Tag: Server Updates

SL project updates 2016 50/2: re-caps and Content Creation UG

Posted on by Inara Pey

Fris' Land, Liebe; Inara Pey, December 2016, on Flickr Fris’ Land, Liebe – blog post

Server Deployments – Recap

As always, please refer to the server deployment thread for the latest updates and information.

  • On Tuesday, December 13th, the Main (SLS) channel received the same server maintenance package, as deployed to the RC channels in week #49. This includes the following feature requests: BUG-6377 – llGetObjectDetails(id,[OBJECT_ATTACHED_SLOTS_AVAILABLE])  and BUG-40871 – llGetEnv() constant “region_object_bonus”.
  • On Wednesday, December 14th, all three RC channels received the same new server maintenance package, comprising improved internal server logging.

SL Viewer

The official viewers list remains unchanged from earlier in the week:

  • Current release viewer, version 5.0.0.321958, dated December 1, promoted December 5 – formerly the Project Bento RC viewer download page, release notes
  • Maintenance RC viewer, version 5.0.1.322219, dated December 9th
  • 360-degree snapshot viewer, version 4.1.3.321712, dated November 23rd.
  • Obsolete platform viewer, version 3.7.28.300847, dated May 8th, 2015 – provided for users on Windows XP and OS X versions below 10.7.

No Change Window

A reminder that the end-of-year No Change window comes into effect from Friday, December 16th. There will be no further planned server deployments or official viewer promotions after that date, through until Monday, January 2nd, 2017.

Content Creation User Group

On Thursday, December 15th, the Project Bento User Group officially morphed into the Content Creators User Group (thus in a way  also now standing as a revamp of Nyx Linden’s old group).

Meetings will continue to take place at 13:00 SLT on Thursdays, at the Hippotropolis camp fire circle, with the exceptions of Thursday, December 29th and Thursday, January 5th. Anything related to Bento remains on topic for the group, but things of general interest to content creators are also open for discussion.

New Bento Issues

Bento is generating considerable interest among users – as witnessed by the release of Firestorm 5.0.1, when demand overwhelmed the Firestorm servers, and additional mirror services had to be set-up, with assistance from the Lab in doing so. However, some further issues have been identified as a result of Bento reaching a broader audience:

  • BUG-41063 – [Bento] Some Fitted Mesh No Longer Fits on Bento Avatars
  • BUG-41048 – [Bento] When wearing some Bento content, all walking animations freeze

The first of these bugs has been accepted by the Lab and is being investigated. The second appears to be most notably related to animations using the Bento wing bones, which appear to be overriding animation walks, causing an avatar to slide along the ground, rather than walking.

The issue particularly seems to impact walk animation using the llSetAnimationOverride capability, while older ZHAO systems (which tend to use the llPlayAnimation capability, appear to be unaffected. This may be due to the manner in which the latter handle start / stop animations calls, which is successfully preventing the issue manifesting with them.

The underlying cause is thought to be a possible animation priority setting / conflict or possibly the result of the wing bone animations having bone positions being set for all other, but not rotation data – but further investigation is required. Vir has taken samples of items which can cause the issue (again, notably, but not necessarily limited to, wings), and is going to have a poke at them to see if he can see what is going on.

Elsewhere, creators are waiting on Avastar to update, and Damien Fate has a rather neat HUD to help animate Bento hands and fingers. It’s unlisted, so I’m linking to it, rather than sharing it via embedding.

Fun Fact

The new Linden Lab portal parks have a LI capacity of 45,000 (with thanks to Cube Republic and Arton Rotaru for the pointers).

Portal Park LI capacity
Portal Park LI capacity

 

 

 

SL project updates 2016 50/1: Server, viewer, no change window

Posted on by Inara Pey

North Pole at Alki, Alki; Inara Pey, December 2016, on Flickr “Hand over your coal and carrots, and don’t try anything funny. This hair-dryer is plugged in, and I know how to use it!” North Pole at Alki, Alki – blog post

Server Deployments

As always, please refer to the server deployment thread for the latest updates and information.

