Category: Simulator User Group

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, October 5th, 2021 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. The meeting was recorded by Pantera Północy, and the video is embedded at the end of this summary. Note this summary focuses on the key points of the meeting; where there is something to report, the video should be referred to should full details of the meeting wish to be reviewed.

Server Deployments

There are no planned deployments or restarts this week, due to the rolling restarts made on Friday, October 1st to correct an expiration issue related to Let’s Encrypt certificates that resulted in failures for in-world scripts making HTTP calls to websites secured with a Let’s Encrypt certificates.

SL Viewer

There have been no updates to the current crop on official viewers to mark the start of the week, leaving the pipelines as:

• Release viewer: version version 6.4.22.561752, formerly the CEF Update RC viewer, issued July 24 and promoted August 10.
• Release channel cohorts:
  • Apple Notarisation Fix RC viewer, version 6.4.23.564172, issued September 24 – this should remove the warning messages which are currently popping up.
  • Maintenance RC viewer updated to version 6.4.23.564063, on September 21.
  • Simplified Cache RC viewer, version 6.4.23.562623, dated September 17, issued September 20.
• Project viewers:
  • 360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.4.23.563579, issued September 3.
  • Performance Floater project viewer, version 6.4.23.562625, issued September 2.
  • Mesh Optimizer project viewer, version 6.4.23.562614, issued September 1.
  • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.4.11.550519, dated October 26, 2020.
  • Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, dated December 9, 2019.

In Brief

• The next maintenance update for the simulator will include a longer read for notecard lines (1024 bytes) that will be retroactive.
• PRIM_PROJECTOR is a new parameter for llSet/GetPrimitiveParams. Documentation is already on the wiki, but the simulator code isn’t ready to deploy for using testing on Aditi yet.
• It still has not been indicated when the Land team will flip the switch to ease the issue of some Mainland regions having darken default EEP settings.
• The simulator engineering team is “finishing up” some retooling, and will be moving on to starting to address performance improvements “in the next few months”.
• BUG-229205 “Re-enable PRIM_CAST_SHADOWS” – this has been seeing some discussion within the Lab, but no inform as to when it might be actioned.
• An interesting question was asked about using EEP to create an aurora effect that would be seen across the sky when used. The suggestion is to try using a texture in place of clouds, which would give a degree of motion (but whether this could mimic the “motion” of aurora streams would be interesting).
• Monday, October 4th saw a log-in update that “caused some issues for Firestorm”. The main fix is in place, but the issues is still being worked on for Aditi (the beta grid).

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, September 28th, 2021 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. The meeting was recorded by Pantera Północy, and the video is embedded at the end of this summary. Note this summary focuses on the key points of the meeting; where there is something to report, the video should be referred to should full details of the meeting wish to be reviewed.

Server Deployments

See the deployment thread for updates.

• There are no planned deployments for the SLS Main channel.
• The RC channels will be subject to a rolling restart on Wednesday, September 29th. Due to technical constraints this, will update the simulator version number to 564195, however there are no changes in code or configuration from the currently deployed version 563375.

SL Viewer

There have been no updates to the current crop on official viewers to mark the start of the week, leaving the pipelines as:

• Release viewer: version version 6.4.22.561752, formerly the CEF Update RC viewer, issued July 24 and promoted August 10.
• Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself):
  • Apple Notification Fix RC viewer, version 6.4.23.564172, issued September 24 – this should remove the warning messages which are currently popping up.
  • Maintenance RC viewer updated to version 6.4.23.564063, on September 21.
  • Simplified Cache RC viewer, version 6.4.23.562623, dated September 17, issued September 20
• Project viewers:
  • 360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.4.23.563579, issued September 3.
  • Performance Floater project viewer, version 6.4.23.562625, issued September 2.
  • Mesh Optimizer project viewer, version 6.4.23.562614, issued September 1.
  • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.4.11.550519, dated October 26.
  • Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, dated December 9, 2019.

