Tag: Server Updates

SL projects update week 30 (1): server releases, viewer, SSB/A

Posted on by Inara Pey

Server Deployments – Week 30

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

Second Life Server (SLS Main) Channel

On Tuesday 23rd July, the SLS Main channel received the server maintenance package previously deployed to BlueSteel. This comprised a further package of under-the-hood changes related to the experience tools.

Release Candidate Channels

On Wednesday July 24th, the three main Release Candidate channels should receive the following updates:

  • BlueSteel should receive the same server maintenance project that was on LeTigre in week 29, and which additionally includes the experience tools updates deployed to the Main channel
  • Magnum and LeTigre should both see Server-side baking / appearance (SSB/A) enabled, and should both receive the experience tools updates deployed to the Main channel.

Viewer Updates and Release Process

The second release candidate viewer was made available on Friday July 19th. Version 3.6.2.278609 comprises the long-awaited Vivox updates. This was followed on Monday July 22nd by the third release candidate, version 3.6.2.278615, which contains Google Breakpad updates.

Commenting on the first two release candidates to be deployed (the Beta Maintenance RC and the Vivox RC), Oz Linden said at the Open-source Dev meeting on Monday July 22nd that, “they each got as many users as we asked for, and we’re getting good data on them.” However, this doesn’t mean that either one will is likely to become the de facto release viewer yet, as Oz went on to note, “we configured both of these for a relatively small number of users just in case… we might want to raise it before we make a release decision.” Given that the Google Breakpad RC has been added to the mix, any decision on which get promoted to release status may well be held over even longer as numbers are crunched.

Release candidates are now also listed on the Official Alternate Viewer wiki page, where they can be downloaded manually. In light of this, I’ve updated my overview of the new viewer release process to include notes on manually downloading and installing release candidate viewers.

Server-side Baking / Appearance

As noted above, following the RC channel restarts due on Wednesday July 24th, both Magnum and LeTigre should be running with SSB/A enabled. Overall, the response to SSB/A deployment both on LeTigre (week 28) and Magnum (week 29) has been good, with few issues being reported.

Of those which have, some may be tied to the way in which some TPVs have implemented the Current Outfit Folder (COF). To help determine whether this is the case, Nyx Linden issued an e-mail on Monday July 22nd, outlining how the Lab anticipates the COF should be set-up within a viewer, and has asked all TPVs to verify that they’ve met the requirements.

More on COF Mismatch Issues

In week 29, I referred to the issue of COF Mismatch Issues. These tend to occur when your viewer and the baking service disagree on the COF version number on which your appearance should be based, resulting in “COF version mismatch” errors appearing in the viewer. Part of the problem is due to the inventory protocol relying on both HTTP and UDP messages, some of which have failure callbacks and some which the viewer may wrongly assumes completes successfully – and the “COF version mismatch” results.

To eliminate this, the Lab is working to update the Agent Inventory Services (AIS), which will see the most error-prone operations related to the COF converted to use AIS rather than UDP. The hope is that this work will both remove the most prominent causes of COF mismatch errors and reduce the number of network calls needed to update the COF. This work has been ongoing for a while, and will form part of the next phase of SSB/A work once the current deployment has seen SSB/A go grid-wide. These updates will involve further viewer-side updates, and include a range of additional improvements, although as yet there is no time scale for their release (particularly as the Lab is only just starting discussing them with TPVs).

Group Ban List

There is not a lot to report here. Baker Linden is still working on the viewer-side code. Giving a brief update at the Simulator User Group meeting, he said, “I’m currently deciding on the format of the data coming into the viewer, and adding it to the group manager subsystem in the viewer. That’s about it :).”

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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.

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SL projects update week 29 (1): server, viewer, SSB/A

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.

Second Life Server (SLS Main) Channel

On Tuesday 16th July, the SLS Main channel received the server maintenance package previously deployed to Magnum in week 28, intended to fix a couple of pathfinding issues:

A slight issue at the start of the rolling restart process on Tuesday 16th July meant that some regions on the main channel experienced to restarts, with the second updating to the correct release.

