Category: SL User Group Meetings

SL project updates 18/3: TPV Developer meeting; viewer changes

Posted on by Inara Pey

Rustic Retreat – blog post

The notes in this update are taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, May 5th, 2017. The video of that meeting is embedded at the end of this update, my thanks as always to North for recording and providing it. Timestamps in the text below will open the video in a separate window at the relevant point for those wishing to listen to the discussions.

AssetHTTP Viewer

[1:32] As noted in part 2 of this week’s updates, the AssetHTTP RC updated on Thursday May 4th to version 5.0.5.325940.  While the sample of users on this version is small and needs to be broadened over the coming days, the crash rate is reportedly already significantly better than it was.

Project Alex Ivy 64-bit viewer

[2:28] An update to the 64-bit RC viewer is expected to appear on or shortly after Monday, May 8th. This includes numerous updates including 64-bit Havok sub-libraries for Mac and improvements for handling web-related elements.

Following this update, the only anticipated major updates for this viewer will be those related to the new viewer management process, which includes checks to try to ensure Windows users receiving the correct flavour of the viewer (i.e. if you’re a 32-bit Windows users, you should automatically get the 32-bit version of the viewer during updates; if you’re 64-bit Windows users, you should get the 64-bit version of the viewer).  These updates are already being integrated into the viewer for the next update, so it is entirely possible the 64-bit viewer will be updated twice in the coming week.

[3:52] There was a slight mistake with the current version of the viewer which meant people on 64-bit Windows were getting the 32-bit version in error, which led to incorrect stats. This will be corrected with the new update.

[22:32] The Lab plan to update the viewer build instructions on the wiki to reflect this viewer as soon as it goes out as a release candidate viewer.

[24:32] Mac users should note that this viewer does not support OS X versions below 10.9.

360 Snapshot Viewer

[7:05] Given the status of the 64-bit viewer, the Lab is resuming work on the 360 snapshot viewer, although there currently isn’t any ETA on an update to the current version.

Voice Viewer

[2:05] The Lab has resolved the issues found in the Voice viewer RC, with the updated version – 5.0.5.325998 – appearing on May 5th during the TPV Developer meeting.

[17:16] As some fundamental issues with Voice are being addressed with this viewer, the SLVoice plugin that comes with it will not work with older viewers, and the SLVoice plugin from older viewer versions will not work with this viewer. This is a deliberate change and means that TPVs will need to integrate the entire Voice update, rather than just parts of it.

[19:14] This viewer also improves overall Voice connection, by both making connections more likely to succeed in the first place, and by making improvements to the retry / reconnection process. However, particularly aggressive anti-virus packages which fiddle with network connections can still cause Voice connection issues.

[18:35] In difference to previous statements made at the back-end of 2016, the Lab currently has no plans to disable older versions of Voice. However, they might revisit the idea in the future .

Upcoming Maintenance Viewer

A new Maintenance RC viewer should be appearing shortly with a number of updates / changes, some of which were outline in part 2 of this week’s updates, and repeated below for completeness.

Inventory Improvements

[9:26]  To try to help with inventory losses through accidental deletion of objects which have mistakenly been moved to Trash, the Maintenance RC viewer will have the following behaviour changes:

  • The prompt displayed when you have over 5K items in Trash will be amended to show the trash folder when you’re ready to purge it – before you can purge it.
  • Backspace will only delete on Mac systems (as it’s the only option available), it will no longer delete on windows.
  • The purging Trash notification will give you the count of items you’re deleting and will be unavoidable.
  • The “Are you sure you want to delete this thing” warning will be seen at least once per session.

Estate and Parcel Permissions

[10:42] The Estate management floater is to be revised somewhat to make it easier to use, while the Permissions check boxes, etc at estate / parcel level are to be changed to better convey what happens when setting them. In particular, these will address BUG-4994 and see some improvements to access /  ban list management at the region level, so that more than four names are visible in the list. at any one time.

This will only be the first iteration of these changes, and Grumpity linden indicates that the Lab will continue to look at how much more can be done to improve these controls without starting to make things complicated.

