Tag: Experience Keys

SL projects update week 30 (2): Upcoming server & viewer releases, SSA, HTTP

Posted on by Inara Pey

Server Deployments Week 31 (Week Commencing Monday July 29th)

As always, please refer to the week’s forum deployment thread for news, updates and feedback.

Second Life Server (SLS Main) Channel

On Tuesday July 30th, the SLS Main channel should receive the server maintenance package previously deployed to BlueSteel in week 30. This project fixes some miscellaneous bugs, and also allows viewers to send requests for materials data more rapidly.

On Wednesday July 31st, the three main Release Candidate channels should be updated as follows:

  • BlueSteel should receive a new server maintenance project.  This project fixes some bugs related to LSL scripts in child prims of linksets, and also addresses some server crash modes
  • Magnum and LeTigre remain SSA enabled and both receive the updates deployed to the Main channel.

Server-side Appearance

As noted in the planned deployment summary above, it is currently not anticipated that SSA will be enabled on any additional channels in week 31.

Overall, the Lab think the initial phase of deployment is going well, and recognise the considerable contribution made by TPVs in enabling this to happen. A rough approximation from viewer statistics suggests that around three-quarters of users logging-in to SL are using viewers which are SSA-enabled, and that the overall figure may be higher.

A chart compiled by Kadah Koba showing the percentages of SSA-enabled and non-SSA viewer in use (excluding Firestorm 4.4.0)
A chart compiled by Kadah Coba showing the percentages of SSA-enabled and non-SSA viewer in use (excluding Firestorm 4.4.0)

Commenting on the state of play for the project during the TPV Developer meeting on Friday July 26th, Nyx Linden said:

The system is working pretty much as we expected … and even the scaling of how much load is being generated is pretty much right on par with what we’re expecting. But we want to make sure that a few other things are returning the right things and we’re getting the right statistics that we want before we roll it out to the [entire] grid. We’re trying to be extra-cautious.

Viewer-side Updates

In terms of viewer-side updates, the plan is to try to have one major post-SSA enabling release which should include the planned inventory updates noted in the first part of this report along with any additional viewer-side code tweaks to the viewer arising from SSA being enabled, and a final code clean-up to remove the “old” baking code.

However, this does depend on enabling SSA on the rest of the grid. If there is yet cause to delay this (due to an unexpected issue arising, for example), and the delay continues for a significant amount of time, then it is possible that there will be two viewer releases: one with the currently planned updates and one with the post-deployment code clean-up.

Either way, to assist TPVs prepare for the viewer-side update(s), Nyx plans to periodically push code from the Lab’s private repositories to their public repositories as and when code is in a suitable condition to be pushed.

Issues Update

SUN-98 (Bake fail resulting from partially broken alpha layer): this is thought to be the result of wearing a corrupted clothing layer, and if so is considered to be expected behaviour in order to avoid cases of “accidental nudity” (which might arise from wearing a corrupted clothing later, which the SSA system would ignore and just bake whatever was underneath it  – such as the avatar’s skin). However the matter is still being looked into in case the problem has another cause.

Nyx acknowledged that even if the problem is due to expected behaviour, it would be useful  “at some point in the future” to add some UI elements to actually show the user which clothing asset they’re wearing that is causing the problem. What form these UI elements / warning will take remains to be decided.

SUN-99 (Bakefail on SSA regions only. When entering into SSA region, skin and system clothes fail to bake): this issue only affects a very small number of users and appears to be related to them having multiple copies of the Current Outfit Folder (COF) in their inventories, probably as a result of having moved it  within their inventory (i.e. into another folder) at some point prior to the Lab introducing restrictions to prevent the COF being moved or deleted.

To prevent this happening in the future, the Lab is implementing further back-end restrictions and other improvements on the COF, and Nyx has e-mailed all TPVs with notes on how the COF should be implemented within the viewer in order to comply with these restrictions.

In the meantime it was mentioned at the Server Beta meeting on Thursday July 25th that LL’s support team can now assist users who find they are suffering from this particular issue.

Viewer Updates

Release Candidates

As noted in part one of this report, there are now three RC viewers in the viewer release channel (Beta Maintenance, Google Breakapad and Vivox). All three are performing well, although no decision has been made as to which will be going to release status first.

