Category: SL User Group Meetings

SL project updates week 39/2: server releases, viewer, misc

Posted on by Inara Pey

The Trace, April 2014 by Inara Pey, on FlickrThe Trace, April 2014 (Flickr) – blog post

Server Deployments Week 39 – Recap

As always, please refer to the forum discussion thread for the latest updates and information.

  • There was no scheduled deployment to the Main (SLS) channel this week.
  • On Wednesday 24th September, all three RC channel received a further update to the Experience Tool maintenance release deployed in week 38, which includes:
    • llGetExperienceDetails(), now includes group_id in return list. In addition,
    •  llUpdateKeyValue() now correctly creates a key if it did not previously exist
    • Objects using experience permissions and llAttachToAvatar() are no longer automatically detached when leaving an area where the Experience is allowed.

SL Viewer

The promised viewer using the new GPU benchmark system appeared as a project viewer on Thursday September 25th. Version 3.7.17.294710, includes MAINT-3131, which is simply described as “Death to the GPU Table”, which pretty much sums the viewer up!

Rather than using the GPU table as a means of determining default graphics level for a graphics card, the viewer measures the memory bandwidth of the card, and sets the default based on that (plus a couple of other parameters. The release notes add, “Initial settings on shiny powerful hardware should now let that hardware shine. Initial settings on low-end machines should not degrade performance from current experience.”

CDN and Regions

The Snack RC is currently being used for CDN testing on Agni. As noted in my week 38 updates, Denby, Hippo Hollow, Hippotropolis and Testsylvania Sandbox were initially placed on the RC, and they have since been joined by Brasil Rio, Brocade, Fluffy, Freedom City, Rocket City and Whippersnapper.

Group Ban Trivia

OK, so not exactly an update, but Baker Linden indicates that some 4500 group bans have occurred since the arrival of the group ban list functionality in the official viewer (and a number of TPVs). Will be interesting to hear how that number increases once Firestorm includes the capability.

 

SL project updates: week 39/1: server, viewer, iCloud and other issues

Posted on by Inara Pey

Matoluta Sanctuary and Bay; Inara Pey, September 2014, on FlickrSunrise, Matoluta Sanctuary and Bay (Flickr) – blog post

The following notes were taken from the Open Source Dev meeting on Monday 22nd September 22nd, and the Simulator User Group meeting on Tuesday 23rd September.

Server Deployments Week 39

As always, please refer to the forum discussion thread for the latest updates and information.

  • There will be no scheduled deployment to the Main (SLS) channel this week.
  • On Wednesday 24th September, all three RC channel should receive a further update to the Experience Tool maintenance release deployed in week 38, which includes a fix for an issue with llGetExperienceDetails().

SL Viewer

The most recent Maintenance release viewer, version 3.7.16.294015, was promoted to the de facto release viewer on Monday 22nd September. This viewer includes fixes for inventory and outfit management; appearance editing; group & group ban management; camera controls; multi-grid support for favourites; notifications management; stability, bug and crash fixes – see the release notes for further information.

On Friday September 19th, the New Log-in Screen RC viewer reached release candidate status when 3.7.16.294345 arrvied in the release channel. This viewer brings a simple and clean login screen for new users, and a corresponding update for returning users. (download and release notes, my overview).

GPU Table Retirement

An ongoing project at the Lab is to remove the need for the GPU table within the viewer. This is currently used to set the default graphics level for a user’s graphics card, and requires constant checking and update as new GPUs and cards are produced. Recent work has seen the GPU table massively updated, with the Lab working towards an alternative strategy of determining the capabilities of a graphics system.  This is primarily done by  measuring the memory bandwidth of a card and setting the default based on that (plus a couple of other parameters.

A viewer utilising this approach is currently with LL’s QA team and should be making an appearance soon. This strategy has already shown sufficient promise that new GPUs are no longer being added to the GPU table in preparation for it to be phased out.

