Category: SL User Group Meetings

Second Life project updates 31/2: TPV Developer meeting

Posted on by Inara Pey

Up to U; Inara Pey, July 2015, on FlickrUp to U, July 2015 (Flickr) – blog post

The following notes are primarily taken from the TPV Developer (TPVD) meeting held on Friday, July 31st. A video of the meeting is included at the end of this report, with any time stamps in the following text referring to it. My thanks as always to North for the recording and providing it for embedding.

Server Deployments Week #31 – Recap

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

  • Tuesday, July 28th, saw the Main (SLS) channel receive the server maintenance package previously deployed to the three RC channels, comprising internal server fixes related to Experience Keys, comprising null pointer checkers and a configuration option for the number of Experiences a Premium member can have.
  • On Wednesday, July 29th, the three RC channels will be updated with a new server maintenance package aimed at fixing recent group-related issues (BUG-9725 ,BUG-9735 and BUG-9695). Reports following the deployment seem to indicate the issues appear to have been addressed.

Viewer-Managed Marketplace

As I’ve reported elsewhere, the Lab has now announced the retirement of Magic Boxes and the final shut-down of XStreet. Merchants have until August 17th to manually migrate their Magic Box items to VMM if they wish to have sales continue uninterrupted. After that date, the Marketplace will cease delivering goods from Magic Boxes. However, XStreet will remain available through until August 27th.

Wednesday, July 29th saw an updated version of the VMM viewer released. Version 3.8.2.303891 does not contain any functional changes to the VMM code, but does include a number of fixes which will hopefully reverse the elevated crash rates the previous RC version had been suffering when compared to the release viewer.

Providing the stats confirm this after the weekend, and no other emergencies occur, the VMM RC viewer will be promoted to the de facto release viewer in week #32 (week commencing 3rd August).

[00:35] The automated migration of all Direct Delivery items has now completed, and appears to have gone smoothly. The Lab is working through what Brooke Linden describes as “minor problems” directly with the Merchants who have encountered them. In addition, feedback from Merchants is currently being used to update the VMM Knowledge Base documents.

There was also an apology for the sudden change in plans regarding the start of the migration process, and the lack of forewarning to TPVs (and Merchants) on the matter.

 Grid Status Page RSS Feed

[08:06] Back towards the start of the year, the Lab attempted to make changes to the Grid Status page; however, the attempt caused issues, and things were subsequently reverted.

During the Third-Party Developer meeting on Friday, July 31st, Oz and Steven Linden indicated that the Lab is going to make a further attempt to update things. The aim is to update the RSS feed from RSS version 1 to RSS version 2.

As existing web pages, etc., using the feed may need to be adjusted to use the new feed format, a, proxy URL is available (http://beta.status.secondlifegrid.net/feed) using the new feed format is available for testing purposes. This is already using live data, and the Lab’s plan is to allow it to run for a few months in order to ensure there are no issues, and then around November of December 2015, re-direct the existing Grid Status URL to point to the new feed, thus hopefully avoiding the upsets that came with February’s attempt to make changes.

Linden Parcel and Region Damage

[11:16] The Lab has put forward a proposal to improve how Damage can be managed at the region / parcel level. For detail, please refer to my separate report.

Unified Snapshot Floater

[19:16] As indicated in week #23 Niran V Dean has contributed his recent updates to the unified snapshot floater to the Lab, where they’ve been under review. The majority of these have now been approved, and are expected to appear in a Snowstorm contributions viewer in the near future.

Improvements to Prevent No Copy Item Losses

[20:14] As part of ongoing efforts to improve inventory handling, the Lab has been working on some simulator-side updates designed to fixes some issues related to content loss of No Copy objects – notably related to race conditions which can occur and result in rezzing failures and the subsequent loss of No Copy items.

These updates are again a result of the Lab’s continued investigation into inventory issues that started back in February, when they requested users complete an inventory loss survey. It is not anticipated that these changes will in any way affect the Return To Last Position capability, as used by some TPVs, nor do they involve any viewer updates. However, prior to their  deployment, a pile-on test will be held on Aditi, most likely on Friday, August 7th, which will involve TPVs and users putting the changes through a series of tests.