In Brief

• Some are reporting an uptick in 502 responses to outgoing HTTP requests that is described as “not common, but common enough” to cause concern, although the requests usually go through as expected on retry. The uptick appears to coincide with the updates to HTTP-out proxies. The usual Jiras on target URL, source regions/objects, owners, etc., have been requested from those experiencing these issues.
• Some are also reporting issues with texture loading taking longer of late, including textures that should be locally cached by the viewer. The simulator and messaging is being pointed to as a potential culprit, although a) this shouldn’t affect cached textures; b) aside from the initial object and texture information, textures (as with all assets) come via the CDN, not through the simulator.
  • It’s been suggested that changes to the Interest List in support of the 360º Capture project viewer could be the cause, and this hasn’t been ruled out.
  • Similar issues had been noted with Firestorm following its release. However these have tended to be in terms of initial viewer start-up at the start of a session (when VFS load seems to take abnormally long), but these do not appear to be related to this issue, as this appears to occur across all viewer flavours – official and TPV.
  • Again, Jira reports on the issue giving viewer details, locations and actual timing snapshots (using ALT-CTRL-3 to display the texture queue) would be useful to the Lab. Also tests using the TextureTest2 and MeshTest2 regions on Aditi (which are structured to test exactly this sort of thing) that can be reported would also be useful.
• BUG-231113 “PRIM_POINT_LIGHT sets the wrong colour (not a duplicate)” has been accepted (and pending more detailed investigation). It is not clear if the viewer is amending the script-supplied light parameters prior to sending them to the simulator, or whether the change is on the simulator side of things.
• The last part of the meeting comprised grumbling about blog reports apparently not being addressed (or possibly more correctly, not being addressed in a time frame those experiencing an issue – which may not be everyone or even a majority or users – want it to be addressed). In response, it was pointed out that there is a lot of working going on under-the-hood that is not user-visible, but nevertheless is of a high priority.

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, September 21st, 2021 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. The meeting was recorded by Pantera Północy, and the video is embedded at the end of this summary. Note this summary focuses on the key points of the meeting; where there is something to report, the video should be referred to should full details of the meeting wish to be reviewed.

There is little to report, given the meeting was also another Solstice party.

Server Deployments

At the time of writing, the server deployment thread had not been published.

• All remaining simhosts were updated to simulator release  563375 on Tuesday, September 21st, 2021, the maintenance release containing changes related to llChar(), llUnsit() and extended internal logging.
• There are no planned RC deployments during the week.

HTTP-Out Proxy

Monty Linden deployed the new HTTP-out proxies in week #36. It wasn’t entirely glitch-free (but not as bad as the August attempt), with issues occurring in a part of the configuration that didn’t allow for immediate correction. Monty hopes that the lessons learnt with make future deployments smoother.

SL Viewer

• The Simplified Cache viewer updated to version 6.4.23.562623 on Friday, September 17th (issued Monday, September 20th).

The rest of the pipelines remain as:

• Release viewer: version version 6.4.22.561752, formerly the CEF Update RC viewer, issued July 24 and promoted August 10.
• Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself):
  • Maintenance RC viewer version 6.4.23.563789, issued on September 16 – combines the Grappa and Happy Hours RCs.
• Project viewers:
  • 360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.4.23.563579, issued September 3.
  • Performance Floater project viewer, version 6.4.23.562625, issued September 2.
  • Mesh Optimizer project viewer, version 6.4.23.562614, issued September 1.
  • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.4.11.550519, dated October 26.
  • Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, dated December 9, 2019.

In Brief

• Some are reporting issues of not being able to easily teleport back to a location previously visited in a session, a similar problems that manifested for some using Malwarebytes. In this case, the issue seems to be exceptionally slow teleport when trying to go back, with some incidence of the viewer shutting down.

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, September 14th, 2021 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. The meeting was recorded by Pantera Północy, and the video is embedded at the end of this summary. Note this summary focuses on the key points of the meeting; where there is something to report, the video should be referred to should full details of the meeting wish to be reviewed.

Server Deployments

At the time of writing, the server deployment thread had not been published.

• Tuesday, September 14th: no deployment to the Main SLS channel.
• Wednesday, September 15th all simhosts should be updated to the same revisions to the new server configuration that was deployed to the Ferrari RC in week #36.

HTTP-Out Proxy

Monty Linden deployed the new HTTP-out proxies in week #36. It wasn’t entirely glitch-free (but not as bad as the August attempt), with issues occurring in a part of the configuration that didn’t allow for immediate correction. Monty hopes that the lessons learnt with make future deployments smoother.

