Category: SL User Group Meetings

SL projects update 24 (3): New object return LSL capabilities

Posted on by Inara Pey

Update June 12th, 22:40 BST/14:40 SLT: The BlueSteel  / LeTigre deployment which includes these capabilities has been rolled back due to an issue whereby objects cannot be rezzed in BlueSteel / LeTigre parcels which disallow object entry (even if Create Objects is enabled) – BUG-2850. Both regions are now running the week 24 Magnum deployment.

In week 23, Kelly Linden announced new LSL capabilities for the scripted return of objects within a region / parcel.  In making the announcement, he indicated the capabilities would be available “some time in the future”, a comment which appears to have been a little overly cautious, as the new functionality received its first outing on the Main channel in the RC deployments to BlueSteel and Le Tigre on Wednesday June 12th.

The new object return functions are llReturnObjectsByOwner and llReturnObjectsByID, and are designed to be used to enable the automated return of specified linksets to their owners.

The object containing scripts using the functions can either be placed in the land, or worn as an attachment but will only work on land held by the object owner.

The primary aim of these functions is to make for easier clearing of private sandboxes and rental parcels in cases where previous users / tenants may have left objects behind on leaving (thus removing the onus on the land owner to locate and manually return items).  They are not intended as anti-griefing tools, nor are they a “replacement” for the parcel / region auto-return functions.

The Functions

The functions are defined within the BlueSteel and LeTigre release notes as follows:

Additional Notes and Q&A On Capabilities / Limitations

There are also some additional notes which go with the new functions:

  • There are no cases where one of these new LSL calls would return an object that you could not manually return yourself
  • The functions will only work on objects in the same region/parcel as the object containing the script using them. Objects which are returned are coalesced in the recipient’s inventory, rather than being returned as individual objects
  • The functions work if and only if the user would have permission to return the object via the viewer, and it does not handle encroachment
  • To prevent severely damaging accidents the mass returns by owner (llReturnObjectsByOwner) will not work for your own items, items owned by an estate owner or manager or items that are owned by the group the land is ‘set’ to
  • llReturnObjectsByID will not return objects owned by the parcel owner
  • In order to work on group-owned land the object containing the script using the functions must be deeded to the group by the group owner
  • The return capabilities are throttled to a maximum hourly quota based on a parcel’s Land Capacity (under About Land > Object). So, if your Land Capacity is 500, then using these LSL functions you can return up to 500 linksets per hour
    • The throttle is there primarily to prevent a silent war between a rezzer and returner that could impact the back-end servers
    • Even with the throttling, it is anticipated that the functions should be able to return everything on your land within a region in one go, but not necessarily more than once an hour for large-scale returns.

Continue reading “SL projects update 24 (3): New object return LSL capabilities” →

SL projects update week 24 (2): server news

Posted on by Inara Pey

Update June 12th, 22:40 BST/14:40 SLT: The BlueSteel  / LeTigre deployment which includes these capabilities has been rolled back due to an issue whereby objects cannot be rezzed in BlueSteel / LeTigre parcels which disallow object entry (even if Create Objects is enabled) – BUG-2850. Both regions are now running the week 24 Magnum deployment.

Server Deploys for Week 24

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

Second Life Server (Main) Channel

On Tuesday June 11th, the SLS channel received getting the server maintenance project that was on BlueSteel and LeTigre in week 23. This is intended to fix a simulator crash mode, and address a disconnection issue whereby multiple avatars would be disconnected from a simulator simultaneously, giving the impression the region had crashed when it had in fact not done so, and which also impacted LSL HTTP-in URLs.

Following the deployment, there was a report that the disconnection issue fix had not fully addressed the problem of LSL HTTP-in URLs being dropped, which was also raised at the Simulator User Group meeting on Tuesday June 11th. The matter has been acknowledged by Kelly and Maestro Linden, who are currently awaiting further information on the problem, although Simon Linden also commented, “I realize a bug Kelly and I were talking about earlier today is that issue, so someone is on it.”