Assorted Notes

  • The Windows 10 detection fix, contributed to the Lab by Ansariel Hiller and referenced in part 1 of this report, will be incorporated in to a Snowstorm contributions viewer
  • There have been no recent code updates from Vivox for voice; Oz is hoping to have news  from them by the next TPV Developer meeting on Friday, August 21st
  • The inventory transform for fixed large “flat” inventories which are causing log-in issues (see my week 15 report) has been under testing, and is currently going through final QA internally at the Lab in preparation for deployment.

Second Life project updates 31/1: server, VMM, group issues, Windows 10 issues

Posted on by Inara Pey

Baby's Ear; Inara Pey, July 2015, on FlickrBaby’s Ear, July 2015 (Flickr) – blog post

Update, July 30th: The updated VMM release candidate viewer referred to in this update is now available: version 3.8.2.303891.

Server Deployments Week #31

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

  • Tuesday, July 28th, saw the Main (SLS) channel receive the server maintenance package previously deployed to the three RC channels, comprising internal server fixes related to Experience Keys, comprising null pointer checkers and a configuration option for the number of Experiences a Premium member can have.
  • On Wednesday, July 29th, the three RC channels will be updated with a new server maintenance package aimed at fixing recent group-related issues (see below for more details).

Commenting on the Experience changes in the Main channel release a the Simulator User Group meeting on Tuesday, July 28th, Simon Linden said:

That’s just under the hood, the one-per-account is not changing. Simon Linden: with configurations like that, we have a layered approach … there’s a set of defaults that is fixed with each server release. We also have a way to over-ride it grid wide … which is how we can turn on and off some things grid-wide, without a server update; that’s how we turned on the experience tools when we released it. Now that it’s released, we move it into the default settings and eventually out of the over-ride.

Group Issues

In my last update, I reported that people had started experiencing group-related issues, following the Main channel deployment in week #30. In particular:

  • BUG-9725 – Activating a group fails on first selection on Second Life Server 15.07.09.303393 & RC
  • BUG-9735 – Unable to Edit Group Parameters after being made OWNER of newly created group
  • BUG-9695 – [Project Notice] First attempt at joining a group fails (also happens with current release viewer)

Of these, BUG-9735 has been causing the most upset, as it affects anyone who has their role changed. While their role title will update, they will not gain the powers associated with the role, even after the requiredrelog. Commenting on the issues,Simon explained:

It’s due to some database race conditions that show up in the production servers. I was a bit over-aggressive about moving some queries from the master Db to the slave databases…. Normally our main and slave databases are pretty well in sync … with very tiny delay between them; but if you read from the slave database and do something back into the main one, there can be a window when the data isn’t right.

The curious aspect with BUG-9735 is that a relog is normally required for a person to get the updated abilities associated with a role change; so it is unclear why things are going wrong, as Simon went on to say:

I’m not exactly sure how 9735 would happen … I can imagine failures, but relogs should fix that. A bunch of your group info is fetched when you log in, [so] I’m not sure why that couldn’t be updated correctly.

As noted above, fixes for these issues are due to be deployed to the RC channels on Wednesday, July 29th. Once deployed, it would seem likely that anyone being promoted to a new role will have to be on a release candidate channel region when being promoted & relogging, in order for their group abilities to correctly update. However, it’s not clear if the individual promoting someone to a new role will also need to be on a release candidate channel region as well, so some experimentation might be required.

VMM Update

VMM auto-migration of Marketplace Direct Delivery items commenced on Thursday, July 23rd and is proceeding on weekdays between 21:00 SLT in the evening and 09:00 SLT the following morning. However, it is unlikely the VMM viewer will be promoted to the de facto release viewer in the short-term. The reason for this is that the current RC has an elevated crash rate. As a result, there will be a further update to the release candidate, which is due to appear in the next day or so and which will include a number of fixes to try to reduce the crash rate, including one for BUG-9748.

Windows 10 Issues

There have been some recent SL-related issues been noted against recent builds of Windows 10 which are worth reporting, although their potential for any impact may vary.

Font Detection

In the first, BUG-9759, Kyle Linden reports that CJK fonts (those containing a large range of Chinese/Japanese/Korean characters) are not visible in the viewer. This appears to be due to  moving the default location of the font store for Windows 10. As a result, the viewer requires an update so it can look at the revised location.