Other Items

iCloud Conflict

A recent update to Apple’s iCloud service aimed at users of windows system using the service has had an unexpected impact on various aspects of the SL including killing mesh uploads, snapshots (saving to inventory fails with “Error encoding snapshot”) and textures (upload fail with “Couldn’t convert the image to jpeg2000”), and UI elements can turn completely black.

Full details of the issue can be found on BUG-7343,  and the problems have been particularly noted in both the official viewer and Firestorm, and Catznip. investigations are underway by both the Lab and the Firestorm team, and one line of thinking is that it might be some DLL injection poisoning issue.

The iCloud update, which was apparently deployed over the weekend of the 20th /21st September has, at the time of writing, yet to be deployed for Mac systems. There is some speculation that it may not result in similar issues for Mac users due to the way iCloud is implemented for each OS. One potential work-around is to roll-back to an earlier version of the service’s client, making sure that any auto-update option is disabled.

Group Tags

We’re probably all aware how changing group tags can often be a cure-all for a number of problems, even when logically it should be the case. One possible explanation as to why this is the case is that changing your group tag may trigger a full update of your avatar.

However, possibly as a result of interest list changes, there is now one situation where changing your group tag is not a good idea – and that is when a scene is still loading, as doing so can cause the scene load to fail, and the only means of resuming it is to relog – see BUG-6299. So, if you arrive in a location that sends you a request to join a group you’d like to join, wait a couple of minutes in order to give the scene the chance to fully load before you do so.

This issue is known to the Lab, but a fix has yet to be determined.

llSetlinkAlpha Update Issue

This is an issue that is getting a little long in the tooth – see BUG-1786 – which sees llSetLinkAlpha failing to correctly update a percentage of prims when a large(ish) number are updated simultaneously. Weapons users are liable to be familiar with this, as it can occur in “holstering”  or “slinging” a weapon which should cause the “held” version of the weapon to turn transparent and the “slung” / “holstered” version rendered, but often results in elements of the “held” version of the weapon remaining visible.

This issue appears to be related to UDP packets being lost between the server and the viewer, with Simon Linden commenting, “I remember digging into this and it seemed like lost packets.  It’s really hard to predict when they’ll get lost, but it seems it’s not slowing down updates quite right when there’s a sudden flood.” He promised to pass the issue with LL’s product team, but wasn’t optimistic it might move higher up the “fix” chain due to the current volume of work.

SL project updates week 38/2: server, CDN, AR category changes

Posted on by Inara Pey

~Santaurio~, April 2014 ~Santaurio~, April 2014 (Flickr) – blog post

Server Deployments Week 38 – Recap

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

  • On Tuesday September 16th, the Main (SLS) channel received the server maintenance package previously deployed to the three RC channels, which includes crash fixes and a fix for a bug that prevented some people from leaving Skill Gaming regions – notably Linden staff who entered a region using their admin powers …
  • On Wednesday September 17th, the three RC channels each received a new server maintenance package, which includes some bug fixes, and tweaks some behaviours related to experience tools.

CDN News

CDN support has been deployed to a small number of regions on the main grid. Maestro Linden indicated these were four Linden-owned regions. These are Hippotropolis, Hippo Hollow and Denby (where the Simulator User Group meetings are held), and the Testylvania sandbox (which isn’t open to public access).

Further regions will be updated to use the CDN service going forward, and the Lab had created an e-mail address region owners can apply to have their region(s) added to the test channel for the CDN: cdn-test@lindenlab.com. Note that regions should be those with a relatively high texture / mesh count, and space is “very limited” at this time (the total for the initial testing appears to be set at around 30 regions).

In addition, the map tile fetching for the main grid is now entirely carried out via the CDN, so map tiles should load a lot faster for people now.

World Map tiles are now served via the CDN
World Map tiles are now served via the CDN

Abuse Report Category Changes

The categories used to define Abuse Reports were recently revised in the official viewer.

The old (l) and new (r) AR categories
The old (l) and new (r) AR categories

This has led to some discussion on the forums and not a little speculation elsewhere as what it means for the AR system, with some people speculating that because some categories are no longer explicitly listed, there are therefore now “allowed”.

