Category: Simulator User Group

2020 Simulator User Group week #30 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Frogmore, June 2020 – blog post

The following notes were taken during the Simulator User Group meeting of Tuesday, July 14th, 2020.

Simulator Deployments

Please refer to the server deployment thread for news and updates:

  • On Tuesday, July 21st, the majority of the grid was updated with server maintenance update 544832, designed to resolve issues with some internal service updates, chat range improvements and capability improvements.
  • On Wednesday, July 22nd, the should be a single RC deployment comprising “a few internal changes (mostly logging)”. At the time of writing, the server deployment thread had yet to be updated with the release notes reference.

SL Viewer

The Tools Update viewer, version 6.4.5.544639, was promoted to de facto release status, Friday, July 17th. This viewer uses the new viewer build tool chain, but does not include any user-facing updates outside of bug fixes.

The remaining official viewer pipelines remain as follows:

  • Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself):
    • Arrack Maintenance RC viewer, version 6.4.5.544465, July 6th.
    • Love Me Render RC viewer, version 6.4.5.544028, June 30th.
  • Project viewers:
    • Custom Key Mappings project viewer, version 6.4.5.544079, June 30th.
    • Mesh uploader project viewer, version 6.4.4.543141, June 11th.
    • Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, December 9th, 2019.
    • Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.532999, November 22nd, 2019.
    • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.3.2.530836, September 17th, 2019. Covers the re-integration of Viewer Profiles.
    • 360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, July 16th, 2019.

Further Regions in the Cloud

Following from the announcement concerning Ahern and Morris on Aditi, the beta grid, being in the cloud (see my previous Simulator User Group update),  most / all of Blake Sea has been cloned to Aditi and is now running in the cloud, specifically for the purposes of  region crossing tests with vehicles.

Again, just to emphasise, this is Aditi, the beta grid, only (at least one person has reported on region crossings on Agni (the main grid) in relation to this announcement). For more information, refer to my blog post Blake Sea in the cloud on ADITI.

Blake Sea is now on Aditi and running in the cloud for those wishing to test vehicle region crossings

What is Simulator “Sleep Time” and how are Scripts Processed?

The viewer provides a set of stats related to both itself and the simulator your user is on (CTRL-SHIFT-1). Most of the stats proved in this window are relatively self-explanatory, although some can cause confusion or can be misrepresented. One area of confusion  – what is simulator “sleep time”  – was raised in the forums recently, and Rider Linden took the time to explain it and a couple of other things in the stats panel. As his reply may help others, I’m including it in full here:

The short answer is that sleep time is the mean amount of time in ms per simulator frame that the simulator has spent idling over the last minute.
The long answer is that the simulators attempt to keep a constant number of processing frames (one cycle through the main loop) per second. This number is displayed in the statistics window as Sim FPS. This value is not the same as the Viewer’s FPS. When the Sim FPS starts to fall below 45 you will begin to see lag events like delayed movement and rubber banding, among other symptoms.
A single frame should take about 21ms. (21ms * 45) = ~1 second (less about 50ms overhead). If a single simulator frame takes less than that 21ms we need to add a few extra ms in order to maintain the constant rate. This extra time is reported as “Sleep Time” and tracks closely to “Spare Time”.
Every frame on the simulator is divided into a number of phases. The big ones are network message processing, advancing the state of the physics simulation, processing agents in the region and updating their interest lists, and executing scripts.
The amount of time allowed per frame to execute scripts is capped. The simulator will attempt to execute all the scripts in the region in that allotted time slice, if it can not make it all the way through the list it will stop and pick up where it left off on the next frame (this gives you the “Scripts Run %” statistic.) Since the time for script execution is capped you can see situations where the % of scripts executed per frame begins to fall even though there is idle time reported on the simulator.

– Rider Linden, July 23rd, 2020

2020 Simulator User Group week #29 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
The Empire of Dreaming Books, May 2020 – blog post

The following notes were taken during the Simulator User Group meeting of Tuesday, July 14th, 2020.

