Server Updates – Page 116 – Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld

SL project updates week 43 (1): Server releases, interest list

Posted on October 23, 2013September 27, 2024 by Inara Pey

Simulator UG meeting, Tuesday Octber 22nd, 2013 — Simulator UG meeting, Tuesday October 22nd, 2013

Server Deployments – Week 43

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

Second Life Server (Main Channel) – Tuesday October 22nd

The Main channel was updated with the server maintenance project that was previously on all three RC channels. The package includes:

A fix for “Group member access to parcels fails when ‘Sell passes to’ is enabled”
Fixes for two region crossing issues:
- “‘Ghost’ avatars and vehicles sometimes appear to an observer at the sim border”
- “Vehicles which exit a region with a passenger are incorrectly auto-returned and become ‘ghost shapes’ in the physics engine”
Extremely high Avatar Render Weights reported to the server are now capped at 500,000
A performance issue fix for avatar loading speed in the experimental ‘viewer-interesting’ viewer.

Second Life RC BlueSteel, RC Magnum, and RC LeTigre – Wednesday October 23rd

There are no updates planned for the three RC channels, as a result, there was no rolling restart across the RCs.

SL Viewer Updates

The Google Breakpad RC was removed from the viewer release cohorts at the end of week 42.

Interest List Viewer

The interest list RC viewer is once again delayed. Commenting on it at the Simulator User Group meeting on Tuesday October 22nd, Andrew Linden indicated the hoped-for schedule for its appearance is before the end of the month, but there is something of a low confidence level in the estimate.

Apparently, there is still a performance issue to be dealt with (whether this is the same issue Richard linden mentioned in discussing the interest list viewer at the TPV developer meeting on Friday October 18th is unclear). Also, it seems that the recent issues of objects steadfastly refusing the render in the interest list viewer without a relog – thhought to have been resolved in week 42 – have also regressed into the viewer code with recent builds.

The issue of prims failing to render in the Interest List viewer, as demonstrated by Whirly Fizzle in the images above and once thought to have been solved, has apparently returned to haunt the code in recent builds, helping to further delay the appearance of the viewer as a release candidate.

Andrew also clarified that the definition of objects which are cacheable by the viewer has been revised such that it is now objects which have not changed outward appearance or transformed in the last two minutes, rather than the one minute Richard Linden indicated, so as to allow for temp-on-rez objects (otherwise additional logic would have been required to check on these). The changes to the definition also mean that some scripted objects which have certain script calls in them, but which do not change appearance as a result of the calls, can also now be cached by the viewer.

As an adjunct to the interest list viewer discussion, Andrew indicated his “before / after” video for scene loading has received the “Torley treatment”, and the results are “impressive”. This is for the changes already implemented server-side, and which should already be visible to people without the Interest List viewer. There’s no date as to when this video may make its public debut.

Other Items

LSL Control for Materials

There have been renewed enquiries for the introduction of scripted control for materials. This has been requested in the past, and was always considered “out-of-scope” for the initial release of materials. A (further?) JIRA has been raised on the topic (MATBUG-359), but is light on suggestion on what might be required, etc.

Those Lindens attending the meeting (Andrew, Kelly and Simon) could see the advantages of extending LSL to handle materials (and Brooke Linden has indicated she feels the JIRA is a valid request). However, how best to achieve this, and the time-frame in which it might be achieved (not just in terms of a technical approach, but also in terms of the Lab’s internal priorities and workload) are unclear at this point.

Both and Andrew and Kelly felt that requiring the normal / specular maps to be in the object contents might be a means by which to both enable and constrain the use of LSL manipulation of materials because of the lack of permissions associated with UUIDs and concerns of misuse. While no promises were made as to whether the work would proceed, Simon Linden suggested a further step would be to lay out a clearer proposed API and the exact behaviour required for manipulating materials via script. Andrew also indicated he has a “few” LSL calls to add, so he’ll try to take a look at the materials system o see how hard it would be to give script access to it.

llGetObjectDetails() and keyframe animation states

Simon Linden indicated that there has been some talk within the Lab of adding some new parameters to llGetObjectDetails() which would return an object’s keyframe animation states, so it would be possible to get the step number, state (paused, looping, ping-pong, etc.). Again, if / when this might appear is unclear; Simon appeared to be putting the idea out for feedback from the meeting attendees.

SL projects update week 42 (2): server, group ban list

Posted on October 19, 2013October 26, 2013 by Inara Pey

Server Deployments – Week 42

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

Tuesday October 15th saw the Main channel updated with the server maintenance project previously on all three RC channels in week 41.

