Category: Simulator User Group

2019 SL User Groups 25/1: Simulator User Group

Posted on by Inara Pey

Killary; Inara Pey, May 2019, on FlickrKillary, May 2019 – blog post

Update, June 19th: following the release of this update:

  • The Rainbow RC viewer, version 6.2.3.527758, and dated June 5th, was updated to the de facto release viewer.
  • The Bakes on Mesh viewer was temporarily withdrawn due to a major bug being reported. The viewer remains listed on the viewer index page and Alternate Viewers page, but cannot be downloaded. Anyone attempting to run a previously downloaded version will be forced to update to the current release viewer.

The notes below have been revised to reflect these updates.

Server Deployments

Please refer to the server deployment thread for the latest news and updates on the week’s deployments.

  • There was no deployment to the SLS (Main) channel on Tuesday, June 18th, leaving region on that channel on simulator release 19#19.05.17.527341. The channel was, however, restarted as a part of the Lab’s policy of restarting channels every two weeks, regardless of deployments.
  • On Wednesday, June 19th, the main RC channels will be updates as follows:
    • BlueSteel should be updated with server maintenance package 19#19.06.14.528215, comprising internal changes.
    • Magnum and LeTigre should be updated with server maintenance package 19#19.06.11.528038, which contains a number of Environment Enhancement Project (EEP) fixes (see below), the long awaited (by some!) Animesh-specific constants for llGetObjectDetails() (see BUG-225815) and the same internal fixes deployed to BlueSteel.

RC EEP Fixes

As noted above, the Magnum and LeTigre RC deployment planned for Wednesday, June 19th is intended to correct a number of EEP-related issues. These are:

  • BUG-226815 [EEP] Since the grid was rolled to 19.04.15.526263 yesterday, region windlight is broken for all legacy viewers.
  • BUG-226252 [EEP] Please create an internal error code for llReplaceAgentEnvironment() & llSetAgentEnvironment() that distinguishes whether an agent does not have the experience allowed and if the experience is not allowed at their location.
  • BUG-226917 EEP Environment, New Sky should default to midday and not 6pm.

SL Viewer

The current LL viewers are as follows:

  • Current Release version 6.2.3.527758, formerly the Rainbow RC viewer, dated June 5th, promoted June 18th – NEW.
  • Release channel cohorts:
  • Project viewers:
    • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.2.3.527749, released on June 5. Covers the re-integration of Viewer Profiles.
  • Linux Spur viewer, version 5.0.9.329906, dated November 17, 2017 and promoted to release status 29 November 2017 – offered pending a Linux version of the Alex Ivy viewer code.
  • Obsolete platform viewer, version 3.7.28.300847, May 8, 2015 – provided for users on Windows XP and OS X versions below 10.7.

General

There was no real discussion at the SUG this week, as matters wee given over to a live music session as an early solstice party.

 

2019 SL User Groups 24/1: Simulator User Group

Posted on by Inara Pey

City of Solace; Inara Pey, May 2019, on FlickrCity of Solace – blog post

Server Deployments

There are no planned deployments for week #24, leaving the SLS (Main) channel and the primary RC channels (LeTigre, Magnum and BlueSteel) on server maintenance package 19#19.05.17.527341.

SL Viewer

On Monday, June 10th, the Lover Me Render and Bakes on Mesh viewer updated as follows:

At the time of writing, these updates (again) had yet to appear on the new Alternate Viewers web page (or on the Release Notes web page), but can be found on the Release Notes index page.

The 360-snapshot project viewer appears to have been temporarily withdrawn. The remaining LL viewers in the pipeline remain as:

  • Current Release version 6.2.2.527338, formerly the Teranino RC viewer, promoted May 22nd – No Change.
  • Project viewers:
    • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.2.3.527749, released on June 5th. Covers the re-integration of Viewer Profiles.
  • Linux Spur viewer, version 5.0.9.329906, dated November 17th, 2017 and promoted to release status 29th November 2017 – offered pending a Linux version of the Alex Ivy viewer code.
  • Obsolete platform viewer, version 3.7.28.300847, May 8th, 2015 – provided for users on Windows XP and OS X versions below 10.7.

Script Processing Issues

As I’ve recently reported, there have been numerous reports of script run time issues. See  BUG-226851 and BUG-227099 as examples. These continue to be felt across the grid, and the Lab is continuing to investigate, with Rider Linden noting:

We’re looking into a couple of things that we think will help. But we don’t have anything to report yet.

