Category: SL User Group Meetings

SL projects update week 32 (2): server releases, SSA, Oculus Rift

Posted on by Inara Pey

Server Deployments Week 32

As always, please refer to the week’s forum deployment thread for news, updates and feedback.

Second Life Server (SLS Main) Channel

There was no update to the Main channel in week 32. This is primarily because the SSA project is not being further deployed during week 32, and BlueSteel was not updated in week 31 (other than to be brought up to a par with the Main channel), so there is nothing from the RC channels to promote to the Main channel.

Release Candidate Channels – Wednesday August 7th

Magnum and LeTigre remained SSA enabled, and without any further updates.

BlueSteel received a new server maintenance package comprising:

  • A new feature which will see regions block rezzing and entering during the final 60-seconds before a shutdown / restart (see notes below)
  • Code to help fix an exploit whereby a scripted object can surreptitiously obtain permissions from an unsuspecting avatar, allowing the object owner to later use the object against the avatar in s griefing attack (e.g. by tracking camera movements in a deform attack, and so on – see publicly viewable JIRA VWR-13228 and the notes below)
  • A fix for “llListen in linked objects is listening at root instead of linked object local position *after re-rezzing the linkset*.” (non-public JIRA BUG-3291)
  • Fixes for further simulator crash modes.

I covered the region restart capability and the code to help with the animation exploit in part 1 of this week’s report, and refer you to that if you need any more details.

Server Deployments Heads-up for Week 33

Details are still to be finalised, but at present it looks as there will be another light week of deployments in week 33 (week commencing Monday August 12th).

  • The server maintenance package currently on BlueSteel looks set to be promoted to the Main channel on Tuesday August 13th
  • There will likely be a new server maintenance package on BlueSteel, which Simon Linden describes as not having much exciting in it other than a “fix for a performance problem that can occur in very specific situations where you have to have neighbour regions, avatars over on those regions and such, but that will hopefully just be a silent improvement.”
  • SSA will most likely not be enabled elsewhere on the grid (see below).

SL Viewer Updates

The Materials project viewer received an update on Thursday August 8th with the release of version 3.6.2.27965 (download & release notes). Otherwise things remain pretty much as they were with part 1 of this report.

Server-side Appearance

There is unlikely to be any further SSA enabling in week 33 (week commencing Monday August 12th). This is because the baking servers themselves will be getting an update, and the Lab wants to see how that goes. Commenting on the update at the Server Beta meeting on Thursday August 8th, Simon Linden said it will be carried out “behind the scenes” with no actual downtime for the SSA service.

Oculus Rift

There has been considerable interest in the state-of-play with this project ever since Rod Humble indicated in an interview with Eric Johnson of All Things D that a viewer supporting the headset might be surfacing in “late summer”. Obviously, the retail version of the headset has yet to ship – and may still be a while before doing so – but the SDK kits are available at $300, and people are purchasing them, so it is not unreasonable to assume the Lab may well have a project viewer with Oculus Rift support available ahead of the consumer version of the product being launched.

Oculus Rift
Oculus Rift – artist’s impression

Commenting on the status of the current work with OR at the Lab during the Server Beta meeting, Simon Linden said:

I tried it out on the code in development and it’s pretty cool. It still needs work and there’s no estimates when it will go out, but we’ll have a project viewer at some point. It requires very careful building in SL, however, as it really needs high frame rate … We’re still getting the basics going … some simple things like a menu, UI buttons and clicking in-world are tough to get right in the Rift.

So it is still likely to be a while before any project viewer sees the light of day.

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SL projects update week 32 (1): Server, viewer

Posted on by Inara Pey

Server Deployments Week 32

As always, please refer to the week’s forum deployment thread for news, updates and feedback.

Second Life Server (SLS Main) Channel

There was no update to the Main channel on Tuesday August 6th. This is primarily because the SSA project is not being further deployed during week 32, and BlueSteel was not updated in week 31 (other than to be brought up to a par with the Main channel), so there is nothing from the RC channels to promote to the Main channel.

Release Candidate Channels – Wednesday August 7th

Magnum and LeTigre will remain SSA enabled, and apparently without any further updates.

