Tag: Server Updates

SL projects update week 10/1: server, viewer, JIRA

Posted on by Inara Pey
A typical Simulator UG meeting (stock)
A typical Simulator UG meeting (stock)

Server Deployments: week 10

As always, please refer to the server deployment thread in the forums for the latest updates / changes.

Main (SLS) Channel

On Tuesday March 4th, the Main channel was updated with the infrastructure update deployed the RC channels  in week 9.

Release Candidate Channels

On Wednesday March 5th, the three RC channels should be updated as follows:

  • BlueSteel and LeTigre should receive a new server maintenance project which contains the following bug fixes:
    • Fixed a bug in which the server release notes link in “About Second Life” would sometimes fail to appear
    • Fixed a bug in which certain objects had incorrect status when crossing between regions
    • Fixed a crash mode
  • Magnum will remain on the same version as week 9, which comprises the infrastructure update and enables support for a new version of the inventory service, AISv3.  To make use of this new feature, login with the Sunshine Project Viewer.

SL Viewer Updates

The Merchant Outbox viewer appeared as a release candidate (version 3.7.3.287344) on Monday March 3rd. This viewer addresses some of the problems affecting some users when using the Merchant Outbox, as specified in the release notes and my report here.

A new Snowstorm viewer is expected to surface in the viewer release channel as an RC the near future. Among other things, this should contain STORM-1831, which is designed to improve syntax highlighting in the viewer’s LSL editor by allowing the viewer to obtain the information required for syntax highlighting directly from the simulator the viewer is connected to. The server-side support for this was deployed at the start of 2014, and the viewer code,  contribution from Ima Mechanic with help from Oz Linden,  has been a little held-up in making its way through the Lab’s QA process. However, referring to it at the Simulator User Group meeting on Tuesday March 4th, Oz indicated the code is now on the “home stretch”.

JIRA Re-opening

There is still no news as to when this week the JIRA will be re-opened. There is also a question as to whether the re-opening will allow all reports to be viewed by anyone, or whether it will only apply to those reports filed once it has been reopened. Note that this is currently a question over the re-opening, not an actual official statement from the Lab. We’ll doubtless learn more once the necessary changes have been made to open-up the JIRA system once more.

Other Items

llSetKeyframedMotion: object stalls and autoreturn defeats

Prior to his departure from the Lab, Andrew Linden was approached by Talarus Luan about issues with llSetKeyframedMotion. Essentially, a number of issues have been reported with objects (such as vehicles) using the function, including:

  • SVC-7556 – Objects with llSetKeyframedMotion() stop running after region restarts (Talarus’ issue)
  • SVC-7787 – Objects using llSetKeyframedMotion() can defeat a parcel’s autoreturn if they travel to and from another parcel
  • BUG-1624

Responding to the issue of SVC-7556, Simon Linden said, “suspending in the middle of KF motion and resuming with that huge time jump sounds really ugly. I haven’t tried it, but if you want to code for that, it might be best to detect the region restart event, reset the position and re-start the key frame motion.” In terms of the Lab dealing with it, he admitted, “given the other things that need attention, it’s not likely to get to the top of the list soon.”

With regards to SVC-7787, his news was in a similar vein, “That is how parcel timing is designed … it measures the current time in the parcel, so if you leave and come back, it’s reset. So there’s a loophole there, yes … and I don’t think we’ve come up with a good alternative. “

SL projects update week 9/3: viewer, Vivox and Fitted Mesh

Posted on by Inara Pey

Server Deployments: week 9 – recap

As always, please refer to the server deployment thread in the forums for the latest updates / changes.

On Tuesday February 25th, the Main channel was updated with the server maintenance package previously on all three RCs, which comprises the following:

  • Fix for BUG-5034 “If an EM restarts a region and then teleports out immediately, the EM will disconnect just after teleport”
  • Fixed a rare case in which e-mails read by LSL scripts immediately after rez or region change would sometimes be missing the message body
  • Fixed some crash modes.

On Wednesday February 26th, the BlueSteel and LeTigre Release Candidate channels were updated with an infrastructure update, with no functional changes. The Magnum RC received the same infrastructure update and had the server-side AIS v3 code is enabled. As noted in part 1 of this report, the new AIS code is designed to improve performance and reliability when changing outfits, but is reliant on new viewer code, which is currently available from the Lab in the Sunshine Project viewer (of which mor below), and will doubtless start appearing in TPVs soon.

While no details were given, the infrastructure updates deployed to the RC channels are apparently system changes to make simulators easier to manage.

TP Developer Meeting Video

A TPV developer meeting took place on February 28th. 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 latter.

