Category: SL User Group Meetings

SL project news week 21 (1): viewer release process

Posted on by Inara Pey

Work continues on implementing the new viewer release process, although it is unlikely to debut this week (week 21). Commenting on the state-of-play at the Open-source Development meeting on Monday May 20th, Oz Linden said, “There are some new services to stand up, and I don’t have enough experience with that to be able to estimate it well.” He also indicated that the necessary changes to the log-in process I reported on in week 20  are still being progressed with care.

However, as of May 20th, 2013, the viewer beta repository has been discontinued by the Lab. This means that the next beta viewer to appear – which is due to be the Materials Processing viewer due out possibly later this week – will be built directly from the Materials project repository and not a merge with the existing beta viewer, although it will go through the existing beta channel for release and made available via viewer download page.

Viewer Naming

Under the new system,  viewer names will be broadly streamlined, with beta and release candidate versions of viewer being broadly identified by the viewer type and project name (e.g “Second Life Beta Materials” or “Second Life Release Candidate Materials”), prior to being updated as the release viewer.

“Willing to Update”

As previously noted in this blog, when a user downloads a specific viewer, they will only receive updates specific to that viewer until such time as it reaches a release status (although user can theoretically run several viewer side-by-side, and receive the required updates to each of them as they become available). However, the beta viewers will in future a new Preferences option, “Willing to update to release candidates” (Preferences > Setup).

The new beta viewer option for updating to RC status
The new beta viewer option for updating to RC status

Precisely how this option works is unclear (I have contacted Oz Linden on the matter but have yet to hear back), but it appears to suggest that if unchecked, then notification of any RC updates to the viewer will not be forwarded to the user  / automatically downloaded and installed, and will thus leave the user running with the viewer in a beta state until such time as a mandatory update is forced as the viewer becomes the de facto release viewer.

How Many?

The new release process means that there will be more viewer options to download via the Alternate Viewers wiki page. How many depends on the number of projects and general work is going on with the viewer. However, it also means that once operational, there should be fewer incidences when a specific project or issue interrupts the flow of viewer through to release status, as occurred towards the end of the 2012, when the viewer releases became “stuck” in the beta release channel as a result of a single crash issue.

Related Links

SL projects update week 20 (2): materials beta, SSB/A

Posted on by Inara Pey

Server Deployments – Week 20

As always, please refer to the release forum  thread on the weekly deployments for the latest updates and discussions.

Second Life Server (Main channel)

On Tuesday May 14th, the Main channel received the Experience Keys project. This means the project is now available across the grid, although there are no visible changes to be seen at this point. Release notes.

Release Candidate (RC) Channels – JSON Capabilities

On Wednesday May 15th, all three RC channels received a new server maintenance project (release notes (Bluesteel)).  The project is designed to fix two crash modes and two bugs, and introduce new LSL support creating and parsing of JSON-formatted strings – see part 1 of this week 20 report.

Commenting on the JSON capabilities at the Server Beta meeting on Thursday May 16th, Maestro Linden said, “There are some issues with this week’s Json functions… the keys in key-value pairs are not quoted, but should be and right now you’ll run into problems when you add stings which contain escaped quotes.”

In addition, a further confirmed bug has been found in the code on the three RC channels (BUG-2601), described by Lucia Nightfire as:

Seems that the release on the RC channels has brought about an annoying bug that affects control event triggering in attachment’s child prims after changing regions.

There are two different effects depending how you enter a version 13.05.14.275813 RC region.

After going into an RC region while using any controls, those controls will lock under execution and remain locked until you reset the script or the control perms or detach the object.

After going into an RC region without using controls like with a teleport, the control event will not trigger when attempting to use any controls until you re-request/re-grant control perms or go back to a main channel region.

Should this problem be encountered, returning to any Main channel region should restore the broken functionality.

Because of both of these issues, it is believed the code currently on the three RC channels will remain on them for a further week while fixes are developed and implemented.

SL Viewer Updates

Beta Viewer

The current SL beta viewer code, which contains the FMOD Ex updates is expected to be merged with viewer release shortly, prior to going to testing. Depending on the results of the testing, an updated SL release viewer should appear early in week 21.

Viewer Release Process

Because the version upgrading changes will move to the viewer release channel with the move of the current beta viewer, the viewer beta repository will stop being used, and viewer releases will start switching over to the new release process. As a part of this, two new wiki pages will be appearing in the next future (probably in week 22).