Simulator Deployments

Please refer to the server deployment thread for news and updates:

  • On Tuesday, July 14th, the majority of the grid was updated with server release 544419, first deployed to the RC channels on Wednesday, July 8th. This should resolve issues with off-line inventory offers and group notice attachments, although a viewer-side update is also required, which is in the current Arrack RC viewer.
  • On Wednesday, July 15th, the RC channels should be updated with server maintenance update 544832, designed to resolve issues with some internal service updates, chat range improvements and capability improvements.

SL Viewer

There have been no official viewer updates to mark the start of the week, leaving the current pipelines as follows:

  • Current Release viewer version 6.4.3.543157, dated June 11, promoted June 23, formerly the CEF RC viewer – No Change.
  • Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself):
  • Project viewers:
    • Custom Key Mappings project viewer, version 6.4.5.544079, June 30.
    • Mesh uploader project viewer, version 6.4.4.543141, June 11.
    • Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, December 9, 2019.
    • Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.532999, November 22, 2019.
    • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.3.2.530836, September 17, 2019. Covers the re-integration of Viewer Profiles.
    • 360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, July 16, 2019.

Cloud Uplift

I don’t know if any of you have looked at AWS, but it’s a huge and complex system, so the learning curve on how to build servers, get them deployed, set up networks, security, etc etc etc is pretty tough … Not a surprise, just a lot of learning and work.

– Simon Linden, SUG Meeting, July 14th

Two publicly-accessible regions  – Morris and Ahern – on Aditi (the beta grid) are now running in the cloud. Aside from outbound HTTP messaging and e-mail, they should function with no discernible difference to regions within the Lab’s co-lo facility.

Ahern and Morris on Aditi (the beta grid) are now operating from the cloud

Commenting on the HTTP messaging / e-mail situation, Oz Linden stated:

There are abuse constraints in AWS that we need to make sure we don’t violate. Both outbound HTTP and Email are ways that scripts could cause problems. We have a way to regulate HTTP out that we’re pretty sure of, and which you should be able to test fairly soon on main grid simulators. llEmail may get some new constraints and/or more severe throttles … still studying that one. When we have some updates on that, we’ll post in the LSL forum.

– Oz Linden, SUG Meeting, July 14th

It is believed that the current HTTP / e-mail out issues should not affect HTTP / e-mail between regions. The issue also shouldn’t affect llTargetedEmail, since the caller cannot specify an arbitrary email address.

2020 Simulator User Group week #28 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
The Woods of Whimsy, May 2020 – blog post

The following notes were taken during the Simulator User Group meeting of Tuesday, July 7th, 2020.

Simulator Deployments

Please refer to the server deployment thread for news and updates:

  • There was not main channel deployment on Tuesday, July 7th, leaving the servers on server release 543526, comprising further infrastructure updates to support Group chat improvements / support of the cloud uplift work.
  • On Wednesday, July 8th, the RC channels should be updated with server release 544419, which should resolve issues with off-line inventory offers and group notice attachments
    • Note that this requires a viewer-side update, which should currently be in all the Viewer RC versions.

SL Viewer

  • The Arrack Maintenance RC viewer updated to version 6.4.5.544465 on July 6th.
  • The Tools Update RC viewer updated to version 6.4.5.544474 on July 7th.

The rest of the current range of official viewers remains as follows:

  • Current Release viewer version 6.4.3.543157, dated June 11, promoted June 23, formerly the CEF RC viewer – No Change.
  • Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself):
  • Project viewers:
    • Custom Key Mappings project viewer, version 6.4.5.544079, June 30.
    • Mesh uploader project viewer, version 6.4.4.543141, June 11.
    • Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, December 9, 2019.
    • Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.532999, November 22, 2019.
    • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.3.2.530836, September 17, 2019. Covers the re-integration of Viewer Profiles.
    • 360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, July 16, 2019.

Region Restarts and Region Crossings

The server deployment threads generally reference rolling restarts being performed if channels have been running for 10 days or longer, regardless as to whether there is an accompanying deployment (e.g. so at least once every 14 days).