Windows 10 / AMD Graphics Driver Issue

The second issue appears to be the return of a problem specific to Windows 10 and AMD graphics drivers first reported in March 2015.  This causes the graphics card name to be saved as garbled text into the Windows registry, with the result that any program explicitly requiring the name of the graphics card in order to run correctly can encounter problems (although those which don’t will continue to run OK). As v3-style viewers are designed to explicitly save the GPU name at log-out (it is stored in the settings.xml file), those using Windows 10 / AMD systems may be affected. This is because the garbled card name gets written to the settings.xml file, along with other global settings applied to the viewer by the user, when logging out. This makes settings.xml unreadable by the viewer at the next log-in, so the viewer fails to obtain information, and so reverts all global settings (including graphics) to their defaults. The issue was first reported in April 2015 (see BUG-9054), but seemed to be resolved with later Windows 10 builds. However, it now appears to have regressed with Windows 10 Build 10240 and  the AMD 15.7 driver (see BUG-9740 and particularly FIRE-16528).

An issue with at least one recent build of Windows 10 is that the name of any AMD graphics cards is being incorrectly saved at garbled text in the Windows registry (shown on the left, using the DxDiag tool). As V3 viewers expressly try to save the graphics card name between log-in sessions, this garbled text gets saved instead, with the result that the viewer's graphics are reset to default settings at the next log-in
Left: and AMD graphics driver recorded as garbled text in the Windows 10 registry, and (right) an AMD card name similarly garbled in the viewer’s settings.xml file as a result. The latter prevents settings.xml, which contains all global settings applied to the viewer by the user, from being read by the viewer when next launched, with the result that it reverts to default settings

Quite how widespread this problem might be as Windows 10 starts shipping is unclear, so the above should be read as an advisory of possible issues. However, if it does prove to be widespread, note that a fix will be required from Microsoft / AMD; this is not something the Lab and affected TPVs can address. In an effort to pre-emptively avoid at least some of the possible headaches the issue might pose for their users, the Firestorm team have developed a workaround, which is to be included in the upcoming 4.7.2 release. This workaround allows the viewer to load the settings.xml file so a user won’t lose all their global settings. But because the graphics card name remains garbled within the Windows registry (from which it is read by the viewer), it will still be saved as garbled text in settings.xml, and the viewer will continue reset all graphics options to their defaults when next launched until such time as a fix is forthcoming from Microsoft / AMD to correct the registry issue.

 Version Number

A third, and in terms of functionality, trivial issue is that Windows 10 will show as Windows 8 running in compatibility mode in the viewer’s system info. This won’t impact the viewer’s performance, and a fix from the Firestorm team has been contributed to the Lab (STORM-2105), and should be appearing in due course.

Second Life project updates 30/1: group issues, avatar complexity

Posted on by Inara Pey

Timeless Memories; Inara Pey, July 2015, on FlickrTimeless Memories, July 2015 (Flickr) – blog post

Server Deployments Week #30 – Recap

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

On Tuesday, July 21st, the Main (SLS) channel had been listed as due to receive server maintenance package previously deployed to the three RC channels (15.07.07.303297). However, post-roll, the channel had been updated to release  15.07.09.303393, although the description of the changes, internal simulator fixes, remained unchanged.

On Wednesday, July 22nd, the three RC channels all received the same new server maintenance package, again comprising internal server fixes related to Experience Keys, comprising null pointer checkers and – interestingly – a configuration option for the number of Experiences a Premium member can have.

Group Issues

Following the week’s deployment, people started reporting group-related issues, particularly:

  • BUG-9725 – Activating a group fails on first selection on Second Life Server 15.07.09.303393 & RC
  • BUG-9735 – Unable to Edit Group Parameters after being made OWNER of newly created group
  • BUG-9695 – [Project Notice] First attempt at joining a group fails (also happens with current release viewer)

BUG-9735 affects promoting a member of the group to Owner status: their role title will change, but they do not gain the Owner powers, even after a relog (if an invitation is sent to someone to join the group with Owner status, they gain the expected rights). Curiously, this bug does not reproduce on Aditi (Beta grid) on simulators running the same code release.

Note that with BUG-9695 that if a fee is charged for joining the group, the fee will be taken, even if the join fails; you’ll then be charged again on your next attempt to join (which should succeed).

The Lab is actively investigating these issues.

In addition, there have been assorted reports of dropped group chat messages and detectable group chat lag.

Avatar Complexity

There have been recent updates relating to STORM-2082, the work Oz Linden has been undertaking on Avatar Complexity (aka “Jelly Baby avatars”). This work had been held-up due to a bug which rendered all avatars affected by the setting as invisible, rather than as the expected “Jelly Babies”. However, this now appears to have been fixed.