The first of these will be a revamped Alternate Viewers page on the wiki, which will list all the available LL project viewers and beta viewers and release candidates which are available, as well as the current viewer release, all of which will have download links and links to their respective release notes.

The second wiki page will have the same information together with pointers to which repository used to build the viewer, which changesets were used to build a viewer, and whether or not the repository is public.

The plan remains that under the new release process, all beta and release candidates will have public repositories, while project viewers many not initially have public repositories, but will have as they reach the later stages of their development.

Cocoa Project

The Cocoa project for Mac versions of the viewer has been largely stalled as a result of redeploying TPV assistance from that project to the materials project. It is anticipated that once materials moves to a beta viewer status, the emphasis will shift back on to the Cocoa viewer work

Materials Processing

Providing all goes according to plan, the Materials Processing code should move to a beta  status within its own repository and hopefully also make an appearance in week 21. Commenting on this, Oz Linden said at the TPV Developer meeting o Friday May 17th, “It’s still not 100% there; there’s still a few known bugs, but we think we’ve got all the serious ones and so we’re going to put it out where people can play with it.”

Once the materials viewer does reach beta, the anticipation is that it will remain there for “a little while” and the it will not be a one-spin beta release prior to moving on.

Detail on the hint of a Katana created entirely using the new materials capability. The sword is made by June Dion and has an LI of 7
Materials used to create details on the hilt of a Katana created by June Dion – soon to be visible in the Materials Processing beta viewer

Continue reading “SL projects update week 20 (2): materials beta, SSB/A” →

SL projects update week 20 (1): server, JSON, viewer release process

Posted on by Inara Pey

Server Deployments – Week 20

As always, please refer to the release forum  thread on the weekly deployments for the latest updates and discussions.

Second Life Server (Main channel)

On Tuesday May 14th, the Main channel received the Experience Keys project which is widely regarded (and referred to by LL staff) as the “experience permissions”. This means the project is now available across the grid, although there are no visible changes to be seen at this point. Release notes.

Speculation is still running high on exactly what the new project is – and whether it is “just” the experience permissions to partner the existing advanced creation tools ot something more – as well as whether the capabilities will be available for use across the grid (i.e. on Mainland as well as private estates). Details will be forthcoming from the Lab in time; for the moment, they’re holding their cards close to their collective chest.

Release Candidate (RC) Channels – JSON Capabilities

On Wednesday May 15th, all three RC channels should receive a new server maintenance project (release notes (Bluesteel)).  The project is designed to fix two crash modes and two bugs, namely:

  • A fix for ‘Overriding “Sitting on Ground” animation while sitting on the ground makes “stand up” button disappear’ (BUG-2424)
  • A fix for ‘ApplyImpulse now works only in the root prim’ (SVC-8227)

In addition, this project introduces new LSL support creating and parsing for JSON-formatted strings. The new LSL functions comprise: 

  • list llJson2List(string json) – converts the top level of the json string to a list.
  • string llList2Json(string type, list values) – 
    • Type is JSON_ARRAY or JSON_OBJECT
    • Converts either a strided list of key:value pairs to a JSON_OBJECT or a list of values to a JSON_ARRAY
  • string llJsonGetValue(string json, list specifiers) – gets the value indicated by spcifiers from the json string.
  • string llJsonSetValue(string json, list specifiers, string value) – returns a new json string that is the json given with the value indicated by specifiers set to value
  • string llJsonValueType(string json, list specifiers) – returns the type constant for the value in json indicated by specifiers.

At the time of writing, the RC deployments still had a question mark over them as testing was, according to Simon Linden when speaking at the Simulator User Group, “down to the wire, although it all looks good.”

Further information on the new LSL support for JSON can be found on the LSL JSON wiki page.

The project is being lead by Kelly Linden who described the reason for implementing them as being because he’s “keen on improving the ability to interface LSL with the larger web. The previous maintenance version expanded the content-type support of http-in and http-out which ties in with this.”

It is likely that further LSL support for JSON will be added in the future.

SL Viewer

Beta Viewer and the Viewer Release Process

A further beta viewer release was made on May 11th (3.5.2.275565) – see the release notes for details – in preparation for the deployment of the new viewer release process. The beta 3.5.2 viewer incorporates changes required by the new service.

