Category: TPVD / Open Source User Group

Second Life project updates 28/2: TPV Developer meeting

Posted on by Inara Pey

Crystal Gardens Estates Inara Pey, July 2015, on FlickrCrystal Gardens Estates, July 2015 (Flickr) – blog post

The following notes are primarily taken from the TPV Developer (TPVD) meeting held on Friday, July 10th. A video of the TPVD meeting is included at the end of this report, with any time stamps in the following text referring to it. My thanks as always to North for the recording and providing it for embedding.

Server Deployments – Recap

As always, please refer to the server deployment thread for the latest updates / news.

  • On Tuesday, July 7th, the Main (SLS) channel received the same server maintenance package deployed to the three RC channels in week #27
  • There was no RC deployments to the RC channels on Wednesday, July 8th, leaving all of the main grid on the same release.

An RC channel release planned for week #29 (commencing Monday, July 13th) will likely see some “db optimization around group stuff”.

SL Viewers

Viewer Updates

The Mesh Importer RC viewer updated to version 3.8.1.303230 on Wednesday, July 8th, with the Lab hoping this release fixes the majority of issues so far reported with that viewer.

On Thursday, July 9th, the Viewer-Managed Marketplace (VMM) RC viewer updated to version 3.8.1.303315.

Viewer Promotion Options

The above updates mean that all four RC viewers currently in the release channel (except the obsolete platforms viewer, which isn’t intended for update), are on a par with the current release version of the viewer (Experience Tools).

However, it is not currently clear which might be promoted to the de facto release version. Any decision on this will be made on the basis of crash rates and overall performance.

[04:13] That said, the VMM viewer has contained a series if XML file breakages with the translation options, and a change in the target formatting for translations also appears to have been changed in the VMM viewer. The Lab believe a fix for the XML issue is in the updated referenced above, although there appears to be some concern that problems still exist. If so, it is unlikely that this viewer will be promoted until issues have been sorted.

Notifications Project Viewer

Also on July 8th, the Lab issued the Notification project viewer, version 3.8.1.303211, which sees an overhaul of the way in which notifications – system, group, transaction, etc., are presented through the viewer. For further information on this release, please refer to my overview.

[08:10]  As this is a project viewer, now is the time to test it and see if it is lacking functionality / options – the Lab will be far more willing to alter the code, should it be required, while the viewer is at a project status than they will be when it reaches RC, where the focus will be on fixing any bugs which may have slipped through.

Other Items

Changes to Linden Damage

[10:00] The Lab have again acknowledged that the recent changes to the way the official viewer handles avatar damage messaging are not ideal. In short, damage cannot be set it the parcel level only; also, the viewer does not display the health meter on damage enabled parcels, but people can be “killed” and teleported home – for a full list of issues, see BUG-9422. There may be further news on this in due course, as Grumpity Linden (recently returned from maternity leave) will be looking at the issues.

Interest List Issues

[14:00] Some people are reporting what appear to be interest list issues (e.g. items not updating correcting in your in-world view when camming around, etc.) – see the likes of BUG-7084 for further details. However,commenting on this, Oz Linden said:

If there are issues with that, we need repros, because we haven’t got them. And we also need to be able to isolate whether the problem is that the various interest list messages are not being delivered properly, or whether the problem is that the assets aren’t being fetched properly, which is independent of that [the interest list messaging].

Any issues that look as if they might be interest list related must be tested and reported using the official viewer, and not with any TPV.

Avatar Shape Issues

[25:04] There have been reports of avatar shape issues and “corruptions” (e.g. BUG-9487). The Lab have acknowledged that they may have an internal issues of a similar nature (and BUG-9487 has also been triaged), however, if the issue is different, the matter will be imported for further investigation. One problem here is defining what is meant by a “corrupted” shape. The asset itself is unlikely to be be affected, which means it could either be the local copy of the asset being somehow modified, or an incorrect pointer has somehow been created – all of which needs clears steps to repro in order to investigate and ascertain.