Beyond these, the Lab is looking at a number of further release candidate cohorts, including the Cocoa updates for the Mac version of the viewer, a series of open-source contributions to the viewer, and a further series of CHUI updates.

Commenting on the current situation with viewer updates at the TPV Developer meeting, Oz Linden said, ” It’s going to be some time before we get to the point where we’ve got the number of simultaneous things happening down to a reasonable number; lots of stuffing was sitting around waiting for the opportunity to get out, and it’s all coming at once now!”

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SL projects update week 29 (2): server, viewer general news

Posted on by Inara Pey

Server Deployments week 29

As always, please refer to the week’s forum deployment thread for news, updates and feedback.

On Tuesday July 16th, the SLS Main channel received the server maintenance package previously deployed to Magnum in week 28.

On Wednesday July 17th, the three main Release Candidate channels received the following updates: individual updates:

  • Magnum became the RC with the server-side baking / appearance project enabled (SSB/A is disabled on LeTigre). This move was made to expose SSB/A to a larger number of regions and a larger number of users as a result
  • BlueSteel received a further package of under-the-hood changes related to the experience tools
  • LeTigre received a new server maintenance project, which included fixes for several issues, including a further updated for pathfinding characters using CHARACTER_STAY_WITHIN_PARCEL getting stuck if they somehow exited their home parcel. It also added “RenderMaterialsCapability” to the /simulator/features cap, which indicates the access rate allowed when accessing the “RenderMaterials” capability, and Increased the “RenderMaterials” capability access rate to 4 requests per second (up from 1).

SL Viewer Updates

Release Candidate Viewers & the Release Process

The first of the viewer Release Candidates became public on Thursday July 19th. This is a maintenance update (3.6.2.278602) with a number of individual fixes from LL’s viewer maintenance team.

While the actual order of release is not clear, it appears that the next Release Candidates which will be added to the viewer release channel will be:

  • Viewer Breakpad changes
  • The Vivox updates
  • A Snowstorm (code contributions) build.

Which of these RCs is promoted to be the defacto release viewer will be depend upon a number of factors, including how well each performs as a release candidate (in terms of performance, crash rate, etc.).

Because Release Candidates are “cohorts” within the viewer release channel, you cannot download them as a distinct viewer installer package via the Official Alternate Viewers wiki page. However, release candidates can be tracked (and the source code obtained by those interested in self-compiling viewers) from the Official Viewer Source Repository page.

To give some idea as to why the new process has been introduced, Simon Linden indicated there is around four months of viewer work currently backed-up and awaiting release. This may mean that initially, there might be a higher bumber of RC viewer cohorts in the release channel than will be the case once the backlog starts to clear.

For a complete breakdown on how the new release process works, please refer to my explanation of the process.

I’ll be endeavouring to keep pace with official viewer updates, including cohorts, through my Viewer Round-up Page.

Settings.xml

The plan to use a single settings.xml file for all installed versions of the SL viewer is currently dependent upon a snowstorm code contribution which is currently in the pipeline. Once this has been implemented within the viewer code, it should help eliminate problems of users on the SL viewer reporting their settings have been “eaten” / overwritten should they move between different versions of the official viewer (i.e. swapping between the release viewer and a project viewer and back again).

Group Ban List

Baker Linden continues to work on the group ban list project (see JIRA VWR-29337). The last time he was available for an update at the Simulator User Group on Tuesday July 10th, he indicated that he was working on the back-end code, which required a lot of refactoring and which he was hoping to get finished by the end of week 28 prior to moving to the viewer-side code.

Speaking on his behalf at the Server Beta meeting on Thursday July 18th, Simon indicated that Baker may have achieved his goal, and is now working on the viewer side of things and the UI.

Experience Tools

Again, no major news here. The server-side updates (which presumably include the long-awaited permissions system updates) continue to reach RC channels, but there is no news on the viewer-side updates which are expected to be appearing in a project viewer at some point in the (hopefully) near future.