Release Candidate Channels

On Wednesday July 17th, the three main Release Candidate channels should each receive individual updates, as follows:

  • Magnum will become the RC with the server-side baking / appearance project enabled
  • BlueSteel should receive a further package of under-the-hood changes related to the experience tools
  • LeTigre should receive a new server maintenance project, which includes the following fixes and new features:
    • Fixes:
      • BUG-969 “teleporting breaks collision detection state for volumedetect objects”
      • BUG-2931 “run_time_permissions no longer triggers in attachments after requesting 0 permissions”
      • A further fix for the issue of pathfinding characters using CHARACTER_STAY_WITHIN_PARCEL getting stuck if they somehow exited their home parcel
    • New Features:
      • Added “RenderMaterialsCapability” to /simulator/features cap, which indicates the access rate allowed when accessing the “RenderMaterials” capability
      • Increased the “RenderMaterials” capability access rate to 4 requests per second (up from 1)

Viewer Updates and Release Process

As I reported at the time (see New viewer release process implemented), the new viewer release process went live in week 28. I’ve provided a complete breakdown of the process and what it means in general, for those who wish to know more.

This has seen a number of beta and project viewers appear on the revised Official Alternate Viewer wiki page, with updated viewers including:

  • On July 15th the Second Life Beta channel saw a new release  – version 3.6.2.278491 (release notes)
  • CHUI updates continue to appear first in the CHUI project viewer, which released version 3.6.2.278372 on July 9th
  • The project Cocoa viewer for the Mac also updated on July 15th, to version 3.6.1.278025.

SSB/A Update

In a late change to the deployment schedule, Magnum will the RC channel to have SSB/A enabled following the rolling restarts on Wednesday July 17th.

This will include a fix for BUG-3203, the “notecard bug” I reported on in week 28 (with thanks to Whirly Fizzle), wherein  if you create a notecard in an SSB/A region (i.e. a region on the LeTigre RC at the moment) and attempt to embed anything in it (e.g. LMs, textures, other notecards), the notecard will fail to save with the message: Unable to upload (asset ID number) due to the following reason: The server is experiencing unexpected difficulties. Please try again later.

Continue reading “SL projects update week 29 (1): server, viewer, SSB/A” →

SL projects update week 28 (2): server, SSB/A update

Posted on by Inara Pey

Server Deployments – Week 28

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

On Tuesday 9th July, the SLS Main channel received the server maintenance package previously deployed to all three RC channels in week 26.

On Wednesday 10th July, the three RC channels received the following packages:

  • LeTigre had Server-side Baking / Appearance code enabled. See my mini-update here
  • BlueSteel received a further package of under-the-hood changes related to the experience tools
  • Magnum received a server maintenance project intended to fix a couple of pathfinding issues:

Week 29 Deployments

While the final arrangements for the week 29 deployments (week commencing Monday July 15th) have yet to be finalised, Maestro Linden indicated at the Server Beta meeting on Thursday July 11th that there is likely to be one new server maintenance package going to an RC channel during that week, This is likely to have:

  • Further fixes for various crash modes
  • An additional update for pathfinding characters with CHARACTER_STAY_WITHIN_PARCEL=TRUE, which should enable such characters to re-enter their assigned parcel should they accidentally exit it (as a result of being pushed out, for example), rather than getting stuck
  • Fixes for issues such as:
    • BUG-2931 ‘run_time_permissions no longer triggers in attachments after requesting 0 permissions’
    • BUG-969 ‘teleporting breaks collision detection state for volumedetect objects’

Obviously, I’ll have more on the deployments for the week when details have been published by the Lab.

Server-Side Baking / Appearance Deployment

The enabling of SSB/A on LeTigre on Wednesday July 10th proceeded smoothly, and there have been few problems noted. Most testing the capability are reporting it functions smoothly and are seeing improved avatar skin / clothing layer rendering with few periods of extended avatar blurring.

