Category: TPVD / Open Source User Group

SL project updates week 41/3: TPV Developer meeting

Posted on by Inara Pey

The following notes are drawn from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday October 10th, and shown in the video above. Time stamps, where relevant, have been included for ease of reference to the video. Note that items are listed according to subject matter, rather than chronologically, so time stamps may appear out-of-sequence in places. My thanks as always to North for the recording.

SL Viewer

HTTP Pipeline Viewer

[0:26:35] As noted in part 2 of this week’s report, the HTTP pipelining viewer was looking close to being ready for deployment as an RC viewer, possibly in the next week. However, it hit a final QA snag, and in Oz’s words, “Monty is busily correcting the problem and getting it back in the queue.” Or as Monty put it in chat “:(“. Apparently a workaround for a CURL bug “tends to disable pipelining”.

Benchmark and Experience Tools Viewers

[0:27:20] It is hoped that these two project viewers will be updating and moving into the viewer release channel as release candidates “pretty soon”.

Viewer Build Tool Chain

[0:41:51] The tools upgrade project for building the viewer has been subject to a few delays. Currently, the Lab has just about finished putting together all the build prerequisites for building the Mac version of the viewer directly on OS X 10.9, and are about to commence test builds of the viewer using the new tool chain. This has also led to some progress being made on updating the Linux build process as well. The windows environment will require further work, so it will be a little longer before things are fully in place.

Group Chat

[0:28:58] Again, as noted in part 2 of this week’s report, the latest updates for group chat are being deployed to various back-end chat servers by the Lab, and may be deployed to all of the chat servers in the next week.

While investigating group chat, the Lab has noticed that in general it is “unbelievably spikey”, with chat sessions having peaks of really good performance followed by troughs of really bad performance regardless as to whether the groups are regarded as being “good” or “bad” in handling group chat. There is no real pattern to these peaks and troughs, other than the larger the group, the more it seems to swing between the two extremes, and nothing to correlate them with anything in particular beyond the bad times occurring when a lot of people in a group are online.

Z-offet height Adjustment

[0:31:52] Work is continuing on the z-offset height proposal, which Vir Linden has been engaged upon. However, it appears the Lab has encountered some issues which have made it “a little more complicated” than had initially be thought. hopefully, these will be overcome, and they won’t bring the work to a halt.

CDN

[0:32:28] As noted in part 2 of this week’s report the number of regions on Snack and utilising  the Highwinds CDN for mesh and texture data servicing had reached around the 270 mark, but has since come down a little as a result of the Lab overloading the Snack sim hosts with regions running high volumes of users.

Metrics gathered by the Lab have been positive, and even though the Snack sim hosts were initially overloaded, the Lab feel they performed significantly better thanks to texture and mesh fetching being off-loaded to the CDN than would have been the case had the “old” method of texture / mesh fetching still been in use.

One aspect of the move to using the CDN is that until now, the sim host Apache service was being used for texture and mesh data handling and “lots” of other things which are timing critical to operations such as region crossings. With the move to the CDN, much (if not all) of the texture and mesh data handling is removed from the Apache service, making it easier for it to better handle time-critical activities.

If all goes according to plan, the CDN support will be expanded to the BlueSteel release candidate channel in week 42 (commencing Monday October 13th). This will allow the Lab to gain data on performance using the CDN support which can be directly compared with historical data available for region / sim host performance in BlueSteel. Those regions already running on Snack will continue to do so alongside of BlueSteel, so that around 5% of the main grid will be using the CDN service.

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SL project updates 39/3: TPV Developer meeting

Posted on by Inara Pey

The following notes are drawn from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday September 26th, and shown in the video above. Time stamps, where relevant, have been included for ease of reference to the video. Note that items are listed according to subject matter, rather than chronologically, so time stamps may appear out-of-sequence in places. My thanks as always to North for the recording.

Benchmark Viewer & GPU Table

[01:00] As noted in part 2 of this report, a new GPU Benchmark project viewer is available (version 3.7.17.294710), designed to put an end to the need for a dedicated GPU graphic table as the mean by which the viewer determines a computer’s initial graphic settings.