This means that this work may well be appearing as a project viewer during week #32 (week commencing Monday, August 3rd).  Commenting on the status of the project at the Open-source Developer meeting on Monday, July 20th, Oz Linden said:

All it needs now is a little more UI – notices that show when your own Complexity has changed, and when your Complexity is too high for those around you to render … I want to wait for those UI changes to release this so that people have a way to understand why things are rendering fully or not … There will be a new setting that controls how long the message about your own cost appears; it will also govern how long the message appears when others are not rendering you.

Avatar Complexity (aka Jelly Babies): expected as a project viewer in early August
Avatar Complexity (aka Jelly Babies): expected as a project viewer in early August

Oz also indicated he’d like to experiment a little more with things. One idea under consideration is that currently, the viewer is gets all the data on high render cost avatars prior to calculating the complexity value. However, it might be possible to allow the viewer to make the calculations without having to fetch the full avatar data. A benefit of this could be to reduce the risk of worn mesh crashers impacting the viewer.

Second Life project updates 29/2: miscellaneous news

Posted on by Inara Pey

Matoluta Sanctuary, Sartre; Inara Pey, March 2015, on Flickr Matoluta Sanctuary (Flickr), March 2015 – blog post

Server Deployments Week #29 – Recap

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

  • There was no Main (SLS) channel deployment on Tuesday, July 14th.
  • On Wednesday, July 15th all three RC channels received the same server maintenance package, comprising internal simulator fixes.

SL Viewer

Following the promotion of the attachment fixes viewer to release status, all three remain active release candidate viewer in the release channel were updated as follows:

  • The Viewer-Managed Marketplace RC viewer updated to version 3.8.2.303583 on Thursday, July 16th
  • The Maintenance RC viewer updated to version 3.8.2.303563 on Friday, July 17th
  • The Mesh importer RC viewer updates to version 3.8.2.303565, also on Friday, July 17th.

Viewer-Managed Marketplace

On Thursday, July 16th, the Lab announced that VMM is now “released” (even through the viewer is currently still at RC status), and that automated migration of those Marketplace stores which have not already converted to VMM will commence at 21:00 SLT on Thursday, July 23rd, and will continue at the same time on weekdays for a 12-hour period (21:00 – 09:00) until complete.

That the announcement has been made prior to the viewer being promoted, and that it was made apparently without any notification to TPVs (who had been trying to work closely with the Lab in getting people ready for VMM) has caused no small amount of upset on the Commerce forum thread opened when the announcement was made, some of which is understandable, particularly given the way TPVs have tried to work with the Lab in support of VMM, and this announcement have left those still in the process of trying integrate the code into their viewers with little time to actually do so and support their users with a VMM-enabled version of their viewer.

Experience Tools

In my week #28 report, I referred to a comment made by Simon Linden relating to Experience Keys / Tools concerning some work he’s been carrying out on the KVP database:

I’ve been working on updating the KVP code that runs on our server and had the most frustrating time integrating the newest version into our code … The code we have is dated and we should have better performance and stability with their latest.

The use of “their” and “our” code led to some questions at the meeting (unanswered at the time) as to what it might indicate. During the Server Beta User Group (SBUG) meeting on Thursday, July 16th, some clarification was given.

The “their” referred to by Simon is MongoDB, which is the database being used to manage the KVP store and key value pairs. The version the Lab had been / is using can only apparently search around 1,000 values per minute. The new version that Simon has been working on should apparently improve on this, hence his reference to performance and stability improvements (not to mention scalability).

Second Life project updates 29/1: server, viewer, general items

Posted on by Inara Pey
Indie Teepee: July 10th through 24th, 2015 - blog post
Indie Teepee: July 10th through 24th, 2015 – blog post

Server Deployments Week #29

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

  • There was no Main (SLS) channel deployment on Tuesday, July 14th.
  • On Wednesday, July 15th all three RC channels should receive the same server maintenance package, comprising internal simulator fixes.

There were some issues with poor region performance following the week #28 Main channel deployment (see BUG-9647), but the majority of these appear to have been corrected with a region restart.