Related Links

SL projects updates Week 16 (3): server, viewer, and Aditi summaries

Posted on by Inara Pey

Server Deployments week 16

  • On Tuesday April 16th, the SLS Main channel received Monty Linden’s HTTP updates, which were deployed to BlueSteel and LeTigre in week 15, after having previously been on Magnum for testing – release notes
  • On Wednesday April 17th, the three Release Candidate channels (BlueSteel, LeTigre and Magnum) all received the same package after a planned deployment to BlueSteel and LeTigre had to be abandoned due to scheduling issues. The package deployed included the new server-side LSL Animation Override capabilities, including a fix for BUG-2164 wherein the new capabilities could conflict with built-in animation poses in chairs, etc., as discussed in my week 15 updates. The Magnum release are linked to for reference.

Following the SLS Main channel deployment there were a number of reports of significantly higher ping rates with regions being reported on the deployment thread, which prompted Monty Linden to comment, “There was a significant networking event today that has cleared.  Back to normal at this point…” Other than this, and reports of animation issues, which again may have been the result of server-side work, the deployments appear to have rolled-out smoothly and without significant issue.

SL Viewer Summary

Materials processing: the project viewer gained a further update on April 17th, with the deployment of release 3.5.1.274082, which includes bug fixes and some work on alpha masks. The bug fixes are hard to relate to public MATBUG JIRA items, as they all reference NORSPEC issues, which is LL’s internal materials JIRA reference. A further update to the project viewer is anticipated on either Friday 19th April or Monday, April 22nd.

Materials porject viewer: second update now available, third update to follow soon.
Materials project viewer: second update now available, third update to follow soon.

Server-side Baking / Appearance: speaking at the OpenDev meeting on Wednesday 17th April, Oz Linden indicated that SSB will have at least “one more spin” in the beta viewer before appearing in the SL release viewer. A further update was made to the SL development viewer (3.5.2.274273) on Thursday April 18th, so the beta update is liable to be appearing very shortly.

Further viewer updates: once SSB moves to the release viewer, it is likely that the FMODex update will move into the beta viewer; this should also include a fix for the issue with the Mac version of the viewer wherein it crashes whenever headphones are unplugged (and which, incidentally, is the most widely reported crash issue with the Firestorm viewer).

Aditi Issues

While Aditi has received attention recently in order to overcome logging-in and inventory issues, it still as a way to go before everything is “fixed”. Commenting on this at the Beta Server meeting on April 18th, Monty Linden commented, “[The] beta grid is going to get some attention in the login/inv area. But [I] don’t have a date. The problems are (mostly) understood.”

The password-change-to-update-your-Aditi-inventory might be changing as things are looked at and further updated / corrected. Commenting on this at the Beta Server meeting as well, Simon Linden said, “That trigger was done as a quick-and-easy way to stop having to ask a Linden to import your account.”

In discussing the asset system and inventories, Simon re-iterated that while there is a central asset system, it is really one very large storage system, and that, “The real magic isn’t the asset system, it’s your inventory database. Your inventory is what says which assets are yours.” It is syncing the inventory databases between Aditi and Agni which had become an issue, and also somewhat labour-intensive for LL but for the password change trigger.

Monty, with tongue firmly in cheek, suggested an alternative as to how the inventory / asset system works: “Inventory is recorded onto Post-ItTM notes and optically scanned at rez time.” Which, on reflection, is likely to confirm suspicions many have had!

Other Items in brief

Monty Linden
Monty Linden

HTTP Work

The next round of HTTP work is still being defined within the Lab. When asked what this might comprise, Monty replied, “Mesh download is going to get attention. It currently shotguns our services without really performing well.”

He went on, “Might do an experiment or two with pipelining. – but no promises, still setting priorities.”

It is the last remark which is important: things are still being decided in terms of further work and priorities where HTTP work is concerned. This was further underlined again by Monty when he indicated that “phase 3” of the work (the immediate follow-on to the last block of work) may well be “all viewer-side”, given that the initial work (texture fetching) was primarily viewer-side work and the last batch of work was exclusively server-side. So this appears to be a case of wait and see which route he and the Lab opt to take.