This viewer will also include the changes needed to support the improved access controls for regions set to Public Access (see New region and parcel access controls coming to Second Life) – a project known internally at the Lab as Jigglypuff. The server-side changes should be on RC from Wednesday, May 10th.

Limiting the Number of Items a You can ADD from a Folder

[14:18] A new limit has been placed up the total number of items which can be added from a folder at any one time. This is specifically to prevent those situations where someone mis-clicks ADD on a top-level folder – say Clothing – to find they are stuck with the viewer trying to add everything in that folder and every sub-folder within it to their avatar.

Lower Default Media Volume

[16:58] In response to requests, the upcoming Maintenance RC will also have a lower default volume for media playback than is set by the Lab in current viewers.

SL project updates 18/2: server, viewer, inventory loss

Posted on by Inara Pey
The Anthropic Principle – Gem Preiz – blog post

Server Deployments  – Recap

As always, please refer to the server deployment thread for the latest information  / updates.

SL Viewer

On Thursday, May 4th, the AssetHTTP RC viewer updated to version 5.0.5.325940, which looks to be to addressing further crash issues with the previous RC version.

All other viewers in the pipelines remain unchanged:

  • Current Release version: 5.0.4.325124, dated April 3rd – formerly the Maintenance RC viewer overview
  • Project viewers:
    • Project Alex Ivy (LXIV), 64-bit project viewer version 5.1.0.504536, dated April 25th
    • 360-degree snapshot viewer version 4.1.3.321712, dated November 23rd, 2016 – ability to take 360-degree panoramic images
  • Obsolete platform viewer version 3.7.28.300847. dated May 8th, 2015 – provided for users on Windows XP and OS X versions below 10.7.

Inventory Loss Issues

I recently reported on people’s experiences with inventory losses, as recorded through the forums. As a result of both the forum discussion and JIRAs filed such as BUG-100541), the Lab has been looking again at inventory and possible causes of inventory loss. This will be resulting in some viewer behaviour changes  as Grumpity Linden explained during the Server Beta meeting on Thursday, May 4th:

So we are actively looking at the various reports of inventory loss (Quick thank you to everyone who takes the time to file bug reports… It helps!). With this recent wave of reports, it seems like there are a lot of things ending up in trash unexpectedly and we can’t be sure whether there’s an evil gremlin in the machinery or a bunch of accidental key presses. So we’re putting in some viewer changes to at least make the accidental key presses less likely. We’re:

  1. Amending the prompt that comes up when you have over 5K items in trash to show the trash folder when you’re ready to purge it – before you can purge it.
  2. Backspace will only delete on mac, not windows.
  3. [The] purging trash warning will give you the count of items you’re deleting and will be unavoidable.
  4. You’re going to have to see the “Are you sure you want to delete this thing” warning at least once per session.

Also, I’d like to clarify something – a lot of reports we’re seeing come up right now but are actually of past incidents. I think the discussion on the forum(s) has led to an increase in reporting.  which is great because then maybe we’ll finally get a reproducible scenario and find ways to fix.

These changes may not resolve all the issues being experienced, but they may help with at least some, and in creasing people’s awareness of what might be happening in their Trash folder. There is currently no time frame as to when these updates will appear in an RC  / project viewer; I’d assume they would most likely be appearing in a Maintenance RC.

Profile Feed Snapshot Uploads

People are (once again) experiencing issues with uploading snapshots to their Profile Feed. A bug on the matter has been raised – BUG-100516.

SL project updates 18/1: server, viewer

Posted on by Inara Pey

Asian Fusion: Oyster Bay – blog post

Server Deployments

As always, please refer to the server deployment thread for the latest information  / updates.

