Category: TPVD / Open Source User Group

The following notes are taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, November 16th, 2018. A video of the meeting is embedded below, my thanks as always to North for recording and providing it.

This was again a short meeting.

SL Viewer

Video: 1:10-3:37.

• The Spotykach Maintenance RC viewer updated to version 6.0.1.521757 on November 15th.
• The Environmental Enhancement Project (EEP) viewer updated to version 6.0.0.521803 on November 16th.

These updates bring both viewers up to parity with the newly promoted Animesh release viewer. The remainder of the viewer pipeline remains as:

• Current Release version 6.0.0.520636, dated October 18th, promoted November 14th. Formerly the Animesh RC viewer – NEW.
• Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself):
  • Love Me Render RC viewer, version 5.1.10.521635, November 13th.
  • Estate Access Management (EAM) RC viewer, version 5.2.0.520057, September 28th.
  • BugSplat RC viewer, version 5.1.9.519462, September 10th. This viewer is functionally identical to the current release viewer, but uses BugSplat for crash reporting, rather than the Lab’s own Breakpad based crash reporting tools.
• Project viewers:
  • Bakes on Mesh project viewer, version 5.1.10.520711, October 29th.
  • 360 snapshot viewer, version 5.1.6.515934, June 6th.
• 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.

Bakes On Mesh

The back-end support is now grid-wide, meaning that Bakes on Mesh can be tested by anyone using the project viewer, which itself will be updated, both to bring it into parity with the new release viewer and with further BoM fixes.

BugSplat Update

[11:55-14:40] There are Four things to note with Bugsplat:

• As noted above, it will see the Lab switch to using the BugSplat system for crash reporting, rather than their  own Breakpad based crash reporting tools.
• The Breakpad support code will remain in place with a build time option, so that TPVs wishing to continue to use it can do so.
• The current parent process that handles viewer launch and also updates, will be removed. This means there will be some internal differences to how the viewer updater works, and one of the two executables for the viewer will vanish.
  • On windows, if the viewer is installed using an account that does not have admin privileges, the viewer installer will install as a local instance in the user’s local applications folder.
• It will also resolve the viewer having 2 dock icons on MacOS.

In Brief

Group Notifications

[3:34-4:40] A resource has been assigned to look into the unreliable delivery of group notices. It appears the reason some notices are being received when people log-in to Second Life is because they are not actually being recorded in the database that manages the delivery of things like off-line notices. Investigations are therefore focused on backtracking through the various systems to work out where things are breaking down.

EEP On Legacy Viewers

[5:04-6:24] It’s been noted that when seen of non-EEP viewers, applied EEP skies appear odd – stars persistently overlay the sky and fail to render correctly, for example.

This is because the simulator end of EEP tries to take the environment and tries to approximate it for delivery to non-EEP viewers using the “old” environment settings system for delivery to those viewers – something that works at best imperfectly. The Lab has not determined how much effort will be put into making EEP fully backwards compatible with the older environment rendering system, as the issues should only exist through a transitional period as the viewer-side EEP code reaches all maintained viewers.

Duplicate Calling Cards

[21:35-24:00] This was an issue some time ago that saw people’s calling cards duplicated – sometimes multiple times. The core issue was largely corrected, so people with duplicates could generally delete them and not see further duplications. However, duplicates could sometimes still be created as a result of inventory issues a logging-in, and sometimes clearing duplicates requires a request to support to run and inventory transform.

Thanksgiving USA

Week #47 (commencing Monday, November 19th, 2018) is Thanksgiving week in the United States. This means there will be limited updates and releases during the week, and the Lab will be closed on Thursday and Friday, except for essential support.

Zone One – blog post

The following notes are taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, November 2nd, 2018. A video of the meeting is embedded below, my thanks as always to North for recording and providing it.

This was again a short meeting.

SL Viewer

The EEP project viewer updated to version 5.1.10.521312 on November 2nd, 2018. Otherwise, the current viewer pipelines remain unchanged since my initial week #44 update:

• Current Release version 5.1.9.519298, dated September 5th, promoted September 26th. Formerly the Rakomelo Maintenance RC viewer – No change.
• Release channel cohorts:
  • Spotykach Maintenance RC viewer, version 5.1.10.520686, October 30th.
  • Animesh RC viewer, version 6.0.0.520636, October 18th.
  • Estate Access Management (EAM) RC viewer, version 5.2.0.520057, September 28th.
  • BugSplat RC viewer, version 5.1.9.519462, September 10th. This viewer is functionally identical to the current release viewer, but uses BugSplat for crash reporting, rather than the Lab’s own Breakpad based crash reporting tools.
  • Love Me Render RC viewer, version 5.1.8.518751, released on August 20th.
• Project viewers:
  • Bakes on Mesh project viewer, version 5.1.10.520711, October 29th.
  • 360 snapshot viewer, version 5.1.6.515934, June 6th.
• 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, May 8th, 2015 – provided for users on Windows XP and OS X versions below 10.7.