Advanced Creation Tools Permissions

July saw the launch of the first phase of the Advanced Creation Tools, also referred to as experience tools. Following problems with an initial deployment of the tools in June, which resulted them being exploited as a means of griefing, the “first phase” of the release saw the tools implemented with existing permissions system in place, with the intention of updating the permissions system to allow the tools to be more fully used “in the future”. Work on the new permissions system was stalled for a number of months, but has recently been getting more attention and work. The current situation appears to be that the permissions system may well be ready, but those working on the project are still, “sorting out how and when that’s going to be made available.”

Diagonal Region Rendering Issues

While fixes have been deployed to assist with issues with regions sometimes taking a long time to correctly handshake and cache with one another following a restart, this issue of regions which are diagonally opposite one another sometimes failing to render remains. Simon Linden had indicated that a potential fix for this issue was with QA as long ago as week 8; however it appears that the work may have hit problems or actually be stalled. In replying to a comment on the forum deployment thread relating to the issue, Maestro Linden replied with a simple, “Correct, that bug has not been fixed”.

No fix yet; status unclear
No fix yet; status unclear

 

SL projects update week 13 (2): server releases, HTTP, and viewer notes

Posted on by Inara Pey

Server Deployments Update

On Tuesday March 26th, the SLS (Main) channel received the maintenance package previously deployed to BlueSteel and LeTigre in week 12, which includes a fix for a crash mode  – release notes.

On Wednesday March 27th, the RC channels received the following packages:

  • BlueSteel and LeTigre: a new maintenance package, which includes:
  • Magnum: should receive the same update as the Main channel (i.e. the package deployed in week 12 to BlueSteeel and LeTigre), otherwise retaining the updates and fixes deployed to it in week 12 – release notes.

As usual, there is a forum discussion thread for comments / feedback on the deployments.

Some issues have been reported following the Main channel deployment, but nothing which warranted any major action on LL’s part. Some reported noticeable improvements as a result of the pathfinding update.

Week 14 Deployments

While a final decisions has yet to be made on deployments for the week commencing Monday April 1st, Maestro Linden, hosting the  Server Beta group meeting on Thursday March 28th, indicated that the Magnum updates (which are all interest list related and include the vehicle region crossing fix for BUG-1814) is currently his personal favourite to be promoted to the Main channel and BlueSteel / LeTigre in week 14. If this proves to be the case, then he’s liable to have a lot of SL vehicle users very happy with him – myself included!

SL Viewer – CHUI, SSB and More

The SL development viewer moved to release 3.5.1.272979 on Thursday March 28th. As there are no release notes associated with development viewer releases, it is not always easy to determine what a new release contains; however, from tests, it would not appear that the release contains the viewer-side Server-side Baking (SSB) code.

The next major update to the release viewer is slated to be the Communications Hub User Interface (CHUI), which should be arriving “any time now” according the last-known plans from LL.

As previously noted, once CHUI reaches the release viewer, SSB will move to the beta viewer and make an appearance in week 14 – possibly (and coincidentally) on April 1st. Once in the beta viewer, it will remain there for up to four weeks (unless significant bugs are found), and no less than two weeks, prior to it moving to the SL release viewer. It is unlikely that any SSB server-side deployment will commence on the Main grid until after SSB has reached the release viewer – however, this is subject to final planning, and there may be a limited release of the server code while SSB is still in the beta viewer.

Work is still progressing on the materials code, and there is still no date for the release of a project viewer.

HTTP Project

On Wednesday 27th March, Monty Linden sent out an e-mail indicating the current beta testing on Aditi for his new HTTP capabilities will be drawing to a close “shortly”, and that anyone interested in carrying out tests in the three channels should do so sooner rather than later. Precisely when the beta test will close is unclear, but from Monty’s e-mail it would not be unreasonable to assume it will be within a week.

The next stage for this work is for it to progress to a Release Candidate channel – which will seem the “normal” configuration for HTTP services currently on channel DRTSIM-203 on Aditi carried forward to the selected RC channel(s). While there is no date as to when the HTTP work will reach a RC channel, Monty will be looking at the deployment as a more in-depth load test opportunity and seeing how well the new services might scale.

Other Items

Advanced Creation Tools Permissions

July saw the launch of the first phase of the Advanced Creation Tools, also referred to as experience tools. Following problems with an initial deployment of the tools in June, which resulted them being exploited as a means of griefing, the “first phase” of the release saw the tools implemented with existing permissions system in place, with the intention of updating the permissions system to allow the tools to be more fully used “in the future”.