Oz Linden added:

 We’re also doing things to get a more global picture, and to allow us to accurately measure how any new simulator compares to existing ones on this and some other metrics.

In Brief

  • There should be two new simulator updates going to the RC channels in week #25 (commencing Monday,  June 17th), and these should have fixes for the EEP bugs being seen today.
  • Simon Linden has been continuing to work on teleport issues, and indicated that there may be a further group test of updated coded on Aditi following the Server Beta User Group meeting (held Thursdays at 15:00 SLT).
  • General points of discussion: these following is a short list of more general items discussed at the meeting, many of which are likely generally known:
    • Empty regions will not go into idle mode if they can be seen from other regions with avatars; nor should they switch to idle mode if they only have registered agents in them. Finally, the switch between a region being at idle and running at full speed is “very quick”.
    • Regions able to idle can offer a measurable boost in performance for other regions on the same host server.
    • As is often pointed out in these pages and elsewhere: viewer performance can be improved by managing things like your draw distance and viewer bandwidth setting (see the Firestorm guidelines for bandwidth settings – these apply equally to all viewers).
    • User of the 64-bit version of Firestorm can optionally set the viewer to clamp the maximum resolution of all textures to 512×512 (this is automatically clamped in the 32-bit version of Firestorm), reducing the amount of memory used by textures. See Preferences > Graphics > Rendering > Restrict Maximum Texture Resolution to 512 px.

2019 SL User Groups 23/1: Simulator User Group

Posted on by Inara Pey

Whimberly; Inara Pey, April 2019, on FlickrWhimberly – blog post

Server Deployments

At the time of writing, a deployment thread had yet to be posted (in fact, it’s not entirely clear what is happening with the weekly release threads). However:

  • There was no SLS (Main) channel deployment on Tuesday, June 4th, leaving it on server maintenance package #19 19.05.17.527341.
  • On Wednesday, June 5th, the Magnum and LeTigre RC channels should be updated to server maintenance package #19 19.05.24.527547, bringing them to parity with BlueSteel.

SL Viewer

There have been no LL viewer updates at the start of the week, leaving the pipelines as follows:

  • Current Release version 6.2.2.527338, formerly the Teranino RC viewer, promoted May 22 – 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:
  • Linux Spur viewer, version 5.0.9.329906, dated November 17, 2017 and promoted to release status 29 November – offered pending a Linux version of the Alex Ivy viewer code.
  • Obsolete platform viewer, version 3.7.28.300847, May 8, 2015 – provided for users on Windows XP and OS X versions below 10.7.

In Brief

Script Processing Issues

As I’ve recently reported, there have been numerous reports of script run time issues, with some reporting that problems only started occurring following the roll-back on April 18th, 2019. BUG-226851 (and more recently BUG-227099) outlines some of the problems. Some regions experiencing the issue have been cloned to Aditi (the beta grid) where they are running fine, and the Lab is currently looking at script scheduling on Agni (the Main grid).

There is a forum thread on the impact of idle scripts (i.e. scripts that are scheduled, but waiting on an event) on full regions (primarily Mainland). In particular, the finding suggest that limiting in-world scripts to 1 per 10LI (2250 script for a Full region) might help pending improvements – although this falls woefully short of shopping-related regions.

Commenting on the situation, Simon Linden states:

We’re actively looking at script scheduling now and these odd cases are on the list to sort out. There hasn’t been a big magic fix yet but it’s getting attention.

Rider Linden added:

And, yes. Idle scripts are not really idle… they can drag down sim performance even if they are not actually doing anything. Right now llListen() is a major culprit (but I’m hoping we can clean that up in the near future) … [and] all idling is not equal. Some events are more expensive than others to wait on.

EEP Issues

As per my May 30th CCUG update, it’s been noted that a recent deployment has resulted in rendering issues for the Environment Enhancement Project (EEP) – see BUG-227100 as an example.

The EEP RC viewer is due for an update, and it is hoped that these will include shader fixes that should correct the problems in that viewer. However, in terms of the simulator problems that are causing issues for those on non-EEP viewers, Rider Linden commented:

We have had some confusion on our end. When we were chasing the teleport bug a couple fixes were accidentally dropped from the simulator. We’ve been sorting those out as we find them.