Simulator UG meeting (stock)
Simulator UG meeting (stock)

BlueSteel and LeTigre Release Candidate Channels

On Wednesday June 12th BlueSteel and LeTigre should receive a new server maintenance project to fix a number of crash modes, addresses an issue with neighbouring region visibility, and adds new LSL pathfinding capabilities and object return capabilities:

  • The new pathfinding property CHARACTER_STAY_WITHIN_PARCEL, which I described in week 19. can be used with llCreateCharacter() and llUpdateCharacter(), and is intended to help with keeping characters within parcel boundaries
  • The new object return functions I reported on in week 23, namely llReturnObjectsByOwner and llReturnObjectsByID, are intended to provide an automated means of returning objects to their owners. For ease of reference, I’ve provided a more in-depth look at the capabilities in a separate report. Kelly Linden has also includes some guidelines on the functions in the deployment discussion thread.

Magnum Release Candidate Channel

On Wednesday June 12th Magnum should receive an update to the current interest list changes running on that channel, which addresses two bugs introduced by the project. Providing no further issues are found with these changes, it is likely (but subject to confirmation) that they will be promoted across the grid in week 25.

Commenting on the Magnum update at the Simulator User Group meeting on Tuesday June 11th, Andrew Linden said, “The Magnum channel has two bug fixes. The excessive AvatarAppearance packets [in which the simulator would send many unnecessary AvatarAppearance messages to the viewer], and my final fix for Meeroos; specifically, the problem where it looks like the Meeroo’s animation is busted when you turn around to look at it.”

Going on Andrew’s recent comments, this update is liable to mark the final aspect of server-side interest list work for the moment.

The Magnum deployment also includes a fix for the issue relating to viewing the text of large scripts I reported on in week 23, whereby the text of previously saved “large” scripts cannot be displayed in the script editor for users on slow connections (BUG-2694). This update had originally been targeted at the week 23 deployments, but failed to make the cut then due to some last-minute work being required.

Other News

Group Ban List

Baker Linden
Baker Linden

The group ban list functionality Baker Linden has been working towards in his desire to address JIRA SVC-8127 may soon start to get attention. Commenting at the Simulator User Group meeting on Tuesday June 11th, Baker said:

I am getting closer! I haven’t started work on it directly, but I’m wrapping up the last of the bug fixes related to Mute Lists. I’m writing some new unit tests to test my new functionality … There might be some viewer / other backed server work to do too, but hopefully everything will work so that part will be smooth. But after I finish up this last issue, I’ll be working on group ban stuff. I’ve learned a ton about Django and how to implement it, so I’m hopeful that it’ll be somewhat smooth of an implementation.

Django is a web framework the Lab uses for a number of in-world user-related services, and is the chosen mechanism by which to add the ban list functionality (its use doesn’t mean the group ban function will be web-enabled or anything like that). It is also a tool set unfamiliar to Baker, who only started finding his way around it a few weeks ago.

JSON Wiki Update

New LSL capabilities were recently introduced for the creation and parsing of JSON formatted strings which can used for transferring data between in-world objects and external resources / websites.  The LSL-JSON pages on the Second Life wiki have been evolving over the past few weeks, with the most recent updates occurring on June 10th. If you’re interested in these new capabilities, make sure you take a look at the wiki.

SL projects update 24 (1): Viewer news – materials, SSB/A, deformer, snapshots

Posted on by Inara Pey

Update: In further tests of the FIRE-9097 “fix” at lower resolutions (e.g. 2650 pixels across), I found it can re-introduce the tiling artefacts in snapshots.

General Viewer News

Materials Processing

The release of an update to the materials beta viewer on Wednesday June 5th (3.6.0.276961) was followed at the weekend by the arrival of a further beta version – 3.6.0.277049 – with accompanying release notes. Commenting on the rapid-fire releases, Oz linden said at the Content Creation User Group meeting on Monday June 10th, “We’re getting close to the end of its beta cycle (or put another way… report your bugs now).”

Snapshot Issues

We’re all aware of the snapshot tiling issue which plagued SL photographers for a good while, which would leave “tiling” artefacts on images taken at higher resolutions than the user’s monitor resolution when running in deferred mode (now known as Advanced Lighting Model). A fix for this issue (MAINT-628) finally reached the public in late 2012, but brought with it some additional issues. On of the most notable of these was the appearance of black rectangles in very high resolution images.

Very high-resolution "black rectangle" issue common to viewers utilsing the MAIN-628 "tiling" fix (image courtesy of Dil Spitz)
Very high-resolution “black rectangle” issue common to snapshots taken with viewers utilsing the MAIN-628 “tiling” fix (image courtesy of Dil Spitz)

This latter problem most recently caused an additional outcry when the LL “tiling” fix was finally incorporated in Firestorm viewer earlier in 2013, with many users incorrectly blaming the Firestorm team for the problem.