SL Viewer

No updates to the current batch of official viewers to mark the start of the week, leaving the current pipelines as follows:

• Release viewer: version version 6.4.22.561752, formerly the CEF Update RC viewer, issued July 24 and promoted August 10.
• Release channel cohorts:
  • Grappa Maintenance RC, version 6.4.23.563012, dated August 24.
  • Happy Hour Maintenance 2 viewer, version 6.4.23.562602, issued August 23 (dated August 20).
  • Simplified Cache RC viewer, version 6.4.22.561873, dated August 9.
• Project viewers:
  • 360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.4.23.563579, issued September 3.
  • Performance Floater project viewer, version 6.4.23.562625, issued September 2.
  • Mesh Optimizer project viewer, version 6.4.23.562614, issued September 1.
  • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.4.11.550519, dated October 26.
  • Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, dated December 9, 2019.

In Brief

• The question was asked on why, when set using llCollisionSound, the sound heard on colliding with an object will revert to the default if the script making the change is removed, rather than being retained as a prim property (like other sounds “scripted into” an object). This is because currently, the sound remains a property of the script, but there are plans to make it consistent with other prim properties.
• LL are working on “stuff” (Mazidox Linden’s term) to help with more efficient script running within regions. The precise details remained unspecified, although some aspects of the work are already on at least some of the RCs channels, and the hope is to get more grid-wide by the end of the year.
• The Percentage Script Run metric within the viewer stats (CTRL-SHIFT-1) is not seen by the Lab as a particularly useful metric when compared to something like total scripts run, as the Percentage Run metric can depend on circumstance, rather than being indicative of actual simulator performance.
  • Example: a region running 1000 out of 1000 scripts in a frame will report 100%, whilst a region running 1000 out of 10,000 will report 10% – but both are processing the same number of scripts, and so performing equally in this regard.
  • Monty Linden also pointed out that the Percentage Run metric can easily be warped simply by the behaviour of a single script, and noted he has some new internal metrics he is testing that he hopes might provide a better perspective of script performance within a region.
• The above points led to an open discussion on script processing as a whole: the use of “fairness” policies to prevent parcels within a region making too heavy a call on simulator / simhost resources (including being swamped by heady script loads on avatars, etc.); allocating script memory size; general ideas on improving script efficiency through the use of things like regular expressions; etc.
  • This conversation included a comment from Rider Linden that LL would be interested in the Firestorm script pre-processor were it to be contributed.
  • The suggestion was made that LL could provide HTTP-out access using the AWS Dynamo DB for those who need bigger KVP databases – and it was pointed out that users can always rent their out Dynamo DB stack.
  • No specifics on what the Lab might or won’t do vis scripts and script management, although Monty Linden revealed he’s been personally speculating on the advantages (or otherwise) of “higher level functionality” in the LSL libraries so that “more could be done with less code” – although he has only general ideas of possible functions in this regard.
  • See the video for more on specifics.

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, September 7th, 2021 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. The meeting was recorded by Pantera Północy, and the video is embedded at the end of this summary. Note this summary focuses on the key points of the meeting; where there is something to report, the video should be referred to should full details of the meeting wish to be reviewed.

Server Deployments

At the time of writing, the server deployment thread had not been published.

• Tuesday, September 7th: no deployment to the Main SLS channel.
• Wednesday, September 8th should she all of the the remaining simhost on the SLS RC channels (Magnum, BlueSteel, Le Tigre and Ferrari) moved to the new AWS server configuration as mentioned here, which will cause some incidental changes to how mesh land impact is calculated, but the primary change will be a small but noticeable bump in speed for most regions.
  • The new configuration can also cause a slight variation on floating point rounding that can show up in Land Impact calculations under rare circumstances. However, LL believes the impact is going to be so limited, it’s unlikely most people will notice.
  • In addition, RC Ferrari may get an update to the simulator configuration, if cleared by QA.

HTTP-Out Proxy

Monty Linden is also going to attempt a fresh deployment of the new HTTP-out proxies. The original deployment in late August went sideways very quickly. The hope is that this deployment will go a lot smoother. HTTP listeners are not changed by this update.