It’s not entirely clear how SSA/B will proceed from here; it appears as if the Lab plans to keep to the cautious approach previously indicated by Nyx Linden rather than rushing forward to enable the capability right across the grid. As such, Log Linden indicated at the Server Beta meeting on Thursday July 11th that either BlueSteel or possibly – given it has a slightly larger number of regions than BlueSteel – Magnum will have SSB/A enabled next.

Have you updated to a viewer supporting SSB/A?
Have you updated to a viewer supporting SSB/A?

Log Linden came in for a number of additional questions on the new baking / appearance service during the Server Beta meeting on Thursday July 11th. Although I’ve covered the topics asked about in previous reports, I’ll note them here for ease-of-reference:

  • The baking / appearance service is entirely separate from the simulator servers, operating on its own dedicated servers. This means that when the service caches your outfit, it is effectively cached “grid wide” and not the simulator you happen to be on when you update your outfit
  • When two avatars are wearing exactly the same outfit, they both use the same copy of the outfit cached on the baking / appearance service. The Lab is aware this will only happen on rare occasions, and will most likely only happen in the case of library avatars
  • How long an outfit remains cached on the baking / appearance service depends on how popular it is. So if it is an outfit you are frequently changing into, it is liable to remain cached for longer than an outfit you wear, change out of and then leave it unworn for several days or more
  • Outfits which are removed from the baking / appearance cache are not deleted from inventory or anything – it just means that the baking / appearance service no longer has the data for the outfit, and so must wait until the outfit is uploaded from the viewer once more (although this shouldn’t visibly slow down the baking process)
  • Rebaking functions differently on SSB/A enabled regions: rather than uploading your appearance from your viewer to the server for distribution to the users around you, using the rebake (CTRL-ALT-R or menu option) causes the viewer to request a fresh download of your cached appearance
  • Should the server cached version of your appearance somehow become corrupted, you must add a clothing item in order to force a fresh update of your appearance from your Current Outfit Folder to the baking / appearance service
  • When you enter an SSB/A-enabled region for the first time, your own avatar will initially render grey before your skin and clothing layers re-render correctly. This is expected behaviour and due to you switching-over to the new baking / appearance service.

Anomalies

There have been some reports of odd anomalies in LeTigre regions (where SSB/A is enabled). These include:

  • A report that if you wear a 50% gray textured skin, you appear invisible to SSA viewers
  • Rather than appearing as a cloud in SSB/A-enabled viewers, avatars on non-SSB/A viewer entering LeTigre regions will actually render, but any outfit changes they make won’t render to those using SSB/A-enabled viewers unless they teleport to a non-SSB/A enabled region to change, and then return to LeTigre (something which will obviously not be possible once SSB/A is grid-wide).

Notecard Issue

One problem which has been confirmed with LeTigre regions is BUG-3203 (Error when adding contents to a notecard and saving). If you create a notecard on a LeTigre region and embed another item within it (another notecard, an LM, a texture), the notecard will not save, but will generate the following error: Unable to upload (asset ID number) due to the following reason: The server is experiencing unexpected difficulties. Please try again later.

General Feedback

Overall, feedback appears to be positive, going on comments in the forum deployment thread and made at the Server Beta UG meeting. Some people have reported performance dips while on LeTigre regions and attributed them to SSB/A, although this may be a placebo effect. There have also been so reports of viewer crashes when trying to walk between a non-Le Tigre region and a LeTigre region.

Most people who have carried out comparative testing between LeTigre regions and regions on other channels are reporting that avatar rendering on Le Tigre is significantly faster, with avatar skins and clothing appearing fully rendered in around 15 seconds in regions with a reasonable number of other avatars, and none of the general fuzziness or “double rebakes” which can be witnessed on the “old” baking process. Some are also reporting that they are seeing some improvements on non-SSB/A regions when using an SSB/A-enabled viewer, although this again may be something of a placebo effect.