Animesh

It is likely – but not certain – the Animesh RC viewer will be the next viewer to be promoted to de facto release status, being slightly ahead of the Bugsplat RC viewer in terms of readiness for promotion.

As per my last Animesh update, a simulator bug has been found. In short, if an Animesh object has a conventional prim as its root, the required 15 LI for the Animesh skeleton is not applied. This 15 LI is an aggregate value for Animesh arrived at during testing Animesh performance across a range of systems. It has also been subject to some alarmist blog posts about unexpected prim returns, but given Animesh products are not generally available as yet, this is unlikely.

The fix is now working through the simulator release cycle.

Bakes On Mesh

As noted in my initial week #44 update, the Bakes On Mesh project viewer updated to version 5.1.10.520711 at the start of the week. Simulator support for the service should now be grid-wide. However, as reported in my most recent Content Creation updates, the Bake Service itself is still awaiting update.

Non-HTTP Asset Fetching / UDP Path Deprecation

Vir referenced the deprecation and removal of simulator code support for UDP asset fetching. This means that from around January 6th, 2019, any viewers still fetching the affected asset types via UDP will not longer work correctly.

The specific asset types affected by this change are: system body parts, system clothing, gesture, animations, sounds, landmarks and textures (textures have been HTTP for some time, along with mesh and avatar appearance, but the UDP support for textures has thus far not been removed from the simulator).

A region will be set-up on Aditi without the code to allow TPVs to test against it ahead of the switch-over.

TPV Developer Meetings to Year End

There should be three more TPV Developer meetings prior to year-end:

• November 16th 2018
• November 30th, 2018
• December 14th, 2018 – although this is subject to further confirmation.

Savor Serenity – blog post

The majority of the following notes are taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, October 19th, 2018. A video of the meeting is embedded below, my thanks as always to North for recording and providing it.

This is again a short meeting with some lengthy pauses, so the following is a summary of key points.

SL Viewer

[1:54-9:07]

The Environmental Enhancement Project (EEP) viewer updated to version 5.1.10.520819 on October 19th.This viewer contains further fixes and tweaks, and the Lab hope to have the viewer on roughly a weekly update cycle through to RC status.

As noted in my week #42 CCUG summary, the Animesh RC viewer updates to version 6.0.0.520636 on October 18th. This leaves the rest of the current official viewer pipeline as:

• Current Release version 5.1.9.519298, dated September 5, promoted September 26. Formerly the Rakomelo Maintenance RC viewer – No change.
• Release channel cohorts:
  • Spotykach Maintenance RC viewer, version 5.1.10.520444, October 11.
  • Estate Access Management (EAM) RC viewer, version 5.2.0.520057, September 28.
  • BugSplat RC viewer, version 5.1.9.519462, September 10. This viewer is functionally identical to the current release viewer, but uses BugSplat for crash reporting, rather than the Lab’s own Breakpad based crash reporting tools.
  • Love Me Render RC viewer, version 5.1.8.518751, released on August 20.
• Project viewers:
  • Bakes on Mesh project viewer, version 5.1.9.519785 September 24.
  • 360 snapshot viewer, version 5.1.6.515934, June 6 (see my hands-on update).
• 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.

Viewer Notes in Brief

• Again, as per my week #42 CCUG summary:
  • Currently, running EEP on the simulator side can result in some strange skies when seen on non-EEP viewers (deep black skies, racing clouds, etc.). Rider and Graham Linden are working to correct this, however, the work involved is a little more complicated than had at first been thought, so there might still be one or two things that continue to “look a little weird” even with a fix in place. Should you enter an EEP region on a non-EEP viewer and experience  odd skies, simply set your environment through the viewer options.
  • [21:06-21:55] It is hoped the October 18th RC update will be the last for the Animesh viewer, and its next update will see it promoted to de facto release status, although right now it hasn’t been available long enough to give a reliable indication of crash rates.
  • The Bakes On Mesh viewer is pending fixes to the Bake Service.
• Bugsplat viewer: a new version is going through QA that eliminates the need for two viewer icons.
  • This should be the final RC update for this viewer, leaving it in the queue for promotion to release status.
  • The viewer also retains the Breakpad code for those TPVs who wish to continue to use that for bug reporting. However, contributions to this code will be required to maintain it once the Lab has moved to using Breakpad.
• The Render viewer still has a number of bugs pending a fix before that will be at an RC status eligible for consideration for promotion to release status.
• The Estate Access Management (EAM) RC viewer hasn’t yet had enough hours of use against it to judge its possible promotion status.

