Tag: Simulator User Group 2014

SL project updates: week 39/1: server, viewer, iCloud and other issues

Posted on by Inara Pey

Matoluta Sanctuary and Bay; Inara Pey, September 2014, on FlickrSunrise, Matoluta Sanctuary and Bay (Flickr) – blog post

The following notes were taken from the Open Source Dev meeting on Monday 22nd September 22nd, and the Simulator User Group meeting on Tuesday 23rd September.

Server Deployments Week 39

As always, please refer to the forum discussion thread for the latest updates and information.

  • There will be no scheduled deployment to the Main (SLS) channel this week.
  • On Wednesday 24th September, all three RC channel should receive a further update to the Experience Tool maintenance release deployed in week 38, which includes a fix for an issue with llGetExperienceDetails().

SL Viewer

The most recent Maintenance release viewer, version 3.7.16.294015, was promoted to the de facto release viewer on Monday 22nd September. This viewer includes fixes for inventory and outfit management; appearance editing; group & group ban management; camera controls; multi-grid support for favourites; notifications management; stability, bug and crash fixes – see the release notes for further information.

On Friday September 19th, the New Log-in Screen RC viewer reached release candidate status when 3.7.16.294345 arrvied in the release channel. This viewer brings a simple and clean login screen for new users, and a corresponding update for returning users. (download and release notes, my overview).

GPU Table Retirement

An ongoing project at the Lab is to remove the need for the GPU table within the viewer. This is currently used to set the default graphics level for a user’s graphics card, and requires constant checking and update as new GPUs and cards are produced. Recent work has seen the GPU table massively updated, with the Lab working towards an alternative strategy of determining the capabilities of a graphics system.  This is primarily done by  measuring the memory bandwidth of a card and setting the default based on that (plus a couple of other parameters.

A viewer utilising this approach is currently with LL’s QA team and should be making an appearance soon. This strategy has already shown sufficient promise that new GPUs are no longer being added to the GPU table in preparation for it to be phased out.

Other Items

iCloud Conflict

A recent update to Apple’s iCloud service aimed at users of windows system using the service has had an unexpected impact on various aspects of the SL including killing mesh uploads, snapshots (saving to inventory fails with “Error encoding snapshot”) and textures (upload fail with “Couldn’t convert the image to jpeg2000”), and UI elements can turn completely black.

Full details of the issue can be found on BUG-7343,  and the problems have been particularly noted in both the official viewer and Firestorm, and Catznip. investigations are underway by both the Lab and the Firestorm team, and one line of thinking is that it might be some DLL injection poisoning issue.

The iCloud update, which was apparently deployed over the weekend of the 20th /21st September has, at the time of writing, yet to be deployed for Mac systems. There is some speculation that it may not result in similar issues for Mac users due to the way iCloud is implemented for each OS. One potential work-around is to roll-back to an earlier version of the service’s client, making sure that any auto-update option is disabled.

Group Tags

We’re probably all aware how changing group tags can often be a cure-all for a number of problems, even when logically it should be the case. One possible explanation as to why this is the case is that changing your group tag may trigger a full update of your avatar.

However, possibly as a result of interest list changes, there is now one situation where changing your group tag is not a good idea – and that is when a scene is still loading, as doing so can cause the scene load to fail, and the only means of resuming it is to relog – see BUG-6299. So, if you arrive in a location that sends you a request to join a group you’d like to join, wait a couple of minutes in order to give the scene the chance to fully load before you do so.

This issue is known to the Lab, but a fix has yet to be determined.

llSetlinkAlpha Update Issue

This is an issue that is getting a little long in the tooth – see BUG-1786 – which sees llSetLinkAlpha failing to correctly update a percentage of prims when a large(ish) number are updated simultaneously. Weapons users are liable to be familiar with this, as it can occur in “holstering”  or “slinging” a weapon which should cause the “held” version of the weapon to turn transparent and the “slung” / “holstered” version rendered, but often results in elements of the “held” version of the weapon remaining visible.

This issue appears to be related to UDP packets being lost between the server and the viewer, with Simon Linden commenting, “I remember digging into this and it seemed like lost packets.  It’s really hard to predict when they’ll get lost, but it seems it’s not slowing down updates quite right when there’s a sudden flood.” He promised to pass the issue with LL’s product team, but wasn’t optimistic it might move higher up the “fix” chain due to the current volume of work.

