Category: SL User Group Meetings

Sommergewitter September 2015 – blog post

The following notes are primarily taken from the TPV Developer (TPVD) meeting held on Friday, September 11th, 2015. 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 37

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

• The Main (SLS) channel did not have any deployment / restart during the week, largely due to the fact the one deployment in week #36 was to a single channel (BlueSteel), which was rolled-back on Thursday, September 3rd
• The three RC channels all received a new server maintenance project, comprising internal simulator fixes.

Upcoming LSL: llGetAttachedList()

The Week #38 (week commencing Monday, September 14th should have a new LSL function rolling to at least one RC channel.

llGetAttachedList() is a new function that will return a list of root keys of all visible attachments worn by an agent except for HUDs. Originally a feature request (see BUG-9683), which also lists a number of potential benefits of such a function. The wiki page for the function is still in preparation,but the function itself can be tested on the Aditi (beta grid) region of Tehama. Note that it will only work when invoked for a target within the same region. I’ll have more on this should the function make it into an RC deployment in the coming week.

SL Viewer Updates

Mesh Importer

[01:50] The Mesh importer viewer continues in RC status as the Lab continues to fix problems either found internally or by those making use of the RC viewer, although Oz notes the problems are gradually becoming less severe in nature. However, it’s still not quite ready to be promoted to the de facto viewer.

Notifications Viewer

[02:39] The notifications viewer has been getting a “lot of exercise” as a project viewer, and looks set to move to release candidate status in the near future.

Quick Graphics Viewer

[03:11] The Quick Graphics project viewer, which presents the new Avatar Complexity capability and the ability to save and re-load graphics settings more-or-less on the fly,  updated to version 3.8.4.304916 on Thursday, September 10th. There are still some further adjustments being made to the viewer, but it should progress to RC status some time in the next two weeks or so.

[46:13] One of the changes which may be made to the Avatar complexity aspect of the viewer is a further toning-down of the colour intensity of avatars rendered as “Jelly Babies”. Also, the values on the Complexity slider my be further adjusted to assist those with low-end systems.

[50:20] Some have expressed an opinion that having an “infinite” upper limit to Avatar Complexity is counter-productive, as it does little to discourage people from having complex avatars which can tax other systems. In reply to this, Oz Linden said:

I really want to emphasise this, and I hope people understand it. we’re not trying to create a standard for what is “good”. what we’re trying to do is inform people about what effect they’re having and to control the impact other people have on them,  and then let things sort themselves out.

[54:28] Also with reference to this viewer, the Advanced Graphics floater has been updated to a 2-column format in response to concerns that the earlier, large single-column floater could not be easily displayed on some laptops / lower resolution monitors.

I’ll be taking a further look at Avatar Complexity once the viewer reaches RC status.

Project Azumarill

[06:25] Project Azumarill is the name of the Lab’s new project viewer, version 3.8.4.304871, which offers a complete replacement of the under the hood HTTP infrastructure, and which impacts all aspects of the viewer using simulator capabilities.

This is essentially building on Monty Linden’s HTTP work, which was applied to the most critical paths within simulator / viewer communications, and sees Rider Linden apply the changes through the viewer, and so includes, but is not limited to the following:

• Asset upload (Images, Meshes, Animations)
• AISv3 inventory manipulation
• Viewer Managed Marketplace
• Simhost event polling
• LSL script compilation
• Experience management (blocking, allowing, creating).

Currently, the new code is sitting in the viewer alongside older code, although the latter will be removed prior to the viewer being promoted to the de facto release viewer. While a significant update, it is anticipated that the viewer will progress rapidly through the release process, as functionally, there isn’t that much which can be said to be new for people to play with. As such, it will hopefully go through a total of two project viewer iterations prior to becoming a release candidate, then move fairly quickly from RC to release.

Continue reading “SL project updates 37/2: TPV developer meeting and more” →

The following notes are primarily taken from the TPV Developer (TPVD) meeting held on Friday, August 21st, 2015. 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 – Recap

There was a single server maintenance package deployed during the week, which was delivered to the BlueSteel RC on Wednesday, August 19th. This was intended to provide fixes for  items and folders getting mixed up. however, this was subsequently rolled back on Thursday, August 20th.

Viewer Updates

Project Quick Graphics

On Friday, August 21st, the long-awaited Avatar Complexity / graphics presets viewer arrived in project viewer form. Version 3.8.4.304433 is being referred to as “Project Quick Graphics”. I provided an initial look at this viewer in pre-release, but I now have an updated overview available.

As noted in that report, the Avatar Complexity default you get is based on the rendering performance of your system. however, this might be adjusted by the Lab during the time the viewer is available at a project status.

Other Viewers

[02:00] An update to the Oculus Rift viewer is still anticipated, although this has tended to be pre-empted by other things, and may be again.

There have been no other viewer updates since the promotion of the Maintenance viewer on Tuesday, August 18th, as reported in part 1 of this update.

[23:35] The will, at some point be an experimental viewer build, which should lead to a project viewer in the future, using the FMod Studio for audio.

HTTP Work

[08;00] Rider Linden has been engaged in further HTTP work, specifically aimed at the viewer with the intent of reducing the paradigms for how HTTP should be used within the viewer from 4 to a single, consistent approach. He has most recently been engaged in aligning recent HTTP updates made to the viewer with his own work.

[19:36] The Lab is still looking for move more asset types from delivery using UDP via the simulator to delivery using HTTP via the CDN, but this is pending the completion of Rider’s HTTP work. Overall, the view is that there is no reason why any asset that goes to the viewer should be cached and delivered via the CDN.

Inventory Improvements

[10:48] The lab is continuing to investigate causes of inventory issues with the intention of reducing them. In particular, they are considering server-side enforcement  on how inventory should be organised.

The idea is not to prevent how people organise their inventories, but rather to ensure things that simply should not happen under normal use, but which have been shown to lead to inventory losses when they do occur, are no longer possible. Examples of this include a user’s inventory gaining more than one Trash folder, or the system allowing folders to be created without an associated system ID, and so on. The most effective way of achieving this is through server-side rules enforcement.

While the Lab is not ready to start implementing such changes as yet – they are still investigating, as noted – these changes are part of an overall goal to migrate all inventory operations over to AIS (Advanced Inventory System) and then to deprecate older inventory code – all of which will involve changes to the viewer. This means that as this work progresses, viewers not supporting the AIS v3 code will no longer be able to perform inventory operations.

Server-side Validation

[16:40] Commenting on issue of validation of uploads in general, Oz Linden said:

I would like to add validation for more things that get uploaded [but] of course there’s always the backward compatibility problem, people complaining that once upon a time I could upload this, and now I can’t…

However, he went on to say that there is a case for not limiting validation of uploads purely to the viewer, as is currently the case:

There’s nothing wrong with also checking in the viewer, but if it’s not the model we expect to be true of the world, there should be validation on the server because we have a lot of third-party viewers … So we really can’t count on the viewer to get it right, there are too many of them. And if nothing else, some things that can cause crashes that might be deliberately put into viewers … that might cause crashes in other people’s’ viewers, and that’s not good. So we have to try to protect against that.

The best place to put that protection, if we can do it, is to put it one the server-side, if we can do it. So there are lots of things that, over time, we may add checking of things, as they are uploaded, on the server, and we may reject uploaded things, and we may reject uploaded things that are inappropriate.

How quickly we will be able to do that will probably vary with what the upload type is and what time we have between doing dazzling new features; but if we find something related to some dazzling new feature we can add some checks to, we might do that.

Continue reading “Second Life projects update: 34/2: TPV Developer meeting” →