SL Viewer Updates

Release Candidates

  • The “Project Interesting” interest list RC  viewer updated to version 3.7.3.287127 on February 26th
  • The Maintenance RC viewer updates to version 3.7.3.287263 on February 27th.

[0:29] These updates put both of these viewers on a par with the current release viewer, and both are doing “well” in terms of low crash rates, but as Oz Linden said at the TPV Developer meeting on Friday February 28th, “it’s still early days”.

Upcoming Release Candidates

[0:43] The Google Breakpad viewer is expected to reappear as a release candidate “pretty soon”. The last version of this viewer had significant issues related to Windows XP, and so a “different tack” will be taken to handling XP and older versions of Windows with the next update, XP itself having a “truly horrific” crash rate for the viewer. However, and to ease any concerns,  the “new tack” doesn’t involve blocking Windows XP systems from accessing Second Life.

[2:33] The Breakpad update is described as being “important” for TPVs to pick-up and include in their own code, in order to ensure viewers are all reporting stats in the same manner.

[6:48] Both the Sunshine (AIS v3) project viewer and the Merchant Outbox project viewer are expected to move to release candidate status very shortly. These are described as being in the “last stages of the QA pipeline”, and so will be entering the viewer release channel,  once again increasing the number of RC viewers vying for promotion.

Project Zipper Viewer

[7:20] On Wednesday February 26th, the Lab issued the “Zipper” project viewer (version 3.7.2.286810), designed to speed-up viewer installation time (cutting it by roughly 50% in a clean install on my own PC) – from 35.6 seconds to  16.4 seconds. Most of this appears to be the result of compressing / combining files, and there have been questions raised on whether doing so might result in an actual performance hit.

It is anticipated that this viewer will also be shortly rebuilt as a release candidate viewer in the release channel.

Other Viewer Projects

  • [9:12] Group Bans – as I’ve noted in part 2 of this week’s report, the viewer-side code for Group Ban (lists) should be appearing as a project viewer in week 10, ready for the Group Ban functionally to be tested on Aditi
  •  [10:07] Oculus Rift – the Rift viewer is still with LL’s QA team.

Continue reading “SL projects update week 9/3: viewer, Vivox and Fitted Mesh” →

SL projects update week 9/1: server releases, viewer updates

Posted on by Inara Pey

Server Deployments: week 9

As always, please refer to the server deployment thread in the forums for the latest updates / changes.

Main (SLS) Channel

On Tuesday February 25th, the Main channel was updated with the server maintenance package previously on all three RCs, which comprises the following:

  • Fix for BUG-5034 “If an EM restarts a region and then teleports out immediately, the EM will disconnect just after teleport”
  • Fixed a rare case in which e-mails read by LSL scripts immediately after rez or region change would sometimes be missing the message body
  • Fixed some crash modes

Release Candidate Channels

On Wednesday February 26th, the Release Candidate channels should be updated as follows:

  • BlueSteel and LeTigre should receive an infrastructure update, with no functional changes
  • Magnum should also receive the infrastructure update, and in addition have the server-side AIS v3 code enabled (the code having already been rolled-out to the grid – see the AIS section of my week 7 report). This code requires viewer-side updates to work (currently available as a project viewer), and should Improve performance and reliability when changing outfits (see my AIS reports in this blog).

SL Viewer Updates

HTTP Viewer Promoted

The HTTP viewer, version 3.7.2.286707 was promoted to the de facto release viewer on February 25th. This currently leaves just two RC viewers in the release channel: the Maintenance RC (3.7.2.286708) and the Interest List viewer (3.6.14.285213), both of which should  be rebuilt using the HTTP viewer code base in due course.

Sunshine / AIS Viewer

With only two RCs in the release channel, it is possible the Sunshine / AIS viewer may be moved to release candidate status this week. Given that the server-side AIS code is starting to be enabled on the main grid, this viewer could be on course to reach a release status in week 11.

Group Ban Lists

Baker Linden is currently filing for the server-side code to be deployed to Aditi, which he hopes will happen by the end of the week. In the meantime, he describes the status of the Viewer code as, “testing it for compatibility with old viewers and such. Once that’s stable and I know I didn’t break anything, I’ll start filing for the viewer to become a release candidate.”

Other Items

Region Restart Oopsie

The new on-screen region restart warning, accompanied by a sound and camera shake
The new on-screen region restart warning, accompanied by a sound and camera shake

A slight issue has come to light with the recently implemented new region restart alert, now active in the SL viewer and in the most recent updates to a number of TPVs. Essentially, the sound accompanying the 5-minute countdown (and which is played alongside the camera shake at the top of each minute in the countdown) is actually played in-world rather than locally.