After hearing that the work on the permissions system was again getting attention having been “stalled” for a time, there has been something of a further absence of news on progress. However, speaking at the Server Beta meeting on Thursday March 28th, Maestro was able to confirm the permissions system is currently on internal testing at LL – so it might be showing-up on Aditi (or in an RC deployment) in the not-so-distant future.

Scripted Avatar Rotation

The subject of scripted avatar rotation has come up for discussion at the last couple of server-related meetings. The idea is to use a scripted object to force the avatar to face a specific direction. It is not a new request, having been the subject of several JIRA in the past, most notably SVC-56, which also provides some suggestions as to how it might be achieved. Being able to turn the avatar to face a specific direction has a number of potential benefits – it could, for example, be used to have an avatar face a rock face which could then be “climbed”, or it could make avatar alignment for hugs / kisses a lot more accurate.

RLV already allows such rotation, although it may not be as accurate as required in some of the potential uses. Some objections to the capability have been put forward in the past – such as the potential for “griefing” others; although “griefing” of the kind envisaged perhaps shouldn’t necessarily prevent the development of such a capability, which would preferably be achieved by means of an attached scripted object, which wshould help minimise the risk of malicious use of the capability.

Andrew Linden, in discussing the idea at the Simulator User Group on March 26th commented:

Avatar rotation by script is actually hard to do. The reason it is so hard is a legacy thing… the protocol is basically set up such that the viewer tells the server where the avatar should be facing, and the server tries very hard to get it there. So in order for the server to turn the avatar, it would have to know when to listen to the viewer and when not; remembering such a state isn’t hard, but figuring out when to transition is hard … what would happen if a “turn the avatar” event was triggered and you started mashing on the keyboard to move the avatar elsewhere… what system should win?

Without committing to anything, Andrew concluded the discussion by saying, “I’ll think more about it. Maybe it’s possible. There must be a clever way. I don’t see it yet.”

SL project news week 7 (1): Server deploys, viewer updates

Posted on by Inara Pey

Server Deployments for Week 7

On Tuesday February 12th, the Main channel (Second Life Server / SLS) received the maint-server package focused on crashes fixes which was  deployed in week 6 to LeTigre – release notes.

On Wednesday February 13th the three RC channels are scheduled to receive the following packages:

  • Bluesteel: retains the materials processing project code  – please see the SL Viewer section below for information regarding the current status of viewer development work for thi project – and should receive the same fixes and updates being deployed to the SLS channel (above) – release notes
  • Magnum: retains the interest list project code and should receive the same fixes and updates being deployed to the SLS channel (above) – release notes
  • LeTigre should receive a new maintenance server update to fix miscellaneous crash modes – release notes. This deployment also includes the following:
    • An improvement to the rolling restart notifications so that they appear in an alert format (as with manual region restarts) rather than an easily missed notification. This change will only be apparent in restarts following the code deployment restart (as per JIRA SVC-7759)
    • An avatar banned from a parcel can now select an object located in that parcel if they have ‘Return’ powers over that object (see JIRA SVC-496)
    • Instant messages are now truncated to 1024 bytes to prevent certain types of delivery failure. Currently, the IM database supports larger messages than the delivery system can handle. This change will enforce a limit of 1024 bytes when processing messages coming into the database as well as those being sent out.

As always, a forum thread has been created for discussions / feedback on the deployments.

SL viewer Updates

Beta Viewer

While the current beta release of the 3.4.5 code remains stable, problems are being reported in merging various project code updates with the 3.4.5 code base, some TPV developers are reporting issues attempting to merge the 3.4.5 code into their viewer builds, notably with Linux 64-bit and Windows, although the same issue does not appear to be occurring with Mac OSx.

In the meantime, one more 3.4.5 beta release of the SL viewer is anticipated during week 7.

CHUI

As noted in part 3 of the week 6 report, the CHUI project viewer is now largely on a par with the development viewer, although it has yet to be actually merged with the main viewer-dev code trunk. This is due to happen very soon. In week 6, Oz Linden commented that it is anticipated that CHUI will be the first of the upcoming projects to merge with the beta viewer code, and would then be in for a (quot) “Good long run” in beta. This week, it has been hinted that CHUI could actually have a lengthy run in both the development viewer and the beta viewer as final priorities are sorted out.