Bluesteel should receive a new server maintenance package comprising:

  • A new feature which will see regions block rezzing and entering during the final 60-seconds before a shutdown / restart (see notes below)
  • Code to help fix an exploit whereby a scripted object can surreptitiously obtain permissions from an unsuspecting avatar, allowing the object owner to later use the object against the avatar in s griefing attack (e.g. by tracking camera movements in a deform attack, and so on – see publicly viewable JIRA VWR-13228 and the notes below)
  • A fix for “llListen in linked objects is listening at root instead of linked object local position *after re-rezzing the linkset*.” (non-public JIRA BUG-3291)
  • Fixes for further simulator crash modes.

Region Restart Blocks

Referring to the new feature allowing regions to block rezzing and entering during the last 60 seconds before a restart at the Simulator User Group meeting on Tuesday August 6th, Simon Linden said, “this is just trying to stop adding stuff to the region’s workload when it shuts down. Let’s say you TP into a region in the last second before it shuts down … you’re still going to be loading when it boots you out [and changes made to attachments could be lost after the resultant relog]. [It’s] the same possibly with rezzing an expensive no-copy item … it’s just not a good idea to start a complicated process right before shutdown. So those last 60 seconds are going to block entering and rezzing.”

In addition to the new blocks, Simon has also added the region name to the pop-up warnings which are displayed during the 5-minute countdown to a restart shutdown / restart.

Animation Griefing

The fix for scripted objects surreptitiously obtaining permissions from an unsuspecting avatar (per JIRA VWR-13228) will require a viewer-side update as well to be effective, which will utilise the Stop Animating Me function in the viewer.

Currently, Stop Animating Me is purely viewer-side. When activated, it will stop all animations running on your avatar within your view, with an update (ANIM_REQUEST_STOP) sent to the simulator which gets relayed to everyone in the same sim to tell their viewers to also stop animating you. The system isn’t perfect, but generally works.  However, it is important to note that no actual permissions are revoked by the process, allowing griefing objects such as Soul Seize to retain control over an avatar.

Under the new system, and once the viewer-side update is available in viewers, Stop Animating Me will send a message to the simulator so it revokes all animation permissions for all objects in the region (other than those worn by the avatar issuing the command, such as AO HUDs, etc.), with the result that they are no longer animating the avatar (legitimate objects can re-animate via an explicit request, as per normal).  While there were concerns expressed at the Simulator User Group meeting that a griefer may be able to work around the approach (although most workarounds appear to be somewhat labour-intensive), the new capability should be enough to stop griefing objects such as Soul Seize within a region from retaining control of an avatar.

Commenting on the viewer side of the fix, Simon Linden indicated that the viewer with the change is undergoing QA testing, but because of the number of updates it contains, it is unclear as to when it will make a public appearance.

Simulator UG meeting, August 6th
Simulator UG meeting, August 6th

SL Viewer Updates

The Vivox release candidate viewer was promoted to the de facto release viewer (version number 3.6.2.279258) on Monday August 5th, which can be obtained via the main viewer download page or will be offered as an automatic update to those using the previous release and who have updates enabled. The release notes summarise changes.

As a result of this, the Google Breakpad release candidate updated to version 3.6.2.279364, on August 5th (download / release notes) and the Maintenance Viewer RC updated to 3.6.2.279427 on August 6 (download & release notes).

In the meantime, the Cocoa viewer updates (Mac only) moved from a project viewer to a release candidate (3.6.2.278960, download & release notes) on August 6th, bringing the number of active RCs back up to five.

The latest CHUI updates (now in release candidate 3.6.2.279321, released on August 1st) still contain the issue of highlighted text in scripts  / notecards being deleted if somewhere else in the script editor / notecard is clicked, requiring a CTRL-Z to undo (see publicly viewable CHUIBUG-210 and the associated forum thread).

As a small aside, apparently the (or perhaps only one of the) meeting(s) to decide on the status of the current viewers and determine which (if any) is ready to go to release status is held around late morning SLT on Mondays.

Group Ban List

Baker Linden - old style (stock)
Baker Linden – old style (stock)

There has been some confusion over the group ban function, which lead Baker Linden to clarify that anyone banned from a group under the new capability will be automatically ejected as well (hence the ban), and will not be able to re-join the group until such time as the ban is lifted. Group owners will automatically be blocked from the ban function, to prevent them being accidentally banned by other group officers.