My own rather quick-fire tests with the SL viewer 3.6.1.278007, Firestorm 4.4.2 and Exodus 13.7.9.1 beta revealed no discernible issues. The majority of avatars tended to render together with visiting regions with a reasonable number on them. I didn’t notice any clouds around me in the more crowded locations I dropped into and where I did experience performance drops, although I put those down to the fact the locations (a club and a hub) were busy with 15-20 avatars in each and had a lot going on rather than being anything intrinsic to SSB/A, nor did I witness anyone remaining grey for an inordinate amount of time.

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SL projects update week 28 (1): servers, SSB/A, viewer, snapshots

Posted on by Inara Pey

Update Wednesday July 10th: In checking the forum deployment thread for this week’s roll-outs, I see that KarenMichelle Lane has provided a list of regions on LeTigre where SSB/A will be enabled once they have restarted. Again, you’ll need to have an SSB/A-enabled viewer to avoid issues with avatar rendering on these regions. If you find that once the restarts have completed you are encountering issues with avatar rendering (for example, you are using an SSB/A viewer and find you avatar fails to render for yourself or others), or other issues which appear to be linked to SSB/A, please consider raising a bug report detailing the problem, how to reproduce it, and including your environment information (Help > About (Viewer Name) > Copy to Clipboard), which references Project Sunshine.

Server Deployments – Week 28

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

Second Life Server (SLS Main) Channel

On Tuesday 9th July, the SLS Main channel received the server maintenance package previously deployed to all three RC channels in week 26. This comprised:

  • A fix for ‘llApplyImpulse now works only in the root prim’ (SVC-8227)
  • Crash mode fixes
  • New LSL function: string llXorBase64(string str1, string str2)
    • Returns a string that is a Base64 XOR of Base64-formatted input strings, str1 and str2.
    • Addresses the cases from SCR-35 “llXorBase64StringsCorrect returns wrong result when the 2nd string contains nulls”
    • Aside from those cases, this function behaves identically to llXorBase64StringsCorrect()
  • Added max_materials_per_transaction to /simulator/features cap
    • This number returns the maximum number of materials that can be sent to the “RenderMaterials” capability in a single request.

     

Release Candidate Channels

On Wednesday July 10th, the three main Release Candidate channels should each receive individual updates, as follows:

  • LeTigre should see the Server-side Baking / Appearance code enabled. See my mini-update here
  • BlueSteel should receive a further package of under-the-hood changes related to the experience tools
  • Magnum should receive a server maintenance project intended to fix a couple of pathfinding issues:

Viewer Updates and Release Process

  • The Second Life Beta viewer updated to release 3.6.2.278133 on July 2nd – see the release notes for change details.
  • The Materials Project viewer was also updated on July 2nd, to release 3.6.2.278221.

Speaking at the Opensource UG meeting on Monday 8th July, Oz indicated that he hoped the new viewer release process would go live on Tuesday July 9th. If this has in fact happened, the first viewer to pass through the new process is likely to be a project (or beta viewer) with further third-party code contributions to the SL viewer.

However, as both the SSB/A deployment and the new viewer release process both require an update to the login code, it is possible the new viewer release process will not go live until Wednesday 10th July.

The login change for the viewer release change is to update the automatic check which is carried out to see if a mandatory upgrade is required (see my week 20 report). To prepare for the new release process, is check has been updated. , the login change for SSB/A is described by Oz Linden as, “a very minor change to ensure that inventory is correct” .

Group Ban List

Baker Linden and his new harido
Baker Linden and his new harido

Baker Linden continues to work on the new group ban list functionality (JIRA VWR-29337). Speaking at the Simulator User Group on Tuesday July 8th, he said:

For my update: I’m making really good progress on group bans. I’m doing a bit of a refactoring because I changed the way the backend works slightly. Hopefully by the end of the week I’ll be finishing up the backend code.

There’s currently no date as to when the viewer-side changes might see the light-of-day, but given Baker is currently working on the back-end, this is hardly surprising. He’s also indicated that while it won’t be available when the new functionality goes live, he is considering adding scripting functions to group bans. He also confirmed that group bans would have their own moderation capability, rather than being tied to estate ban moderation.