The planned deployment of a new server maintenance project to all three RC channels was threatened at the 11th hour by the discovery of a bug which took time to resolved, and left the package teetering on the edge of whether it would pass QA testing in time to make the deployment cut-off.

Maestro Linden's disco-themed Server Beta meeting venue (stock) — Maestro Linden’s disco-themed Server Beta meeting venue (stock)

Speaking at the Server Beta meeting on Thursday October 17th, Maestro Linden expanded on this last-minute bug. He explained that it took the form of objects failing to vanish from a user’s field of view after being de-rezzed, and would instead remain as a ghosted object until touched, because the user’s viewer wouldn’t get the update message that the object had been de-rezzed. The problem for the Lab was that the issue would occur in some places but not in others, and seemed to be dependent on things like camera position and draw distance, making it hard to reproduce consistently.

Andrew Linden finally worked out that the problem would only occur in regions with a neighbour to the east and if the user’s viewer was connected to that region. So depending on the region, the object’s position, your camera position and draw distance, the bug might or might not trigger.

While the issue was successfully addressed and the update package successfully deployed on schedule, the Lab are still uncertain as to why the bug should only occur when there is a neighbouring region to the east; however, it’s fair to say that this is not the first “east related” bug to have been found.

Group Ban List

Baker Linden is continuing with internal testing with the new code, using Maestro and Caleb Linden as his guinea pigs. Apparently, the server-side code is hung-up in LL’s internal QA, possibly awaiting resources there. As such, it has yet to become visible and there are currently no regions available on Aditi which include the server-side updates.

Other Items

A problem has been noted following-on from the recent updates to prevent people from using recursive rezzing to grief regions (see my week 35 and week 37 reports). As a consequence of this, some engaging in combat in Second Life have encountered issues wherein combat vehicles in regions with short auto-return times can have their ordnance immediately returned when a weapon is fired, and any temp vehicles are unable to rez attachments, even when sat upon.

Commenting on the situation, Maestro agreed the use-case is legitimate and that some exemption should be made for sat-upon vehicles / objects in these circumstances. He’s agreed to put the matter to Simon and Andrew Linden for further discussion on the best way to approach and resolve the issue.

SL projects update week 42 (1): Server, viewer updates, misc news

Posted on October 16, 2013November 8, 2013 by Inara Pey

Server Deployments – Week 42

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

Second Life Server (Main Channel) – Tuesday October 15th

The main channel received the server maintenance project previously on all three RC channels in week 41. This project includes a fix for a group notice delivery issue, introduces a missing JSON operation to LSL, and includes preparatory work for an upcoming viewer with scene loading (interest list) improvements.

Second Life RC BlueSteel, RC Magnum, and RC LeTigre – Wednesday October 16th

All three RC channels should receive a new server maintenance project. However, at the time of writing, it is unclear whether the RC deployment will occur due to a last-minute bug being identified. Speaking at the Simulator User Group meeting, Andrew Linden indicated that while it had been fixed, it has yet to pass internal QA.

Assuming it does go ahead, the deployment includes fixes for the following issues:

“Group member access to parcels fails when ‘Sell passes to’ is enabled” (BUG-3992)
“‘Ghost’ avatars and vehicles sometimes appear to an observer at the sim border” (BUG-3872)
“Vehicles which exit a region with a passenger are incorrectly auto returned and become ‘ghost shapes’ in the physics engine” (BUG-4024)
A performance issue with avatar loading speed in the experimental ‘viewer-interesting’ viewer.

Simulator User Group meeting, Tuesday October 15th 2013

In addition, extremely high Avatar Render Weights reported to the server are now capped at 500,000 (BUG-4010) – so the server will take any report over 500k and treat it as 500k. Simon explained that this cap had been arrived through a process of observation and data-gathering he undertook himself or resident supplied to him, all of which suggested the average for ARW among users is around 100K. In describing the cap in general, he went on:

You should consider anything close to 500k as just “way too high”. The system is a compromise that’s needed because some people will try to game it You should not trust the values too much. They are from viewers, which (don’t take this personally, anyone) cannot be trusted to be accurate 500k is at the very high-end of usage.

Really, anyone near that in a public place is hogging your viewer display power if you’re up by 500k – you’re using roughly 5x the viewer render resources as everyone else Also remember that SL is not doing anything with this data. It’s up to scripters and land owners to react. So I can imagine a popular club maybe sending a warning IM to someone who’s really complex.

I hope some people can find it useful within its limitations. As it currently works, it should give scripts a good idea if some people are extra-costly. It’s up to the scripter to handle that well or not.