Tag: HTTP updates

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!”

Continue reading “SL projects update week 30 (2): Upcoming server & viewer releases, SSA, HTTP” →

SL projects update week 26 (3): more viewer, SSB/A and cache

Posted on by Inara Pey

Materials Processing

As reported in part 2 of this update, the release viewer was updated on June 27th with a release containing a number of updates and fixes, including some for materials, such as occlusion culling is less effective than it should be, especially with regards to very large objects; light function sampling being incorrect in advanced lighting model and the legacy Shiny options being overly strong in deferred rendering. The initial fixes for these issues are considered important for TPVs to pick-up when integrating materials into their viewers, while follow-up releases (such as the new 3.6.1277824 beta viewer released on June 25th, being viewed as slightly less important at this time.

Materials continues to be updated and refined, and the Lab is gathering stats on viewer use with ALM enabled
Materials continues to be updated and refined, and the Lab is gathering stats on viewer use with ALM enabled

The latest stats the Lab has on viewers show that some 30% of users are currently running with the Advanced Lighting Model option (ALM – otherwise known as deferred rendering), and are thus able to see materials in use in-world, although the stats also appear to indicate that up to 75% of the user base have hardware capable of running with ALM enabled, “with reasonable performance” in terms of frame rates (e.g. an average somewhat above 10 fps). However, given that fps is a highly subjective measure and somewhat dependent on a range of external factors (such as how many other avatars are in the region with you, whether you are moving around a lot or not, etc), the “YMMV” rule comes into play.

The Lab has already carried out a fair amount of performance tuning with ALM, and at the TPV Developer meeting on Friday June 28th, Oz Linden reported that further work is going on in this area, which will include some profiling of the shaders in order to try to further improve performance.

Currently, and as previously reported in these pages, the Cool VL viewer experimental branch and the Black Dragon 2.2.3 beta both provide materials processing capabilities.

Viewer Release Process and Viewer Updates

The expectation is now that the new viewer release process will come into effect during week 28 (week commencing Monday 8th July). The process is actually ready to go, but as with the server-side of things, the 4th July no change window means that the process cannot be implemented in week 27.

Vivox Update

Once the new process is running, the Vivox update is likely to be one of the first items to go to a viewer release candidate. This update should greatly improve Voice quality within SL. A further Vivox update is liable to follow this at some point.

Interest List Improvements

The viewer-side interest list updates are coming, although the viewer repro has yet to be made public, although again it is anticipated that a project or beta viewer with the updates will be made available after the holiday period, and TPVs will be able to obtain the code.

Viewer Settings

The Lab is moving to eliminate the use of viewer settings files based on channel name. This means that in future, a single SETTINGS.XML file will be used for all versions of an SL viewer which is installed. The code for this is moving towards the release channel of the SL viewer, and the hope is that it will prevent issues of confusion when settings appear to be “wiped out” when using multiple versions of the viewer (e.g. such as moving between the SL release viewer and  the SL development viewer and back a few months ago resulted in people’s toolbar buttons “vanishing” from the release viewer).

Continue reading “SL projects update week 26 (3): more viewer, SSB/A and cache” →

SL projects update week 20 (2): materials beta, SSB/A

Posted on by Inara Pey

Server Deployments – Week 20

As always, please refer to the release forum  thread on the weekly deployments for the latest updates and discussions.

Second Life Server (Main channel)

On Tuesday May 14th, the Main channel received the Experience Keys project. This means the project is now available across the grid, although there are no visible changes to be seen at this point. Release notes.

Release Candidate (RC) Channels – JSON Capabilities

On Wednesday May 15th, all three RC channels received a new server maintenance project (release notes (Bluesteel)).  The project is designed to fix two crash modes and two bugs, and introduce new LSL support creating and parsing of JSON-formatted strings – see part 1 of this week 20 report.