Attachment Issues

[20:23] As noted above, project Big Bird (version 3.8.1.303130 at the time of writing) is thought to correct the majority of viewer-side attachment issues. However, this does not mean that all such issues are fixed; some might be server-side, etc., Both BUG-7761 and BUG-6925 refer to specific issues that have been reported.

An important thing to remember here – again – is that issues like this need to be tested and reported using the relevant Linden Lab viewer, not a third-party viewer.

This is not the Lab being awkward over matters or trying to avoid issues. It is simply because if an issue can be consistently reproduced on the Lab’s viewer points to it being directly related to their code; if a TPV is used – and with respect to all TPV coders – it is not always possible to determine if a problem is a result of code the Lab have supplied, or something a TPV may have done in modifying the code / viewer to suit the needs of their users. Obviously, if it is the latter, fixing the problem is outside of the Lab’s reach.

 Firestorm Update

[01:25 and 11:33] Firestorm are currently waiting on VMM and the attachments fixes (project Big Bird) to be merged into the Lab’s de facto release viewer, as these will allow them to push ahead with there own merges and testing in preparation for the next Firestorm release. However, given the Lab would prefer to promote a viewer to release status every other week (and allowing for Firestorm’s own testing), it could be around 6 weeks before Firestorm updates (although the team already have VMM, the attachment fixes and the maintenance RC updates staged ready for merging).

Second Life project updates week 25/2: TPV Developer meeting

Posted on by Inara Pey
Alpha.Tribe
Alpha.Tribe – blog post

The following notes are taken from the TPV Developer (TPVD) meeting held on Friday, June 19th. A video of the TPVD meeting is included below, with any time stamps in the following text referring to it. My thanks as always to North for the recording and providing it for embedding.

SL Viewer

RC Viewers

[0:39 / 08:00] The Viewer-Managed Marketplace (VMM) viewer reached release candidate status on Thursday, June 18th with the release of version 3.7.31.302677. This means the VMM code is now officially available for TPVs to integrate into their viewers. When this viewer reaches release status, it will signal the end of the current VMM beta period.

[22:37] Currently, the Lab is aiming to promote the Experience Tools, VMM and attachment fixes (Project Big Bird) in order – although what that order might be, has yet to be finally determined.

A new Maintenance RC viewer, version 3.7.31.302685, entered the release channel on Friday, June 19th, with some 50 fixes, improvements and updates, covering building, snapshots, group ban fixes, rendering fixes, etc. Please refer to the release notes for full details.

Project Viewers

An update to the Oculus Rift project viewer  (currently version 3.7.18.295296, and not updated since October 2014) is anticipated to be arriving “soon”, although no precise date is available.

[09:10] A new voice project viewer is expected to appear in week #26 (week commencing Monday, June 22nd), with fixes for voice issues directly from Vivox.

[09:32] A project viewer based on the latest HTTP updates (llcorehttp) that rider Linen has been working on is also expected to make its appearance shortly. This will likely remain at project viewer status for a while as it goes through various iterations as further improvements and revisions are made.

[10:00] A further project viewer with the Lab’s revamped notifications interface (see BUG-8000) is also anticipated as arriving soon as well.

A preliminary version of the proposed new notification panel (see BUG-8000). Note that is is a work-in-progress and may be subject to change prior to release (image courtesy of Whirly Fizzle)
A preliminary version from February 2015 of the proposed new notification panel (see BUG-8000). Note that is is a work-in-progress and may be subject to change prior to release (image courtesy of Whirly Fizzle)

Chromium Embedded Framework

[10:14] Work is progressing with the switch from webkit to the Chromium Embedded Framework (CEF) for media management such that it is entirely possible that a project viewer using CEF may be appearing in the next two weeks.