SL Viewer

On Tuesday, July 14th, the attachment fixes viewer (project Big Bird) was promoted to the de facto release viewer. Version 3.8.1.303130 has fixes for some attachment-related issues, particularly when multiple attachments are added or removed at the same time. Allegedly, no birds were harmed during the making of this viewer, although a parrot may have bitten an engineer’s finger…

Region Performance

Simon Linden: considering matters of region performance
Simon Linden: considering matters of region performance

While things may appear to be quiet in terms of new deployments, etc., the Lab are working on Second Life in a number of areas. One of these is in finding ways to improve region performance – such as through finding the means for a region to support more avatars, something Simon Linden was recently looking into.

During the Simulator user group meeting on July 14th, Simon indicated he was also looking at the abilities provided to region owners which might allow them to better specify what can and cannot be done within their regions in turns of things like object rezzing. in order to improve people’s experiences. “I’m looking at the balances we keep on regions between being permissive and locked down, and how that relates to the land usage,” he said during the meeting, before continuing:

So combat regions want fast and free rezzing, but that’s not appropriate for a music venue … venues don’t want free rezzing of objects, so someone can’t drop their griefer bombs. The big fuzzy goal is to make SL better.   More specifically, it’s to make different types of regions run better. For example, there’s a bug now where rezzing can get backed up and delayed.   This is really bad for combat rezzing arrows or whatever projectile. Part of the reason that happens is throttles and limits on rezzing … So maybe we should be able to set up combat region settings tweaked for that kind of performance, and an event venue might be tweaked to handle crowds best, and really lock down free rezzing and object entry. 

This sparked a discussion on a range of performance issues and cases, including issues such as BUG-8974 and BUG-8946, as well as matters such as the inefficiencies evident in the asset handling system in general (this has also come into sharper focus with the arrival of Experiences, where KVP operations are handled by the same thread as asset handling), and the issues of agent script usage (script management doesn’t balance out and prevent someone from using far more than their share of script time). Ironically, during the meeting, a demonstration of this problem was given with the arrival of a griefer loaded with  >9999 scripts – with the result that the region crashed.

Simon emphasised the discussion was just that – a discussion intended to explore ideas and options, rather than any firm commitment on his or the Lab’s part to make changes. With this in mind, some of the suggestions put forward were:

  • Land owner resource control for both rezzing and scripts for all region types (see BUG-3854)
  • An option to block rezzing an object over a certain draw weight to help stop people being able to rez graphics crashers
  • Possibly altering settings on mainland so that when purchased, it is not completely permissive and the new owner failing to understand what that can mean
  • A re-submission of BUG-2467 as a feature request, amended to “visible attachments”, so the Lab might re-evaluate the idea
  • The Lab to reconsider requests such as BUG-4153 and BUG-4182.

One of the problems here is that there are a lot of settings which might be exposed in order to help land holders better protect / optimise their land, such that it could become a complex issue in user understanding if too many controls are made available. However, it will be interesting to see what might transpire in the future as the Lab continued to consider options.

Other Items

Receipt of illegitimate L$ and Account Locking

An old issue of individual harassment has started to re-surface in Second Life of late, which can lead to people’s accounts being locked. With it, someone pays another avatar in-world using fraudulently created Linden Dollars. This results in an automatic account lock being applied, and the recipient, even though they are an innocent party, finds they are unable to use the account while investigations proceed.

The problem here is that there is currently no way to prevent the receipt of any L$ payment; not even blocking an avatar can prevent them from making a payment to you.

As a result of the recent increase in this problem occurring (there have been numerous reports to the Lab’s support team on the matter), a request has been made for the Lab to consider adding an “accept” button for all incoming payments. This would allow people to review all such unsolicited incoming payments ahead of accepting them, allowing them to judge whether the payment is valid or not.

Second Life project updates 28/2: TPV Developer meeting

Posted on by Inara Pey

Crystal Gardens Estates Inara Pey, July 2015, on FlickrCrystal Gardens Estates, July 2015 (Flickr) – blog post

The following notes are primarily taken from the TPV Developer (TPVD) meeting held on Friday, July 10th. A video of the TPVD meeting is included at the end of this report, with any time stamps in the following text referring to it. My thanks as always to North for the recording and providing it for embedding.

Server Deployments – Recap

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

  • On Tuesday, July 7th, the Main (SLS) channel received the same server maintenance package deployed to the three RC channels in week #27
  • There was no RC deployments to the RC channels on Wednesday, July 8th, leaving all of the main grid on the same release.

An RC channel release planned for week #29 (commencing Monday, July 13th) will likely see some “db optimization around group stuff”.