SL project updates week 38/2: server, CDN, AR category changes

Posted on by Inara Pey

~Santaurio~, April 2014 ~Santaurio~, April 2014 (Flickr) – blog post

Server Deployments Week 38 – Recap

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

  • On Tuesday September 16th, the Main (SLS) channel received the server maintenance package previously deployed to the three RC channels, which includes crash fixes and a fix for a bug that prevented some people from leaving Skill Gaming regions – notably Linden staff who entered a region using their admin powers …
  • On Wednesday September 17th, the three RC channels each received a new server maintenance package, which includes some bug fixes, and tweaks some behaviours related to experience tools.

CDN News

CDN support has been deployed to a small number of regions on the main grid. Maestro Linden indicated these were four Linden-owned regions. These are Hippotropolis, Hippo Hollow and Denby (where the Simulator User Group meetings are held), and the Testylvania sandbox (which isn’t open to public access).

Further regions will be updated to use the CDN service going forward, and the Lab had created an e-mail address region owners can apply to have their region(s) added to the test channel for the CDN: cdn-test@lindenlab.com. Note that regions should be those with a relatively high texture / mesh count, and space is “very limited” at this time (the total for the initial testing appears to be set at around 30 regions).

In addition, the map tile fetching for the main grid is now entirely carried out via the CDN, so map tiles should load a lot faster for people now.

World Map tiles are now served via the CDN
World Map tiles are now served via the CDN

Abuse Report Category Changes

The categories used to define Abuse Reports were recently revised in the official viewer.

The old (l) and new (r) AR categories
The old (l) and new (r) AR categories

This has led to some discussion on the forums and not a little speculation elsewhere as what it means for the AR system, with some people speculating that because some categories are no longer explicitly listed, there are therefore now “allowed”.

While views such as this might be debated until such time as the Lab issues commentary on the changes, the one thing that is clear at the moment is that they do put the AR floater somewhat out-of-synch with its official Knowledge Base article given the “Other” category has been removed. This has been noted and the Knowledge Base article is liable to be updated.

The changes also put some TPVs out-of-sequence with the revised categories until such time as they update. However, this hopefully will not negatively impact ARs filed via viewers using the older category options.

Related Links

SL projects updates 38/1: server, group chat, CDN

Posted on by Inara Pey

The Colder Water, Daydreams; Inara Pey, August 2014, on FlickrThe Colder Water, Daydreams, (Flickr) – blog post

Server Deployments

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

  • On Tuesday September 16th, the Main (SLS) channel received the server maintenance package previously deployed to the three RC channels, which includes crash fixes and a fix for a bug that prevented some people from leaving Skill Gaming regions – notably Linden staff who entered a region using their admin powers …
  • On Wednesday September 17th, the three RC channels should each receive a new server maintenance package, which includes some bug fixes, and tweaks some behaviours related to experience tools.

CDN Micro Channel Deployment

The CDN micro channel deployment is due this week. As noted in mt last TPV meeting report, this will see a small number of regions updated to use the CDN test configuration for texture and mesh fetching, bypassing the simulator entirely. No viewer-side update is required for this (that will come in the future), so the benefits should be felt by anyone entering those regions (assuming the region is already cached by their local CDN node).

There currently isn’t a list of regions which will be included in the micro channel, although it has been suggested that the Lab consider including the Home and Garden Expo and the Kustom 9 event regions are included, as these all have considerable mesh and texture use. Two regions that will be included in the micro channel are Hippotropolis and Hippo Hollow.  The latter can be a reasonable text of texture downloads, as it has a wide variety of items sitting on it.

Group Chat

While Izzy Linden had reported something of a drop in the number of reports of requests for the back-end chat servers to be restarted at the end of week 37, reports continued through the weekend and the start of this week. The changes aimed at fixing the problem (essentially a network issue which causes the chat server to run out of ports) has been delayed, but commenting at the Simulator User Group meeting on Tuesday September 16th, Simon Linden said he hopes to see them deployed soon.

There is also a further update aimed at improving group chat performance that is also in the pipeline, the result of recent testing on Aditi; Simon Linden has “high hopes” for these changes once deployed.