Snowstorm Project Viewers

[10:30] There are two Snowstorm (open-source contributions) viewers in progress. One of these includes the Avatar Complexity work and the ability to save graphics preferences for the viewer which are being developed by Jonathan Yap (see below for more on this viewer).

The second is a viewer build clean-up viewer that includes a number of TPV-contributed updates and fixes. This latter viewer is currently awaiting internal resources at the Lab, but should hopefully “very, very soon”.

Avatar Complexity

Work on the Avatar Complexity code has been halted due to the introduction of a bug
The introduction of a bug has paused work on the Avatar Complexity code

The Avatar Complexity (aka Jelly Babies) project is the upcoming functionality which provides greater control to user to define how other avatars are rendered in their world-view.

However, a recent  hiccup means that the project has been on hold. n making some changes to the code, Oz accidentally broke the code such that instead of rendering as a solid colour, avatars exceeding the limit are currently rendering as transparent, and this is yet to be fixed.

Commenting on situation at the TPV Developer meeting, Oz indicated any help any willing devs can provide to help sort the problem out, would be appreciated. The public repository for the code is here.

The code problem arose as Oz sought to make changes such that avatars above the rendering limit set by the user render as “Jelly Babies” (i.e. a solid colour, as previously indicated in discussing the project), those avatars with incomplete rendering data are rendered grey (as we currently sometimes see in-world), and those that the user has muted are simply not rendered at all.

Continue reading “Second Life project updates week 25/2: TPV Developer meeting” →

SL project updates 23/1: server, TPV Developer meeting

Posted on by Inara Pey

Crestwick Island; Inara Pey, June 2015, on Flickr Crestwick Island (Flickr) – blog post

The following notes are primarily taken from the TPV Developer (TPVD) meeting held on Friday, June 5th. A video of the TPVD meeting is included below, with any time stamps in the following text referring to it. My thanks as always to North for the recording and providing it for embedding.

Server Deployments Week 23 – Recap

There was no deployment to the Main (SLS) channel on Tuesday, June 2nd, due to the week #22 RC deployment being rolled-back.

On Wednesday, June 3rd, all thee RCs received the same server maintenance package, which was the same update which had been attempted in week #22, but with additional back-end fixes to prevent a repeat of the earlier problems. The update comprises:

  • A change logic on accessing group member lists for large groups
  • Internal server logging changes.

SL Viewer

On Thursday, May 3rd, the attachment fixes RC viewer (Project Big Bird) updated to version 3.7.30.302190.  Presumably, this update is to bring the viewer up to parity with the current release viewer (formerly the avatar layers update), and so will hopefully clear the way for it to be promoted to the de facto release viewer in the near future.

[02:40] A new maintenance fixes RC viewer should be appearing in the release channel soon, the should also be an update to the Mesh Importer project viewer (currently version 3.7.28.300878) appearing soon; and work is progressing on updating the Oculus Rift project viewer.

Experience Keys (/ Tools)

[03:35] Work is continuing on the back-end of the Experience Keys systems prior to the capabilities being formally released across the grid as a whole.

“We are making progress on the back-end issues that have been delaying that,” Oz Linden informed the TPV Developer meeting. “But as far as I’m aware, we have not yet  … uncovered a viewer-related problem with that. so far these are all back-end related issues.” He went on:

To be a little bit more transparent, it’s really scaling issues. Experience actually work just fine at the scale we’re using them right now … but what we’re concerned about is what will happen when we turn them loose on a much, much larger population and there are lots more experiences running and there are a lot more simulators with experiences running on them. 

So what we’ve doing … is fairly intensive scaling and performance testing and we’re solving the problems that the testing uncovers. So, we’re making progress on it, and we’re fairly confident the problems are solvable, but we have run into a whole host of assorted issues with that.

In the meantime, it is expected that the current RC release of the Experiences viewer (currently version 3.8.0.300963) will be brought up to parity with the release viewer during week #24.