While at the Open-source Dev meeting on Monday May 13th, I asked Oz Linden on the status of the new process. “Internally, we’re essentially already using it in that all projects are based on viewer-release,” he replied. “We’re starting system test of the server-side infrastructure changes this week… once those are tested, it’s just a matter of deploying them and we can fully switch over to the new process. ‘just deploying’ on our scale is always an understatement, incidentally.”

This does not mean the release process is about to be deployed, however. The server-side infrastructure testing is liable to be on-going for a while. One aspect which the Lab will be checking carefully is the changes made to the log-in process.

When a user logs-in to Second Life using an official viewer, a check is carried out to see if a mandatory upgrade is required. To prepare for the new release process, is check has been updated. “that’s not something one deploys without having taken every step one can think of to quadruple-check just a bit,” Oz explained.

How long the tests will take to complete is unclear, but it is unlikely the new release process will be deployed in week 20.

Materials Processing

May 8th saw the The materials project viewer updated with the release of version 3.5.2.275470, with the release notes available here.

Detail on the hint of a Katana created entirely using the new materials capability. The sword is made by June Dion and has an LI of 7
Detail on the hilt of a Katana created entirely using the new materials capability. The sword is made by June Dion and has an LI of 7

Work is continuing with the viewer, focusing on the UI issues which need to be resolved in order for the code to progress towards mainstream  release.

Continue reading “SL projects update week 20 (1): server, JSON, viewer release process” →

Server-side Baking / Appearance: key questions answered by the Lab

Posted on by Inara Pey

On Monday May 13th 2013, Troy and Nyx Linden appeared on a segment of Designing Worlds to discuss Server-side Baking / Appearance (SSB/A), alongside Brooke and Oz Linden, who were there to discuss Materials Processing.

Troy Linden is a Senior Producer at Linden Lab, who has been working on high-level server-side baking, and Nyx Linden is a Senior Software Engineer at the Lab, who has been working with the technical aspects of SSB/A and has been very much the public face of the project. Together, they answered a series of questions on the project put to them on behalf of users (the questions having been requested in advance of the show being recorded) by the Designing Worlds hosts, Saffia Widdershins and Elrik Merlin.

The following is a summary of the questions asked and answers given.

Nyx Linden (l) and Troy Linden (r) on Designing Worlds
Nyx Linden (l) and Troy Linden (r) on Designing Worlds (image courtesy of Wildstar Beaumont / Designing Worlds)

Saffia Widdershins (SW): Let’s start with the basics: what is baking, and how is it being handled now?

Troy Linden (TL): Baking is a process where we take all the information that involves your avatar – how it looks – and we combine it to deliver a finished avatar. Currently, how it’s handled right now [is] your computer, the individual’s computer, handles all of the processing involved in determining your avatar’s appearance, and it sends all the result back to our servers. So it’s a pretty involved process and there’s a bunch of time that it takes to do all that.

SW: So how is that going to be changed in the future … and will it simplify it?

TL: Server-side baking is our new system. It’s where we actually stand up a new service that will handle all of the baking process on our end. And what this actually does is it takes the load away from your computer, the individual user’s computer, and the results are a faster, more consistent experience during the whole baking process in Second Life.

Elrik Merlin (EM): Just to be clear about this … in the new system, what will be handled by the server and what will be handled by the viewer, exactly?

TL: The new viewer will be sending the server and [be] the recipient of all the avatar data, while the server does all the calculations required. So your viewer will download the results [of the baking process] over a lot faster HTTP connection.

EM: So that’s the basics of how it works, so to speak; how would you summarise the benefits to users?

Designing Worlds hosts Saffia Widdershin and Elrik Merlin
Designing Worlds hosts Saffia Widdershin and Elrik Merlin (image courtesy of Wildstar Beaumont / Designing Worlds)

TL: Well, simply put, it’s a much faster, more reliable avatar rendering experience. So hopefully you’ll see less avatars being stuck in their clouded state as well as being stuck untextured. So they’ll actually appear the way the user actually intended much quicker.

SW: So it will be an end to that problem where you half-rez but, (laughs) your make-up is blurred so you look as though you’ve been having a really heavy night!