Other Items

The Simulator User Group meeting on Tuesday September 16th saw renewed discussion on a number of subjects which have been previously raised, such as improvements to scripted sounds / sound functionality (see my January 2014 and November 2013 updates) and the environment improvements project. While no conclusions were drawn on specific improvements to the sound functionality (it doesn’t appear to be on the current roadmap), Oz Linden did confirm the environment improvements are still on the roadmap, but are not currently being worked on.  It’s not clear whether the SL roadmap will be made public, although it was indicated this might be the case when it was first raised a couple of months ago.

SL project updates week 37/2: miscellaneous items

Posted on by Inara Pey

Server Deployments, Week 37 Re-cap

  • There was no deployment to the Main (SLS) channel on Tuesday September 9th, largely as a result of there having been no RC deployments in week 36.
  • On Wednesday September 10th, the RC channels all received the same server maintenance project, which includes crash fixes and a fix for a bug that prevented some people from leaving Skill Gaming regions – notably Linden staff who entered a region using their admin powers …

SL Viewer

The Experience Keys projects viewer got its long-awaited update on Wednesday September 10th, with the release of version 3.7.16.293901. The viewer remains at a project viewer status, but now has parity with the current release viewer.

Group Chat

There is no major news here; as noted in part one of the week’s report, the Lab are still working on adjustments to the group chat code, but according the Maestro Linden, there isn’t anything as yet ready for further testing on Aditi – although the implication seemed to be that there may well be in the near future, as the comment on the work was made in terms of “upcoming stuff”.

In the meantime, people have been reporting further increases in group chat issues, prompting questions on whether increasing the number of servers used in support of the chat service might help. However, when this idea was last discussed, it was indicated that increasing the amount of available hardware isn’t considered to be a suitable solution at the moment, as it is the exponential manner in which ancillary messages (status updates, etc.) flood the service is seen to be the issue; something which just the provision of new hardware may not resolve / ease. As such, bringing the volume of the messages under better control is seen as key step in improving the service.

Other Items

Gesture and Object Sounds Parcel Restrictions

During the Server Beta meeting the subject of restricting sounds between parcels came up, with a request for a parcel setting to restrict sounds from other parcels being heard within a parcel. Currently, there is an option to restrict sounds from objects and gestures played within a parcel to that parcel, this can be found under About Land > Sound.

The option to restrict sounds from gestures and objects to a parcel will also block the same sounds originating from other parcels
The option to restrict sounds from gestures and objects to a parcel will also block the same sounds originating from other parcels from being heard within the parcel where set

The question led to an experiment with this option, which revealed, to the surprise of several at the meeting (myself included), that the setting is actually bi-directional: enabling it not only restricts sounds from objects and gestures being heard outside of a parcel, it blocks such sounds played from other parcels from being heard within the parcel as well. In some respects, that the options is bi-directional shouldn’t really have been a surprise; the other parcel options of a similar nature – restricting voice, restricting avatar visibility and chat, for example, are bi-directional, so why not gestures and sounds?

The option may not be perfect; looped sounds, for example, may not be restricted, and during a short test at the meeting,  some indicated they could still hear a sound generated on one parcel when moving from it to a parcel with the gesture and objects sounds restriction set, prompting Maestro Linden to muse if the restriction was enforced server-side or in the viewer. However, if you are troubled by sounds from a neighbouring or nearby parcel, it might be worth trying the option if you haven’t already.

SL project updates week 37/1: server, viewer

Posted on by Inara Pey

GFrisland - Laluna Island; Inara Pey, March 2014, on FlickrFrisland – Laluna Island (Flickr) – blog post

Server Deployments

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

There was no deployment to the Main (SLS) channel on Tuesday September 9th, largely as a result of there having been no RC deployments in week 36.

On Wednesday September 10th, the RC channels should all receive the same server maintenance project, which includes crash fixes and an “obscure bug”.

Describing the crash mode fixes at the Simulator User Group meeting, Simon Linden said, “The crash fixes aren’t normal usage but some edge cases that needed attention. The “obscure bug” was one that Maestro Linden had mentioned at the last Server Beta meeting, describing it as preventing Lindens from being able to leave Skill Gaming regions. Simon expanded on that saying, “It wasn’t just Lindens, but it was really anyone that didn’t have proper access.” Quiet what the proper access might be, isn’t clear.