The result is that if there are several avatars close together who are using viewers with the new restart alert code, the noise can either be very loud or something of a mess (particularly if some of those users have opted to set custom warning sounds within their viewer).

The fix is relatively straightforward, and will doubtless be incorporated into an upcoming viewer release. In the meantime, the Firestorm team have implemented their own fix ready for the next release of that viewer due in early(ish) in March, which will be the first version of Firestorm to incorporate the new code.

Pocket Metaverse Users Inadvertently Blocked at Weekend

There were a number of reports over the weekend that users on the iOS Pocket Metaverse third-party client were unable to log-in to Second Life, as a result of their hardware being blocked. This caused a number of forum posts on the subject, such as this one and this one, and some upset on Twitter.

It turned out the client was apparently presenting the wrong information to LL’s servers, triggering the hardware block. On becoming aware of the problem, the Lab immediately set about reversing the blocks, and the matter appeared to be cleared-up by the end of the weekend.

The Pocket Metaverse issue caused some users to complain on Twitter, prompting a resonse from Ebbe Altberg
The Pocket Metaverse issue caused some users to complain on Twitter, prompting a response from Ebbe Altberg

SL projects news week 8/1: server, viewer and log-in issue PSA

Posted on by Inara Pey

My apologies for the late release of this update; things have been a little bit hectic, and I’ve been rushing to catch-up on posts and news.

Server Deployments: week 8 – recap

As always, please refer to the server deployment thread in the forums for the latest updates / changes.

  • As there was no update to the RC channels in week 7, there was no update to the Main channel on Tuesday February 18th.
  • On Wednesday February 19th, all three RCs received a new server maintenance package which comprised the following updates:
    • Fix for BUG-5034 “If an EM restarts a region and then teleports out immediately, the EM will disconnect just after teleport”
    • Fixed a rare case in which e-mails read by LSL scripts immediately after rez or region change would sometimes be missing the message body
    • Fixed some crash modes
Maestro Linden
Maestro Linden

The region restart issue (BUG-5034) was described in part 2 of my week 7 report.

Commenting on the e-mail issue during the Server Beta Meeting on Thursday February 20th, Maestro Linden said:

The other bug fix was for some obscure e-mail issue that Kelly found, where e-mails to LSL scripts would be missing their message bodies under very obscure circumstances. Nobody’s filed a bug report about that happening, so maybe nobody ever saw it regularly.

 In this case you’d see the e-mail, and see the subject but not the body. Or rather, I guess the body would be an empty string … I guess you’d only know if you had sent the e-mail yourself.

 According to Kelly, it would only happen during a very narrow time window as the sim was starting up, so I could imagine most people who saw it once just shrugging after the issue didn’t occur a second time.

SL Viewer Updates

  • The Maintenance release RC was updated on Tuesday February 18th to version 3.7.2.286708
  • The HTTP RC was updated on Wednesday, February 19th to version 3.7.2.286707
  • The Google Breakpad RC has been removed from the release channel, having completed this round of tests.

Group Ban Lists

There’s not much more to report here than last week. Commenting on the overall status of the work at the Simulator User Group meeting on Tuesday February 18th, Baker Linden said:

I’m in the last stages of code cleanup and ensuring there aren’t any major bugs (which QA will surely find) and I’m wrapping everything up for deployment to Aditi this week (server-side stuff only right now).

 It’s not clear if the server code did reach Aditi, or whether it may appear in week 9. Commenting on the status at the Server Beta meeting later in the week, Maestro Linden indicated the code was “inching closer to Aditi”, and will be available “as soon as we’re confident that the backend host and simulators are playing nicely. If there’s a bug which is definitely viewer-only, that’s not a blocker for Aditi at all.”

Materials Handling

Scripted Control

The ability to control materials (normal and specular maps) via scripts has been an oft-discussed topic in User Group meetings and the subject of MATBUG-359.  The subject was again raised at the Simulator User Group Meeting on Tuesday February 18th, to which Simon replied, “I’ve been looking into that, and hope to get to it soon, but it keeps getting pushed back with other more immediate issues cropping up.”

One of the concerns with scripted control of materials maps in that if manual changes are made to materials too quickly in the build floater, they will often revert, as if the server is unhappy in receiving  too many quick updates. Commenting on this, Simon added:

That’s an interesting point and something we’ll have to look at after doing the basic scripting change.   If it’s somehow worse than the current scripted texture changes, we’ll have to have some sort of throttle to slow it down.