Commenting on the JSON capabilities at the Server Beta meeting on Thursday May 16th, Maestro Linden said, “There are some issues with this week’s Json functions… the keys in key-value pairs are not quoted, but should be and right now you’ll run into problems when you add stings which contain escaped quotes.”

In addition, a further confirmed bug has been found in the code on the three RC channels (BUG-2601), described by Lucia Nightfire as:

Seems that the release on the RC channels has brought about an annoying bug that affects control event triggering in attachment’s child prims after changing regions.

There are two different effects depending how you enter a version 13.05.14.275813 RC region.

After going into an RC region while using any controls, those controls will lock under execution and remain locked until you reset the script or the control perms or detach the object.

After going into an RC region without using controls like with a teleport, the control event will not trigger when attempting to use any controls until you re-request/re-grant control perms or go back to a main channel region.

Should this problem be encountered, returning to any Main channel region should restore the broken functionality.

Because of both of these issues, it is believed the code currently on the three RC channels will remain on them for a further week while fixes are developed and implemented.

SL Viewer Updates

Beta Viewer

The current SL beta viewer code, which contains the FMOD Ex updates is expected to be merged with viewer release shortly, prior to going to testing. Depending on the results of the testing, an updated SL release viewer should appear early in week 21.

Viewer Release Process

Because the version upgrading changes will move to the viewer release channel with the move of the current beta viewer, the viewer beta repository will stop being used, and viewer releases will start switching over to the new release process. As a part of this, two new wiki pages will be appearing in the next future (probably in week 22).

The first of these will be a revamped Alternate Viewers page on the wiki, which will list all the available LL project viewers and beta viewers and release candidates which are available, as well as the current viewer release, all of which will have download links and links to their respective release notes.

The second wiki page will have the same information together with pointers to which repository used to build the viewer, which changesets were used to build a viewer, and whether or not the repository is public.

The plan remains that under the new release process, all beta and release candidates will have public repositories, while project viewers many not initially have public repositories, but will have as they reach the later stages of their development.

Cocoa Project

The Cocoa project for Mac versions of the viewer has been largely stalled as a result of redeploying TPV assistance from that project to the materials project. It is anticipated that once materials moves to a beta viewer status, the emphasis will shift back on to the Cocoa viewer work

Materials Processing

Providing all goes according to plan, the Materials Processing code should move to a beta  status within its own repository and hopefully also make an appearance in week 21. Commenting on this, Oz Linden said at the TPV Developer meeting o Friday May 17th, “It’s still not 100% there; there’s still a few known bugs, but we think we’ve got all the serious ones and so we’re going to put it out where people can play with it.”

Once the materials viewer does reach beta, the anticipation is that it will remain there for “a little while” and the it will not be a one-spin beta release prior to moving on.

Detail on the hint of a Katana created entirely using the new materials capability. The sword is made by June Dion and has an LI of 7
Materials used to create details on the hilt of a Katana created by June Dion – soon to be visible in the Materials Processing beta viewer

Continue reading “SL projects update week 20 (2): materials beta, SSB/A” →

SL projects update 18 (4): servers, viewer release process, group bans and bits

Posted on by Inara Pey

Server Deployments – Week 18

As reported in the first part of this update, the SLS Main channel was rolled back to release 13.04.05.273580, as a result of a widespread performance issue.  This unfortunately saw the removal of the new LSL animation capabilities from the channel.

The issue itself is related to problems with regions locating their neighbours. “The sim were hitting the [region presence lookup] service too hard, causing stability problems.” Maestro Linden said at the Server Beta meeting on Thursday May 2nd. Release notes.

In the original notes for this week’s deployments, BlueSteel and LeTigre were scheduled to receive the same deployment package. However, this was subsequently changed so that:

  • BlueSteel received the same reversions as the Main channel due to the performance issue between neighbouring regions, but also received updates for the Experience Keys project as originally planned. Release notes.
  • LeTigre received the same code that was on the main channel in week 17, the only difference being that it fixes the performance issue that caused the Main channel to be rolled back this week.  Release notes.

