Oskar Linden has provided an update / post-mortem on the recent bout of griefing that took place across the grid as a result of person or persons unknown abusing the advanced user experience code that was released onto the Magnum Release Channel two weeks ago.
The problem hit on Monday 4th June when the advanced teleport functions released to Magnum were used to teleport individuals or groups around the grid, with some people reporting they were teleported to the likes of The Cornfield, while others found themselves unexpectedly picked up and dropped into stores or meetings.
Linden Lab reacted rapidly to the issue, determining a fix for the exploit on the afternoon of the 4th (SLT) and deployed across the entire grid in a rolling restart that affected the main channel and all release channels.
The key points relating to the issue remain:
The exploit came about due to a permissions restriction within the advanced tools not working as anticipated
To prevent further misuse of the code, the advanced tools were also removed from the Magnum RC channel
Both the code and the associated test plans have been revised and are being run through LL’s QA process to better ensure the situation of the 4th June is unlikely to be repeated when the code is rolled-out once more
Coyot Linden estimates that the advanced experience tools project has been delayed by around 2-3 weeks as a result of these events
LL are at this point in time unclear as to when the tools are likely to be rolled back out onto a Release Channel; the slot assigned to the tools on the Magnum RC has now been taken by other security issues in preparation for their roll-out to the grid.
One immediate outcome of the griefing situation is that the teleport capability has been revised so that when someone is teleported, the function will tell them the name of the owner of the object that teleported them (thus allowing any potential abuser of the system to be reported to LL via an Abuse Report).
Update June 6th: Oskar Linden has confirmed that the Advanced Creation Tools capabilities that were rolled-out to the Magnum RC channel will remain disabled until at least next week, although no firm decision has been on re-enabling them.
Update June 5th 11:30 UTC:The rolling restarts completed at 03:39 UTC. At present, no further updates have been given on the forum post relating to the restarts, but this may change later during the course of today. Oskar Linden has reiterated that due to this rolling restart, there will be no main channel deploy today and that details on Wednesday’s RC deploys are still TBA. My apologies for late timing of this update; a small matter of real life prevented me putting my nose in front of the keyboard any sooner!
Last week saw elements of the new Second Life Advanced Creator Tools rolled-out to the Magnum channel. As I reported at the time, the tools were issued without the new permissions system, but with safeguards that (it was hoped) would prevent misuse.
Today, however, a party or parties unknown started to use teleport functions of the new tools outside of the Magnum Release Channel as a means of griefing. People first became aware of the issue as individuals and groups started finding themselves randomly teleported around the grid, which sparked speculation on Twitter. Later, messages started circulating in-world among groups, outlining issues, such as this one, sent out to the NCI Citizens Helper Group (with thanks to Raylene Gothly)
Ok to everyone, there is something seems grid wide, we do not know if its a bad code in certain sims or if someone has found a way to teleport grief. But its happening all over, so I’m not sure. however I’d like to let everyone know we are aware of this. Suddenly you are just teleported away, best to log off and relog to get out of it, as it seems to continue to teleport you, I was teleported 3 times when I relogged… Dont be frightened it just seems to be a mess up.
The only regions unaffected by the griefing tool appear to have been those on the Magnum RC (where the new teleport functionality has safeguards) and those sims that had script capabilities disabled. Messages were thus circulated to land holders to disable scripting in their regions to avoid the issue, at least until Linden Lab responded to the situation.
Linden Lab themselves commenced efforts to stop the problem with emergency rolling restarts across the grid, announced via a Grid status update and a forum post:
To solve a security issue with the Experience Tools that were deployed to Magnum last week we are doing an emergency simulator rolling restart deploy. This has already begun.
Regions on the following channels will be restarted with the fixed code:
Main Channel
BlueSteel
LeTigre
Magnum will not be restarted because the issue is not possible in Magnum regions. We will have no rolling restart Tuesday morning. The Wednesday morning RC channels will roll at the usual time.
We apologize for any inconvenience and appreciate your understanding.
I’ll update here when further information is available.
Today sees the first phase in rolling-out the new User Experience tools to the Main grid. As noted in the official release notes, the tools have been rolled-out to the Magnum Release Channel.