Non-HTTP Asset Fetching

[10:19-12:45] Again as a reminder: for over a year now, LL has used HTTP via their CDN provider(s) for all asset fetching, avoiding the need for the simulator to handle all asset transfers and associated messaging directly. However, the simulator-side UDP code for some asset types has yet to be removed. This will now happen at the start of January 2019, and means that from around January 6th, 2019, any viewers still fetching the affected asset types via UDP after this date will not longer work correctly.

The specific asset types affected by this change are: system body parts, system clothing, gesture, animations, sounds, and landmarks (mesh, textures and avatar appearance having long been HTTP only).

A region will be set-up on Aditi without the code to allow TPVs to test against it ahead of the switch-over.

Inventory Bug and Inventory HTTP Operations

[13:23-19:06]

Inventory Bug Fix

There should be a fix in the  Spotykach RC viewer for an “obnoxious” bug within the inventory database which, on rare occasions during inventory initialisation, could see a specific UDP inventory operation that isn’t supposed to move folders attempt to do so, as a result of an unknown issue within inventory. This then results in the folders being recorded (and appearing) as items in Trash and at risk of accidental deletion.

Inventory HTTP Operations

Oz Linden has indicated he hopes that 2019 will see all inventory operations move away from UDP in order to make them more reliable, but there is a fair amount of systems work to be done to achieve this, including implementing new HTTP inventory operations.

The current plan is to implement the HTTP functions in the first half of 2019 and switch over to them, then disable the existing UDP operations later in 2019, and eventually remove them from both the viewer and the server.

ARCTan and Texture Caching

ARCTan

[22:18-23:12] ARCTan is the code-name for the project to re-evaluate object and avatar rendering costs to make them more reflective of the actual impact of rendering both, which it is hoped will also help correct some inherent negative incentives for creating optimised content (e.g. with regards to generating LOD models with mesh).

It’s a project that has been on a slow burn for some time, and the current order of priorities for anything involving rendering is EEP first, then the updates to texture caching, then ARCTan. As such, there are unlikely to be any changes to ARC calculations, possible changes to LI for objects before the end of the year. Even then, because of concerns over LI changes, the Lab will approach things cautiously – see here for more.

Texture Caching

[23:12-24:52] The updates to improve texture caching are moving forward. Overall the expectation is that the new method for caching will be a lot more robust in terms of the code, and it could lead to some viewer performance improvements for most systems. Focus should switch to this viewer as EEP matures through RC however, with the holiday season approach, the project may not advance too far before the end of the year, but hopefully a project viewer will surface before the year-end No Change window comes into effect.

Other Items in Brief

• [9:08-9:38 and 26:32-26:57] The US holiday season is approaching – notably US Thanksgiving and then Christmas, so the cadence of TPV meetings may therefore be changing as the end of the year approaches. The next meeting (November 2nd) will take place, after that meeting frequency will be TBA.
• [19:41-20:18] Return of last names: progress is being made on updating the back-end services. It’s still not clear if this will be deployed before the end of the year.

The majority of the following notes are taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, October 5th, 2018. A video of the meeting is embedded below, my thanks as always to North for recording and providing it.

This is again a short meeting, with lengthy pauses in chat, so the following is a summary of key points. Note that due to a log-in issue occurring before the meeting, the discussion proper doesn’t start until the 3m 40s point in the video, having been delayed to give people still having issues the opportunity to log-in and get to the meeting.

Simulator Deployment Update

The planned deployment of server maintenance package 18#18.0924.19940, scheduled of Wednesday, October 3rd was cancelled after a last minutes issues was found in testing.

SL Viewer

[3:40-6:56]

The new Spotykach Maintenance RC viewer updated to version 5.1.10.520176 on October 4th.