A separate issue with Skill Gaming regions is that some who have had payment information files with the Lab for some time, but who have not actually used it for a period of time, may have to refresh their information prior to being able to access such regions.

SL Viewer

Release Viewer

Monday September 8th saw the Snowstorm contributions RC promoted to the de facto release viewer, version 3.7.15. 293376. This viewer includes assorted contributed fixes and updates, including the unified snapshot floater and support for ‘older than’ when inventory filtering).

The new snapshot floater by Niran V Dean is now available within the official viewer
The new snapshot floater by Niran V Dean is now available within the official viewer

There has been a report of this installation of this viewer pausing with the message “unable to find Second Life Crash Logger”, but that clearing the message will see the viewer complete installation OK. As there are reports that this has happened with other releases of the viewer and where allow automatic updates has been enabled, it might be connected to the automatic update process within the viewer itself, possibly as a result of the viewer not shutting down correctly as a part of the automatic update process, although this is by no means certain.

RC Updates

A new maintenance release viewer arrived in the release channel as an RC on Friday September 5th. Version 3.7.15.293253, which includes fixes for inventory and outfit management; appearance editing; group & group ban management; camera controls; multi-grid support for favourites; notifications management; stability, plus bug and crash fixes (download and release notes).

New Viewer Autobuild Process

The Lab’s new viewer autobuild process is now in the final phases of preparation for deployment, with Oz Linden reporting at the Open-source Dev meeting that there are only “minor fixes here and there” that seem to be required. There are expected to be some further updates to the new autobuild wiki page to assist self-compilers.

Other Items

Viewer Fixes in the Works

In week 34, I referred to a Mac Cocoa issue with theapplicationShouldTerminate function,   reported by Cinder Roxley, and which she described as:

Say you are logged into sl, and you open appstore and there is an update that needs a restart to complete. Normally you click restart and it shuts down all apps completes the update and when you login your apps are reopened. Because the viewer is sending a bad value back to OSX, OSX will not close it, and it stops the restart from happening.

The fix for this, submitted by Cinder under STORM-2053, is now under review, and so should be progressing forward soon.

STORM-2053, “Viewer no longer asks for confirmation before ejecting a member from a group like in previous releases, also no confirmation for banning”, also submitted by Cinder is also in the same state.

OPEN-268, “FFLOAD_XML missing on linux and darwin, FFSAVE_XML missing on darwin”, also from Cinder Roxley, may be a little more obscure, given it is apparently a long-standing issue which hasn’t previously been reported, but it to is progressing the Lab’s internal review phase.

Opting Out of Group Chat

As noted in my SL project updates, the Lab is working on trying to improve group chat (see the Group Chat tag list for articles). While this doesn’t form a part of the Lab’s work, Cinder Roxley has submitted STORM-2079, “As a group member, I would like to opt out of joining chat”.

The JIRA itself is still pending, but it highlights one of the ways in which some of the message load face by the group chat service might additionally be reduced. As previously noted, the major issue with group chat is not so much the volume of actual chat messages being sent, but with the number of updates the service must send as people log-in and out of SL, and as they join / leave group chat sessions. However, cumulatively, this still adds up to a lot of message traffic. So having a means by which users can opt-out of group chat altogether (and just receive notices, for example), could help reduce the load in terms of actual messages being sent and with the volume of updates for people joining / leaving group chat sessions.

Firestorm already provides a toggle for opting-out of group chat either on a group-by group basis from within a Group Profile floater, or en masse via options in Preferences > Chat > Firestorm. However, these options only cause the viewer to discard incoming messages, they don’t actually reduce the volume of messages being sent by the chat servers.

Firestorm includes options to discard group chat messages - but this doesn't reduce the volume of messages being sent
Firestorm includes options to discard group chat messages – but this doesn’t reduce the volume of messages being sent

As a result of the JIRA and a brief discussion at the Open-source Dev meeting, there is likely to be some more poking around to identify where values relating to received group notices and chat are stored in the viewer with a view of seeing what might be leveraged towards helping reducing the volume of chat related traffic.