The new tools were previewed back in March in a rare SL blog post, which I covered at the time it was released. Today’s Magnum release adds three new LSL functions for User Experience:
llAttachToAvatarTemp (integer attach_point) — Follows the same convention as llAttachToAvatar, with the exception that the object will not create inventory for the user, and will disappear on detach, or disconnect. It should be noted that when an object is attached temporarily, a user cannot ‘take’ or ‘drop’ the object that is attached to them. Additionally, if this function is used with experience permissions, the user is ‘automatically’ made the owner of the object. If you use this function without the experience permission, the target MUST be the owner of the object for it to attach properly
llTeleportAgent (key agent_uuid, string lm_name, vector landing_point, vector look_at_point) — Teleport Agent allows the script to teleport an agent to either a local coordinate in the current region or to a remote location specified by a landmark. If the destination is local, the lm_name argument is a blank string. The landing point and look at point are respected for this call. If the destination is remote, the object must have a landmark in its inventory with the teleport agent script. lm_name refers to the name of the landmark in inventory
llTeleportAgentGlobalCoords (key avatar, vector global_coordinates, vector region_coordinates, vector look_at) — Teleports an agent to region_coordinates within a region at the specified global_coordinates. The agent lands facing the position defined by look_at local coordinates. A region’s global coordinates can be retrieved using llRequestSimulatorData(region_name, DATA_SIM_POS).
This initial roll-out does not include the expanded Experience Permissions System, as Oskar Linden points out in a forum post on this week’s server releases. Instead, the new functions work with the current runtime permissions system (specifically PERMISSION_TELEPORT), although plans are in-hand to roll-out the new permissions systme at some point in the future.
No details have yet been released on theProfessional Creators Programme that was mentioned in the original preview blog post, but if you are interested in learning more about the tools, the Advanced Creator Tools Notification Group is still open to membership, and you are encouraged to join the Group.
Oskar notes that LL will be actively monitoring the forum thread announcing the roll-out, and anyone encountering issues with the new functions is encouraged to post feedback in the thread, cross-referencing any relevant JIRA they raise.
Given the functions are now on the Magnum RC, and people are being encouraged to provide feedback, this roll-out would appear to move the User Experience tools outside of the associated Closed Beta programme.
For ease of reference, here’s the video LL released with the original preview announcement:
There has been much in the way of heated debate on the subject of the mesh parametric deformer and standard sizes for avatars of late. So much so that in this week’s Metareality podcast, Kimberly Winnington (Gianna Borgnine in SL), deformer coder Karl Stiefvater (Qarl Fizz in SL) and in-world content creator Cathy Foil discussed the debate at some length and touched on other aspects of the deformer project.
The following is a summary of the core aspects of the discussion, presented in the panelist’s own words. My thanks to Kimberly for allowing me to produce this piece.
[2:10] Kimberly Winnington (KW): As it stands now, mesh items have to be built to the default avatars like the Ruth Avatar and then be deformed.
[2:32] Karl Stiefvater (KS): There’s a slight difference between Ruth, the actual Ruth – a lot of people call different shapes “Ruth”, so that’s a bad term to use – and the important shape, the one that you get when you say, “Hey, I want to do a shape!” and you don’t touch any of the other dials … and I call that the “default shape”.
[2:58] KW: So as it is now, clothing has to be built to that default shape before it can be deformed.
[3:04] KS: Right.
[3:05] KW: And it’s been suggested it should … that group of things like the default avatar should include some sort of standard size as well, even though that’s not officially a feature at this time.
[3:22] KS: That is correct. The rationale there is the deformer isn’t perfect and if you start with a shape that’s closer to your end shape before you actually tweak it, you can get superior results … Even if the deformer worked perfectly, when you design a shirt with a floral print … and you put it on someone with their body weight turned all the way up … the floral print is going to be distorted … So with the new system, the artist could say, “I’m going to repaint that floral print so it doesn’t get stretched out.”
[4:19] KW: There’s this fight going on. Emma Gilmore, also known as Elie Spot – she is of course on the standard sizing side, she was one of the people who worked with a bunch of other designers and came up with the standard sizes. And then I guess on the other side of the argument is Maxwell Graf … he’s on the side that the standard sizing is a marketing ploy and is awful and we shouldn’t even tolerate its existence. And I guess I’m somewhere in the middle of those two arguments on the basis I kind of agree with the standard sizing – not as the official solution because I don’t want to change my avatar … so I’m all for the deformer and do not want to have standard sizing as the only solution. However, I would have a much better chance of fitting into something without a lot of stretching if I stretched from a size that was closer to my avatar than the default avatar … But I still think that it’s at least a solution that should be discussed; where the starting-off point for the deformer should maybe be closer to a standard size.