Well, for all and sundry, Firestorm users or otherwise, there is some potentially good news on the horizon.

Firestorm image artefact fix: image at 6000 pixels across, saved as JPG (click to enlarge)
Firestorm image artefact fix: image at 6000 pixels across, saved as JPG (click to enlarge)

Commenting on the broader issues reported with snapshots duing the Open-source Dev meeting on Monday June 10th, Oz Linden said:

It looks like there are fixes in the MAINT pipeline for those. I don’t know how soon those will be out… I can try to find out if they have a project build ready.

Additionally, there is further news specifically for Firestosm users. While it is somewhat outside the scope of “SL project news”, it is neverthless reporting here.

Nicky Dasmijn has been working on the problem, and has implemented a fix for the issue (see Firestorm JIRA FIRE-9097), which should correct matters for snaps of up to 4096×4096 pixels without any “rectangle” artefacts appearing or with any regression to issues of tiling, and which may work at high resolutions than that for some.

tile-test-6K_001
Firestorm image artefact fix: image at 6000 pixels across, saved as PNG – note rectangle artefact (click to enlarge)

I tried a very rough-and-ready test of the fix. I found that capturing images up to 5,000-5,600 pixels across with the aspect ratio maintained worked OK for me. Anything around 6,000 pixels across saw JPG images save OK, but rectangle artefacts begin to appear when saving in PNG (see both images on the right)

However, as I’ve recently been experiencing other GPU issues, I’ve been unable to ascertain if the rectangles are down to an issue with the code or simply a matter of my GPU running out of resources when processing PNG images above 5600 pixels across.

The fix is currently in a recent Firestorm pre-release, and will hopefully make the cut for the next formal release. It is currently unclear whether the code has been / will be contributed to LL, and if so, whether they will adopt it or opt to go with their own forthcoming updates (as indicated by Oz in his statement above) or opt to combine it with their own fixes (depending on the nature & scope of the latter).

Future “STORM Project Viewer” Release

There are a number of code contributions which have come via the Snowstorm route which have been queued awaiting a suitable release. These cover a range of additions to the viewer, and example of which is STORM-68 (As a Builder, I want that ability to set default permissions on creation of objects, clothing, scripts, notecards, etc.).

Commenting on STORM contributions in general, and in light of the forthcoming changes to the viewer release process, Oz said, “I’m trying to get all the storm issues merged up so that I can be ready to put out a project viewer as soon as the new viewer version manager is deployed.” Whether STORM-68 (which is apparently seen as “largely good to go”, although it may also require a server-side change), or the fixes for snapshot issues mentioned above will be among them remains to be seen. However, a “STORM” project viewer could well be adding even more features to the SL viewer in the near future.

Continue reading “SL projects update 24 (1): Viewer news – materials, SSB/A, deformer, snapshots” →

SL projects update week 23 (2): server, viewer, SSB/A, new LSL functions

Posted on by Inara Pey

Server Deployments, Week 23

As usual, the latest updates, feedback and comments can be found on the deployment discussion thread. Anyone encountering a specific bug is asked to file a JIRA.

  • There was no SLS Main channel roll out this week
  • On Wednesday June 5th, the Release Candidate channel received the following packages:
    • BlueSteel and LeTigre were updated with a new server maintenance project.  This project addresses a disconnection issue and also fixes a crash mode – see my notes from week 22, and a fix for a crash mode
    • Magnum remained on the same interest list improvement project as originally deployed to LeTigre in week 21, and to Magnum and BlueSteel in week 22, with some updates. Two of these fix what Andrew Linden describes as “two rare crash modes”. The package should also include the same disconnection issue fix.

Interestingly, the “large” scripts issue I reported on in part 1 of this update was given as the reason why there was not Main channel deployment this week. As previously reported, the fix for this issue, which prevents the text of previously saved scripts from being displayed in the script editor for users on slow connections, failed to make the cut for the week 23 deployments.

There are continuing reports of “invisible avatars” on Magnum regions. This issues was first reported following the week 22 deployments, and described as “on an in-region teleport when landing all surrounding avatars de-rezz and cannot be seen until the person re-logs. Everything else appears normally.” The problem appears to be random in nature, and was also noticed at one club which enjoys a high level of attendance. and which still appears to be encountering the same issue. During the Beta Server meeting on Thursday June 6th, this issue was discussed, and appeared to be most strongly linked to v1-based viewers.