Instead, if there is no settings file for the viewer (such as after a clean install),  the viewer will measure how quickly data can be copied back and forth between GPU memory and your computer’s main memory. This, combined with a couple of other benchmarks, determines the initial graphics settings in the viewer. It may not always pick the most preferred settings (it might still set things a little high or a little low), but testing has shown it to be reasonably accurate,  and it does prevent the viewer opting for the lowest settings simply because a card isn’t listed on the GPU table. As is currently the case, any subsequent adjustments you make to the graphics settings should be saved within the viewer and take precedence.

Feedback on the viewer is encouraged (a wipe of any SL viewer setting files on your computer will be required), particularly if you encounter issues such as finding the viewer “sticks” with the settings it has determined, rather than allowing you to adjust them. When filing JIRA, the Lab requests that log files are attached.

HTTP and CDN

[09:39] The anticipated HTTP pipelining viewer should be appearing as a release candidate viewer in the early part of week 40 (week commencing Monday 29th September). This is the viewer that the QA team in LL have been referring to as QA,  “weaponized viewer”, it is so fast as a result of leveraging the HTTP streaming.

This viewer works with the CDN, with Oz Linden indicating a personal experience of logging-in to a CDN-enabled region with an empty cache and having the textures and meshes for the region loaded by the time the log-in process had finished, so it will be interesting to see how the viewer performs under more widespread use.

TPVs are being encouraged to adopt the HTTP updates as soon as their integration / release cycles allow. In the meantime, those wishing to test this viewer, when it appears, with the CDN can do so via one of the following regions: Denby, Hippo Hollow, Hippotropolis,Testsylvania, Brasil Rio, Brocade, Fluffy, Freedom City, Rocket City or Whippersnapper. It is anticipated  further regions will be added to the CDN channel (Snack) in the next week or so, prior to CDN support rolling to one of the server RC channels.

 Voice Updates

[17:16] Another batch of viewer updates due out, and which TPVs are being urged to adopt as soon as they can, are for voice. These mostly relate to managing voice sessions rather than voice improvements, and are aimed at helping Vivox with problems at their end, and should make troubleshooting genuine issues within voice a lot easier. However, this update should plug the hole where stalkers can track where someone using voice has teleported to just by monitoring their voice channels.

Z-offset Height Adjustment

Jessica Lyon demonstrated part of the avatar height offset issue at the last TPV Developer meeting: when seated using her preferred sitting pose, her avatar floats above a chair, and she has no means of adjusting the height so that she appears to be sitting in the chair
The z-offset hegiht adjustment option should help in situations where the current Hover option is unusable – such as trying to adjust you avatar’s height when using a preferred AO sitting pose

[18:42] Vir Linden is now working on the z-offset height proposal. The work is in the early stages, so no date on when it will appear in a viewer.

The current plan is for a new option to be added to the right-click avatar context menu which will access an adjustment slider. However, at present, any adjustments made using it will not be persistent across log-ins, although it will work alongside the existing Edit Appearance > Hover option (allowing for the No Mod shape limitation of the latter).

It has been suggested the offset setting could be made persistent by tying it to a debug setting. This is something the Lab has said they’ll think about; should they opt not to go that route, there will hopefully be no reason why TPVs should not go that route if persistence was deemed vital to their users’ experience.

[48:13] Adjustments made using the slider will occur locally until such time as the mouse button is released; only then is an update message sent to the server & relayed to other viewers, to prevent multiple messages spamming a server as people make adjustments. It is hoped that this approach will also allow z-offset adjustments to interact with other active animations relatively smoothly (e.g. adjusting your height to prevent appearances of dancing on air when using couples dance poseballs).

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SL Project updates week 37/3: TPV Developer meeting

Posted on by Inara Pey

The following notes are drawn from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday September 12th, and shown in the video above. Time stamps, where relevant, have been included for ease of reference to the video. Note that items are listed according to subject matter, rather than chronologically, so time stamps may appear out-of-sequence in places. My thanks as always to North for the recording.