Baker has been considering who can actually be banned by a group member granted the ability to ban others.

His initial idea is to allow anyone given the authority to ban group members to be able to ban anyone else (other than the group owners), so one officer with the ability to ban people could ban another officer, for example. “My reasoning is that if you can’t trust an officer with banning, don’t let that person be an officer,” he explained.

Descibing the other option he was considering, he said, “The other route I can go is anyone with the ban ability can [only] ban anyone that doesn’t have that ability.”

This second option appeared to gain more support than the first, although Baker himself sees it as somewhat limiting, “But I don’t see the point in that,” he said, “Since we already have a problem with eject not being able to eject anyone belonging to any role other than ‘Everyone’ which seems pointless to me.”

Unfortunately, the meeting drew to a close before both options could be further explored, and so they may be a topic for further discussions at the next meeting. However, the idea of those with the ban ability only being able to ban those who don’t have the ability doesn’t actually seem to be as limiting as Baker suggests when citing the issue with group ejections (only those in the “Everyone” group can be ejected), so it will be interesting to see how much more discussion there is on this subject.

Andrew Linden: Interest List Work and Anti-Griefing Measures

Andrew Linden reports he has now all but finished his current work on interest list updates. While there is still no indication when the viewer-side changes might surface, he’s nevertheless freeing himself up to take a look at anti-Griefing measures. He’s already compiling a list of items he wants to look into, although his initial focus will be on general maintenance work to get him, as he puts it, “back in the groove”. One item in particular he’ll be looking at prior to delving more into anti-griefing measures is that of motion stops on region restarts.

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SL projects report week 31 (2): server and viewer

Posted on by Inara Pey

Server Deployments Week 31 (Week Commencing Monday July 29th)

As always, please refer to the week’s forum deployment thread for news, updates and feedback.

Second Life Server (SLS Main) Channel

On Tuesday July 30th, the SLS Main channel received the server maintenance package previously deployed to BlueSteel in week 30 and LeTigre in week 29. This project includes:

  • A further fix for the issue of pathfinding characters using CHARACTER_STAY_WITHIN_PARCEL getting stuck if they somehow exited their home parcel
  • Fixes for objects failing to detect collisions after teleporting (BUG-969) and run time permissions failing to function correctly on attachments (BUG-2931)
  • New capabilities added to the materials system to control how quickly the viewer can set or query normal and specular maps on objects. The current maximum is once a second and the new capability will be 4 a second. However there will need to be a viewer-side update to make use of the new capability, which should be available soon.  Commenting on the capability, Maestro Linden said, “the difference will probably be most noticeable if you’re doing something like rotating the normal map on an object with the spinner control (holding down the button) it should update more quickly to observers in that case.”

Release Candidate Channels – Wednesday July 31st

  • Magnum and LeTigre will remain SSA enabled and both received the updates deployed to the Main channel.
  • BlueSteel should have received a new server maintenance project. However, as noted in the update to part 1 of this report, a last-minute bug was found in the code which meant the deployment didn’t go ahead with the result that it is currently running the same release as the Main channel.

Viewer Updates

There have been a number of viewer release candidate updates for the end of the week:

  • The Google Breakpad RC was updated on Tuesday, July 30th (2.6.2.279026 – download and release notes)
  • The Snowstorm  contributions appeared in a release candidate on Wednesday, July 31st (3.6.2.279119 – download and release notes)
  •  The Vivox RC was updated on Wednesday, July 31st (3.6.2.279258 – download and release notes)
  • The CHUI updates became the latest viewer release candidate on Thursday, August 1st  (3.6.2.279321– download and release notes)

The appearance of the CHUI and Snowstorm RCs brings the total number of cohorts in the release channel up to five.

Animation Syncing Issues

Speaking at the Server Beta meeting on Thursday August 1st, Maestro Linden said that he and Alexa has been looking into the animation syncing issue I noted in part 1 of this report. Their findings pointed to an issue going back to 2012, whereby someone who is dancing in sync with others can cams such that all of the group is out of the field-of-view and then cams back, their own avatar will be out of sync with the rest. As such, Maestro felt the issue might be related to JIRA VWR-10578.

