SL projects updates week 2 (1): server releases, AIS v3

The first Simulator User Group meeting of 2014
The first Simulator User Group meeting of 2014

Server Deployments: week 2, 2014

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

Main Channel: Tuesday January 7th

The main channel received the server maintenance project that had been on the RC channels for the past few weeks. It contains a single bug fix, related to vehicles becoming stuck in the ‘sat upon’ state (which prevents parcel auto return).

This issue is related to vehicles getting into a “bad” state if they lose the passenger right at region crossing. The vehicle is left with what is effectively a “ghost rider” sitting in it, which defeats parcel auto return, leaving the vehicle in-world.

Release Candidate Channels, Wednesday January 8th

All three RC channels should receive a new server maintenance project, which contains some crash fixes and the new LSL functions for uniformly scaling linksets.

The uniform scaling project was one of the last projects Andrew Linden worked on prior to departing the Lab at the end of 2013. The new functions comprise:

  • integer llScaleByFactor(float scaling_factor)
    • Uniformly resizes the linkset by the given multiplicative scale factor (e.g. 2.0 to double the scale in all dimensions)
    • Returns TRUE if rescaling was successful or FALSE otherwise
    • This function only succeeds in non-physical objects
    • Rescaling is subject to Linkability_Rules and prim scale limits
  • float llGetMinScaleFactor()
    • Returns the minimum multiplicative scale factor which can be used by llScaleByFactor(); i.e. such that every prim in the linkset is >=1mm in scale
  • float llGetMaxScaleFactor()
    • Returns the maximum multiplicative scale factor which can be used by llScaleByFactor(); i.e. such that every prim in the linkset is <=64m and the resulting linkset meets linkability requirements

In addition, the RC project includes server-side support for custom default permissions on newly created objects. This is again some of the last pieces of server-side work Andrew Linden was involved in prior to his departure, and forms the server-side work related to STORM-68.  The viewer element of this work is a third-party code contribution from Jonathan Yap, and should be appearing in a Snowstorm RC viewer in the near future.

Finally, the RC project also contains the server-side work to allow to fetch LSL syntax rules directly from the simulator, rather than downloading them from a manually maintained file. This should enable up-to-date syntax highlighting within the script editor. This work forms a part of STORM-1831, which is a third-party viewer project developed by Ima Mechanic. Again, the viewer-side updates should be appearing in a Snowstorm RC viewer in the near future.

Sunshine AIS v3

During the Content Creation meeting on Monday January 6th, Nyx Linden reported at the next round of server-side changes for the Sunshine / AIS v3 updates are currently being “queued-up” ready for deployment – although not day is as yet available for when they’ll actually see the light of day.

In the meantime, the viewer-side changes are progressing, and are “nearing readiness for release as a test viewer. Those who have been following my AIS updates will know that the Lab has been encouraging TPVs to adopt the viewer-side code updates for use in experimental versions of their viewers, as LL would like to run a pile-on test to test the new AIS updates and inventory handling using regions on the Beta (Aditi) grid. There had been hopes within the Lab that such testing might take place prior to the end-of-year holidays, so expect to be hearing more on this in the near future.

Other Items

Snapshot uploads to the SL Feeds

As many are aware, there have been numerous issues with the SL profile feeds (my.secondlife.com), including issues around uploading snapshot to the feeds.

The problem, which first surfaced prior to the Christmas break, has not affected everyone using the feeds, but those who have been impacted have found it to be most irritating. Simon Linden poked at it, and as a result some people who were impacted were once again able to upload their images. However, for a good number, the problem still remains. As of January 7th, the situation remains that the Profiles team is still attempting to resolve the issue.

SL projects update 2014 week 1 (1): HTTP project viewer arrives

It’s the first week of the year and the Lab is already busy on the viewer front.

New Release Candidate: PackageFix Viewer

Thursday January 2nd saw a new release candidate viewer enter the release channel. Version 3.6.13.284995 is described as Second Life PackageFix Viewer. This update fixes an issue introduced with the 3.6.12 code base whereby the Windows executable name was changed from “SecondLife” to “SecondLifeViewer”.

As any executable using the old name (“SecondLife”) was not removed as part of the 3.6.12 installation process, problems could result when using old shortcuts pointing to the old executable, rather that the new version, which would then run and could then trigger a further auto-update, again without removing older executables or shortcuts.

With this fix, any executables using the old name (“SecondLife”) will be removed from the installation folder, so any shortcuts created to it will cause Windows to display an error message, and the user can then remove them or modify them to point to the correct executable.

HTTP Project Viewer

Monty Linden's HTTP project viewer arrives
Monty Linden’s HTTP project viewer arrives

Monty Linden’s long-awaited HTTP project viewer surfaced from QA on Friday January 3rd. Part of the ongoing HTTP project work, version 3.6.13.284698 contains three headline updates:

  • Experimental Fix for Long-Standing DNS Problems: the mechanism used to perform DNS look ups has been changed from an application-hosted DNS resolver to a combination of threads and the host operating system’s resolver.
  • Mesh Download with Better TCP Connection Behaviour: this release of the viewer reduces by 75% the number of connections used for downloading meshes. It also reuses these connections more effectively further reducing network demands. Those who have experienced connectivity problems from router instability or other networking problems may see a significant improvement.
  • General Reliability Improvements in Mesh Upload and Download: a great deal of work has been put into the mesh upload and download code. Better error handling, less frequent request retries, removal of many thread issues and fixes for numerous smaller bugs are a part of this release.

Among the changes, this viewer sees the introduction of the new GetMesh2 capability, together with its associated debug, mesh2MaxConcurrentRequests, which are designed to reduce the number of concurrent number of mesh connections from 32 to 8, but which adds keepalive functionality and improved retry logic, and which see the number of viewer / server connections which can be requested by the viewer clamped to prevent individual users overloading the server-side capabilities, as explained back in my 2013 week 36 and week 34 reports.The new capability will run alongside the existing capability as things are transitioned-in to SL.

More news on this project viewer to follow.

New Merchant Outbox Project Viewer

Arriving on Thursday, January 2nd, the Merchant Outbox project viewer, version 3.6.13.284731, is described as including fixes for accurately detecting Merchant status and improves recovery for Merchant Outbox errors. As such, it addresses the following problems:

  • Merchant Outbox viewer crashes on Exit on Windows 7 (ACME-1219)
  • User needs to click OK twice to dismiss Merchant Outbox notification (ACME-1220)
  • Merchant Outbox Initialization fails with 404 error with new account in Merchant Outbox viewer (ACME-1221)
  • Merchant Outbox panel unusable and unrecoverable if outbox folder disappears (MAINT-2287)
  • Send to Marketplace from Merchant Outbox says it fails when it doesn’t (MAINT-2301)
  • Merchant outbox with genuine failure “409 conflict” causes all further imports to fail (MAINT-2452)
  • Merchant outbox: Second Life 3.6.8 (282375) build – results when user has a merchant outbox misplaced in inventory (MAINT-3319)
  • Viewer crash when deleting trash which contains Merchant Outbox (MAINT-3320).

Those who have experienced any of the above issues when using the Merchant Outbox might want to try-out this project viewer – but do keep in mind it is a project viewer.

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