However, during the Simulator User Group meeting, comments from the Lab suggest this is not an absolute. For example, if agents (avatar or scripted) are in a region, a restart may not occur. As it is, there is currently a fair number of mainland and private regions that have not seen a restart in 2-3 weeks.

This is causing some consternation among road vehicle users who see region restarts as (currently) the main panacea for their region crossing woes; there may well be fair mileage in this – no pun intended; but equally, there are reasons why restarts may not resolve issues, but as they are a non-trivial matter, could be disruptive to other users, requiring a balance to be struck.

The fact is the physical region crossings involving vehicles are a complicated issue. There is no single point of failure – and issues can be exacerbated by factors external to SL; it might even be argued that as script load plays a role in bad region crossings, loading vehicles up with scripts to monitor / log crossings could actually exacerbate the problems being encountered by those using said scripts. However, Given that rolling restarts are expected every 14 days, regardless of deployments, it might not be a bad idea to try to ensure this is a regimen that is more rigorously held to, in that restarts can be seen as calming region crossing issues.

2020 Simulator User Group week #27 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Cherishville, May 2020 – blog post

The Simulator User Group meeting held on Tuesday, June 30th was a relatively brief meeting in terms of actionable news.

Simulator Deployments

Please refer to the server deployment thread for news and updates:

  • There was not main channel deployment or restart on Tuesday, June 30th, leaving the servers on server release 543526, comprising further infrastructure updates to support Group chat improvements / support of the cloud uplift work.
  • On Wednesday, July 1st, there should by an RC server update that includes a fix for off-line inventory offers failing. However, this update requires a viewer-side fix that should be in all RC versions of the official viewer, and TPVs will need to pick it up. Please refer to the deployment thread for further information on this update, when available.

SL Viewer

  • The Love Me Render RC viewer updated to version 6.4.5.544028. Among its updates and fixes, this viewer includes:
    • A fix for BUG-225784 “BUG-225446 regression – HUDs are again affected by environment setting”.
    • Additional logging for detecting Vulkan graphics support on Windows clients.

The rest of the current range of official viewers remains as follows:

  • Current Release viewer version 6.4.3.543157, dated June 11, promoted June 23, formerly the CEF RC viewer – NEW.
  • Release channel cohorts:
    • Arrack Maintenance RC viewer, 6.4.5.544024, issued on June 24 – this viewer uses Viewer Manager 2.0.538279.
    • Tools Update RC viewer, version 6.4.5.544097, June 25 – this viewer is built using VS 2017 / a recent version of Xcode, and Boost.Fiber. It contains no user-facing changes.
  • Project viewers:
    • Mesh uploader project viewer, version 6.4.4.543141, June 11.
    • Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, December 9, 2019.
    • Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.532999, November 22, 2019.
    • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.3.2.530836, September 17, 2019. Covers the re-integration of Viewer Profiles.
    • 360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, July 16, 2019.

In Brief

  • The was some general discussion on region crossings. However, as LL are not currently working on these, here is nothing solid to report in terms of updates.
  • The second half of the meeting was dominated by comparisons between the the Lab’s Copy / Paste project viewer and a similar parameters capability that has long been a part of editing objects in  Firestorm.

2020 Simulator User Group week #26 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Kintsugi: Spirited Beyond – blog post

The following notes were taken at the Simulator User Group meeting held on Tuesday, June 23rd. Not much to report as it as another live music event.

Simulator Deployments

Please refer to the server deployment thread for news and updates:

  • On Tuesday, June 23rd, the min channel was updated to server release 543526, comprising further infrastructure updates to support Group chat improvements / support of the cloud uplift work.
  • There is no planned RC deployment or restart planned for Wednesday, June 24th, also leaving regions running on release 543526.