[6:56] KS: It sounds like you and I are in agreement …
[7:15] KW: The other thing that came up was … Emma was talking to you about possibly having a way they could convert current meshes without having to re-upload, and you had suggested to her that she post on the JIRA and get some feedback from some other people. So the problem became she posted on the JIRA and she posted a Plurk about both these issues. like let’s discuss where we should start from and lets talk about whether we should be re-uploading or converting and how should we do that … So it started this huge fiasco where everybody kind-of attacked her both on the JIRA and totally all over Plurk, and were like, “you’re wrong, you shouldn’t be posting here…” … I actually agree with her and think she has a good point; but whether you agree with her or not, the topics she brought up are important for us to discuss as a community, especially designers and people who want to wear mesh. Because once the thing is final – you know how things go in Second Life; it will come out and everyone will be unhappy with it but it will be too late to do anything about it. So you have to do it now …
[9:59] KS: The deformer isn’t perfect. There are problems and what she’s proposing … is an extension … so it doesn’t take anything away from what you had before; it’s just adding new features. So how can you hate something that has everything you want but has this extra thing that somebody else wants? How does that engender white-hot hatred? I don’t understand.
[10:36] KW: I think there’s two things. I think the first on is not understanding that it works in collaboration with the deformer. So I think there’s a lot of people…they hear “standard sizing” and they are automatically like, “No”, without understanding that it’s not going to work like standard sizing is now … that you have to fit to that standard size. This is just in collaboration with the deformer, and I almost want to name it something else….
[11:03] KS: How about “alternate bases”? … Alternate bases, everyone.
[11:14] KW: The other thing that comes up is that a lot of people feel like that if we make a solution that fits … then Linden Lab will stop trying to think about trying to create a new overall avatar mesh.
Karl Stiefvater (Qarl Fizz)
[11:47] KS: I don’t thing that we’ve forced them to do anything ever … They’ve never given in, ever! So I don’t see that as a smart strategy … One thing I want to add to this, tho, is this other aspect that I don’t think anybody knows about. And that is, Linden Lab, internally, is … struggling with a question that is probably going to delay the deformer even more. And that is, they don’t know if they like the default avatar as the base. They think there might be a better base. … Then the question is, so how do you pick a better base? Some of them are suggesting … that adding curves is easier than removing curves, so if the base was something that had no boobs, that had no curves or shapes whatsoever, that might perform better … But they have no system in mind for making this call. So this is like one of those objections that can never be necessarily resolved, which is very dangerous for the project. So one of the things I like about this alternate bases idea is it neutralises this potential problem, because if they think there is a better base avatar, we can just add it later. As soon as they decide what that perfect base is, we’ll just add it to the list. So it’s beneficial for reasons completely unrelated to the whole fight right now, so that’s something to keep in mind. That’s mainly why I’m sort-of leaning this way … because it kills two birds, and one of these birds is otherwise potentially project destroying.
[14:23] Cathy Foil (CF): Is it possible to have the content creators load-up their own custom bases for their mesh? Would that be possible? Or would they have to create their own blend shapes so they work with the sliders?
[14:40] KS: No … they would have to use the existing shapes, the existing parameters. But they could specify their own set of parameters; that’s doable, but I’m a little bit afraid that that’s over-designed … so I think that maybe down the road that’s a good option, but I think for right now just a set … just six or seven different bases….
[15:16] CF: I did have a wackadoodle idea I wanted to put forward. I know it’s probably way too late in the development … right now you have the avatar mesh is driving the deformer of the mesh clothing, and I thought of the idea of having “deformer underwear” so to speak, an invisible mesh that you wear so that the avatar’s mesh deforms the underwear but then the underwear deforms the clothing mesh … so that the designers could create custom underwear that would only fit over certain parts of the avatar if they wanted or they could have more vertices in the underwear that would spread out the deformer so that they would deform the clothing mesh maybe a little bit more evenly.
[16:08] KS: That’s a clever idea … but no it’s too late for that! [laughs] But that’s interesting and that could definitely be in version 2 … Then clothing could work on avatars that are completely alien, you know, something you couldn’t dial around … like an elephant .. you could create an elephant avatar and then your hoodie or your dress would fit…
From here, the discussion moved out to talk about design techniques before moving on to the remaining topics of the podcast. For those interested in the mesh deformer and the ongoing debate, I thoroughly recommend listing to the podcast in its entirety, which also includes issues such as DMCA, copyrights and a discussion about the use and impact of the SL Marketplace.