TL: (Laughing) That’s the plan. We’re actually seeing some great results so far, so we’re very excited.

SW: Are there likely to be any downsides? There will be less impact on peoples’ machines, is that what you’re saying, or could there me more?

Nyx Linden (NL): The one downside to the new system is, because it is such a big change from how we have done things in the past, everyone is going to have to update their viewer. It will be a mandatory update. Users who don’t update will start to see even more avatars fail to load. Fortunately, we have the viewer that people need to download released, and users who use any actively maintained third-party viewer should be able to download an update presently as well. As long as users do update, they won’t see any downsides.

EM: This is obviously nearing completion and we’re nearing implementation. Can you tell us a little about where the project is, what its current status is, and what the time scales are for introduction are going to be?

NL: Absolutely! So, we’re in a multi-stage release; at this point we have our first viewer out the door. So the next stage is that we’re going to be standing-up the service that is going to be doing all the work for rezzing your avatar. Over time we will slowly roll-out the new system across the grid. That’s going to take some time, and we’re going to be following-up through our blogs and forums to let people know how that process is going, but we want to take our time with that process, to make sure that everything is working as well as we think it is.

Continue reading “Server-side Baking / Appearance: key questions answered by the Lab” →

SL projects update 19 (3): server, pathfinding, materials & more

Posted on by Inara Pey

Server Deployments – Week 19

The week 19 server deployments went ahead as scheduled and as outlined in an earlier part of this report, to wit:

SLS (Main) Channel

On Tuesday May 7th, the Main channel received the maintenance package which has been running on Magnum. This project brings some new minor features to LSL, and fixes some crash modes and well as additional LSL HTTP support, as well as the previously rolled-back new AO capabilities.

In addition, this package included an additional update which was not documented in the release notes until after the deployment had been made: “Fixed a bug: ‘Orientation data for landing point is disregarded during teleport’.

This fix means that when teleporting to a place which has a defined landing point, you will arrive facing the direct determined by that landing point, rather than arbitrarily facing east. To complement this fix, there is an upcoming viewer update which will show the heading of a parcel’s landing point on the map – but no details on when that update is liable to appear.

Pointing out the fix at the Server Beta meeting, Maestro Linden added, “There’s an exception for cases in which if you have a beacon set, where you’ll face the beacon position instead. I think this is a bug.”

This lead to a discussion on the exception, in which the wider consensus appeared to be that having an avatar facing the beacon (when set) on arrival might be the preferable to automatically having the avatar facing the direction imposed by the landing point. However, this would mean people using a beacon would arrive at the landing point facing a direction other than the land owner intended, prompting Voidpointer Linden to comment, “Yeah, seems like we would only want to have you face the beacon when going to a landing point if it’s in the same region, maybe?”

It’s currently unclear as to whether the feedback from the meeting will mean this exception is allowed to continue, or whether there will be further tweaking with the landing point code in the future,

Release Candidate Channels

On Wednesday May 8th, all three Release Candidate channels (BlueSteel, LeTigre and Magnum) received server-side support for experience permissions which was running on BlueSteel in week 18. The update, as usual, will also include the changes which are going to the Main channel on May 7th, which included the new AO capabilities – release notes (BlueSteel).

SL Viewer Updates

Beta Viewer

The beta viewer as we currently know it received what might by its final update prior to the new viewer release processing coming into effect. Version 3.5.2.275565 was released on May 9th, and the release notes provide details on changes.

Materials Processing Project Viewer

A new version of the Materials Processing viewer – 3.5.2.275470 – was released on May 8th, based on the 3.5.2 viewer code. The release also appears to include a fix for MATBUG-38 (“Material with normal map but no specular map is always specular with no adjustment possible”), and which I’d described in week 18.

MATBUG-38. appears to have been fixed in Material Processing project viewer 3.5.2
MATBUG-38. appears to have been fixed in Material Processing project viewer 3.5.2.275470, May 8th 2013.

The release may also include a fix for MATBUG-16 (Changing one material, or setting causes another material texture to be lost), which I’d previously noted in week 16.

Whether this latter issue is fixed is hard to judge, as it was somewhat intermittent to start with. and there have been reports that it was already less noticeable with the previous release of the viewer. However, at the time of writing, the bugs remain marked as Unresolved / Incomplete in the public JIRA (but could have been updated in LL’s internal JIRA).