Viewer Updates

[00:00] The Maintenance RC was updated on Friday September 12th with the release of version 3.7.16.294015.  This viewer includes a range of updates and fixes as specified in the release notes.

The Oculus Rift project viewer, with the first round of updates for the Oculus DK2 has been through LL’s QA process, and is currently undergoing further refinement as a result. There is no ETA on when it might appear other than “soon”; however, it is anticipated it will continue to support DK1 as far as possible, as well as supporting DK2.

As noted in part 2 of this report the  Experience Keys project viewer was updated to version 3.7.16.293901. and it appears further updates may be on the way.

Experimental Log-in Viewer

[21:20] For the last several weeks, the Lab has been running some A/B tests with new users using a viewer with a revised log-in screen alongside of the familiar log-in screen (see version 3.7.14.292660).

The log-in screen displayed by the experimental viewer the *first time* a new user runs the viewer ready to log-in to SL
The log-in screen displayed by the experimental viewer the *first time* a new user runs the viewer

Commenting on this testing, Grumpity ProductEngine Linden said:

We’ve found that there are some changes we can make that increase retention by a fairly sizeable number of thee to five percent. So we’re going to be putting forward some changes to the newbie log-in screen and then the subsequent returning user log-in screen. They’re going to be gradual, and sometimes not as beautiful as we might like all at once; however, you can be assured that they’ve all been tested and that they perform better.

The log-in / splash screen in the experimental viewer that is seen by user who have previously logged-in to SL
The log-in / splash screen in the experimental viewer that is seen by user who have previously logged-in to SL

This means that there will be an RC viewer appearing in week 38 which will have updates based upon the results from this testing incorporated into it. These changes should not affect any of the widgets  / embedded features within the log-in screen used by TPVs.

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SL project udates week 35/2: server; CDN; TPV meeting

Posted on by Inara Pey

NorderNey, Heaven Scent; Inara Pey, July 2014, on FlickrNorderNey, Heaven Scent (Flickr) – blog post

Server Deployments, Week 35 Recap

As always, please refer to the server deployment thread on the forums for the latest updates and information.

  • On Tuesday August 26th, the Main channel was updated with the server maintenance release previously deployed to all three RC channels in week 34, which contains a single crash fix.
  • On Thursday August 28th, after a delay from the planned deployment, the three RC channels were all updated with the same server maintenance package, which contains further crash mode fixes and, fixes for SVC-2262 – “Incorrect height value in postcard which sent from above 256m” (a postcard being a snapshot sent to e-mail) and BUG-6466 – “Numbers expressed in scientific notation and include a plus sign in the exponent are not parsed as JSON numbers by LSL”, which was thought to have been fixed a while ago, but which in fact resulted in BUG-6657 – “Valid JSON numbers like 0e0 no longer valid after 14.06.26.291532″, prompting the original fix to be rolled back.

The crash mode fix deployed on the RC channels in week 34 and the Main channel in week 35 is apparently related to Skill Gaming regions (SEC-1458).  Essentially, if you sent somebody a teleport offer from a Skill Gaming region, you could, depending on the circumstances, crash the region. Which sort-of sounds like a skill game in its own right …

The RC rolls were postponed 24 hours as a result of problems with the simulator deployment tool, rather than with the RC code itself. The postponement allowed the deployment team locate and fix the problem.

CDN and Map Tile Images

During the Server Beta meeting on Thursday August 28th, Maestro revealed that as well as looking to move mesh and texture fetching to a CDN, the Lab is considering using the same service to deliver map tile images for the world map. To test the idea, and while acknowledging it doesn’t have much of a load test, as the beta grid is much smaller than the main grid, map tiles are now being delivered to any viewers connected using Aditi via the CDN.

Hopefully, this should result in faster and more reliable map tile loading than when relying on the Amazon S3 servers.