The remaining viewers in the pipeline remain unchanged from the start of the week:

• Current Release version 5.1.9.519298, dated September 5, promoted September 26. Formerly the Rakomelo Maintenance RC viewer.
• Release channel cohorts:
  • Estate Access Management (EAM) RC viewer, version 5.2.0.520057, September 28.
  • BugSplat RC viewer, version 5.1.9.519462, September 10. This viewer uses BugSplat for crash reporting, rather than the Lab’s own Breakpad based tools.
  • Animesh RC viewer, version 6.0.0.518949, August 24.
  • Love Me Render RC viewer, version 5.1.8.518751, released on August 20.
• Project viewers:
  • Environmental Enhancement Project (EEP) viewer, version 5.1.10.520121, released on October 3.
  • Bakes on Mesh project viewer, version 5.1.9.519785 September 24.
  • 360 snapshot viewer, version 5.1.6.515934, June 6 (see my hands-on update).
• 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.

Of the current RC viewers:

• Animesh appears to be the leading contender, but this is unlikely to happen “immediately” due to apparent performance issues (see below).
• Bugsplat is currently awaiting a change to the updater to be merged with it, so will likely remain at RC status, and the update may appear in week #41 (commencing Monday, October 8th, 2018).
• [32:06-32:53] The Estate Access Management viewer is largely regarded as feature complete, although estate holders / managers are being encouraged to test the viewer and offer feedback to the Lab.
• Bakes On Mesh has received the required simulator update (maintenance package 18#18.09.20.519894). This should just leave the Bake Service update before the capability will be available on Agni (the main grid).
• EEP is now officially available for testing on Aditi – see EEP testing and project viewer officially announced for more, and the additional EEP news below.

EEP

[10:00-25:50] EEP permissions may cause some confusion. Please see the EEP documentation on permissions for additional information.

• EEP assets can be set to be Mod(ify) or No Mod(ify); Transfer or No Transfer, but they are always Copy.
• No Copy is not supported because  – like avatar shapes –  it is possible to manually copy settings values, even if the asset itself is No Copy.
• No Mod(ify):
  • Is respected for a fixed sky / water asset if it is transferred / sold.
  • Is not respected if the asset is subsequently used as a day cycle frame (presumably to allow blending with other frames in the cycle).
  • No Mod EEP assets cannot be edited and saved; however, Save As can be used with them to create a new asset based on them.
• No Transfer:
  • Adding a No Transfer asset as a frame in a day cycle will convert the entire day cycle to No Transfer.
  • This prevents No Transfer assets a creator does not want re-sold from being used in day cycles created by others.

The permissions appear confusing in order to allow people to be able to create and sell sky and water assets; however, there have already be calls for EEP assets ignore permissions altogether. This would mean they would be freely exchangeable – much as windlight XML settings are currently.

This feedback has been heard by the Lab and will be taken back to the project, but in the meantime the request is that TPVs do not alter the assigned permissions with EEP assets, due to the additional confusion this would likely cause.

Adjustable Vertical Zoning

[34:06-35:00] Note that the project viewer version of the EEP viewer allows the vertical position of sky settings to be adjusted, rather than being fixed at 1,000 metre intervals. However, Rider Linden has indicated some refinement is required on setting the slider values.

Animesh: Performance Issue

[30:00-31:45] There is an apparent performance issue with Animesh, which may be connected to the needsUpdate patch added to the viewer as a part of the changes for dynamic bounding boxes – see BUG-225584.

It was always expected that Animesh might introduce some performance hits – although up until the changes to the bounding box nothing major had been encountered – and the degree of impact this issue seems to produce was not anticipated.

Diagnosing the problem has been difficult from the Lab’s perspective, as issues have so far only been reported on the Black Dragon viewer and Firestorm’s Animesh test viewers – with the former suffered a far greater impact than the latter.

Vir Linden has started a forum thread on the issue (as Jira comments are limited to supported users at present). He has also asked for specific testing using the official Animesh viewer as well. Those wishing to test and offer feedback are asked to do so via the forum thread (although for those with permission to comment on Jiras, feedback on the bug report will also obviously be accepted).

There is an upcoming update for the viewer, but it does not include any fix for this issue. As of the TPV meeting, it hadn’t been decided if the issue was sufficient enough to be classified as a blocker to the promotion of the Animesh viewer to de facto release status.

Other Items

• [8:50-9:06] BUG-225557: “Attaching an object from the ground causes inventory loss under certain circumstances” can be nasty. The Lab are aware of the issue and will be investigating it.

Bellefleurs – blog post

The following notes are taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, September 7th, 2018. A video of the meeting is embedded below, my thanks as always to North for recording and providing it.