Last week Oz put out a call for help with testing the Mesh Parametric Deformer than Qarl Fizz has been developing, and which is now available in a Project Viewer (as well as some TPVs).
The response to that call has been somewhat slow, prompting Oz to pass a further comment on the JIRA related to the deformer (STORM-1716):
Perhaps this issue really isn’t all that important, or worth the trouble to integrate.
So far, only one designer has responded with one test garment.
Let me be clear – the lack of test material is a major blocker for testing, and therefore accepting, this proposed feature. If you want it, step up and do it soon.
The comment has been reported elsewhere (and remarked upon in the comments following my original piece on the call), and has caused some consternation.
Howeverbefore people start taking Oz’s comment to heart as a sign that he or LL want to “kill” or “drop” the deformer, I spoke to Oz directly on the matter after reading the comment and he wryly admitted that it was intended as an attention-grabber and that, indeed, several more mesh designers have come forward indicating that they wish to engage in the testing as a result. When I asked him about the shock value of the comment, he replied, “Yeah, it was certainly intentional, and I would not have actually dropped it. But it is true that it would have taken far, far longer (months maybe).”
So does this mean we should ignore the underlying call for help?
No – we just shouldn’t panic about the deformer being dropped. Help is still needed. So, if you are a mesh clothing designer, or know of a mesh clothing designer, then please consider getting involved in the work / asking them to get involved in the work.
[57:15] I’ve pushed another version of the deformer today. It does male and female avatars; so that answers people’s questions who are upset about that. And I would say that we’re getting pretty close to the final product. If you … haven’t been following it closely, waiting for it you should check it out.
He goes on to comment, in response to a question about what people should be looking for in using the deformer, “I don’t think regular people should check it out. Content creators should check it out, I should say that …. Because in order to use it you need to mark the mesh as being deformed, and the only way to do that is to create your own mesh and upload it.”
This may sound like, “Well, duh!” information, but the fact that the deformer is still in development and at this point really only applicable to content creators, is worth pointing out. It also leads-in nicely to the next piece of news.
If you are a clothing designer interested in getting the mesh deformer integrated into all SL viewers, you can help both make it better and get it integrated more quickly:
We need a collection of test garments that we can use to evaluate this feature, and to form the basis of an ongoing regression test of it once it is integrated. These need not be “good looking”, and in some cases should not be (so we’re not asking you to give away your best commercial work). What we need is deformable mesh garments, based on either the unaltered “new shape” (female), or that shape changed to male; the garments should be designed to explore the limits of the technology as well as to showcase the normal easy cases.
Some examples I can think of (but I expect that you as designers and fashionistas can think of more and better): a full length garment (ball gown, trenchcoat, kaftan)
garments designed to be close fitting around problem areas like the shoulders, breasts, and butt (or whatever areas you think are problems)
garments designed to stand away from the body in some areas (capes, high collars, flared or puffed sleeves and pants, hoop skirts)
very small garments that cover limited areas (gloves, shoes, scarves, shin and thigh pads)
garments designed to layer with each other (a close fitting shirt with a jacket to wear over it)
It would probably be useful for these test garments not to be textured for normal use — instead, give them simple high contrast patterns like checks or stripes that make it easy to evaluate how textures are altered by the deformations.
If you’d like to contribute items for this effort, please:
Upload them with the current version of the official Project Viewer for the Deformer. You can find a download link on the test build wiki page, and record the full version number of the viewer you used (from the Help > About Second Life floater).
Put a copy of the garment (no-modify is fine, but please allow copy and transfer) into a Notecard that describes what the garment is intended to demonstrate or test. Links to images of what you think it should look like would be useful; be sure to include the version number from the viewer in the Notecard.
Send the Notecard to Oz Linden
Optionally, attach the mesh file to this issue
I’d like to get Contribution Agreements from anyone submitting garments; contact me for details on that if you need them.
I will establish a way anyone can pick up copies of the test garments that we incorporate into the test suite.
The deformer itself has given rise to much debate on the current SL avatar – Nalates Urriah provides some solid insight into this; which has also lead to debates on “standard” sizing I’ve touched upon here. Part of this debate has also ranged on the JIRA – although there is a JIRA dedicated to matter of the avatar itself (STORM 1800) and Oz has requested that discussions pertinent to that aspect of things be carried out on that JIRA.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 