Viewer-Managed Marketplace

[05:53] For ease of reference, please refer to my update on VMM, available here.

Land Bans

[17:58] Oz Linden has issues an invitation to open-source contributors to assist the Lab in trying to improve the management of land ban lists. Again, for ease of reference, please refer to my separate report on this, available here.

Group Membership Changes

[22:15]  The update to the server RC channels referred to as “a change logic on accessing group member lists for large groups”, as noted in the server deployments recap at the top of this article, refers to a new way in which the members lists for larger groups (5,000 members and over) are handled.

In brief, the members lists for such groups will no longer load in the group floater in the viewer, unless the person attempting to see the list is in a role which requires they need to be able to do so. While this change is discussed within the meeting, I have been specifically asked not to blog on the change until it is deployed to the Main (SLS) simulator channel on Tuesday, June 9th, when I’ll have the details in full.

Unified Snapshot Floater

[33:12] As I’ve recently reviewed, NiranV Dean has updated the unified snapshot floater in his Black Dragon viewer. As he originally contributed the code for this floater to the Lab, he has also raised a JIRA (see BUG-9325) listing improvements and fixes and has contributed his updated code. This has been under review at the Lab, and commenting at the TPV Developer meeting, Oz indicated that the Lab are “fine” with the majority of Niran’s suggestions, although there are a couple that appear to be subject to further consideration, which might take a little while to sort through.

NiranV Dean's unified snapshot floater improvements, including the separate, resizeable preview panel, are now with the Lab, although it is not yet entirely clear which of the updates will be adopted, or when they will appear in the official viewer.
NiranV Dean’s unified snapshot floater improvements, including the separate, resizeable preview panel, are now with the Lab, although it is not yet entirely clear which of the updates will be adopted, or when they will appear in the official viewer.

Continue reading “SL project updates 23/1: server, TPV Developer meeting” →

SL project updates week 20/2: TPV Developer meeting, VMM

Posted on by Inara Pey

Miyagi; Inara Pey, May 2015, on Flickr Miyagi (General), May 2015 (Flickr) – blog post

The following notes are primarily taken from the TPV Developer (TPVD) meeting held on Friday, May 15th, and from the Server Beta meeting held on Thursday, May 14th. A video of the TPVD meeting is included below, with any time stamps in the following text referring to it. My thanks as always to North for the recording and providing it for embedding,

Server Deployments, Week 20 – Recap

As always, please refer to the server deployment thread for the latest updates / news.

There was no Main (SLS) channel deployment on Tuesday, May 11th. On Wednesday, May 12th, the three RC channels were all updated with a new server maintenance package, comprising internal server logging changes, back-end system bug fixes, reply-to email changed in postcard sends (see below for more).

Group Chat

The Server Beta User Group meeting on Thursday, May 14th, saw a test of a group chat update it is hoped will fix the issue of some people not seeing all or some chat when the group chat window is open (see BUG-9130). The test appeared to yield positive results, with Simon reporting no unusual event logging. The problem here is that the instances of the problem seem to be so rare, it’s hard to guarantee a small sampling of testers will catch any problems which might still exist.

SL Viewer

[00:15] It has been a quiet week on the viewer front. As noted in part 1 of this week’s report, the attachment viewer (Project big Bird) reached RC status, other than that there has been not additional movement with either the current selection of RC and project viewers.

A further update to the mesh importer project viewer (currently at version 3.7.28.300878) is with LL’s QA team and should be released relatively soon. Updates are also being made to the Viewer-Managed Marketplace project viewer (which is likely to go to RC status once through LL’s QA process) and the Oculus Rift project viewer.

Snapshots to E-mail

[02:22] Commenting at the TPV Developer meeting, Oz Linden gave a little more information on the “reply-to email changed in postcard sends” update deployed to the RCs, indicating this was indeed a fix aimed at preventing snapshot to e-mail being tagged as spam by ISPs and a/v software due to the way they handle the “from” field (see my TPV Developer meeting report for week #17), which had caused the Lab to consider removing the snapshot to e-mail capability.