While views such as this might be debated until such time as the Lab issues commentary on the changes, the one thing that is clear at the moment is that they do put the AR floater somewhat out-of-synch with its official Knowledge Base article given the “Other” category has been removed. This has been noted and the Knowledge Base article is liable to be updated.

The changes also put some TPVs out-of-sequence with the revised categories until such time as they update. However, this hopefully will not negatively impact ARs filed via viewers using the older category options.

Related Links

SL projects updates 38/1: server, group chat, CDN

Posted on by Inara Pey

The Colder Water, Daydreams; Inara Pey, August 2014, on FlickrThe Colder Water, Daydreams, (Flickr) – blog post

Server Deployments

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

  • On Tuesday September 16th, the Main (SLS) channel received the server maintenance package previously deployed to the three RC channels, which includes crash fixes and a fix for a bug that prevented some people from leaving Skill Gaming regions – notably Linden staff who entered a region using their admin powers …
  • On Wednesday September 17th, the three RC channels should each receive a new server maintenance package, which includes some bug fixes, and tweaks some behaviours related to experience tools.

CDN Micro Channel Deployment

The CDN micro channel deployment is due this week. As noted in mt last TPV meeting report, this will see a small number of regions updated to use the CDN test configuration for texture and mesh fetching, bypassing the simulator entirely. No viewer-side update is required for this (that will come in the future), so the benefits should be felt by anyone entering those regions (assuming the region is already cached by their local CDN node).

There currently isn’t a list of regions which will be included in the micro channel, although it has been suggested that the Lab consider including the Home and Garden Expo and the Kustom 9 event regions are included, as these all have considerable mesh and texture use. Two regions that will be included in the micro channel are Hippotropolis and Hippo Hollow.  The latter can be a reasonable text of texture downloads, as it has a wide variety of items sitting on it.

Group Chat

While Izzy Linden had reported something of a drop in the number of reports of requests for the back-end chat servers to be restarted at the end of week 37, reports continued through the weekend and the start of this week. The changes aimed at fixing the problem (essentially a network issue which causes the chat server to run out of ports) has been delayed, but commenting at the Simulator User Group meeting on Tuesday September 16th, Simon Linden said he hopes to see them deployed soon.

There is also a further update aimed at improving group chat performance that is also in the pipeline, the result of recent testing on Aditi; Simon Linden has “high hopes” for these changes once deployed.

Other Items

The Simulator User Group meeting on Tuesday September 16th saw renewed discussion on a number of subjects which have been previously raised, such as improvements to scripted sounds / sound functionality (see my January 2014 and November 2013 updates) and the environment improvements project. While no conclusions were drawn on specific improvements to the sound functionality (it doesn’t appear to be on the current roadmap), Oz Linden did confirm the environment improvements are still on the roadmap, but are not currently being worked on.  It’s not clear whether the SL roadmap will be made public, although it was indicated this might be the case when it was first raised a couple of months ago.

SL Project updates week 37/3: TPV Developer meeting

Posted on by Inara Pey

The following notes are drawn from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday September 12th, and shown in the video above. Time stamps, where relevant, have been included for ease of reference to the video. Note that items are listed according to subject matter, rather than chronologically, so time stamps may appear out-of-sequence in places. My thanks as always to North for the recording.

Viewer Updates

[00:00] The Maintenance RC was updated on Friday September 12th with the release of version 3.7.16.294015.  This viewer includes a range of updates and fixes as specified in the release notes.

The Oculus Rift project viewer, with the first round of updates for the Oculus DK2 has been through LL’s QA process, and is currently undergoing further refinement as a result. There is no ETA on when it might appear other than “soon”; however, it is anticipated it will continue to support DK1 as far as possible, as well as supporting DK2.

As noted in part 2 of this report the  Experience Keys project viewer was updated to version 3.7.16.293901. and it appears further updates may be on the way.

