As always, please refer to the forum discussion thread for the latest updates and information.
There was no scheduled deployment to the Main (SLS) channel this week.
On Wednesday 24th September, all three RC channel received a further update to the Experience Tool maintenance release deployed in week 38, which includes:
llUpdateKeyValue() now correctly creates a key if it did not previously exist
Objects using experience permissions and llAttachToAvatar() are no longer automatically detached when leaving an area where the Experience is allowed.
SL Viewer
The promised viewer using the new GPU benchmark system appeared as a project viewer on Thursday September 25th. Version 3.7.17.294710, includes MAINT-3131, which is simply described as “Death to the GPU Table”, which pretty much sums the viewer up!
Rather than using the GPU table as a means of determining default graphics level for a graphics card, the viewer measures the memory bandwidth of the card, and sets the default based on that (plus a couple of other parameters. The release notes add, “Initial settings on shiny powerful hardware should now let that hardware shine. Initial settings on low-end machines should not degrade performance from current experience.”
CDN and Regions
The Snack RC is currently being used for CDN testing on Agni. As noted in my week 38 updates, Denby, Hippo Hollow, Hippotropolis and Testsylvania Sandbox were initially placed on the RC, and they have since been joined by Brasil Rio, Brocade, Fluffy, Freedom City, Rocket City and Whippersnapper.
Group Ban Trivia
OK, so not exactly an update, but Baker Linden indicates that some 4500 group bans have occurred since the arrival of the group ban list functionality in the official viewer (and a number of TPVs). Will be interesting to hear how that number increases once Firestorm includes the capability.
As always, please refer to the server deployment thread for the latest updates.
On Tuesday September 16th, the Main (SLS) channel received the server maintenance package previously deployed to the three RC channels, which includes crash fixes and a fix for a bug that prevented some people from leaving Skill Gaming regions – notably Linden staff who entered a region using their admin powers …
On Wednesday September 17th, the three RC channels each received a new server maintenance package, which includes some bug fixes, and tweaks some behaviours related to experience tools.
CDN News
CDN support has been deployed to a small number of regions on the main grid. Maestro Linden indicated these were four Linden-owned regions. These are Hippotropolis, Hippo Hollow and Denby (where the Simulator User Group meetings are held), and the Testylvania sandbox (which isn’t open to public access).
Further regions will be updated to use the CDN service going forward, and the Lab had created an e-mail address region owners can apply to have their region(s) added to the test channel for the CDN: cdn-test@lindenlab.com. Note that regions should be those with a relatively high texture / mesh count, and space is “very limited” at this time (the total for the initial testing appears to be set at around 30 regions).
In addition, the map tile fetching for the main grid is now entirely carried out via the CDN, so map tiles should load a lot faster for people now.
World Map tiles are now served via the CDN
Abuse Report Category Changes
The categories used to define Abuse Reports were recently revised in the official viewer.
The old (l) and new (r) AR categories
This has led to some discussion on the forums and not a little speculation elsewhere as what it means for the AR system, with some people speculating that because some categories are no longer explicitly listed, there are therefore now “allowed”.
While views such as this might be debated until such time as the Lab issues commentary on the changes, the one thing that is clear at the moment is that they do put the AR floater somewhat out-of-synch with its official Knowledge Base article given the “Other” category has been removed. This has been noted and the Knowledge Base article is liable to be updated.
The changes also put some TPVs out-of-sequence with the revised categories until such time as they update. However, this hopefully will not negatively impact ARs filed via viewers using the older category options.
As always, please refer to the server deployment thread for the latest updates.
On Tuesday September 16th, the Main (SLS) channel received the server maintenance package previously deployed to the three RC channels, which includes crash fixes and a fix for a bug that prevented some people from leaving Skill Gaming regions – notably Linden staff who entered a region using their admin powers …
On Wednesday September 17th, the three RC channels should each receive a new server maintenance package, which includes some bug fixes, and tweaks some behaviours related to experience tools.
CDN Micro Channel Deployment
The CDN micro channel deployment is due this week. As noted in mt last TPV meeting report, this will see a small number of regions updated to use the CDN test configuration for texture and mesh fetching, bypassing the simulator entirely. No viewer-side update is required for this (that will come in the future), so the benefits should be felt by anyone entering those regions (assuming the region is already cached by their local CDN node).
There currently isn’t a list of regions which will be included in the micro channel, although it has been suggested that the Lab consider including the Home and Garden Expo and the Kustom 9 event regions are included, as these all have considerable mesh and texture use. Two regions that will be included in the micro channel are Hippotropolis and Hippo Hollow. The latter can be a reasonable text of texture downloads, as it has a wide variety of items sitting on it.