Moving the delivery of world map tiles to the CDN should hopefully improve the loading time for the world map
Moving the delivery of world map tiles to the CDN should hopefully improve the loading time for the world map

Commenting on the current state of play with Aditi, Maestro said, “Aditi doesn’t have too many regions up, so there’s no exciting load test to do with a regular viewer, but for what it’s worth, I do see much lower latency when fetching map tiles from the CDN than from Amazon S3 (from my home, about 15ms vs 30-42ms, round trip).”

It’s not clear when this might be available on Agni, “I think it’s a matter of the ops team setting up an Agni-pointing CDN,” Maestro said.

The following notes are drawn from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday August 28th, and shown in the video above. Time stamps, where relevant, have been included for ease of reference to the video. Note that items are listed according to subject matter, rather than chronologically, so time stamps may appear out-of-sequence. My thanks as always to North for the recording.

 SL Viewer

There are no major changes to the various LL viewers; the Experience Keys project viewer has yet to be updated, and the Oculus Rift viewer will be getting updated as the Lab continue to work with their Oculus DK2 sets.

The Snowstorm RC is  liable to remain in RC for a while yet, although it appears to be doing well in terms of crash rates. The Experimental log-in viewer is still available and being tested.

Autobuild work

[01:48] As reported following the last TPV Developer’s meeting, the Lab is updating the tool chain used to compile the Windows and Mac versions of the viewer, together with implementing a new viewer autobuild process. Referring to the latter at the TPV Developer meeting on Friday August 28th, Oz described the work as going “really well” and pointed to the fact that there are now two versions of the autobuild process that re “in theory” available for testing, “one that builds 64-bit, and one that does not.” These are liable to be merged in the near future.

Some TPV Devs have reported a few problems reported with the process, which may be library or environment related, but these still need to be looked into further to determine what the problems being experienced are and where they actually reside.

[03:50] There is some further work to be done on the new process, notably in making the handling of licenses and copyrights a lot stricter, but otherwise it is viewed as being very close to being ready to go. Oz hopes to have the latest bug fixes and updates merged into the process in week 36, and once that is done, the new autobuild process will be used in compiling the Lab’s viewers going forward as a part of the overall tool chain update.

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SL projects update 33/3: TPV Dev meeting: HTTP, avatar height offset

Posted on by Inara Pey

The following notes are taken from the TPV developer meeting of Friday August 15th. A video of the meeting, provided by Chakat Northspring is included below. This report represents an overview of items discussed at the meeting which are liable to have the broadest interest among users. Timestamps are given against items and paragraphs for ease of referencing what was said within the video for those who wish to listen to the entire conversation on a given subject.

Note that subjects are not necessarily presented chronologically when compared to the video, but has been grouped under common headings.

My thanks, as always, to North for her recording of the meeting and linking to this blog post.

SL Viewers

[00:30] There have been few visible changes with the RC and project viewers this week. The library refresh viewer and the experimental log-in viewer remain unchanged, and while the Experience Keys project viewer has been updated, this has yet to appear in the Alternate viewers wiki page.

Oculus DK2 and Project Viewer Updates

Oculus Rift: the Lab now has the DK2, so work will be resuming on the project viewer
Oculus Rift: the Lab now has the DK2, so work will be resuming on the project viewer

[00:50] The lab has received around half-a-dozen of the Oculus Rift DK2 headsets, and so it is anticipated that further work will be progressing with the project viewer, and updates will be emerging over time. As noted in week 32, there are some substantial differences between the DK1 headset and the DK2, which currently make the project viewer largely incompatible with the newer headset.

Texture Statistics Logging

[19:15] With the roll-out of the 3.7.7 the Lab unfortunately broke the texutre stats reporting debug option LogTextureDownloadsToSimulator. As this is off by default (set to False) it has not been noticed by most users. However, the recommendation is that users do not set this option to True, as it will cause the viewer to immediately crash on start-up, at the next attempt to run it. This issue is common to all viewers using all code releases subsequent to 3.7.7 as well.