Some saw people go out-of-sync almost as soon as dance sequences started, and without moving their camera position (image courtesy of Whirly Fizzle)
Some saw people go out-of-sync almost as soon as dance sequences started, and without moving their camera position (image courtesy of Whirly Fizzle)

Following the meeting, a number of us participated in a “group dance test” to see what would happen, and the experiences varied somewhat, with some reporting issues consistent with the long-standing problem, others seeing avatars slip out of sync without and camera movement, and some reporting the avatars on the very edge of their field of view appearing to be dancing slower than the rest, and starting to slide out of sync. This lead to a lot of speculation as to the possible causes, and also as to how much settings such as avatar imposters or message throttling might be influencing the viewers play-through of animations.  Maestro did suggest some of the issues may be down to some sort of message sorting behaviour based on where the avatars are, relative to camera view. As it was, no definitive outcome was reached, so it is liable that investigations may continue.

Related Links

SL projects update week 31 (1): server releases, SSA, Interest List

Posted on by Inara Pey

Update, July 31st: further to the note below relating to the BlueSteel RC deployment, it appears the bug fix did not clear QA in time for the deployment to occur. Maestro Linden has updated the deployment thread to read: “BlueSteel’s planned project hit some last minute issues, so the update has been canceled for this week.  Instead, BlueSteel will not be rolled this week (it will match the version on the ‘Second Life Server’ channel).“

Server Deployments Week 31 (Week Commencing Monday July 29th)

As always, please refer to the week’s forum deployment thread for news, updates and feedback.

Second Life Server (SLS Main) Channel

On Tuesday July 30th, the SLS Main channel received the server maintenance package previously deployed to BlueSteel in week 30 and LeTigre in week 29. This project includes:

  • A further fix for the issue of pathfinding characters using CHARACTER_STAY_WITHIN_PARCEL getting stuck if they somehow exited their home parcel
  • Fixes for objects failing to detect collisions after teleporting (BUG-969) and run time permissions failing to function correctly on attachments (BUG-2931)
  • New capabilities to the materials system to better handle texture requests.

Release Candidate Channels – Wednesday July 31st

Magnum and LeTigre will remain SSA enabled and both receive the updates deployed to the Main channel.

BlueSteel should receive a new server maintenance project. However, a last-minute bug was found in the code. While this has been fixed by Kelly Linden, it has still to pass LL’s QA at the time of writing. Assuming the package passes QA and is deployed, it will include:

  • Fixes for some simulator crash modes
  • A fix for BUG-3291 (“llListen in linked objects is listening at root instead of linked object local position *after re-rezzing the linkset*.”)
  • A fix for BUG-3307 “(llApplyImpulse called from attachment does not work on avatar if script is reset or started when attached”).
The Simulator UG meeting, Tuesday July 30th.
Doyouthinkhesaurus – Baker Linden (far right), in his new avatar look, literally towers over the start of the Simulator UG meeting on Tuesday July 30th.

Server-side Appearance

As noted above and in part 2 of last week’s report, SSA will not be enabled on any additional server channels this week, but does remain enabled on LeTigre and Magnum as the Lab continue to gather statistics and monitor performance, etc. Commenting on the state-of play, Nyx Linden said, “Testing seems to be going well, but we’re being on the cautious side – making sure that the back-end can handle the load. There are a few reported bugs in JIRA, but *most* are minor and we’re working on the not-so-minor ones.”

Issues

I provided an update on some of the more serious issues the Lab has been addressing with SSA in part 2 of my week 30 report (see the link in the paragraph above). Since then I’ve been poked about additional advice the Firestorm team have put together for those experiencing issues, including SUN-98,and I’m providing the relevant information here.

Avatar textures remaining grey / SUN-98: is generally the result of wearing a corrupted clothing asset, and as such is “expected behaviour” in order to avoid cases of accidental nudity, as I explained last week. To help diagnose the problem, the Firestorm team suggest you:

  • Remove all clothing and allow the avatar to bake with just the skin layer worn. If it fails to bake properly, the skin is the corrupted asset and needs to be replaced
  • If the skin bakes correctly, start adding the clothing layers of the outfit one at a time and check each to see how it bakes
  • If an item shows-up fully or partially grey, that is the corrupted asset. Replacing it should allow everything to bake and render correctly.

The Firestorm article also includes some Firestorm-specific actions for problems, and is a work-in-progress, so you can refer to it via the link above for further advice.