SL Viewer

There have been no updates to the current viewer pipelines to start the week, leaving them as follows:

  • Current Release version: 5.0.4.325124, dated April 3rd – formerly the Maintenance RC viewer overview
  • Project AssetHttp RC viewer version 5.0.5.325825, dated April 27th – This viewer moves fetching of several types of assets to HTTP / CDN – overview
  • Project viewers:
    • Project Alex Ivy (LXIV), 64-bit project viewer version 5.1.0.504536, dated April 25th
    • 360-degree snapshot viewer version 4.1.3.321712, dated November 23rd, 2016 – ability to take 360-degree panoramic images
  • Obsolete platform viewer version 3.7.28.300847. dated May 8th, 2015 – provided for users on Windows XP and OS X versions below 10.7.

Region Crossings

There have been reports of worsening in vehicular region crossings recently (by coincidence, Caitlyn and I ran into so particularly unpleasant crossings over the most recent weekend). Simon Linden agreed to have a poke at server logs, time permitting, to see if there is any other change in crossing stats. He also mused on the potential impact of mesh bodies and attachments on such crossings, which constitute a considerable amount of additional data (including saving and restoring the state of scripts associated with them.

It was also pointed out that worn mesh attachments bring with them an (unneeded?) physics shape calculation, potentially adding to the load. This prompted a further discussion on whether any attachments should have a physics shape data used or calculated until such time as it is physically rezzed in-world.

As a first point of call, Simon repeated that as time permits, he’ll look into what goes into the region crossing calculations, and have a closer look at attachments physics calculations in general to she what is going on.

What Is the Lab Working On?

Things seem pretty quiet at the moment, but the Lab is working on a lot right now, although much of it is transparent to users, as Oz linden indicated at the Simulator User Group meeting on Tuesday, May 2nd:

At the moment, we happen to have a number of projects in flight that are either not good to discuss (security changes), or system upgrades that really shouldn’t be visibly different…. that’s unfortunate, but we’re getting started on (or getting ready to start on) some that will be much more interesting.

The recent changes to land access and control, together with the upcoming changes to allow region / estate staff to better managed Public Access regions are examples of more visible changes affecting users – or will be, once the viewer has been updated to handle the latter; and there a further changes to the likes of region-level ban lists coming down the pipe which will also bring visible changes to the viewer and provide better controls / support for land owners.

SL project updates 17/2: server, viewer Content Creation UG

Posted on by Inara Pey

Patankar – blog post

Server Deployments

As always, please refer to the server deployment thread for the latest information  / updates.

  • There was no deployment to, or restart of, the Main (SLS) channel on Tuesday, April 25th
  • Depending on the outcome of late QA testing, the three RC channels may be updated on Wednesday, April 26th as follows:

DRTSIM-343: Allow Public Access Region / Parcel Settings Changes

This is the update to region / parcel access that will mean that if a region is explicitly set to Allow Public Access, parcel holders on the region will no longer be able to override the setting at the parcel level (see my update here). It had been deployed to the three RC channels a couple of weeks ago, but was then withdrawn. This may now be reappearing on an RC in week #18 (commencing Monday, May 1st, 2017), with Rider linden noting:

There were a number of suggestions about additions to the project. I just finished getting the code in that will send a notification to the parcel owner if their access settings are changed out from under them. Rider Linden: I’ve also fixed it so that the previous settings are stored in the simstate and restored if the override is reverted.

SL Viewer

The AssetHTTP project viewer, which shifts remaining asset types to delivery over HTTP via the Content Delivery Network(s) leveraged by the Lab, was updated to version 5.0.5.325825 on Thursday, April 27th. This is primarily a bug-fix release, aimed at reducing the high crash rate exhibited by the previous version.

Content Creation User Group Meeting

The following notes are taken from the Content Creation User Group meeting, held on  Thursday April 27th, 2017 at 1:00pm SLT at the the Hippotropolis Camp Fire Circle. The meeting is chaired by Vir Linden, and agenda notes, etc, are available on the Content Creation User Group wiki page.

The meeting was more of a general Q&A session, live streamed / recorded by Medhue Simoni, and that video is embedded at the end of this update, my thanks to him for providing it. Timestamps in the text below will take readers directly to the relevant point in the video (in a separate tab) where topics are discussed. Note that there was a lot of discussion via text, with topics overlapping. The notes here, together with the time stamps and audio extracts from my own recording refer to the key topics where Vir Linden provided input / feedback.