Particle System Updates

Particle Blocking

As previously reported in these updates, the new “right-click on particles to block and emitter” (MAINT-2268) code for the viewer has been released in the SL Beta Maintenance Viewer. As well as allowing people to click on particles to prevent the viewer generating any more particles in someone’s world-view, the code also has a FPS limit on particles and will stop generating new particles when frame rates drop to 4 FPS.

Those who have tested the capability report it works well and it is very easy to right-click on particles and block them. A slight bug has been reported whereby when unblocking a particle generator / person owning a particle generator, the viewer will not resume generating the particles until the user changes their group tag.

New Particle Capabilities

First reported on in these pages back in week 12, the new particle capabilities – glow, ribbon and blending optionshave had server-side support for some time. The Beta Maintenance viewer mentioned above now has the first part of the viewer code, and speaking at the Simulator User Group meeting on Tuesday July 8th, Simon Linden said, ” Once that one is out, we’ll get the next one going,” so expect these capabilities to be becoming more radily available in the near future.

Ribbon particles – one of the new particle capabilites

Other Bits

Snapshot Fixes

The SL Beta Maintenance veiwer includes further snapshot fixes (MAINT-2152) which are designed to overcome the problem of black rectangles  / borders appearing in very high resolution snapshots. These fixes are in addition to the “tiling” fix issued last year.

However, Whirly Fizzle reports that if very high-res snapshots are captured with the Beta Maintenance viewer and post-processed, the tiling artefact tends to return.

Post-processing high-res images captured using the additional snapshot updates (as found in the current SL Beta Maintenance viewer) can result in tiling artefacts reappearing (image, originally in PNG format, courtesy of Whirly Fizzle.
Post-processing high-res images captured using the additional snapshot updates (as found in the current SL Beta Maintenance viewer) can result in tiling artefacts reappearing (image, originally in PNG format, courtesy of Whirly Fizzle.

Simon Linden reports that a further update to these fixes is about to be released, although it is not known at this time if it will fix this issue, or a reported issue of GPU crashes when using the Beta Maintenance viewer for snapshots.

Your Skin – In the Sky

The issue of avatar skins appearing in the sky at very high altitudes (see JIRA VWR-28962) came up for discussion at the Simulator User Group. First reported in 2012, there is some speculation whether SSB/A will impact the frequency with which the issued manifests; it appears to be linked to the local bake process, and so may only occur in the future when people at high altitudes are editing their appearance.

The "face-in-sky" issue (image courtesy of Eku Zhong)
The “face-in-sky” issue (image courtesy of Eku Zhong)

In the meantime, if you are up high and encounter this phenomenon, try toggling the Advanced Lighting Model option in Preferences > Graphics off / on.

SL projects update week 26 (2): server, pathfinding bug, viewer updates

Posted on by Inara Pey

Server Deployments – Week 26

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

Second Life Server (Main) Channel

On Tuesday 25th June, the SLS Main channel received the server maintenance package deployed to the three RC channel in week 25. This fixes a number of crash modes, addresses an issue with neighbouring region visibility, and adds the new pathfinding property CHARACTER_STAY_WITHIN_PARCEL to llCreateCharacter() and llUpdateCharacter() – see my week 19 report for details – and the object return functions I reported on in week 23.

While not intended to fix issues of diagonally adjacent regions not being visible to one another (SVC-8130), there are reports that at least some of the regions which have suffered from this issue for a considerable time can be seen from one another once more – although Maestro Linden isn’t entirely convinced the underlying cause of the problem has been corrected.

Release Candidate (RC) Channels

On Wednesday 26th June, all three RC channels (Magnum, BlueSteel and LeTigre) received a new server maintenance package, comprising:

  • A fix for ‘llApplyImpulse now works only in the root prim’ (SVC-8227)
  • Crash mode fixes
  • New LSL function: string llXorBase64(string str1, string str2)
    • Returns a string that is a Base64 XOR of Base64-formatted input strings, str1 and str2.
    • Fixes a ‘bad’ behaviour when the 2nd string contains nulls (“A” in base64) – SCR-35
    • Aside from those cases, this function behaves identically to llXorBase64StringsCorrect()
    •  added to avoid changing the behaviour of existing scripts which may rely on llXorBase64StringsCorrect()’s current output
  • Added max_materials_per_transaction flag to /simulator/features cap
    • This number returns the maximum number of materials that can be sent to the “RenderMaterials” capability in a single request.