“Instead,” Oz told the meeting, “we found we could get around that by sending the e-mail differently … So the way it’s changed now is that instead of sending the ‘from’ address as the sender’s address, we send the ‘reply-to’ address; and the ‘from’ address is ‘no-reply@secondlife.com’ … so that ducks the problem of us looking like spammers who are forging invalid addresses.”

This should hopefully negate any need to remove the snapshot to e-mail capability, and retain compatibility with sending snapshots to the likes of Snapzilla and the SLU forums.

Unified Snapshot Floater

[04:40] NiranV Dean, who submitted the unified snapshot floater to LL (and which has most recently been integrated into Firestorm among the TPVs) asked if there had been any feedback on it. Both Oz and Grumpity Linden indicated that overall, feedback has been positive, although some have complained at the amount of screen real estate it takes up with the preview panel open. As this allows the snapshot preview to match the aspect ratio of the user’s screen, there’s not a lot that can be done about it – and the preview window can always be closed / the panel minimised when initially setting-up shots.

The unified snapshot floater - further work is being carried out by TPV devs for contribution to LL, including the possible full integration of the Facebook, Flickr and Twitter upload options
The unified snapshot floater – further work is being carried out by TPV devs for contribution to LL, including the possible full integration of the Facebook, Flickr and Twitter upload options

Niran is proposing a further set of updates (one of which, a fix for auto snapshot, is in the works at the Lab), including possibly making the preview screen detachable from the main floater.  Cinder Roxley also indicated she is working on fully integrating the Facebook, Twitter and Flickr options into the main snapshot floater (they currently retain their own floaters due to the authentication workflow required for each. This work will be contributed to the Lab for consideration / integration when complete.

Viewer-Managed Marketplace (VMM)

[08:09] Over the last two weeks, as a part of the on-going beta of VMM, around 15-20 volunteers have had their stores migrated by the Lab from Direct Delivery to VMM. Brooke linden reports that the exercise has uncovered “pretty much minor issues” which the Lab can address. A further batch of volunteer migrations is planned to help further test the robustness of the process in the next week or so.

As noted above, the VMM viewer is now heading for an RC release once it has cleared LL’s QA testing. However,  the time frame on when this might happen is a little vague; it might be in the next week or so, or it might be longer.

Avatar Complexity

[17:34]  The next Snowstorm contributions viewer is progressing internally at the Lab. This is the viewer which includes the new Avatar Complexity (aka “Jelly Babies” or “rainbow avatars”) functionality which allows users to define a level of complexity (a weighting number) which will render any avatar exceeding that value as a solid colour, rather than a full avatar. The aim of this is to help reduce the rendering load placed on people’s computers, particularly in very busy locations. The value is adjustable, as so can of course be varied to suit your current needs.

Avatar complexity is intended to help those who may hit performance issues as a result of their GPU struggling to render complex (hight render cost) avatars, by rendering such avatars as solid colours.
Avatar complexity is intended to help those who may hit performance issues as a result of their GPU struggling to render complex (hight render cost) avatars, by rendering such avatars as solid colours.

A slight hiccup has occurred in that in making some changes to the code, Oz accidentally broke the code such that instead of rendering as a solid colour, avatars exceeding the limit are currently rendering as transparent, and this is yet to be fixed. Code has been added to the viewer to report how many people around you are rendering your avatar as a solid colour (should your avatar be complex enough to be rendered thus), but this has yet to be made visible through the viewer UI, and simulator support for this is now in place on the RC channels and will be rolled to the Main channel in the coming week.

Mac Updates

[19:36] Cinder Roxley has a set of contributions for using the viewer with Mac Retina displays ready to go to the Lab, and it seems likely these will flow into a further Snowstorm contributions viewer in development alongside the one containing the Avatar Complexity updates.