SL Viewer

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

  • Current Release viewer version 6.4.3.542964, dated May 29th, promoted June 2nd, formerly the FMOD Studio RC viewer – No Change.
  • Release channel cohorts:
    • CEF RC viewer, version 6.4.3.543157, June 11.
    • Tools Update RC viewer, version 6.4.4.543148, June 5 – this viewer is built using VS 2017 / a recent version of Xcode, and Boost.Fiber. It contains no user-facing changes.
    • Love Me Render RC viewer, version 6.4.4.543142, June 3.
  • Project viewers:
    • Mesh uploader project viewer, version 6.4.4.543141, June 11.
    • Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, December 9, 2019.
    • Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.532999, November 22, 2019.
    • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.3.2.530836, September 17, 2019. Covers the re-integration of Viewer Profiles.
    • 360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, July 16, 2019.

2020 Simulator User Group week #25 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Mediterraneo Coffee and Lounge Bar – May 2020 – blog post

The following notes were taken at the Simulator User Group meeting held on Tuesday, June 16th.

Simulator Deployments

Please refer to the server deployment thread for news and updates:

  • On Tuesday, June 16th, the majority of the grid was updated to server release 543337, comprising simulator-side updates that will eventually allow per-region values for Shout, Say, and Whisper distances.
    • Note: Currently these values are read only, and can be accessed via the Sim Console.
  • On Wednesday, June 17th, the RC channels will be updated to server release 543526, comprising further infrastructure updates to support Group chat improvements / support of the cloud uplift work.

Voice Carry Project – Update and Re-Cap

Voices Carry is the name given to the extended chat range project. Once fully deployed, it will allow region / estate owners / managers to set the open chat range on a region (see BUG-228333).

As of the June 16th simulator update, the current values can be viewed via the Sim Console, as noted above.  the command for doing so are: “get chat_range”, “get whisper_range” and “get shout_range”.

General notes on the capability, once fully deployed:

  • It only applies to local chat channel 0, and so it should not impact scripted objects using other chat channels.
  • The distance set within a region will determine which, if any, of any adjoining regions can her local chat with that region.
    • For example, if you are in a region with chat distance set to 50m and you’re more than 50m from any boundary with an adjoining region, then your chat will not be relayed beyond the region.
  • The distance chat is set to within a region will determine how far any chat from an adjoining region will be relayed within it.
    • For example: if a region has a chat range of 20m, and chat is relayed from a neighbouring region with a range of 100m, that chat will only be relayed 20m within the current region.
  • No matter how great the chat range is set within an region, it will never be relayed further than those immediately adjoining it.
    • For example: if a Mainland region has a chat range set to 1000m, chat from it will only be relayed to the (maximum of) 8 regions adjoining it.

SL Viewer

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

  • Current Release viewer version 6.4.3.542964, dated May 29th, promoted June 2nd, formerly the FMOD Studio RC viewer – No Change.
  • Release channel cohorts:
    • CEF RC viewer, version 6.4.3.543157, June 11.
    • Tools Update RC viewer, version 6.4.4.543148, June 5 – this viewer is built using VS 2017 / a recent version of Xcode, and Boost.Fiber. It contains no user-facing changes.
    • Love Me Render RC viewer, version 6.4.4.543142, June 3.
  • Project viewers:
    • Mesh uploader project viewer, version 6.4.4.543141, June 11.
    • Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, December 9, 2019.
    • Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.532999, November 22, 2019.
    • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.3.2.530836, September 17, 2019. Covers the re-integration of Viewer Profiles.
    • 360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, July 16, 2019.

In Brief

  • Extended update deployment roll-times: region owners have noted that the time taken for deployments to roll across  estates has become extended – some regions taking up to an hour to update and restart. LL believe they know what the issue is, but any fix will not be implemented until after the cloud uplift work has been completed.
  • Cloud uplift: work is progressing well, although LL are not revealing which services have been migrated and which have yet to move.
    • Following completion of the uplift, all SL services will initially be in a single AWS regional zone.
    • However, LL expect to eventually have things more distributed across zones (e.g.allowing some simulators to be located closer to where their core audience is located, where there is a clear geographical distribution of users.