Attachments Using non-Hand Bones Following Hand Movements

[5:31] Medhue Simoni has been trying to work out a way to have attachments used by the hand (such as a gun, or nunchuk system, for example) rigged to non-hand bones in the skeleton correctly track with the hands. This would, for example allow someone perform a set of nunchuk exercises without the weapons massively separating from the hands, or allow a gun to be drawn, fired, twirled on a trigger finger, etc, and then be returned to the holster in a fluid, hand-following movement.

The problem here is that s non-hand bones which might be used for this aren’t actually connected to the hands, they have no way of knowing where the hand might be placed. However, Medhue believes that given time, he might be able to solve the problem.

“Layering” Meshes using Alpha Textures

[9:20] Some content creators have been taking advantage of placing two meshes in the same location and using an alpha texture as an overlay, thereby forcing one mesh to always be on top.  This can add a certain level of realism to objects such as plants without the need for additional textures / baking.

However, how meshes with alphas are “sorted” at present appears to be more a factor of how the rendering pipeline is working at present, rather than being an intentional feature, therefore using layered meshes and alphas in this way is not recommended, as it cannot be guaranteed that a future update to the rendering system won’t change the behaviour.

Advanced Lighting Model and Lower-End Systems

[20:38] A question was asked if Advanced Lighting Model (ALM) “be made to work on lower spec computers”, so that more people have the opportunity to see materials in use.

ALM has tended to be a controversial subject, as it is often blamed for causing significant performance hits. However, on medium-to-high end systems, this is perhaps a case of people confusing enabling ALM with enabling ALM together with enabling shadow rendering (which does cause a performance hit); enabling ALM by itself shouldn’t result in any significant hit.

Lower specification systems and older GPU systems, however, are different. Some are not capable of handling ALM, regardless as to whether shadows are disabled, and a performance hit is noticed simply by turning it on. This, coupled with a number of other factors, means that trying to adjust ALM so be of use to lower specification systems isn’t really something that the Lab could realistically engineer.

Note that the above discussion continues for a large part of the meeting, mostly in text chat.

JIRA Feature Acceptance & Action

[26:38] Feature requests submitted via the JIRA can go in one of several ways. If a request proposes something that the Lab believes cannot reasonably be done, or which cannot be done, or which offer what is thought to be a small return for the amount of investment in terms of effort, which tend to get rejected.

Where a request is accepted by the Lab and pulled into their internal JIRA, this doesn’t mean it will definitely result in it being implemented. Again, this doesn’t automatically mean the idea will be implemented; it simply means the Lab is considering the idea. Again, it comes down to matters of overall benefit, resource requirements and availability, etc., as to whether it is actually implemented.

Supplemental Animations and Animated Mesh

[41:32] Both are still under consideration at the Lab, but no news on actual projects being on the horizon. Concerns about performance with animated meshes has been raised internally where people to fill there region / space with lots of animated meshes (NPS, trees with branches swaying in the wind, animals, etc.).

Next Meeting

The next content Creation User Group meeting will be on Thursday, May 11th.

SL project updates 17/1: server, inventory issues

Posted on by Inara Pey

Dawn’s Promise by Marcus Inkpen and Sharni Azalee, Fantasy Faire 2017 – blog post

Server Deployments

As always, please refer to the server deployment thread for the latest information  / updates.

SL Viewer

The Project Alex Ivy (LXIV) project viewer updated to version 5.1.0.504536 on April 25th. According to comments passed at the TPV Developer meeting on Friday, April 21st, this update should now include Havok for Mac, although the release notes currently do not reflect this, possibly because they have not been updated from the previous release.