  • On Tuesday, December 13th, the Main (SLS) channel received the same server maintenance package, as deployed to the RC channels in week #49. This includes the following feature requests:
    • BUG-6377 – llGetObjectDetails(id,[OBJECT_ATTACHED_SLOTS_AVAILABLE]) – Returns a value that is number of attachment slots allowed by the server minus the number of attachments worn by avatar. Returns 0 if avatar is not in the same region or if UUID is not an agent.
    • BUG-40871 – llGetEnv() constant “region_object_bonus” – returns the object bonus set for a region.
  • On Wednesday, December 14th, all three RC channels should receive the same new server maintenance package, comprising improved internal server logging.

SL Viewer

The Maintenance RC viewer updated to version 5.0.1.322219, bringing it to parity with the current release viewer, incorporating the Bento updates. This leaves the remaining viewers in the pipelines unchanged from week #48:

  • 360-degree snapshot viewer, version 4.1.3.321712, dated November 23rd.
  • Obsolete platform viewer, version 3.7.28.300847, dated May 8th, 2015 – provided for users on Windows XP and OS X versions below 10.7.

No Change Window

The Christmas and New Year 2016/17 No Change window comes into effect from Friday, December 16th. This means there will be no further server deployments and no further official viewer promotions after that date, through until Monday, January 2nd, 2017.

Issues

Mesh and Texture Rezzing

As noted in my week #49 update, people have been noticing increased delays in object mesh and texture rezzing, with fingers being pointed at the Lab’s CDN supplier(s).  The issues are continuing for some, while for others they appear to have cleared up. It’s still not obvious if it is a potential LL / CDN issue or a network problem in general.

As Simon Linden said in the meeting, the problems have been seen by the Lab, but are proving to be intermittent and hard to pin down. The problem also seems to manifest differently for people: some report very slow texture rendering, other report textures load and render fine, but mesh items are prone to failing to fully render, others report a mix of the two.

Region Crossings

Region crossings have been widely reported as increasing again – including avatars being dumped at 0,0,0 (again). Some are reporting the issue as cumulative: the more regions they cross, the greater the likelihood they’ll encounter a serious issue (becoming unseated, return of vehicle, forced log-out). The usual advice is being circulated – reduce script load, handle crossings with caution, etc. However, the Lab are again aware of the uptick, but have not come to any specific conclusion on the cause.

The avatar appearing at a region’s 0,0,0 co-ordinates appears to be linked to connection problems and / or UDP packet loss (usually the first packet) resulting in messages arriving in the wrong order and the viewer and simulator falling out of synch with one another.

With both the rendering issues and the region crossing issues, fingers have been directed at the increased land impact allowances. This may be a case of post hoc, ergo propter hoc. In particular, it has been claimed that region crossings “became” bad after the mainland LI allowance increase, although people were reporting issues before the LI increase took place.

Appearance Issues / Bake Fails

Some are finding their avatar is failing to render in their view (bake fail) when logging-in. Changing outfits, camming away / back to your avatar may fix this, or a re-log. In extreme cases reverting to the default Character Test avatars may be required, or deleting and recreating the affected avatar appearance folder on your hard drive.

Rider Linden is looking into the problem, and believes it may be due to a missed inventory fetch at log-in, leaving the viewer thinking you’re missing a critical part of your appearance (e.g. your shape), but he is not 100% certain at this point in time.

2016 SL project updates 49/2: Bento and web and bits

Posted on by Inara Pey
lw-3b_001
Luane’s Magical World, Morning Glow – blog post

Server Deployment – Recap

  • On Tuesday, December 6th, the Main (SLS) channel was updated with the same server maintenance package deployed to the three RC channels, comprising internal simulator changes.
  • On Wednesday, December 7th, the three RC channels will received the same new server maintenance package, which includes the following feature requests:
    • BUG-6377 – llGetObjectDetails(id,[OBJECT_ATTACHED_SLOTS_AVAILABLE]) – Returns a value that is number of attachment slots allowed by the server minus the number of attachments worn by avatar. Returns 0 if avatar is not in the same region or if UUID is not an agent.
    • BUG-40871 – llGetEnv() constant “region_object_bonus” – returns the object bonus set for a region.