SL Viewer News

The next release of the materials beta viewer arrived on Wednesday June 5th (3.6.0.276961 with the release notes here), and as I indicated in part one of this report, sees the beta once more installed into the “correct” folder (SecondLifeBetaViewer). This means the initial beta release needs to be uninstalled separately, as the updated version obviously won’t over-write it.

The materials project beta viewer had its first update on June 5th, with the release of 3.6.0.274961
The materials project beta viewer had its first update on June 5th, with the release of 3.6.0.276961

In terms of beta releases in the future, it’s worthwhile again pointing-out that once the new viewer release process comes into effect, beta viewers will be installed into folders identified by their project name (e.g. something akin to “SecondLifeBetaMaterials”). Viewers should be fairly well self-contained (although they may still share the same default settings location, as that remains to be seen once things start rolling), so the uninstalling of individual beta versions (or RC versions) shouldn’t be a problem once they reach release status.

Work continues in preparing the new viewer release process for … release (or implementation). It’s still unclear whether it will arrive before or after materials moves to the release viewer. As reported in week 22, the current pipeline of releases we should be seeing as the new release process rolls forward includes:

  • A collection of open-source contributions to the viewer which is hoped will appear as a release candidate viewer pretty quickly
  • A “pretty substantial batch” of maintenance fixes for the viewer
  • Vivox updates, which Oz described as, “Finally getting attention again, and will probably be in a release candidate version ‘real soon’ now”
  • An Experience Tools viewer which is also expected to appear “real soon”
  • An interest list update viewer, which is believed to be getting closer to being stable

Server-side Baking / Appearance

Investigations have been continuing into the SUN-74 issue which affects non-SSB/A updated viewers (notably Phoenix), with Nyx Linden commenting at the Server Beta meeting that, “Thanks to the support from the phoenix/firestorm team, we’ve been able to identify the cause of that issue. We’re looking into what options are available to us. [It]  took some backflips to get it in a debugging environment, but managed to hunt it down – a combination of factors from not having the last 4 years of appearance fixes :)”

Continue reading “SL projects update week 23 (2): server, viewer, SSB/A, new LSL functions” →

SL projects update 23 (1): server releases, general notes

Posted on by Inara Pey

Apologies for the slight delay in getting this update out, real life is proving a little time-consuming at the moment.

Server Deployments, Week 23

As usual, the latest updates, feedback and comments can be found on the deployment discussion thread. Anyone encountering a specific bug is asked to file a JIRA.

Second Life Server (Main) Channel

No rolls are planned for the week 23.

Release Candidate Channels (RC)

On Wednesday June 5th, the Release Candidate channel should receive the following:

  • BlueSteel and LeTigre should get a new server maintenance project.  This project addresses a disconnection issue and also fixes a crash mode – see my notes from week 22, and a fix for a crash mode
  • Magnum will remain on the same interest list improvement project as originally deployed to LeTigre in week 21, and to Magnum and BlueSteel in week 22, with some updates. Two of these fix what Andrew Linden describes as “two rare crash modes”. The package should also include the same disconnection issue fix.

A further fix had been planned for the RC channels. This relates to people’s inability to download “large” scripts. This relates to the code path used for script uploads  / downloads having a bug, such that you can write a lengthy LSL script and save (upload) it, but on trying to edit it once more, the text of the script will not display. The issue is thought to be related to bandwidth use, and while a fix has been developed by Andrew Linden, but it failed to make the QA cut for this week’s RC releases.

Viewer News

There have been reports of issues with the materials beta viewer, including:

  • Crashing when logging-in to SL on systems using Intel graphics
  • Issues with transparent alphas showing as white and semi-transparent alphas showing as black, which also appears linked to systems with Intel-based graphics

The Lab is currently working on a fix for the Intel issue, but the alpha issue is apparently providing difficult to consistently reproduce

That the materials beta viewer (3.6.0.275764) installs into a different folder to previous SL beta viewers (SecondLifeBeta rather than SecondLifeBetaViewer), as reported in my overview of the materials beta release, appears to have been an error on the Lab’s part, and it appears likely the additional releases will revert to the SecondLifeBetaViewer folder until such time as the new viewer release process comes on-stream.

Server-side Baking / Appearance

The Lab continues to investigate SUN-74, although there has been no major progress since my last update. The JIRA itself has been updated as a result of further TPV testing.