Outside of this update, the viewer pipeline is as follows:

  • Current Release version: 5.0.4.325124, dated April 3rd, promoted April 19th – formerly the Maintenance RC viewer overview
  • Release channel cohorts:
    • Project AssetHttp project viewer version 5.0.5.325600 dated April 20th – This viewer moves fetching of several types of assets to HTTP / CDN – overview
  • Project viewers:
    • 360-degree snapshot viewer version 4.1.3.321712 dated November 23rd, 2016
  • Obsolete platform viewer version 3.7.28.300847 dated May 8th, 2015 – provided for users on Windows XP and OS X versions below 10.7.

Inventory  / Inventory Loss Issues

Inventory loss is not a new issue within Second Life, and it is something the Lab has acknowledged in the past and sought to try to reduce. However, there are new reports of odd cases of inventory loss resulting from folders apparently somehow being moved to the Trash folder without apparent user intervention, from whence they are then purged (see this forum thread for examples).  Others have also reported seeing folders move themselves to Lost & Found.

While it is only speculative, it has been suggested that a bug somewhat akin to BUG-4617 might be in part responsible. It is also possible that is some cases, the loss is due to accidentally moving a folder to Trash and then purging as a result of a (fairly) recent introduction of the pop-up warning to purge Trash (intended to show up when Trash exceeds 5K items, unless the threshold is manually increased via debug), which may be causing people to purge their Trash without double-checking to ensure nothing is there that shouldn’t be there.

However, the above doesn’t explain the apparent movement of folders into Trash (or lost & Found) where the user is certain then did not mis-click or mis-drag. A further problem appears to be that when moved, folders don’t always appear in Trash – although this may be due to people incorrectly looking at Trash via the Recent Tab in the Inventory floater, or as a result of inventory filters being active.

Kyle Linden is apparently ware of the latest batch of reported issues, which means that  hopefully, they are being looked into. In the meantime, if you do suffer any kind of noticeable inventory loss on the scale being reported, immediately file a support case; it may not work, but the sooner a case is logger potentially the greater the chance of the matter being resolved.

General Steps to Help with Inventory Loss

The following steps are not suggested as a panacea for the kinds of losses noted above, but are offered as a potential help to those experiencing lost inventory (and are based on using the official viewer):

  • Try a cache clear first:
    • In the top menu bar of the viewer, go to Me > Preferences > Advanced -> Click the “Clear Cache” button -> OK
    • Restart the viewer – the cache will be cleaned when the viewer launches
    • Login to a low lag region (for example Pooley), open your inventory and wait for it to fetch
  • If you are still missing inventory, then work through all the relevant steps on the Inventory Loss wiki page
  • If still no luck then you need to contact Linden Lab support directly for help by submitting a support case form at https://support.secondlife.com/contact-support/

SL project updates 16/3: TPV Developer meeting, servers

Posted on by Inara Pey
Butterfly Conservatory – blog post

The majority of the following notes are taken from the following sources:

  • The TPV Developer meeting of Friday, April 21st. A video of the meeting is embedded (my thanks to North, as always), and time stamp reference appearing in the text relate to that video
  • The Server Beta User Group meeting of Thursday, April 20th.

Server Deployments – Recap

As always, please refer to the server deployment thread for the latest information.

  • On Tuesday, April 18th the Main (SLS) channel received the server maintenance package previously deployed to the RC channels in week #15.
  • On Wednesday, April 19th, the RC channelsreceived the improved region capacity and access capabilities previously on the McRib micro-channel, which has been reabsorbed into the RCs

Simulator OS Update

The simulator build using a new version of Linux is now on the Main (SLS) grid, but currently restricted to the Cake micro-channel. Region holders with a defined interest in testing their products, scripted objects ,etc. on the build should contact Concierge Support to request an opt-in to the channel.

SL Viewer

Release Viewer

[02:15] The release viewer was updated on Wednesday, 19th April with the promotion of version 5.0.4.325124, formerly the Maintenance Release viewer.

  • This viewer includes a number of important updates, including:
  • Avatar Complexity Rendering Updates, including avatar rendering exceptions
  • Grid Status Display Toolbar Button
  • Improvements to the snapshot floater, inventory offer messages
  • Block list improvements

See my overview of this viewer (from when it was an RC release) for more.