Experimental Log-in Viewer

[21:20] For the last several weeks, the Lab has been running some A/B tests with new users using a viewer with a revised log-in screen alongside of the familiar log-in screen (see version 3.7.14.292660).

The log-in screen displayed by the experimental viewer the *first time* a new user runs the viewer ready to log-in to SL
The log-in screen displayed by the experimental viewer the *first time* a new user runs the viewer

Commenting on this testing, Grumpity ProductEngine Linden said:

We’ve found that there are some changes we can make that increase retention by a fairly sizeable number of thee to five percent. So we’re going to be putting forward some changes to the newbie log-in screen and then the subsequent returning user log-in screen. They’re going to be gradual, and sometimes not as beautiful as we might like all at once; however, you can be assured that they’ve all been tested and that they perform better.

The log-in / splash screen in the experimental viewer that is seen by user who have previously logged-in to SL
The log-in / splash screen in the experimental viewer that is seen by user who have previously logged-in to SL

This means that there will be an RC viewer appearing in week 38 which will have updates based upon the results from this testing incorporated into it. These changes should not affect any of the widgets  / embedded features within the log-in screen used by TPVs.

Continue reading “SL Project updates week 37/3: TPV Developer meeting” →

SL project updates week 37/2: miscellaneous items

Posted on by Inara Pey

Server Deployments, Week 37 Re-cap

  • There was no deployment to the Main (SLS) channel on Tuesday September 9th, largely as a result of there having been no RC deployments in week 36.
  • On Wednesday September 10th, the RC channels all received the same server maintenance project, which includes crash fixes and a fix for a bug that prevented some people from leaving Skill Gaming regions – notably Linden staff who entered a region using their admin powers …

SL Viewer

The Experience Keys projects viewer got its long-awaited update on Wednesday September 10th, with the release of version 3.7.16.293901. The viewer remains at a project viewer status, but now has parity with the current release viewer.

Group Chat

There is no major news here; as noted in part one of the week’s report, the Lab are still working on adjustments to the group chat code, but according the Maestro Linden, there isn’t anything as yet ready for further testing on Aditi – although the implication seemed to be that there may well be in the near future, as the comment on the work was made in terms of “upcoming stuff”.

In the meantime, people have been reporting further increases in group chat issues, prompting questions on whether increasing the number of servers used in support of the chat service might help. However, when this idea was last discussed, it was indicated that increasing the amount of available hardware isn’t considered to be a suitable solution at the moment, as it is the exponential manner in which ancillary messages (status updates, etc.) flood the service is seen to be the issue; something which just the provision of new hardware may not resolve / ease. As such, bringing the volume of the messages under better control is seen as key step in improving the service.

Other Items

Gesture and Object Sounds Parcel Restrictions

During the Server Beta meeting the subject of restricting sounds between parcels came up, with a request for a parcel setting to restrict sounds from other parcels being heard within a parcel. Currently, there is an option to restrict sounds from objects and gestures played within a parcel to that parcel, this can be found under About Land > Sound.

The option to restrict sounds from gestures and objects to a parcel will also block the same sounds originating from other parcels
The option to restrict sounds from gestures and objects to a parcel will also block the same sounds originating from other parcels from being heard within the parcel where set

The question led to an experiment with this option, which revealed, to the surprise of several at the meeting (myself included), that the setting is actually bi-directional: enabling it not only restricts sounds from objects and gestures being heard outside of a parcel, it blocks such sounds played from other parcels from being heard within the parcel as well. In some respects, that the options is bi-directional shouldn’t really have been a surprise; the other parcel options of a similar nature – restricting voice, restricting avatar visibility and chat, for example, are bi-directional, so why not gestures and sounds?

The option may not be perfect; looped sounds, for example, may not be restricted, and during a short test at the meeting,  some indicated they could still hear a sound generated on one parcel when moving from it to a parcel with the gesture and objects sounds restriction set, prompting Maestro Linden to muse if the restriction was enforced server-side or in the viewer. However, if you are troubled by sounds from a neighbouring or nearby parcel, it might be worth trying the option if you haven’t already.