Continue reading “SL projects update week 31 (1): server releases, SSA, Interest List” →

SL projects update week 30 (2): Upcoming server & viewer releases, SSA, HTTP

Posted on by Inara Pey

Server Deployments Week 31 (Week Commencing Monday July 29th)

As always, please refer to the week’s forum deployment thread for news, updates and feedback.

Second Life Server (SLS Main) Channel

On Tuesday July 30th, the SLS Main channel should receive the server maintenance package previously deployed to BlueSteel in week 30. This project fixes some miscellaneous bugs, and also allows viewers to send requests for materials data more rapidly.

On Wednesday July 31st, the three main Release Candidate channels should be updated as follows:

  • BlueSteel should receive a new server maintenance project.  This project fixes some bugs related to LSL scripts in child prims of linksets, and also addresses some server crash modes
  • Magnum and LeTigre remain SSA enabled and both receive the updates deployed to the Main channel.

Server-side Appearance

As noted in the planned deployment summary above, it is currently not anticipated that SSA will be enabled on any additional channels in week 31.

Overall, the Lab think the initial phase of deployment is going well, and recognise the considerable contribution made by TPVs in enabling this to happen. A rough approximation from viewer statistics suggests that around three-quarters of users logging-in to SL are using viewers which are SSA-enabled, and that the overall figure may be higher.

A chart compiled by Kadah Koba showing the percentages of SSA-enabled and non-SSA viewer in use (excluding Firestorm 4.4.0)
A chart compiled by Kadah Coba showing the percentages of SSA-enabled and non-SSA viewer in use (excluding Firestorm 4.4.0)

Commenting on the state of play for the project during the TPV Developer meeting on Friday July 26th, Nyx Linden said:

The system is working pretty much as we expected … and even the scaling of how much load is being generated is pretty much right on par with what we’re expecting. But we want to make sure that a few other things are returning the right things and we’re getting the right statistics that we want before we roll it out to the [entire] grid. We’re trying to be extra-cautious.

Viewer-side Updates

In terms of viewer-side updates, the plan is to try to have one major post-SSA enabling release which should include the planned inventory updates noted in the first part of this report along with any additional viewer-side code tweaks to the viewer arising from SSA being enabled, and a final code clean-up to remove the “old” baking code.

However, this does depend on enabling SSA on the rest of the grid. If there is yet cause to delay this (due to an unexpected issue arising, for example), and the delay continues for a significant amount of time, then it is possible that there will be two viewer releases: one with the currently planned updates and one with the post-deployment code clean-up.

Either way, to assist TPVs prepare for the viewer-side update(s), Nyx plans to periodically push code from the Lab’s private repositories to their public repositories as and when code is in a suitable condition to be pushed.

Issues Update

SUN-98 (Bake fail resulting from partially broken alpha layer): this is thought to be the result of wearing a corrupted clothing layer, and if so is considered to be expected behaviour in order to avoid cases of “accidental nudity” (which might arise from wearing a corrupted clothing later, which the SSA system would ignore and just bake whatever was underneath it  – such as the avatar’s skin). However the matter is still being looked into in case the problem has another cause.

Nyx acknowledged that even if the problem is due to expected behaviour, it would be useful  “at some point in the future” to add some UI elements to actually show the user which clothing asset they’re wearing that is causing the problem. What form these UI elements / warning will take remains to be decided.

SUN-99 (Bakefail on SSA regions only. When entering into SSA region, skin and system clothes fail to bake): this issue only affects a very small number of users and appears to be related to them having multiple copies of the Current Outfit Folder (COF) in their inventories, probably as a result of having moved it  within their inventory (i.e. into another folder) at some point prior to the Lab introducing restrictions to prevent the COF being moved or deleted.

To prevent this happening in the future, the Lab is implementing further back-end restrictions and other improvements on the COF, and Nyx has e-mailed all TPVs with notes on how the COF should be implemented within the viewer in order to comply with these restrictions.

In the meantime it was mentioned at the Server Beta meeting on Thursday July 25th that LL’s support team can now assist users who find they are suffering from this particular issue.

Viewer Updates

Release Candidates

As noted in part one of this report, there are now three RC viewers in the viewer release channel (Beta Maintenance, Google Breakapad and Vivox). All three are performing well, although no decision has been made as to which will be going to release status first.