I can say that I’ve so far been unable to reproduce either bug using the new release, having carried out a number of individual tests.

Continue reading “SL projects update 19 (3): server, pathfinding, materials & more” →

SL projects update week 19 (2): Interest list, missing prims, griefing

Posted on by Inara Pey

Interest List Update

As noted in week 18, Andrew Linden has been working on fixing a bug related to Meeroos (but which I’ve seen affecting other animals as well).

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)

Reporting on the situation at the Simulator User Group meeting on Tuesday May 7th, he said, “Right before this meeting I was rounding up some meeroos to do some testing on the beta grid. The bug is theoretically fixed, but I’ve yet to actually see it work. We’ll be testing this week.” If all goes well, the fix may well be progressing towards an RC release in the near future.

“Missing Prims”

Still no major news on this issue in terms of a lasting fix becoming available. Commenting on it again during the Simulator User Group Meeting, Andrew Linden said:

We were having trouble reproducing it on one of our more recent viewers; the viewer that will eventually go along with the recent interest list fixes, is currently stalled for a mysterious crash bug.

We think the “right click to make the object show up” bug is related to loading of object cache in the viewer and that loading code has had an overhaul in this recent viewer project. So we think the bug is fixed there, but we have yet to test it a lot. Because there is a crash bug we’re still trying to track down.

"Missing" prims - viewer-side fix stalled; code might be made available to TPVs anyway?
“Missing” prims – viewer-side fix stalled; code might be made available to TPVs anyway?

The question was asked if the code could be made available to TPVs as it is, even if prone to crashing. Doing so might provide extra eyes on the problem which may both help to resolve the issue and fix the crash issue. Andrew replied to the question by saying, “Oz asked us to put that code out on a public repo, but that was before we realized we had a crash problem.” However, he agreed to take the request back to the office and see what the reaction might be.

Other Bits – Griefing Issues

There has been a long-standing issue with objects sitting on the region borders being very hard to return to their owners, and which has become something of an exploit where mainland griefing is concerned. It had been hoped that the fix for the issue would be deployed to the grid this week, However, in reviewing matters, Andrew linden regretfully reported that “It appears that ‘return of objects at region border’ bug fix is not deployed at the moment, as far as I can tell.”  There is currently no date as to when this will be deployed,

Similarly, there is still no news as to when the particle muting capability (right-click on a particle to stop your viewer generating the particle stream in your world-view) might make a viewer-side appearance.

There are reports of a new form of particularly malicious griefing involving spinning / flashing objects which appear deliberately designed to trigger epilepsy or migraine.  At the Simulator UG meeting, Simon Linden indicated that the Lab is at least aware of this form of attack.

Blocking Banned Users’ Objects from Rendering

A suggestion has been put forward at several Simulator UG meetings where griefing has been discussed that all objects on a parcel belonging to a user banned from that parcel for griefing should no longer be rendered for other users within that parcel.

This is seen as a particularly useful option at events, etc., where time would otherwise be taken up in trying to locate and return objects which may have been left behind when banning the user, and / or in telling other people in the parcel how to mute offending objects from their view.

Commenting on this as a possible server-side capability, Andrew Linden said, “More fidelity of visibility on a per-parcel level would further complicate things that are already fairly complicated. I’m not saying it can’t be done, but it would be tricky and I would worry about lag issues… server lag as it picks up more work.”

However, after a discussion on the viability of viewer-side blocking and server-side blocking, he commented, “I’m hip… if visibility of banned owners’ objects were to be done… it would probably be easiest to do it at the server.” Even so, there would still be a range of issues to deal with, were such a capability to be put into place. As it stands, it appears to be more a case of food-for-thought than a definite step to be taken.

Forced Object Return

Another griefing attack is one which sees an object deposited in a region but which doesn’t actually trigger until after the region is restarted. This means it gets included in the region back-up – and any subsequent region restart, leaving it free to annoy.

A suggestion was put forward at the Server Beta meeting on Thursday May, 2nd to force a return of all objects in a region which are not set to the required Group as a part of the region restart process. This idea gained some support at the meeting and might have resulted in a feature request being filed. However, it is not without issues of its own – such as with regions where Group object rezzing isn’t a requirement, where it could result in a lot of items which might otherwise have been “safe” returned to their owners.