HTTP Asset Viewer

[02:38] The AssetHTTP release candidate updated to version 5.0.5.325600 on Thursday, April 20th. This viewer moves fetching of several types of assets to HTTP. This update was primarily to merge the HTTP code with the new release viewer, but also includes additional logging code in an effort to try to determine why the previous version had an elevated crash rate.

Voice Viewer

[02:56] This RC viewer was withdrawn due to a high crash rate. An updated version may soon be available, but is dependent upon another bug being fixed, described as a “really loud, horrible screech in your headphones” if you teleport when someone is talking.

Once available this is seen as an important update for TPVs to pick-up, not only for the new voice updates but also because it fixes a number of bugs in certificate handling.

Project Alex Ivy 64-bit Viewer

[03:45] This viewer is awaiting a further update, which will hopefully appear in week #17 (commencing Monday, April 24th), pending the outcome of QA testing. The update will include 64-Havok on the Mac (it is already in the Windows version).

E-mail Verification

On Wednesday, April 19th the Lab posted about Making Email From Second Life (More) Reliable, and the need for users to verify their e-mail addresses with the Lab (detailed instructions on which can be found here).

[05:17] There will be an update viewer supporting this (for IMs-to-e-mail, etc.), available “soon”.

Improved Estate / Parcel Access Controls

[09:08] A viewer supporting the server-side changes to the Public Access settings at region / parcel level (in short, parcel owner will not be able to set their parcels to restricted access if the region is explicitly set to Public Access at the Estate level), will be out shortly. Commenting on this, Grumpity Linden said:

Hopefully, we’ll have the first iteration out next week [week #17], and we might have to have some back-and-forth to make sure that the behaviour makes sense.

This viewer will also hopefully resolve issues such as BUG-4994 which results in a parcel being set to Group access (and gaining ban lines) if both the Public and Group access options are checked, are also resolved as a part of the work.

Improved Estate Ban List Management

[12:18] in February it was indicated that the current capabilities for managing estate ban lists are far from ideal. The ban list is confined to a small area of the World > Region Details > Estate tab, which is currently shared with three other lists. It is also non-searchable, making locating individuals for removal from very large lists time-intensive and difficult.

The Lab is working to provide a larger space for managing estate ban lists, with Grumpity Linden noting:

What I hope is not going to be unreasonably complicated to do, is to actually give you additional information, like when the user was banned and by whom. But we still need to see whether that is hard to do. It’s not going to be a part of the other UI changes for estate controls, because we want to get those out quickly; [but] I expect both of these things will require a couple of iterations.

Other Items

Second Life Statistics Stuck

[10:04] There is an issue with the statistics for the number of concurrent users on-line, Linden dollar exchange rate and number of daily sign-ups, which have remained frozen at the same values since April 12th, 2017 (the number of users on-line statistic, often referenced on the log-in splash screen by a number of viewers spent several days stuck at 44,647, for example) – see BUG-100468. The Lab is looking at the issue, but state it might take “a little while” to determine the problem.

Media Volume Issues

This breaks down into two areas:

  • Groups involved in the Community Gateway programme report that many incoming new users complain about the default volume at which the official viewer auto-plays streaming media on logging-in. An informal request has been made for the Lab to adjust the volume level downwards, but no work has been done on this (and no JIRA formally requesting the change has been raised)
  • [17:30] BUG-40937: “Shared media a great distance away (different region even) sometimes plays at maximum volume when entering a region or moving camera slightly” – the Lab has promised to discuss this, but is making no promises as to what might be done by way of resolution.

Fun Fact – Maintenance Viewer Internal Names

[19:37] Grumpity and Oz Linden revealed that they use internal project names to identify the various Maintenance viewers which are either under development or in flight. For some time now, these viewers have been named for assorted alcoholic drinks!

“For a while we stuck with drinks beginning with ‘s’,” Grumpity said, “but we had to expand.”

“They started getting pretty obscure!” Oz added.