Bento Update

The major news is that Bento was officially pronounced “live” on Monday, December 5th with the promotion of the Bento viewer code to de facto release status – see the official blog post or my covering article. Currently  – and as far as I’m aware – Black Dragon has a release out supporting Bento, Cool VL viewer has had Bento updates in the experimental branch for some time, and both Firestorm and Catznip will be issuing updates with Bento support very soon.

The announcement was followed with some further releases of Bento capable content on the Marketplace, and more will doubtless follow as Bento reaches more viewers and Avastar is fully updated (see below).

Troy Linden, the product lead for the project, passed on congrats and thanks to all who have been involved in the project, and Vir Linden’s role in getting things rolling and taking responsibility for getting things to work in the viewer.

One issue that wasn’t fixed prior to release was that of facial deformations occurring at altitude, which was noticed very early in the project.

Cathy Foil demonstrates the mesh deformation which becomes more pronounced with altitude (starting at around 1,000m and getting progressively worse through 4,000m)
Cathy Foil demonstrates the mesh deformation which becomes more pronounced with altitude (starting at around 1,000m and getting progressively worse through 4,000m)

As this particular problem appears to be part of a broader issue of floating point calculation errors and it can be overcome by using hardware skinning,  it wasn’t seen as a significant enough issue to warrant holding back Bento.  Should you encounter it, try using hardware, rather than software skinning on your system.

Future Follow-Ons for Bento

As Bento was being developed, a number of ideas for follow-on projects were put forward. Two of these include:

  • “unwearing” the default avatar while allowing baked textures & reducing the complexity of avatar bodies(see BUG-10980). Vir has previously indicated an interest in pursuing this idea (and the feature request has been accepted by the Lab).
  • Splitting the avatar shape into different elements (e,g, head and body), seen as making it easier for users who are uncertain about customising their form using the sliders, or who have a No Mod shape associated with their head or body to be able to mix and match more easily.

No final decision has been made on what might follow Bento or when, but given Vir’s feedback on splitting the avatar shape into separate elements would require a fairly extensive re-working of how avatar appearance is handled (up to and including changes to the baking service), it would seem unlikely this would be adopted,

Avastar and MayaStar

Avastar is still in the process of being updated to give expected support for Bento, and a new version is anticipated in the near future – users should keep an eye on the Avastar website for news. Cathy Foil believes that MayaStar is fully up-to-date, and while there have been reports of problems, these appear to be user error rather than bugs in the software, so she is considering further tutorial videos.

Future Meetings

Bento meetings will continue for a while (allowing for upcoming holidays). They may still be broadened into more of a content creation style meeting if there is sufficient interest. This is still TBD. The next meeting will take place on Thursday, December 15th at the Hippotropolis Camp Fire Circle, as usual, commencing at 13:00 SLT.

Web Properties Update

On Monday, December 5th, Grumpity Linden issued a further blog post on recent SL web property updates, which also included a minor update (contents unspecified to the lindenlab.com properties.   In terms of Second Life, the updates can be summarised as:

  • Maps:
    • slurl.com was officially retired on November 22nd, everything is now maps.secondlife.com – slurl.com/secondlife/ are redirected.
    • Viewing a specific location on maps.secondlife.com no longer throws a 404 error in the console.
    • Maps no longer  disappear at peak use times.
  • A large infrastructure update was made to secondlife.com along with security fixes and several minor bug fixes.
  • The Marketplace had an Events infrastructure stabilization to fix a few listing bugs.
  • A minor Security fix was released.

The update also referenced the new Grid Status page service.

2016 SL project updates 49/1: server, viewer, issues

Posted on by Inara Pey

La Digue du Braek, Muppets Island; Inara Pey, December 2016, on Flickr La Digue du Braek, Muppets Island – blog post

Server Deployments

On Tuesday, December 6th, the Main (SLS) channel was updated with the same server maintenance package deployed to the three RC channels, comprising internal simulator changes.

On Wednesday, December 7th, the three RC channels will received the same new server maintenance package, which includes the following feature requests:

  • BUG-6377 – llGetObjectDetails(id,[OBJECT_ATTACHED_SLOTS_AVAILABLE]) – Returns a value that is number of attachment slots allowed by the server minus the number of attachments worn by avatar. Returns 0 if avatar is not in the same region or if UUID is not an agent.
  • BUG-40871 – llGetEnv() constant “region_object_bonus” – returns the object bonus set for a region.