SL project updates week 36/2: server releases, CDN news, projectors and materials

Posted on by Inara Pey

Kats, Love Kates; Inara Pey, February 2014, on FlickrKats, Love Kats (Flickr / Blog post)

Note that the majority of information in this article was gathered at the Server Beta User Group meeting on Thursday September 4th, the transcript for which is available here.

Server Deployments, Week 36 – Recap

On Wednesday September 3rd, the Main channel received the server maintenance project previously deployed to the three RC channels. This comprises crash mode fixes and fixes for the following:

  • SVC-2262 – “Incorrect height value in postcard which sent from above 256m” (a postcard being a snapshot sent to e-mail)
  • BUG-6466 – “Numbers expressed in scientific notation and include a plus sign in the exponent are not parsed as JSON numbers by LSL”, which was thought to have been fixed a while ago, but which in fact resulted in BUG-6657 – “Valid JSON numbers like 0e0 no longer valid after 14.06.26.291532″, prompting the original fix to be rolled back.

There were no planned deployments to the RC channels for week 36.

Week 37 Releases

There will be a Release Candidate channels deployment in week 37 (week commencing Monday September 8th), which will comprise crash fixes and bug fixes. Interestingly, one of the fixes will be to prevent Linden personnel from getting stuck in the new Skill Gaming regions – which Maestro jokingly describes as, “once that fix is out, I’ll no longer have an excuse to play cards all day 🙂 .”

CDN Work

Map Tiles

April Linden has been doing further refinements to the use of the CDN environment for map texture fetching on Aditi (see my notes from week 35). This work is liable to be moving to a main grid RC in the near future, and is being viewed as a “good dry run  for using the CDN for texture and mesh fetching in the future”, according to Maestro.

Viewer Mesh Request Throttling

“During mesh fetch testing with the CDN, we realized that we were throttled by a viewer’s internal throttle,” Maestro said of the ongoing texture and mesh CDN testing currently underway on Aditi (again, please refer to my week 35 and  week 33 reports). He went on:

The viewer ‘only’ requests 100 meshes/second because the simulator has a similar throttle for answering those requests, but with the CDN, the simulator’s throttle is irrelevant. Monty did a special build of his viewer (I’m not sure if the change was permanent) which removed the throttle, and I benchmarked an average of ~365 meshes/second on the CDN region with it. Which, in my mind, is approaching “fast enough” 🙂 .

This probably means that when the CDN work is completed (which will include viewer-side changes at some point), the viewer’s throttle will likely remain, but will be set higher and perhaps with a debug setting. “Because,” as Maestro said, “if mesh loading got way too fast, eventually you might have viewer performance issues from the insane download speed.”

Yuzuru Jewell (of Kane projects fame), has been carrying out tests from Japan, which saw his mesh load speed double via the CDN when using an unmodified viewer.

 Other Items

HUD Detaching / Reattaching Following Teleport

This was first commented on in my week 32 meeting update, and referred to again in week 33 (both alongside BUG-6908). Commenting on the state-of-play with investigations into the issue, Maestro indicated that there is some thinking that it may have the same cause as BUG-7131 (Unexpected behaviour of on_rez event and llDetachFromAvatar() ), which is being looked into, although there is no news on a fix as yet.

Materials Rendering via Basic Shaders and Improving Projectors

In week 34, I carried news about Geenz Spad’s proposal for introducing materials rendering into basic shaders (i.e. so users would not necessarily need to have Advanced Lighting Model enabled in order to see materials), and to improve the functionality of projectors in Second Life.

The JIRA submitted for this work were respectively:

  • STORM-2077 – Add support for materials in basic shaders
  • STORM-2056 – Projector reflections do not respect the environment intensity parameter
  • STORM-2067 – Glossy Projectors

The news on adding materials to basic shaders isn’t currently encouraging. The most recent comment from Marissa Linden (August 20th) states, “Moved to STORM. However our internal engineers do not believe that this can safely be implemented.”

Gennz's work on projectors an glossiness: top: as test items currently appear in Firestorm. Bottom: as they appear in the test viewer
Geenz’s work on projectors an glossiness: top: as test items currently appear in Firestorm. Bottom: as they appear in the test viewer

News is a little more positive with the projector work, with a test viewer having been built, offering those who are interested with an opportunity to play with the updated projector capabilities. There is also a test area on Hippo Hollow.