Maestro described the deployment of the fix for region lookup issues as the “conservative option”, rather than deploying the fix to multiple Release Channels, “In case the changes from the other two channels have their own problems.”

Magnum received the package originally scheduled for it, described as bringing some new minor features to LSL, and fixes some crash modes as well as the fix for grid performance issue, and fixing an issue in which llDialog() messages sent to the object owner could be incorrectly throttled. Release notes.

The hope is that if all is well with the Magnum update, it is liable to be deployed to the Main channel in week 19.

SL Viewer Updates

Beta Viewer Release

A new beta version of the viewer emerged on May 2nd, using the 3.5.2 code (3.5.2.275087). This release includes the update from FMOD to FMOD Ex, and well as a number of other maintenance and other fixes as specified in the release notes.  However, it does not include the anticipated Vivox updates to improve SL Voice. These will be coming along at a later date.

The current plan is for this release to remain in the beta channel for at least one further update prior to it appearing in the release channel. As such, it is unlikely to be in the release viewer until late in week 19 or in week 20. Once it has appeared in the release viewer, LL will probably deploy the new viewer release process, and the beta channel will cease being used.

Viewer Release Process

Oz Linden
Oz Linden

As previously reported, the viewer release process will be changing in the coming weeks. As a part of this, the development viewer channel has already been deprecated; however it will still be a while before the new process is put into place, as further infrastructure changes are still required on LL’s part.

Concerns have been raised by TPV developers about a side-effect of the new process potentially being that the rate at which code becomes available to them may slow down, thus causing them to “fall behind” the LL viewer in terms of new functionality or capabilities. Stressing that this is not the intent, Oz Linden described process in further detail at the TPV Developer meeting, indicating that under the new system:

  • Viewer projects will each have their own repositories, which will be made available to TPVs (and others) once it is deemed they are “safe to share” as a project or “beta” viewer
    • While it has yet to be formally decided within LL, and may take a little time to work up to, critical bug fixes are liable to have their own repositories, from where they can be merged into other viewers
  • Users will be able to pick which beta / project viewer(s) they download from the Alternate Viewer wiki page without being tied to any specific update route (so you can download and run as many project / beta viewers as you like)
  • Once a project is believed to be of release quality, it will be put into a release candidate, built on the current viewer release code and released to a target number of users (as chosen by LL), alongside other release candidates being used by other users
  • When a user receives a release candidate viewer via the download page, the updates they receive will be offered on the basis of the release candidate they are currently running (for example, if a user is running the Materials RC viewer, they won’t be offered updates from, say, the SSB/A RC viewer)
  • After some period of time, and when LL have looked at the results, one of the release candidates will be promoted to the default download (without the viewer having to be rebuilt) and will be available on the main download page
  • The remaining viewer projects (at least those at release candidate status) will then be merged with the newly-released viewer code, and re-test and issue a further release candidate, which may in turn be selected as the next candidate for promotion to the default download.

He added that in terms of TPV’s concerns over code being made available to them, the level of co-operation which has been evident in the Sunshine project (SSB/A) has “not gone unnoticed” within LL’s management, and that the team involved has received a lot of kudos for the way they have handled interaction with TPVs. As such, it is likely that the Lab will endeavour to build on this going forward.

Continue reading “SL projects update 18 (4): servers, viewer release process, group bans and bits” →

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 14 (3): Viewer releases, server-side AO

Posted on by Inara Pey

Server Deployments – week 14

On Tuesday April 2nd, the Second Life Server (SLS or Main) channel received the interest list update which has been running on the Magnum RC channel for weeks 12-13, together with fixes for the following issues:

  • BUG-1779 – Updates for objects that are out of view are delayed for a maximum of 5 seconds, at which point they will be sent
  • BUG-1795 – “Agent appears in incorrect position to other agents after being moved by a sim teleporter”
  • BUG-1814 – “No object updates from vehicles after some region crossings” – yes, the vehicle region crossing bug fix reaches the Main channel (and should be on BlueSteel and LeTigre following the RC deployments on Wednesday 3rd April).