Group Chat
While Izzy Linden had reported something of a drop in the number of reports of requests for the back-end chat servers to be restarted at the end of week 37, reports continued through the weekend and the start of this week. The changes aimed at fixing the problem (essentially a network issue which causes the chat server to run out of ports) has been delayed, but commenting at the Simulator User Group meeting on Tuesday September 16th, Simon Linden said he hopes to see them deployed soon.
There is also a further update aimed at improving group chat performance that is also in the pipeline, the result of recent testing on Aditi; Simon Linden has “high hopes” for these changes once deployed.
Other Items
The Simulator User Group meeting on Tuesday September 16th saw renewed discussion on a number of subjects which have been previously raised, such as improvements to scripted sounds / sound functionality (see my January 2014 and November 2013 updates) and the environment improvements project. While no conclusions were drawn on specific improvements to the sound functionality (it doesn’t appear to be on the current roadmap), Oz Linden did confirm the environment improvements are still on the roadmap, but are not currently being worked on. It’s not clear whether the SL roadmap will be made public, although it was indicated this might be the case when it was first raised a couple of months ago.
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
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
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.
Note that the majority of information in this article was gathered at the Server Beta User Group meeting on Thursday September 4th, the transcript for which is available here.
Server Deployments, Week 36 – Recap
On Wednesday September 3rd, the Main channel received the server maintenance project previously deployed to the three RC channels. This comprises crash mode fixes and fixes for the following:
SVC-2262 – “Incorrect height value in postcard which sent from above 256m” (a postcard being a snapshot sent to e-mail)
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.
There were no planned deployments to the RC channels for week 36.
Week 37 Releases
There will be a Release Candidate channels deployment in week 37 (week commencing Monday September 8th), which will comprise crash fixes and bug fixes. Interestingly, one of the fixes will be to prevent Linden personnel from getting stuck in the new Skill Gaming regions – which Maestro jokingly describes as, “once that fix is out, I’ll no longer have an excuse to play cards all day 🙂 .”
CDN Work
Map Tiles
April Linden has been doing further refinements to the use of the CDN environment for map texture fetching on Aditi (see my notes from week 35). This work is liable to be moving to a main grid RC in the near future, and is being viewed as a “good dry run for using the CDN for texture and mesh fetching in the future”, according to Maestro.
Viewer Mesh Request Throttling
“During mesh fetch testing with the CDN, we realized that we were throttled by a viewer’s internal throttle,” Maestro said of the ongoing texture and mesh CDN testing currently underway on Aditi (again, please refer to my week 35 and week 33 reports). He went on:
The viewer ‘only’ requests 100 meshes/second because the simulator has a similar throttle for answering those requests, but with the CDN, the simulator’s throttle is irrelevant. Monty did a special build of his viewer (I’m not sure if the change was permanent) which removed the throttle, and I benchmarked an average of ~365 meshes/second on the CDN region with it. Which, in my mind, is approaching “fast enough” 🙂 .
This probably means that when the CDN work is completed (which will include viewer-side changes at some point), the viewer’s throttle will likely remain, but will be set higher and perhaps with a debug setting. “Because,” as Maestro said, “if mesh loading got way too fast, eventually you might have viewer performance issues from the insane download speed.”
Yuzuru Jewell (of Kane projects fame), has been carrying out tests from Japan, which saw his mesh load speed double via the CDN when using an unmodified viewer.
Other Items
HUD Detaching / Reattaching Following Teleport
This was first commented on in my week 32 meeting update, and referred to again in week 33 (both alongside BUG-6908). Commenting on the state-of-play with investigations into the issue, Maestro indicated that there is some thinking that it may have the same cause as BUG-7131 (Unexpected behaviour of on_rez event and llDetachFromAvatar() ), which is being looked into, although there is no news on a fix as yet.
Materials Rendering via Basic Shaders and Improving Projectors
In week 34, I carried news about Geenz Spad’s proposal for introducing materials rendering into basic shaders (i.e. so users would not necessarily need to have Advanced Lighting Model enabled in order to see materials), and to improve the functionality of projectors in Second Life.
The JIRA submitted for this work were respectively:
STORM-2077 – Add support for materials in basic shaders
STORM-2056 – Projector reflections do not respect the environment intensity parameter
The news on adding materials to basic shaders isn’t currently encouraging. The most recent comment from Marissa Linden (August 20th) states, “Moved to STORM. However our internal engineers do not believe that this can safely be implemented.”
Geenz’s work on projectors an glossiness: top: as test items currently appear in Firestorm. Bottom: as they appear in the test viewer
News is a little more positive with the projector work, with a test viewer having been built, offering those who are interested with an opportunity to play with the updated projector capabilities. There is also a test area on Hippo Hollow.
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
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.
The Trace, April 2014 (Flickr) – blog post
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 