SL Viewer

On Monday, December 5th, the Project Bento viewer, version 5.0.0.321958, was promoted to de facto release status. See the official blog post here and my post here.

This leaves the current viewer pipelines looking as follows:

  • RC viewers:
    • Maintenance RC viewer, version 4.1.3.321792, dated November 30th – some 42 fixes and improvements
  • Project viewers:
    • 360-degree snapshot viewer, version 4.1.3.321712 dated November 23rd – ability to take 360-degree panoramic images – hands-on review
  • Obsolete platform viewer, version 3.7.28.300847, dated May 8, 2015 – provided for users on Windows XP and OS X versions below 10.7.

Other Items

Mesh and Texture Rezzing

People have been noticing increased delays in object mesh and texture rezzing, with fingers being pointed at the Lab’s CDN supplier(s).  Raised at the Simulator User Group meeting, it prompted Simon Linden to comment it could be a CDN issue, and re request was passed for the Lab to have a poke around at things.

Duplicated No Copy Items

Raised a couple of weeks ago, this is an issue where region crashes are being exploited to create duplicates of No Copy items (i.e. the duplication is happening server-side, rather than the objects simply being copied using a viewer, making them indistinguishable from the original), with the duplicated item – mostly obtained through gachas – then being put up for sale on the Marketplace.

The Lab is continuing to look at the problem, but as yet, no answer / solution has been identified.

2016 SL project updates 48/2: TPVD meeting; SVC-7532 roll-back for guns

Posted on by Inara Pey

Rosemoor, Jadeite; Inara Pey, December 2016, on Flickr Rosemoor, Jadeite – blog post

The majority of the notes in this update are taken from the abbreviated TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, December 2nd. The video of that meeting is embedded at the end of this update. My thanks as always to North for recording and providing it.

Server Deployments – Recap

As always, please refer to the server deployment thread for any updates.

  • There was no deployment of a server maintenance package to the Main (SLS) channel on Tuesday, November 29th, leaving it running on the same build as week #47 – 16#16.11.02.321369. However, the channel did undergo a rolling restart in order to update all private regions on it to the new land impact allowances – see my expanded report for more.
  • On Wednesday, November 30th, all three RC channels received a new server maintenance package, comprising internal simulator changes. This deployment also saw all private regions on the three RC channels updated with the new land impact allowances.

No Change Window

[01:51] The Christmas and New Year 2016/17 No Change window has been confirmed as running from Friday, December 16th 2016 through to Monday, January 2nd, 2017. There will be no planned server deployments or major viewer releases during this time frame.

SL Viewer

Project Bento RC

[00:23] On Thursday, December 1st, the Bento RC viewer updated to version 5.0.0.321958, which primarily includes a further fix for a rendering bug related to bad skin weights in some mesh avatars, which hadn’t been entirely fixed with the last update.

Unless something completely unexpected crops up in the next few days, and providing the RC performs well, this viewer could be promoted to release status early in week #49 (week commencing Monday, December 5th). Should this happen, it is likely that Firestorm will issue their own Bento update roughly a week later.

Maintenance RC

[09:46] A new Maintenance RC arrived in the release channel on Tuesday, November 30th. Version 4.1.3.321792 includes some 42 fixes and improvements including the following:

Abuse Reporting:

  • When you’re trying to file an abuse report and you crash – the floater will stay open and all information we were able to save will persist.
  • There is a new toolbar button: “Report Abuse”

Appearance:

  • Appearance floater will now remember your last selected tab across logins. You like your Outfit Gallery? Enjoy! You don’t like it? Enjoy something you prefer …

Pay floater:

  • You can now add an optional payment message when you send money, and it accepts UTF8 (via Ansariel Hiller).