SL Viewers

Viewer Updates

The Mesh Importer RC viewer updated to version 3.8.1.303230 on Wednesday, July 8th, with the Lab hoping this release fixes the majority of issues so far reported with that viewer.

On Thursday, July 9th, the Viewer-Managed Marketplace (VMM) RC viewer updated to version 3.8.1.303315.

Viewer Promotion Options

The above updates mean that all four RC viewers currently in the release channel (except the obsolete platforms viewer, which isn’t intended for update), are on a par with the current release version of the viewer (Experience Tools).

However, it is not currently clear which might be promoted to the de facto release version. Any decision on this will be made on the basis of crash rates and overall performance.

[04:13] That said, the VMM viewer has contained a series if XML file breakages with the translation options, and a change in the target formatting for translations also appears to have been changed in the VMM viewer. The Lab believe a fix for the XML issue is in the updated referenced above, although there appears to be some concern that problems still exist. If so, it is unlikely that this viewer will be promoted until issues have been sorted.

Notifications Project Viewer

Also on July 8th, the Lab issued the Notification project viewer, version 3.8.1.303211, which sees an overhaul of the way in which notifications – system, group, transaction, etc., are presented through the viewer. For further information on this release, please refer to my overview.

[08:10]  As this is a project viewer, now is the time to test it and see if it is lacking functionality / options – the Lab will be far more willing to alter the code, should it be required, while the viewer is at a project status than they will be when it reaches RC, where the focus will be on fixing any bugs which may have slipped through.

Other Items

Changes to Linden Damage

[10:00] The Lab have again acknowledged that the recent changes to the way the official viewer handles avatar damage messaging are not ideal. In short, damage cannot be set it the parcel level only; also, the viewer does not display the health meter on damage enabled parcels, but people can be “killed” and teleported home – for a full list of issues, see BUG-9422. There may be further news on this in due course, as Grumpity Linden (recently returned from maternity leave) will be looking at the issues.

Interest List Issues

[14:00] Some people are reporting what appear to be interest list issues (e.g. items not updating correcting in your in-world view when camming around, etc.) – see the likes of BUG-7084 for further details. However,commenting on this, Oz Linden said:

If there are issues with that, we need repros, because we haven’t got them. And we also need to be able to isolate whether the problem is that the various interest list messages are not being delivered properly, or whether the problem is that the assets aren’t being fetched properly, which is independent of that [the interest list messaging].

Any issues that look as if they might be interest list related must be tested and reported using the official viewer, and not with any TPV.

Avatar Shape Issues

[25:04] There have been reports of avatar shape issues and “corruptions” (e.g. BUG-9487). The Lab have acknowledged that they may have an internal issues of a similar nature (and BUG-9487 has also been triaged), however, if the issue is different, the matter will be imported for further investigation. One problem here is defining what is meant by a “corrupted” shape. The asset itself is unlikely to be be affected, which means it could either be the local copy of the asset being somehow modified, or an incorrect pointer has somehow been created – all of which needs clears steps to repro in order to investigate and ascertain.

Attachment Issues

[20:23] As noted above, project Big Bird (version 3.8.1.303130 at the time of writing) is thought to correct the majority of viewer-side attachment issues. However, this does not mean that all such issues are fixed; some might be server-side, etc., Both BUG-7761 and BUG-6925 refer to specific issues that have been reported.

An important thing to remember here – again – is that issues like this need to be tested and reported using the relevant Linden Lab viewer, not a third-party viewer.

This is not the Lab being awkward over matters or trying to avoid issues. It is simply because if an issue can be consistently reproduced on the Lab’s viewer points to it being directly related to their code; if a TPV is used – and with respect to all TPV coders – it is not always possible to determine if a problem is a result of code the Lab have supplied, or something a TPV may have done in modifying the code / viewer to suit the needs of their users. Obviously, if it is the latter, fixing the problem is outside of the Lab’s reach.

 Firestorm Update

[01:25 and 11:33] Firestorm are currently waiting on VMM and the attachments fixes (project Big Bird) to be merged into the Lab’s de facto release viewer, as these will allow them to push ahead with there own merges and testing in preparation for the next Firestorm release. However, given the Lab would prefer to promote a viewer to release status every other week (and allowing for Firestorm’s own testing), it could be around 6 weeks before Firestorm updates (although the team already have VMM, the attachment fixes and the maintenance RC updates staged ready for merging).