Server-side Baking Project Viewer

Problems remain in merging the SSB code with viewers using RLVa, although good progress is being made in addressing them, although they have yet to be merged-up to a TPV which supports RLVa and have a version under development using the SSB code.

In the meantime, the latest updates to the viewer code from the Lab were pushed to the project repositories on Monday 11th February, and a new version of the Sunshine project viewer for Windows emerged on Tuesday February 12th – Sunshine 3.4.5.270231, with Mac and Linux builds to follow.

Materials Viewer

Problems remain with the materials processing viewer-side code. Precise details are not clear, but the latest private (LL and project members only) Windows builds are being reported as being, “Conspicuously more unstable than the Mac builds”, in that they tend to crash when connecting to a materials-enabled server. Investigations into the problems (notably by TPV developers engaged in the project) are ongoing to try to locate the underpinning cause.

Materials processing: viewer issues still being resolved, so no public project viewer as yet
Materials processing: viewer issues still being resolved, so no public project viewer as yet

There are a couple more features to go into the materials viewer as well prior to it reaching a public project viewer status, but these are apparently being held-off until the current server interaction problems are resolved.

Experience Permissions

July saw the launch of the first phase of the Advanced Creation Tools, also referred to as experience tools. Following problems with an initial deployment of the tools in June, which resulted them being exploited as a means of griefing, the “first phase” of the release saw the tools implemented with existing permissions system in place, with the intention of updating the permissions system to allow the tools to be more fully used “in the future”. Since then, it has been something of a waiting game to see if / when the promised new experience permissions would be deployed, and my own last report on the general status of the permissions system being in December 2012.

Questions are still being asked at various LL meetings, he most recent being tabled at the Content Creation User Group on Monday 11th February. In reply, Nyx Linden indicated he would attempt to get an update from Falcon Linden, who is leading this project.

Object Inventory Issues

Some people may have encountered problems when trying to transfer a number of inventory items into a box (prim rezzed in-world) or similar. There are two known issues with this:

  • The first is (non-publicly viewable) JIRA BUG-383: “When HTTP Inventory is disabled, mass selecting a bunch of inventory items and attempting to add to an objects contents will fail”. This will apparently happen if the HTTP inventory setting in a viewer is changed without cache also being cleared
  • The second is (non-publicly viewable) JIRA SEC-1041, which is apparently (according to Kelly Linden) related to “An internal TCP error between sim and dataserver.” The problem manifests with the in-world error-message “Inventory creation on in-world object failed” on trying to transfer a large number of items (e.g. 50+) from inventory into the contents of a prim in one go.

As the JIRA on both of these issues are non-viewable, their status isn’t clear, other than the problems described in them can be reproduced. SEC-1041 is the more serious of the two problems and might result in a crash, although it will not result in physical damage to a person’s inventory.

SL project news: week 3 (1): Servers, Materials, Baking and more

Posted on by Inara Pey

Update 19th January: As is being reported in the deployment thread in the forums, further issues are arising with search, and also problems with scripted vehicles (as Wolf also nones in the comments for this article. Those using regions running on Magnum are advised to keep an eye on the deployment thread for news on issues as they are investigated by other users / feedback from the Lab.

Update 18th January: An issue has ben reported with Magnum regions no longer being listed in the main search floater, although shops, etc, within a Magnum region are still listed. The problem does not extend to the world map search. Maestro Linden has filed a bug report. A rolling restart of all LeTigre and BlueSteel regions commenced at 10:00 SLT due to instablility issues being reported with the regions. The restart will comprise a roll-back of server code on BlueSteel and LeTigre to 12.12.18.268345.

Deployments for Week 3

After the issues encountered last, week, there was no main channel release on Tuesday 15th January, 2013.

Changes also occurred with the RC channel deployments. As fixes for the threaded region crossing problems were not ready for release, this was removed from the schedule and replaced by a maint-server release. Then, a network hardware error forced the RC deployments to be postponed until Thursday 17th January.