SL Viewer

No updates to the current batch of official viewers to mark the start of the week, leaving the current pipelines as follows:

• Release viewer: version version 6.4.22.561752, formerly the CEF Update RC viewer, issued July 24 and promoted August 10.
• Release channel cohorts:
  • Grappa Maintenance RC, version 6.4.23.563012, dated August 24.
  • Happy Hour Maintenance 2 viewer, version 6.4.23.562602, issued August 23 (dated August 20).
  • Simplified Cache RC viewer, version 6.4.22.561873, dated August 9.
• Project viewers:
  • 360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.4.23.563579, issued September 3 – overview here.
  • Performance Floater project viewer, version 6.4.23.562625, issued September 2  – overview here.
  • Mesh Optimizer project viewer, version 6.4.23.562614, issued September 1.
  • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.4.11.550519, dated October 26.
  • Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, dated December 9, 2019.

In Brief

• Work is still progressing on the tools update.
• The majority of the meeting involved a general discussion (largely among users present) as to the merits of providing support for Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) and animated gifs; the cloning of regions, a concern that the lack of defragmentation in the KVP (experiences) database might lead to issues for those reaching the limits of their allowed space (to be investigated), and a texture issue apparently specific to a single Skill Gaming region (referred to support). As this discussion did not yield definitive news / options for action / response by the Lab, please refer to the video below for further information.

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, August 31st, 2021 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. The meeting was recorded by Pantera Północy, and the video is embedded at the end of this summary. Note this summary focuses on the key points of the meeting; where there is something to report, the video should be referred to should full details of the meeting wish to be reviewed.

Server Deployments

Please refer to the server deployment thread for updates.

• All simulators on both the Tuesday, August 31st and Wednesday September 1st deployments will be updated to simulator release 563385, which is functionally and configurationally identical to the 562252 SLS Main Channel deployment of the previous week.
• The RC deployment on Wednesday, September 1st will additionally continue to process of changing all RC regions over to a new AWS server configuration as mentioned here, which will cause some incidental changes to how mesh land impact is calculated, but the primary change will be a small but noticeable bump in speed for most regions.
  • The new configuration can also cause a slight variation on floating point rounding that can show up in Land Impact calculations under rare circumstances. However, LL believes the impact is going to be so limited, it’s unlikely most people will notice.

Week #34 RC Deployment

The RC deployment originally planned for the previous week (Wednesday, August 25th) was pulled back due to a late-breaking issue. A fix has been implemented, but Mazidox Linden has indicated he wants to comb through the release before passing it as ready for deployment.

General Deployment Notes

• As of the week commencing Monday, August 30th, 2021, the weekly planned deployment window is to be 06:00-11:00 SLT, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, subject to actual updates being available to deploy.
• Rolling restarts will generally take place across all simhosts that have not been restarted in the past 14 days

Tuesday August 30th Issues

Tuesday, August 31st saw extended issues across a number of Second Life services, as per this SL grid status report, which were still on-going at the time of the SUG meeting. These issues appeared to be related to a significant problem at the AWS centre in Oregon, USA, where the SL services are currently hosted.

SL Viewer

No updates to the current batch of official viewers to mark the start of the week, leaving the current pipelines as follows:

• Release viewer: version version 6.4.22.561752, formerly the CEF Update RC viewer, issued July 24th and promoted August 10th.
• Release channel cohorts:
  • Grappa Maintenance RC, version 6.4.23.563012, dated August 24th.
  • Happy Hour Maintenance 2 viewer, version 6.4.23.562602, issued August 23rd (dated August 20th).
  • Simplified Cache RC viewer, version 6.4.22.561873, dated August 9th.
• Project viewers:
  • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.4.11.550519, dated October 26th.
  • Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, dated December 9th, 2019.
  • Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.532999, dated November 22nd, 2019.
  • 360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, dated July 16th, 2019.

In Brief

• Rider Linden continues to work on the tools update for the simulators, and believes he may have something that could help improve the scripts run percentage issue, but also emphasises it is currently too early to make any promises that it will actually do so.
• BUG-231158 “Allow llGetNotecardLine to return more than 255 bytes” has been raised as a result of a conversation about raising the limit to 1024 bytes, which Rider Linden indicated shouldn’t be too problematic – subject to proper review of course.