Other Performance Impacts

  • It’s long been recognised that teleports – particularly teleports involving mesh-heavy avatars into a region can adverse affect performance (see BUG-8496).
    • Beq Janus has been looking at this, and can show – via a a comment posted to the above Jira, that the effect “ripples through” simulator stats, including hitting script stats.
    • She estimates that overall, the arrival of a mesh avatar in a region can take around 6 seconds to ripple through the region (and impacting users within the region).
    • It’s currently estimate by both Beq and Lou Netizen that female avatars carry on average 70 scripts, and mail avatars an average of 68 (see here for more).
  • Beq has also been investigate another performance impact – that of the viewer flooding the server with GroupProfileRequest at log-in due to persistent notifications see BUG-227094). She is currently working on a patch for contribution to LL to resolve this issue.

2019 SL User Groups 22/1: Simulator User Group

Posted on by Inara Pey

Season's Cove; Inara Pey, April 2019, on FlickrSeason’s Cove – blog post

Update, May 29th: the BlueSteel RC updated to server maintenance package #19 19.05.24.527547. Magnum and LeTigre appear to have remained on  #19 19.05.17.527341.

Server Deployments

At the time of writing, a deployment thread had yet to be posted however:

  • On Tuesday, May 28th, the SLS (Main) channel updated to server maintenance package #19 19.05.17.527341, previously deployed to all three RC channels.
  • It does not appear that the three main RC channels will be updated on Wednesday, May 29th. Commenting on releases, Simon Linden said:

For server news, we updated the main channel of regions this morning, so the grid is pretty much all on the same version, except for one small RC channel. That’ll get updated tomorrow, I believe.

This “small” update might include an initial deployment of the updated region crossing code that has been subject to testing in the last couple of weeks, as per my last couple of Simulator User Group updates.

SL Viewer

There have been no LL viewer updates at the start of the week, leaving the pipelines as follows:

  • Current Release version 6.2.2.527338, formerly the Teranino RC viewer, promoted May 22nd.
  • Release channel cohorts:
  • Project viewers:
  • Linux Spur viewer, version 5.0.9.329906, dated November 17th, 2017 and promoted to release status November 29th, 2017 – offered pending a Linux version of the Alex Ivy viewer code.
  • Obsolete platform viewer, version 3.7.28.300847, May 8th, 2015 – provided for users on Windows XP and OS X versions below 10.7.

In Brief

Script Processing Issues

As I’ve recently report, there have been numerous reports of script run time issues, with some reporting that problems only started occurring following the roll-back on April 18th, 2019. BUG-226851 outlines some of the problems. Some regions experiencing the issue have been cloned to Aditi (the beta grid) where they are running fine, and the Lab is currently looking at script scheduling on Agni (the Main grid).

It has been suggested that multi-thread LSL might offer advantages, prompting Simon Linden to comment:

Again it’s a tougher job retrofitting multiple threads since it wasn’t part of the original design … it would have to be an update queue … but that adds some problems too, as if you call one function and it changes something in-world, then one to get the info … we’d have to suspend until we apply the first. I’m not saying it’s a bad idea or anything … just that it would turn into a monster project.

Rider Linden added:

Threading is one of those things that really needs to be considered up front in the design. Trying to retrofit it into an existing project can lead to madness.

Voice Griefing

Voice griefing can be a problem on voice-enabled regions. It can take several forms (e.g. someone hacks voice system so they can connect to a region without being in it or even logged in). Detailing with these types of hacks  is exceptionally difficult. However, Oz commented in the SUG meeting that LL are working to address this problem – how wasn’t specified, but one possible way of doing so would be for Support to be able to remove an offending user from voice.

2019 SL User Groups 21/1: Simulator User Group

Posted on by Inara Pey

Amrum; Inara Pey, April 2019, on FlickrAmrum – blog post

Server Deployments

There have been no release notes for the week #21 deployments. however:

  • On Tuesday, May 21st, the SLS (Main) channel updated to server maintenance package 19.05.10.527185, containing internal fixes.
  • On Wednesday, May 22nd, the three RC channels updated with server maintenance package 19.05.17.527341.

SL Viewer

  • The Alternate viewer wiki page has now been retired and replaced by a new Alternate Viewers page.
  • The de facto release viewer was updated to version 6.2.2.527338, dated May 20th, formerly the updated Teranino Maintenance RC.