In terms of any deployment time frames, the Lab still will not be drawn on dates at the moment (again, understandably, even the likes of SUN-74 and the need to try to push more users into updating to viewers which do support SSB/A). Replying to a question on possible deployment beyond the current close beta regions at the Content Creation UG meeting on monday June 3rd, Nyx Linden would only say, “SSA will be deployed slowly and carefully when its ready, we’re working with third-party devs to make sure the last of the bugs are found and hunted down.”

Interest List Update

Andrew Linden
Andrew Linden – who marked his 11th rezday on June 4th, 2013!

As Andrew has been involved in trying to resolve the “large” script bug described above, he’s not had time to make further progress on the “Meeroo issue”, which can affect other scripted animals, etc., as well, and which he describes as:

If you turn your camera away from a crowd of Meeroos, wait several seconds, then turn back around… the Meeroos will be updated, but not quite in the right order. So sometimes you’ll see a head move to the new position, then a fraction of a second later the rest of the body.  So I have a theoretical fix that doesn’t crash the simulator (anymore).

As noted recently, he has developed a partial fix for this problem was deployed as a part of the current interest list updates, and he now hopes he’ll be able to focus on developing a more complete fix, which will mark the final aspect of server-side interest list work for the moment.

Continue reading “SL projects update 23 (1): server releases, general notes” →

SL projects Update 22 (3) SSB/A issue update, upcoming viewer releases

Posted on by Inara Pey

Server-side Baking / Appearance

Yesterday, I reported on the SUN-74 issue (Apparent avatar skin and eye texture asset corruption with Server Side Appearance), which can impact users with avatars wearing modifiable skin and/or eyes and/or hairbase who enter (via teleport or crossing a region boundary) an SSB/A-enabled region while using a non-SSB/A enabled viewer (e.g. such as Phoenix or the v1.23.5 viewer) and leave them with a corrupted copy of the worn skin / hairbase or eyes. At the time I noted that the matter was under investigation by Linden Lab, and no decision had been made on how to handle it.

Whirly Fizzle demonstrates the result of the SUN-74 issue
Whirly Fizzle demonstrates one aspect of the SUN-74 issue – on a non-SSB/A viewer, her MOD skin has turned black / invisible and her MOD eyes have turned white as a result of entering an SSB/A-enabled region and responding with YES to the given prompt.

Speaking at the TPV Developer meeting on Friday May 31st, Oz Linden provided an update on the issue and spoke more generally on the issue of the use of olfder (non-SSB/A capable viewers) going forward:

We don’t actually know what’s ultimately going to be done about that; that’s a subject of vigorous discussion that’s going on even as we speak, so we’ll see how that plays out. I think it’s fair to say that regardless of what happens with that particular issue … I will just make the observation that there are still people really, really old viewers [and] there is no way, no way at all, that we could even begin to test for compatibility back with all of those viewers.

As it is, as recently as this last week there were 1,665 different viewer version strings reported as connecting to the main grid (these include 151 versions of Singularity, 50 versions of Phoenix, 262 labelled as Firestorm, and so on). Some of these may be “one offs” self-compiled builds (which may or may not have the most recent updates to support something like SSB/A), but even so, given the overall number of viewer strings, it is understandable why the Lab view attempt to ensure so many different viewer versions were fully compatible with anything on the grid is a next to impossible task.

This does not mean that the Lab is going to ignore SUN-74, right now they are still investigating the problem and trying to reproduce it in a consistent manner (which is apparently proving difficult for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that some older viewers simply crash when attempting to repro the corruption). However, what it does underline is the need for people to upgrade to an SSB/A-enabled version of their preferred viewer sooner rather than later.

The reason for this is that very soon the Lab will start undertaking more widespread testing of the new service by enabling it across a number of regions across the grid. These regions may not necessarily be constrained to any of the usual RC channels, but could well be a mix of regions from all of the various simulator channels, making them harder to identify and avoid. This testing will be to gain greater insight into how the service stands up under “real avatar loads” – something which is impossible to carry out to any great depth on Aditi, as there simply isn’t the volume of users active there.

Once this more widespread testing starts, then it is entirely possible that users who remain on non-SSB/A capable viewers are going to encounter issues and problems beyond seeing grey avatars which the Lab are not going to address, simply because the issues can be resolved by a viewer update.

So the word really is, update, update, update.

Continue reading “SL projects Update 22 (3) SSB/A issue update, upcoming viewer releases” →