The question was raised on why normal and specular maps appear to work different to diffuse (texture maps), with the server better able to handle fast changes to textures when compared to normal and specular maps. Simon indicated that both normal and specular maps are handled differently in order to minimise the impact of multiple usage.  Expanding on this is terms of scripted control, he went on:

I was just looking at the materials code, and the complication this has compared to regular textures is how materials have their own layer of special data packaging instead of a just a UUID on a face.  I’m not sure yet how script access is going to thrash that data or not.

There also may be something of a cost / benefit issue within the Lab when it comes to adding scripted control to materials – would the potential uses be broad enough to justify the time required to avoid issues of data thrashing, introducing throttles on updates, etc. Hence Simon asked for some specific examples of where scripted control of materials would be beneficial, so he could carry them back to the Lab’s product managers.

Continue reading “SL projects news week 8/1: server, viewer and log-in issue PSA” →

SL projects update 7/2: server and viewer

Posted on by Inara Pey
Ther Server Beta UG meeting, Thursday February 13th, 2014
The Server Beta UG meeting, Thursday February 13th, 2014

Server Deployments: week 7 – recap

As always, please refer to the server deployment thread in the forums for the latest updates / changes.

  • On Tuesday February 11th, the Main channel received the server maintenance package previously deployed to the RC channels in week 6, which includes a crash fix.
  • There  were no updates to the RC channels.

Upcoming Deployments – week 8

As there was no deployment to the RC channels this week, there is nothing to be promoted to the Main channel in week 8 (week commencing Monday 17th February). However, according to Maestro Linden, speaking at the Server Beta meeting on Thursday February 13th, there will a new maintenance package deployed to the RCs on Wednesday February 19th.

This will include a fix for an issue reported in BUG-5034, whereby if an Estate Manager restarts a region and then immediately teleports out when there are no other avatars in the region, the Estate Manager will be logged out of Second Life just after the teleport completes.

That Estate Managers tend to encounter the issue may be purely down to the fact they are the last to leave a region on a manual restart; there are reports of some being disconnected when teleporting out of a region during a rolling restart.

The issue has been problematic for the Lab to reproduce, and is possibly related to users with higher ping times. The thinking is that the restart is occurring before the avatar is properly reported as having left the region (there is still a child agent present), so the viewer ends up disconnecting. The fix being implemented is to adjust the restart process so the simulator waits just a little longer prior to the actual restart being initiated.

SL Viewer Updates

HTTP RC

Following the promotion of the Fitted Mesh viewer to the de facto release viewer on February 10th, The HTTP RC became the first of the existing RC viewer to be updated to include the Fitted Mesh code and was updated to version 3.7.1.286567 on February 13th.

Facebook Hotfix RC

A new RC appeared on February 12th, with the release of version 3.7.1.286557 on February 12th. This again includes the Fitted Mesh code, but the release is actually to fix a problem in the viewer’s built-in web browser which makes it impossible to login correctly into Facebook.

This puts the total count of current RC cohorts in the viewer release channel at 5, so it is unlikely there will be further RC viewers appearing until this list has been thinned down a little (which does not mean there will be no releases of any project viewers waiting in the works).

Avatar Physics

The arrival of fitted Mesh, which works with most avatar physics (except belly), has led to renewed discussion over issues around problems with avatar physics being so dependent upon viewer frame rates, with the result that lower frame rates can result in wildly exaggerated movement (see both  VWR-25545 (publicly viewable) and FIRE-12386. for details).

Whether or not the issue will be addressed (or can be reasonably addressed) remains to be seen; how many people actually use avatar physics is unclear. However, the fact that avatar physics can be used with fitted Mesh may see a wider use of the former as the latter gains more of a foothold, in turn increasing calls for the issue to be dealt with.

SL projects update week 7/1: server / viewer

Posted on by Inara Pey

News is a little light at the moment., although there are a number of things in the works and yet to be opened to public viewing.

Server Deployments: week 7

As always, please refer to the server deployment thread in the forums for the latest updates / changes.

  • On Tuesday February 11th, the Main channel received the server maintenance package previously on the three RC channels which includes a crash fix.
  • There will be no RC channel deployments, and it is not anticipated that the RC regions will not be subject to a rolling restart.

This means there will be no Main channel deployment in week 8 (week commencing Monday February 17th. However, there should be a new server maintenance package deployed that week.

SL Viewer Updates

Fitted Mesh

The Fitted Mesh RC version: 3.7.0.286015 was promoted to the de facto release viewer on Monday February 10th, complete with a video from Torley Linden.

See my coverage here, and my Fitted Mesh preview article (now slightly dated).

As a result of this, the remaining RC viewers will be updated in due course to match the current release build.

Group Ban Lists

The work on group ban list functionality is going through a further round of internal testing at LL. It is still anticipated that a project viewer will be emerging for testing on Aditi (the Beta grid) in the very near future.