara Pey, July 2018, on FlickrStrawberry Lake – blog post

The majority of the following notes are taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, July 27th 2018. A video of the meeting is embedded below, my thanks as always to North for recording and providing it. This was a short meeting – 24  minutes on the video, which includes some lengthy silences.

My apologies for the tardiness in posting this – I wrote it up on Saturday, then got distracted by RL before posting and forgot about it!

SL Viewer

No updates during the week, leaving the viewer pipelines as:

  • Current Release version 5.1.6.516459 and dated June 15, promoted June 21 – formerly the Pálinka Maintenance Release Candidate – No Change
  • Release channel cohorts:
    • BugSplat RC viewer, version 5.1.7.518003, released July 20. This viewer is functionally identical to the current release viewer, but uses BugSplat for crash reporting, rather than the Lab’s own Breakpad based crash reporting tools.
    • Quinquina Maintenance RC viewer updated to version 5.1.7.517594, on July 12.
  • Project viewers:
  • Linux Spur viewer, version 5.0.9.329906, dated November 17, 2017 and promoted to release status 29 November – offered pending a Linux version of the Alex Ivy viewer code.
  • Obsolete platform viewer, version 3.7.28.300847, May 8, 2015 – provided for users on Windows XP and OS X versions below 10.7. This viewer will remain available for as long as reasonable, but will not be updated with new features or bug fixes.

The Bugsplat viewer has some issues logged against it, notably BUG-225112 -[Bugsplat-RC] Bugsplat viewer appears to misreport viewer crashes as freezes & other assorted annoyances. This is being looked into.

Upcoming Projects

  • For Animesh Bakes on Mesh and EEP, please refer to my week #30 CCUG report.
    • In addition to the above notes, the Advanced Inventory System (AIS) is currently being updated, and this work is delaying both Bakes on Mesh and EEP, both of which make changes to the inventory system as well.
  • A viewer with the updated estate management tools is in the process of being polished, and should be appearing “pretty soon”.
  • Texture cache project viewer: this has been on hold recently while Graham Linden works on another project, however, he’ll be returning to it in the very near future.

Other Items

  • Noted in my CCUG summary, BUG-225157 “[RC BlueSteel 18.07.17.517953] Adjusting specular horizontal offset also adjusts specular vertical offset on BlueSteel regions only” should be getting both server-side a viewer updates to correct. These updates were with the Lab’s QA team at the time of TPVD meeting.
  • There are reports of a media issue arising from the Firestorm 5.1.7.55786 release (reviewed here), but the root cause appears to be with the Lab’s code – a JIRA is to be raised.
  • Group Notices: the new capability to use HTTP rather than UDP for receiving off-line notices when logging in had a couple of issues relating to group notices and friend requests. The fixes for this are both server-side and in the viewer, and should both see the light of day soon.
    • Note that the HTTP capability is only for received messages held while off-line. IMs, group notices, etc., sent while you are actually logged-in to Second Life are still delivered via UDP.