360 Snapshot Project Viewer

[29:07] Issues have emerged with the latest version of the 360 snapshot project viewer (4.1.3.321712, dated November 23rd) and the back-end web viewer, with people reporting:

  • Images captured using the latest version of the viewer will not load into older versions of the web viewer (pages remain suck on the gear cogs).
  • Images captured using any version of the viewer will not load into the latest version of the web viewer (which also uses a different folder hierarchy for the location of ZIP files).
  • The Lab indicates that some of these issues can be corrected by adjusting the image resolution in the snapshot floater to take pictures at a lower resolution.

[13:27] Right now, effort is being directed towards the 64-bit viewer’s media handling, it is therefore unlikely further work will be carried out on the snapshots viewer until 2017.

64-bit Viewer

[10:35] The Lab has successfully built 64-bit versions of the viewer that launch, but is “wrestling” with assorted issues in the new build pipeline. Discussions on the build process are largely taking place on the open-source development e-mail list, but the related wiki information will be updated to reflect the updates, and the use of a new configuration repository for setting all the correct build switches, etc., once the Lab is more confident with the build process. The target for a project viewer remains Real Soon NowTM.

[12:50] The 64-bit viewer will also include the changes to the viewer update process and how the process is managed. These will appear in the 64-bit version after the initial release has been made.

Viewer Release Notes

[10:09] A relatively new feature introduced to the official viewer, and which is now finding its way into version 4.x TPVs is that when opening a newly installed version of the viewer for the first time, the release notes are displayed in a  pop-up, to help encourage users read about what has changed.

Voice Updates

[12:40] There are still bugs to be addressed in the next set of SL Voice updates, and the Lab wants to have these addressed before the updates are released at a project viewer.

SVC-7532 Roll-Back

[14:03] After all the investigations into the recent llTakeControl issues, include the “Horizons gun issue“, which was recently fixed, the Lab has looked more closely at the overall issue of weapons breakage in general, which was introduced as a result of SVC-7532. The conclusion drawn is that the “fix” for the issue should not have been implemented, and the issue as reported in that JIRA should have been marked as “expected behaviour”.

As a result, the Lab will be reverting the change. This means that TPVs should not need to offer a menu / preference toggle to allow users to switch between behaviour modes when using weapons depending upon how the weapon  has been scripted.  However, this does mean that touching things in Mouselook may not work if you are under the control of an attachment using llTakeControl.

The change to revert SVC-7532 will most likely go into an update yo the new Maintenance RC viewer.

Other Items

Proprietary Licensing

[18:30] There is an issue with proprietary licensing, apparently related to music and MP3 decoding and issues around it successor, AAC, and possible patent infringement. The discussion has been going on elsewhere, and I’m currently not au fait with the problems.

Community Gateways

[22:34] The updated registration API for new users, which features the latest avatars, etc., was made available to those in the Community Gateway programme in August / September (London City was one of the first in the programme to implement the updated API). Firestorm is dealing with some issues in updating their own landing pages to point to the new API.

Last 2016 TPV Developer Meeting

This was apparently the last TPV Developer meeting for 2016 – although one has been appearing on the calendar for December 16th.

2016 SL project updates 48: server, viewer

Posted on by Inara Pey

The Mill, Pale Moonlight; Inara Pey, November 2016, on Flickr The Mill, Pale Moonlight – blog post

Server Deployments  – Week 48

As usual, please refer to the server deployment thread for the latest information and updates.

  • There was no deployment of a server maintenance package to the Main (SLS) channel on Tuesday, November 29th, leaving it running on the same build as week #47 – 16#16.11.02.321369. However, the channel did undergo a rolling restart in order to update all private regions on it to the new land impact allowances – see my expanded report for more.
  • On Wednesday, November 30th, all three RC channels should receive a new server maintenance package, comprising internal simulator changes. This deployment should also see all private regions on the three RC channels also updated with the new land impact allowances.

SL Viewer

On November 23rd, the Project Bento (avatar skeleton extensions) RC viewer updated to version 5.0.0.321760. This primarily comprised a fix for SL-534, a continuously growing bone error (aka “the Viagra bug”), and to bring the viewer to parity with the current release version.

Also on November 23rd, the 360-degree snapshot viewer updated to version 4.1.3.321712, maintaining parity with the current release viewer.

Grid Status Changes

The new Grid Status page is now in operation, complete with new RSS feeds and subscription options – see my expanded report for more.