Deployment release notes.

On Wednesday April 3rd, the Release Candidate (RC) channels received the following updates:

  • BlueSteel and LeTigre received the same package as week 13, which includes the new Animation Override LSL capabilities together with the following:
    • The changes deployed to the Main channel on Tuesday April 2nd
    • A fix for BUG-2134 – “Avatar pre-jump is sporadic”
    • Release notes are available (BlueSteel link)
  • Magnum received Monty Linden’s new server-side HTTP updates – release notes.

SL Viewer

There has been some activity within the various viewer channels, and the promise of more to come.

The Communications Hub User Interface (CHUI)

CHUI has now reached the  viewer release channel with LL issuing viewer 3.5.0.273444. This release includes both the new CHUI UI for conversations, etc., as well as a lot of additional refactoring of code. A blog post has accompanied the launch, complete with Torley’s original video on the interface.

Server-side Baking Viewer Code

The viewer-side code for Server-side Baking / Appearance (SSB) reached the SL development viewer with the release of version 3.5.1.273529. With CHUI now in the release viewer, SSB should also be appearing in the SL beta viewer view shortly.

Materials Processing

“Materials is actually making great progress,” Oz Linden reported at the Open-source Dev meeting on Wednesday April 3rd. He went on to say the latest work on the code is showing promise and was due to go to LL’s QA department. If things go well with QA, it is possible that a project viewer could finally be emerging from the darkness. However, as Oz again warned this will only happen when, “We’re confident that 1) it won’t do any serious harm, and 2) it’s not so terrible that it’ll give the project a black eye.”

Nevertheless, things are moving.

Server-side Animation Override Capabilities

New server-side AO capabilities coming soon
New server-side AO capabilities: LSL functions now being deployed to main grid

While the new Animation Override LSL capabilities have only just rolled-out BlueSteel and LeTigre, the server has actually supported overriding animations for over a year; it has just lacked the required LSL functions and some bug fixes. This means that if you use the new capabilities on either BlueSteel or LeTigre, any animations you set will continue to work across the entire grid until you log out.

In noting this at the Server Beta user group meeting on Thursday April 4th, Kelly Linden went on to say:

The new override functions do not allow setting by UUID. My original version (well over a year old) set by integer constants. However there was some desire internally to make the system more flexible, to allow for different states or modifying the state machine diagram, and for that string constants were used. Right now those string constants are converted to integer constants for use in the existing internal state machine.

In other words, the system allows animations to be specified by name (string constant), making the capability somewhat more user-friendly than might have been the case has UUIDs for animations been required. The the string constants are converted to integers for handling by the server’s state machine (the “engine” for animations on the server-side) means that it should be possible for the state machine to be updated in the future without potentially breaking content using the capabilities.

In answering a question on the lack of support for animations such as idling and typing, Kelly again explained that some animation types are not supported by the state engine. These are either handled within the viewer (idling) or elsewhere in server (typing), as such they fall outside the new AO capabilities. Swimming is also excluded, although Kelly couldn’t remember if that is handled viewer-side or elsewhere in the server.

HTTP Updates

Monty Linden’s ongoing HTTP work reached the Magnum RC channel. For those interested in monitoring SL’s port usage, Monty provided a quick summary in response to a question on texture fetches posted to the deployment thread:

The Texture Console speaks truth for texture fetches, either http or udp.  If that is quiet while this transport is going on, it’s something else …. and here are some rules that will determine the traffic:

  • Port 12046 but textures are quiet => mesh fetches
  • Port 12043 (corrected, was 12042) => other HTTP services (“Capabilities”)
  • UDP port 12035, 13000-130XX => simulator communications

Related Links