The roll-outs duly took place on the 17th, and comprise:

BlueSteel and LeTigre received the interest list improvement project. Originally scheduled for Magnum in week 2, but was held up due to a last-minute bugs, this  update should reduce the bandwidth usage of viewers due to object updates, and should improve simulator performance, especially in sims with many connected avatars – release notes here (BlueSteel).

This release received an additional bug fix, related to seated avatars temporarily vanishing from other avatars’ view when  crossing between regions. This fix may have led to the server release notes as reported and wiki pages for BlueSteel and LeTigre slipping out of sync with the actual code release (this has now been corrected subsequent to my pointing it out to Maestro Linden).

Magnum received a new server maintenance project, which mostly contains bug fixes, together with the following:

  • Server-side code to support “neck” and “center” attach points, which didn’t get rolled out when these were added to the viewer (but which now also require a minor change to the viewer, which is forthcoming)
  • An update to improve the effectiveness of estate bans (i.e. preventing banned avatars returning)
  • An update for builders, which covers SVC-7996 and as a part of STORM-68 (ensuring all created items have the default permissions set within the viewer). This particular fix ensures that scripts created using the New Script button in the build floater inherit the permissions set within the viewer, rather than server-defined defaults
  • An update to how abandoned mainland is handled, as the automated buy-back option for abandoned land is being eliminated (see: Abandoned Land in the Knowledge Base)
  • Release notes here.

Deployments for Week 4 (Commencing Monday 21st January)

There is no major news on releases for week 4, other than the threaded region crossing code now has fixes for the last-minute issues which prevented its roll-out in week 2, so this should be on one of the RC channels for deployment on Wednesday 23rd January.

SL Viewer

The release version of the SL viewer rolled to the 3.4.4 codebase on Tuesday January 15th, with the release of 3.4.4.268864. See the release notes for details of updates and fixes.The development viewer is rapidly progressing through a series of releases, with 3.4.6.269073 released on January 15th, followed by 3.4.6.269108 on January 17th.

After a series of development version releases, the CHUI project viewer also moved to the 3.4.4 codebase with the release of version 3.4.4.268981, also on January 15th. The Development version of CHUI continues to keep pace with releases from viewer-development.

Server-side Baking

Work is continuing on avatar baking (otherwise know as server-side baking or Project Sunshine), with Nyx Linden reporting at the Content Creation User Group on Monday 14th January that the team has, “Been a bit heads-down focusing on some bug-stomping.”

Concern is growing that, since the initial release of the Sunshine Project viewer a month ago, there have been no further updates to the viewer-side code, despite extensive feedback from TPVs, which  – in the words of one developer – is not conducive to enabling everyone to adopt the latest code and get ready for the baking service within anticipated time frames (i.e. mid-to-late February).

Nyx has acknowledged the problem, and hopes that the Sunshine code will be merged-up to the latest viewer development code soon, together with verification that nothing has been broken as a result. In the meantime, and away from the SL viewer itself, Henri Beauchamp reported that he has server-side baking working in the experimental branch of his Cool VL viewer.

A further concern with the project is the manner in which JIRAs are being handled since last year’s changes to the system. Raised issues are effectively being cloned, with one version sitting internally to LL and “hidden” from general viewing, with the cloned version available for public viewing and update. This has resulted in worries that cooperation between TPVs and LL in resolving issues related to the Sunshine project could be hampered if the cloned public JIRA are not properly updated whenever LL update the internal versions of the same issues. Nyx Linden has promised to work to ensure that all cloned public JIRA are kept up-to-date.

Materials Processing

The server-side code for this is “inching towards” a point where it will be ready for deployment to an RC channel. When this will be is unclear, but it is likely to be ahead of any project viewer emerging from the Lab.

Concern is still being raised over the need to run the viewer in deferred mode in order to see materials processing in action once it has been rolled-out onto the grid. Some of this concern may be down to the confusing way in which deferred mode is labelled in the Graphics tab of the viewer preferences (“Lighting and Shadows”), with people thinking they must have shadows running in order to be in deferred mode (i.e. with the Shadows drop-down set to either Sun/Mon or Sun/Moon + Projectors). However, the viewer is running in deferred mode even with the drop-down set to None.

Continue reading “SL project news: week 3 (1): Servers, Materials, Baking and more” →