This is another short TPV Developer meeting, with a lengthy discussion (roughly from 7:00 to 13:15) on the Estate Access Management project viewer, the majority of which is covered by my overview of that viewer, and so not repeated here. There are also some extended silences on the video.

SL Viewer

[0:58-7:00]

The Rakomelo Maintenance RC viewer updated to version 5.1.9.519298 on September 5th.  The remaining viewer pipelines remain as:

• Current Release version 5.1.8.518593, dated August 14, promoted August 20. Formerly the SL Voice 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):
  • Animesh RC viewer, version 6.0.0.518949, August 24.
  • Love Me Render RC viewer, version 5.1.8.518751, released on August 20.
  • BugSplat RC viewer, version 5.1.8.518305, August 7. This viewer is functionally identical to the current release viewer, but uses BugSplat for crash reporting, rather than the Lab’s own Breakpad based crash reporting tools.
• Project viewers:
  • EAM project viewer, version 5.2.0.518362, August 9 – improved region access control tools; see my overview for more.
  • Bakes on Mesh project viewer, version 5.1.7.518013 August 3.
  • 360 snapshot viewer, version 5.1.6.515934, June 6 (see my hands-on update).
• 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. This viewer will remain available for as long as reasonable, but will not be updated with new features or bug fixes.

Assorted Notes on the Viewer Pipeline

• The Bugsplat RC viewer is still awaiting a further update (to bring it to parity with the release viewer), and this update will include some Mac improvements.
• A second viewer with further round of rendering updates will be following on the heels of the current Love Me Render RC viewer.
• EAM Project Viewer:
  • The next update to the EAM viewer may see it promoted to release candidate status.
  • This update will include the ability to set time-based bans on individuals (i.e. banning someone for a period of time, after which they are automatically unbanned).
• The snapshot viewer is still awaiting internal resources at the Lab to be able to resume working on it.
• Both the Bakes on Mesh and Environment Enhancement Projects continue to await the AIS update (see below for more).
  • The Bakes on Mesh project also requires both a simulator update (as does EEP) and an update to the Bake Service. These  will take place some time after the AIS update has been deployed,
  • [7:51-8:49] As a sidebar to the Bakes on Mesh and EEP work, it was found that the existing viewer code did not handle inventory assets types very well if it could not recognise them. This has now been corrected with one of the updates in the Rakomelo RC viewer, so viewers with this code, but which do not have the BOM and EEP code should handle the new asset types delivered by the simulator / CDN for these projects a lot more gracefully than has previously been the case with adding new asset types.
• [6:16-7:00] The Animesh is now down to a small number of must-fix bugs before it can roll to release status; additional bugs have been tiraged and flagged as “fix later”. As noted in my most recent CCUG update, there will be a behavioural change to add a scale limit to the existing translation limit such that Animesh objects can’t become too large or too arbitrarily placed.

AIS Update

[4:00-4:34] As noted above, the AIS (Advanced Inventory System) update contains changes to support both the Bakes on Mesh project and the EEP project. However, it is primarily aimed at running the inventory services on a newer version of their operating system (the Lab is currently engaged in updating the operating system used across their servers, as noted by Simon Linden at the week #36 Simulator User Group meeting). This OS update is also one of the foundational requirements need to start moving more of the SL services to a cloud based infrastructure in the future.

The AIS update has now cleared the Lab’s QA testing, and is expected to be grid-wide in the next week or so.

ARCTan and Viewer Texture Caching

[13:30-14:40] ARCTan and the viewer texture caching updates have been on hold, the former because of the effort being put into the rendering updates in the Love Me Render RC viewer (and presumably its follow-up viewer) and the EEP project. Both ARCTan and the viewer texture caching project are expected to resume “real soon now^TM“.

In Brief

• A reminder that the SL Voice .EXE in the current release viewer (5.1.8.518593) is incompatible with earlier versions of the viewer, and cannot be used with them.
• There is also a report that viewer 5.1.8.518593 can disconnect voice when teleporting a lot more frequently that previous releases. This is to be the subject of the bug report.
• A reminder that the fixes for ensuring off-line Group messages and Friend requests are correctly delivered at log-in by the new HTTP capability can be found in the Rakomelo RC viewer.
• [21:27-22:10] There is still no confirmed date as to when the inventory UDP messaging will be turned off at the simulator end. All inventory messaging switched from UDP to HTTP earlier in 2018, and it had previously been indicated the UDP support would be switched off on the server end in late summer / autumn 2018.  This is in part due to the discovery the messaging system is being used by some “other things”, and this need to stop before UDP messaging can be disabled.