The rest of the current SL viewer channels remain as:

  • Release channel cohorts:
  • Project viewers:
  • Linux Spur viewer, version 5.0.9.329906, dated November 17, 2017 and promoted to release status 29 November – offered pending a Linux version of the Alex Ivy viewer code.
  • Obsolete platform viewer, version 3.7.28.300847, May 8, 2015 – provided for users on Windows XP and OS X versions below 10.7.

In Brief

  • Teleport Fail Issues: following the last Server User Group meeting on Tuesday May 14th, there was a test of a teleport fix Simon Linden had been working on, and a further test was carried out following this week’s meeting, with Simon Linden commenting:

Last week’s test was really helpful – it showed that one problem seemed to be fixed, but exposed another one that I hope is fixed this week. If it goes well, that new teleport code may go out onto RC channels next week.

  • Teleport Attachment Issues: this is a separate issue to that being investigated by Simon Linden, and which is more related to . there’s no current update on the work being put into fixing this, but as Simon observed in the meeting:

As far as I know, the problems with attachments tend to be with crossings and not teleports … while much of the code is the same, there’s usually a fundamental difference in crossings because you’re already connected to that region before you go there, whereas with teleports you are not … which was part of the big disconnect issue we had before.

  • Script Processing Issues: as reported in my week #18 SUG summary, there have been numerous reports of script run time issues, with some reporting that problems only started occurring following the roll-back on April 18th, 2019. BUG-226851 outlines some of the problems. The Lab are looking into this, but at present there are no updates on the problem.

 

2019 SL User Groups 20/1: Simulator User Group

Posted on by Inara Pey

La Virevolte; Inara Pey, March 2019, on FlickrLa Virevolte – blog post

Server Deployments

At the time of writing, a deployment thread had yet to be posted however:

  • There are no deployment to the SLS (Main) channel on Tuesday, May 14th, leaving regions on that channel on server maintenance package 19#19.04.25.526669, primarily intended to correct the simulator-side EEP regressions that resulted of the roll-back of Thursday, April 18th. This update also includes a number of other internal fixes.
  • On Wednesday, May 15th, the three RC channels should be updated with two new packages:
    • BlueSteel and LeTigre should be updated with server maintenance package 19.05.01.526856, but not details are available at the time of writing.
    • Magnum RC will also be updated, but again, no details are available at the time of writing.

SL Viewer

  • The de facto release viewer was rolled back from the Teranino Maintenance RC release viewer, to the EAM viewer, version 6.2.0.526190, originally promoted on April 17th, 2019.
  • The Teranino Maintenance RC was re-released as a Release Candidate cohort on Monday, May 13th as version 6.2.2.527198.
  • The Love Me Render viewer updated to version 6.2.2.527021 on Monday, May 13th, 2019.

The rest of the current SL viewer channels remain as:

  • Release channel cohorts:
    • EEP RC viewer version 6.2.0.526104, dated April 11th.
    • Bakes on Mesh RC viewer, version 6.1.1.525409, dated March 26th.
  • Project viewers:
  • Linux Spur viewer, version 5.0.9.329906, dated November 17th, 2017 and promoted to release status 29th November – offered pending a Linux version of the Alex Ivy viewer code.
  • Obsolete platform viewer, version 3.7.28.300847, dated May 8th, 2015 – provided for users on Windows XP and OS X versions below 10.7. This viewer will remain available for as long as reasonable, but will not be updated with new features or bug fixes.

Network Maintenance

The first tranch of network maintenance announced last week has, according to the Grid Status page on the web, now been completed. This work included a period of time over the night of May 13th / 14th (US / EU) when Second Life log-in were disabled.

Commenting on the work, Simon Linden said, “Last night’s work isn’t anything that will be repeated … hopefully ever.”

While the core of the work has apparently been completed, Oz Linden noted there could be some final testing overnight on May 14th/15th, stating, “They’ll be doing some more testing tonight, but we don’t expect it to be (very) long or disruptive.”

Teleport Fail Issues

I’ve identified 3 different ways TPs could fail and I _believe_ I fixed those on the beta grid. Your help is really appreciated because the last time “someone” tried to fix things didn’t go well.

Simon Linden, SUG Meeting, May14th.

While the recent server-side deployment may have seen teleport success rates have returned to the levels witnessed before the recent “troubles”, the Lab continues to dig into problems, as per Simon’s comment above. To this end, those attending the SUG meeting were invited to a further test session, this one on Aditi (the Beta grid), to see how well his fix works. Expect an update following the next SUG meeting.