Viewer Build Process

[40:24] The Lab is shortly going to commence the process of upgrading the tool chain they use in the viewer build process (e.g. switch to Visual Studio 2013 for Windows and Xcode 5 for Mac) and switching over to the new version of autobuild. This work may also eventually help pave the ay for 64-bit builds of the official viewer. However, this is not currently the focus of the changes, as no decision has made as yet within the Lab on producing 64-bit builds of the viewer; the current aim of these changes is to improve the overall viewer build process.

[47:23] There are two points of note here. The first is that the new autobuild process includes changes which self-compilers must adhere to if they are using it, and details are available on a wiki page. The second is that it is probable that Windows viewers built using Visual Studio 2013 will not run on Windows XP. The Lab has already dropped Windows XP support, which is as much as it will currently say in terms of future viewers built using the new tool chain running on XP.

Group Chat

[02:00] The work on group chat has temporarily halted due to those working on it either being on vacation or working on other projects. Given this, and with a degree of ironic timing, there have been increasing reports of group chat issues over the last several days, including one chat server apparently becoming completely non-responsive.

It’s not clear to the Lab as to what may be causing the problems, but they have been noted. In the meantime, informal advice is that if your group chat is consistently failing, to contact support, provide them with the information on your group (name, etc.), and the issues you’re having, and request the chat server is restarted.

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SL project updates 31/3: TPV Developer Meeting and SL issues

Posted on by Inara Pey

A TPV developer meeting took place on Friday August 1st, 2014. The core items discussed in the meeting are reported below, with timestamps in the relevant paragraphs indicating the point at they are discussed in the video embedded here. My thanks, as always, to North for the video.

SL Viewers

[00:15] There have been no changes to the RC viewer currently in the release channel or to the project viewers. The limited release log-in viewer which is being used for some unspecified A/B testing is still in the wild as well, although this is not available for manual download via the Alternate Viewers wiki page.

The Zipper viewer (for faster installation), which reappeared as a RC viewer on Wednesday July 30th (version 3.7.13.292263), is reported as doing “pretty terribly” crash-wise on older operating systems which may not support the archive format used to zip the viewer skins for faster installation. As a result, the Lab is currently unsure as to whether the project will be continued or not. Until a decision has been made, TPV developers have been advised not to port the code.

The Oculus Rift project viewer was updated to the current viewer code base in week 30. However, it is not currently clear when any updates related to the Oculus DK2 kit will start appearing in the viewer.

As indicated in part 1 of this week’s update, the Experience Keys beta project is going well. There are some issues to be addressed, although these are describing as being “nothing major”, and it’s not clear if they are viewer-related or not.

Unsupported Operating System Versions and Windows 8.0

[38:03] A reminder was issued at the TPV Developer meeting that the Lab will no longer be providing assistance with unsupported operating systems. This includes Windows XP and, once the Library Refresh RC viewer reaches a release status, Max OS X 10.6.

[39:05] It was also reiterated that Windows 8.0 users who are experiencing crash issues with the viewer should consider the free upgrade to Windows 8.1, which has a much lower crash rate, with overall improvement in viewer stability being described as a “really big difference”. A blog post on this subject (and viewer crashes in general) was posted by the Lab towards the end of July 2014.

Group Chat

[03:00] Following-on from the discussion about group chat and the initial testing of updates which took place at the Server Beta meeting on Thursday July 31st, Oz said of the work, “we’re continuing with making back-end changes, there’ll be another roll-out of some experiments shortly and we’ll see how they go. Like I’ve said before, we’re not going to generally announce when those happen, because we don’t want to change the experiment by changing people’s perceptions.”

[10:27] Although at the moment the focus is very much on what can be achieved on the back-end services without the need for changes within the viewer itself,  Oz gave notice that the Lab may want to talk to TPVs about possible changes to group functionality and viewer behaviour at some point in the future. One of the questions being asked within the Lab is whether or not the members list needs to be displayed for all groups. Some groups, for example have a “no chat” policy and / or are only for the outward flow of information (e.g. product update groups); so are these a category of group for which the updates of people coming on-line or joining / leaving the session are no actually relevant, and could be eliminated  or suppressed, thus reducing the volume of update messages?

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