MAX_MATERIALS_PER_TRANSACTION

Speaking at the Server Beta meeting on Thursday 27th June, Maestro Linden described the max_materials_per_transaction flag thus:

It limits how many materials the viewer can request details for or set (POST, PUT methods) in a single message. By default, the limit is 50. The reason for the limit is that we don’t want the simulator to hang if a malicious viewer requests the details of 2 billion materials at once.

So, the capability for materials is called RenderMaterials [and] it has 3 HTTP access methods:

  • GET: get the full list of details of all materials in the region
  • POST: get the materials details for a list of material_ids (the server will only parse the first max_materials_per_transaction in the post data)
  • PUT: set the materials properties of up to max_materials_per_transaction object faces

GET is used when you first connect to a region and want to get the materials of everything [in the region, not just within draw distance]; POST is used if, for example, a new object is rezzed with a new materials type, and the viewer needs to resolve what the normal map is, etc; and PUT is used for object editing.

[So] if the viewer needs to edit 80 faces at once, for example, it will know that the server limit is 50, and POST in 2 messages (one for the first 50, the other for the other 30).  [The] ‘max_materials_per_transaction’ flag in the features cap will be a way for the viewer to know if the server limit changes from 50 per message. I’m not aware of any plans to change that limit in the near future, though.

Deployments for Week 27

There will be no server-side deployments in Week 27 (commencing Monday July 1st), as US Independence Day is on Thursday July 4th. The next scheduled deployments will be in week 28, commencing Monday July 8th.

Pathfinding Bug

Elijah Linden has discovered a bug within the pathfinding code, wherein certain regions have continuous navmesh rebaking, which causes some annoying UI effects, hurts simulator performance somewhat and causes memory spikes. Regions can be affected even if pathfinding is turned off.

Voidpointer Linden assumes human form (stock)
Voidpointer Linden assumes human form (stock)

The bug arose as a result of the recent CHARACTER_STAY_WITHIN_PARCEL property added to the pathfinding capabilities. Commenting on the bug at the Server Beta meeting on Thursday 27th June, Voidpointer Linden, who implemented the new CHARACTER_STAY_WITHIN_PARCEL property, said:

As part of the STAY_WITHIN_PARCEL changes, I needed to change the way the navmesh is constructed. This involved making sure that every region did a rebake once. Unfortunately, the criteria that I used to test whether a region needed rebaking had a flaw – it can’t see parcel edges underwater [possibly because the navmesh doesn’t include areas below sea level]. So if a region has more than 1 parcel and has no parcel edges above water, then it thinks it needs to rebake. So it does.

And does so repeatedly, as Elijah Linden reported in BUG-2975 (Regions continue to requests rebake after rebakes have been performed).

There is a fix for the issue, but it currently requires testing, and may not appear for a while. In the meantime, there is one assured workaround: if your region is suffering from the issue and has a parcel which is completely submerged, subdivide / raise one part of a boundary for that parcel (and which is not also a region boundary) above water so it can be found by the navmesh rebake process.

This bug is unlikely to be resolved before week 28 due to there being no deployments scheduled for week 27, as mentioned above.

SL Viewer

The SL release viewer updated to version 3.6.1.278007 on June 27th, containing the fixes from the 3.6.1.277611 beta release. This contains some updates related to the viewer being available via Amazon, and fixes for occlusion culling being less effective than it should be, legacy Shiny being too strong in ALM with materials,light function sampling is incorrect in advanced lighting model and a viewer compilation error.

The beta viewer updated to 3.6.1.277824 on June 26th, with the release notes listing the same updates as 3.6.1.277611 and 3.6.1.278007 – so these appear to be work-in-progress fixes.