Beyond these, the Lab is looking at a number of further release candidate cohorts, including the Cocoa updates for the Mac version of the viewer, a series of open-source contributions to the viewer, and a further series of CHUI updates.

Commenting on the current situation with viewer updates at the TPV Developer meeting, Oz Linden said, ” It’s going to be some time before we get to the point where we’ve got the number of simultaneous things happening down to a reasonable number; lots of stuffing was sitting around waiting for the opportunity to get out, and it’s all coming at once now!”

Continue reading “SL projects update week 30 (2): Upcoming server & viewer releases, SSA, HTTP” →

SL projects update week 30 (1): server releases, viewer, SSB/A

Posted on by Inara Pey

Server Deployments – Week 30

As always, please refer to the week’s forum deployment thread for news, updates and feedback.

Second Life Server (SLS Main) Channel

On Tuesday 23rd July, the SLS Main channel received the server maintenance package previously deployed to BlueSteel. This comprised a further package of under-the-hood changes related to the experience tools.

Release Candidate Channels

On Wednesday July 24th, the three main Release Candidate channels should receive the following updates:

  • BlueSteel should receive the same server maintenance project that was on LeTigre in week 29, and which additionally includes the experience tools updates deployed to the Main channel
  • Magnum and LeTigre should both see Server-side baking / appearance (SSB/A) enabled, and should both receive the experience tools updates deployed to the Main channel.

Viewer Updates and Release Process

The second release candidate viewer was made available on Friday July 19th. Version 3.6.2.278609 comprises the long-awaited Vivox updates. This was followed on Monday July 22nd by the third release candidate, version 3.6.2.278615, which contains Google Breakpad updates.

Commenting on the first two release candidates to be deployed (the Beta Maintenance RC and the Vivox RC), Oz Linden said at the Open-source Dev meeting on Monday July 22nd that, “they each got as many users as we asked for, and we’re getting good data on them.” However, this doesn’t mean that either one will is likely to become the de facto release viewer yet, as Oz went on to note, “we configured both of these for a relatively small number of users just in case… we might want to raise it before we make a release decision.” Given that the Google Breakpad RC has been added to the mix, any decision on which get promoted to release status may well be held over even longer as numbers are crunched.

Release candidates are now also listed on the Official Alternate Viewer wiki page, where they can be downloaded manually. In light of this, I’ve updated my overview of the new viewer release process to include notes on manually downloading and installing release candidate viewers.

Server-side Baking / Appearance

As noted above, following the RC channel restarts due on Wednesday July 24th, both Magnum and LeTigre should be running with SSB/A enabled. Overall, the response to SSB/A deployment both on LeTigre (week 28) and Magnum (week 29) has been good, with few issues being reported.

Of those which have, some may be tied to the way in which some TPVs have implemented the Current Outfit Folder (COF). To help determine whether this is the case, Nyx Linden issued an e-mail on Monday July 22nd, outlining how the Lab anticipates the COF should be set-up within a viewer, and has asked all TPVs to verify that they’ve met the requirements.

More on COF Mismatch Issues

In week 29, I referred to the issue of COF Mismatch Issues. These tend to occur when your viewer and the baking service disagree on the COF version number on which your appearance should be based, resulting in “COF version mismatch” errors appearing in the viewer. Part of the problem is due to the inventory protocol relying on both HTTP and UDP messages, some of which have failure callbacks and some which the viewer may wrongly assumes completes successfully – and the “COF version mismatch” results.

To eliminate this, the Lab is working to update the Agent Inventory Services (AIS), which will see the most error-prone operations related to the COF converted to use AIS rather than UDP. The hope is that this work will both remove the most prominent causes of COF mismatch errors and reduce the number of network calls needed to update the COF. This work has been ongoing for a while, and will form part of the next phase of SSB/A work once the current deployment has seen SSB/A go grid-wide. These updates will involve further viewer-side updates, and include a range of additional improvements, although as yet there is no time scale for their release (particularly as the Lab is only just starting discussing them with TPVs).

Group Ban List

There is not a lot to report here. Baker Linden is still working on the viewer-side code. Giving a brief update at the Simulator User Group meeting, he said, “I’m currently deciding on the format of the data coming into the viewer, and adding it to the group manager subsystem in the viewer. That’s about it :).”

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