A question was also asked whether there were plans to update the Mac viewer to use a newer OpenGL core profile. The Lab is not working on this, as their rendering team believe there is little or no benefit to be gained from it. However, they would accept any contributions offered for consideration (subject to a “long, terrible QA process”). However, a good part of this would require working through some eight years of OpenGL code.

SL project updates week 18/2: TPV Developer meeting

Posted on by Inara Pey

Server Deployments Week 18 – Recap

As always, please refer to the server deployment thread for the latest news.

SL Viewer

[00:30] All of the viewers currently in the release channel as RCs are currently being updated to match the current release viewer, version 3.7.28.300918, which uses the new viewer build tool set.

Experience Keys / Tools

[02:06] The Lab is still making headway on the back-end issues they wish to clear before they promote the Experiences RC viewer to the de facto release viewer.

Attachment Fixes

[02:20] The attachment fixes project viewer (Project BigBird), currently at version 3.7.28.300856, is expected to appear as a release candidate viewer very soon – most likely in week #19. It is thought this viewer fixes all of the attachment issues associated with AIS v3, although there are some attachment issues which occur server-side which it does not correct, such as failures with requests to attach multiple items (such as during an outfit change).

Oculus Rift Project Viewer

[07:22] As noted in my last TPV Developer meeting report, the Lab is resuming work on the Oculus Rift project viewer. The focus on this will be to ensure the viewer works with the latest Oculus SDK (it is currently running behind SDK releases), and also up to the latest viewer source.

Once this has happened, it is likely that the viewer will enter the release channel as a release candidate viewer, so that it can keep pace with updates to the release viewer, and from there progress to release status. How quickly this will happen is dependent upon a lot of different factors, and it is likely to remain the last in line to become the release viewer for a good while, partly because it is unlikely the Oculus Rift will be available as a consumer item until 2016, and so there will be other things entering the release channel which have broader usage within the SL community, and will therefore be promoted more quickly.

Viewer-Managed Marketplace

There was a Viewer Managed Marketplace meeting on Friday, May 1st, immediately prior to the TPVD meeting, and a transcript of that meeting, with recording, is now available.

SL project updates week 17/2: TPV meeting – CEF, Inventory

Posted on by Inara Pey

Fantasy Faire 2015: YoZakura; Inara Pey, April 2015, on Flickr Fantasy Faire – April 23rd to May 3rd, 2015: YoZakura (Flickr)

The following notes are primarily taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, April 24th,  a video of which is included below (my thanks as always to North for recording it and providing it for embedding), and from the Server Beta meeting held on Thursday, March 26th. Any time stamps contained within the following text refer to the TPV developer meeting video.

Server Deployments, Week 17 – Recap

As always, please refer to the server deployment thread for the latest updates.

  • On Tuesday, April 20th, the Main (SLS) channel received the server maintenance package deployed to all three RC channel in week #16, which comprises internal server logging changes and new flags for llGetObjectDetails()
    • OBJECT_BODY_SHAPE_TYPE – returned list entry is a float between 0.0 and 1.0. Anything > 0.5 is male, otherwise female; -1.0 if the avatar is not found
    • OBJECT_HOVER_HEIGHT – returned list entry is a float, -1.0 if the avatar is not found.
  • There were no deployment or restart on the three RC channels on Wednesday, April 22nd.

SL Viewer Updates

[05:50] The Tools Update viewer, version  3.7.28.300918, was promoted to the de facto release viewer on April 23rd – see my article here for details. During its run as an RC viewer, this release had around a 2% lower crash rate than the release viewer built using the “old” tool set and processes.

As a result of this, all the remaining RC and project viewers are being updated to match the release viewer code base, and updated versions should be appearing soon.

Attachment Fixes Viewer (Project BigBird)

[07:42] This viewer, current available as a project viewer – version 3.7.28.300856 – and which fixes a range of issues related to avatar attachment failures, is in the process of being updated to a Release Candidate status, and should be appearing in the release pipeline as such in week #18.

[29:28] The Lab believes that these fixes resolve all of the viewer-side issues related to attachment problems which are related to AIS v3. However, a number of the more noticeable issues  – such as problems with attachments being detached on teleporting – are server-side, and require further investigation / fixing.  Similarly, failures with requests to attach multiple items (such as during an outfit change) also appear to be simulator-related, rather than anything within the viewer or linked to AIS v3.

Oculus Rift Viewer

[07:55] The Oculus Rift viewer is now on the schedule to be updated and brought into line with more recent viewer code releases. There is no set time scale for this project (and the Oculus Rift itself, according to Oculus VR, is unlike to reach a consumer release in 2015), but the aim is to bring it back to a “more active” state.

Viewer-Managed Marketplace

[00:08] Brooke Linden gave an update on VVM – as this is of interest to a potentially wider audience than those interested in viewer development, I’ve provided a separate article on it.

Web Media (Webkit and CEF)

[08:41] The Lab is making “pretty good” progress on replacing webkit, an increasingly outdated third-party library used within the viewer for powering the built-in web browser, displaying web profiles and powering in-world media (TVs, MOAP, etc.), with the Chromium Embedded Framework. The Mac work is lagging a little behind this, but the Lab has now called-in external expertise to help move the project forward as a whole.

Request for TPV / Open-source Support for Linux

[09:17]  The Lab is seeking support from TPV developers and the open-source community to help maintain and move the Linux flavour of the viewer forward. For details, please see my  separate article in this blog, complete with an audio extract from the meeting.

Snapshots to E-mail

[12:27] The send snapshot as e-mail capability is in the process of being removed from the viewer.

The main reason for this is that wherever possible, snapshots are sent via the “secondlife.com” domain, but use the sender’s own e-mail address as the originating address in the “from” field of the sent e-mail which appears as if the “from” address is being forged. This, and other ways in which e-mails flowing out from “secondlife.com” are handled, has resulted in some ISPs regarding the domain as a spam domain, and have been pro-actively blocking it (Germany-based GMX is one such example).

To rectify these problems, the Lab is reviewing how e-mails from “secondlife.com” are being managed as a whole, and eliminating those uses which may conceivably lead to the domain In the case of the snapshot floater, the Lab’s perspective is that the easiest way to fix the problem is to remove the option from the snapshot floater; however as was pointed out to them in the meeting, this will break content such as wardrobe HUD systems which utilise the snapshots to e-mail functionality.

Other Items

HTTP and CDN Use Expansion

[20:35] The Lab is working on increasing the number of assets such as animations, sounds, and gestures, consumed by the viewer to being delivered via HTTP the CDN, and removing the reliance on UDP. This is for a number of reasons:

  • It further fees-up resources on the simulator to do what they do best – simulate the world around us, rather than using them for managing UDP file transfers
  • The use of UDP is not the most efficient or robust means of carrying out these transfers
  • UDP is bad for the network; there’s no flow control packet or congestion control behaviour, it can result in high packet losses which may occur anywhere between the the server and the viewer, and thus be hard to identify and prevent in future, etc.

As this work progresses, the Lab will be removing the server-side support for the UDP messaging currently used by such transfers. This has already happened with inventory fetching (and the option to disable HTTP Inventory is due to be removed from the viewer), and will be happening soon with texture fetching (which will also see the removal of the option to disable HTTP Textures in the viewer).

To help with this, TPVs are being encouraged to work with the Lab to identify specific / reproducible  issues users are encountering vis HTTP, etc., so that more work can be put into fixing them, and the Lab is asking TPVs not to recommend to users to switch back to the “old ways” of doing things when potential HTTP problems are encountered, as the 2old way may not be around for much longer.

Continue reading “SL project updates week 17/2: TPV meeting – CEF, Inventory” →