Tag: Simulator User Group 2016

SL project updates 2016 51: server, simulator OS update

Posted on by Inara Pey
DRD Arctic Express
DRD Arctic Express – blog post

Server Deployment

While the No Change window was supposed to have come into operation on Friday, December 16th, there was indeed a deployment to the Main (SLS) channel on Tuesday, December 20th. It comprised the same server maintenance package as deployed to the RC channel in week #50, comprising internal logging changes.

The deployment means that all of the server channels on the main grid (Agni) are now running the same simulator version. As there are no planned deployments to the RC channels, all four channels should remain on this release until deployments resume after the holiday period.

SL Viewer

We might see a 64-bit project viewer appear during the week. However, at the time of writing,  the list of viewers in the various pipelines remains as:

  • Current Release version: 5.0.0.321958, dated December 1st, promoted December 5th – formerly the Project Bento RC viewer.
  • Release channel cohorts:
    • Maintenance RC viewer, version 5.0.1.322219, dated December 9th – some 42 fixes and improvements + Bento support
  • 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.

Bento Support

With the release of Kokua for Second Life 5.0.0 and RLV 2.9.21 (see my article here), the following currently maintained viewers all have Bento support: Black Dragon, Catznip, Cool VL, Firestorm, Kokua for Second Life, Restrained Love. Alchemy is expected to update to include Bento “soon” and UKanDo is still awaiting a complete overhaul.

In terms of clients with 3D viewing capabilities, Radegast has been updated to support Bento, but the update is pending release. Lumiya for Android will have Bento support added “soon” (Lumiya 3.3 with Voice support released on Sunday, December 18th, and my review is available here).

Simulator OS Update

The Lab is in the process of updating the operating system on the simulator servers. At the moment the new OS version is installed on a number of regions on Aditi (the beta grid), including: Fire Ants 1, Fire Ants 2, Grasmere, Oak Forest, and Twilight Shores, not all of which are open to the public.

“This is one of those ‘features’ that might perform a bit better, but otherwise is a success if it behaves exactly like our current servers,” Simon Linden said at the Simulator User Group meeting on Tuesday, December 20th.

“We’re in the starting process of testing things. We have a lot of testing to do. [We’re] updating from an old version of Linux to a not-so-old version of Linux,” April Linden added. “Just to keep things moving. All the usual reasons. Performance updates, security, etc.”

Second Life hits a lot of low-level server code hard, including networking, memory and multi-processing. The overall hope is to have the newer revisions of the operating system will improve these. Expect this work to reach Agni in early 2017.

Group Chat

Group chat was long a bane of Second Life. In 2014/15 however, the Lab put a considerable amount of work into improving things, although some issues remain. One of these is that if an individual role outside of the default “Everyone” has a very high number of group members assigned to it (e.g. several thousand), it can dramatically impact things like group chat performance and can prevent the members’ list loading. One solution might be to delete the role (converting those in it to Everyone).

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 49/1: 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: 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.

2016 SL project updates 47: No Change windows and misc items

Posted on by Inara Pey

WeeVille, Oyster Bay; Inara Pey, November 2016, on Flickr WeeVille, Oyster Bay – blog post

Server Deployment No  Change Window

As this is Thanksgiving week in the United States, there are no deployments for week #47. The next deployment should be on Wednesday, November 30th, with a new server maintenance package to be deployed to the RC channels. While the full details of what it will comprise aren’t available, it will apparently include a fix for a data server crash which, although rare, can affect multiple regions when it happens.

SL Viewer

There have been no changes to the current viewer pipeline this week.Viewer release updates are generally a part of the no change window, however, in recent times a couple of RC / project viewers have slipped out unexpectedly. Currently, there are updates anticipated to the Bento RC viewer, but whether or not this might slip through and appear before the Lab closes for an extended Thanksgiving weekend is debatable. A new Maintenance RC is also anticipated in the near future as well.

At the moment, the pipeline is as follows:

  • Current Release version: 4.1.2.321518, dated November 10th, promoted November 15th – formerly the Maintenance RC viewer
  • Project Bento  RC (avatar skeleton extensions), version 5.0.0.321598, dated November 15th – bug fixes
  • 360-degree snapshot viewer, version 4.1.2.321431, dated November 9th – 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

Duplicated No Copy Items

Concern is growing about people who are using region crash exploits to duplicate No copy objects (particularly those from Gatchas) and then putting them up for sale on the Marketplace. The problem isn’t necessarily new, but is spreading. Various ideas have been put forward on how the situation might be dealt with, while the Lab is also aware of the problem and investigating what might be done. However, the caution at this point is that there is unlikely to be a simple fix for the issue.

Bento Meeting

A reminder that there is no Bento meeting either this week – Thursday November 24th – due to Thanksgiving or next week – Thursday, December 1st. This means the next Bento User Group meeting will now be on  Thursday, December 8th, at the usual time of 13:00 SLT at the Hippotropolis Camp Fire Circle.

2016 SL project updates 46/1: server, viewer

Posted on by Inara Pey

Telrunya Winter; Inara Pey, November 2016, on Flickr Telrunya Winter – blog post

Server Deployments for Week 46

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

  • On Tuesday, November 15th, the Main (SLS) channel received the same server maintenance package as previously deployed to the three RC channels in week #45. This includes:
    •  llGetEnv() will support “region_max_prims” (feature request BUG-40825).
    • llGetObjectDetails() will have a new OBJECT_GROUP_TAG function  (feature request BUG-20064) – when pointed at avatars it returns the group tag you see floating above them; and also OBJECT_TEMP_ATTACHED – to tell you if something is a temp attachment (feature request BUG-5195).
  • There is no planned RC deployment for Wednesday, November 16th.

No Change Window

A No Change window is in force in week #47 (week commencing Monday 21st November) in the run-up to Thanksgiving in the United States. This means that all four server channels should now remain on the same release through until November 30th, when a new RC deployment is anticipated.

SL Viewer

As anticipated, the Maintenance RC viewer, version 4.1.2.321518 was promoted to de facto release status on Tuesday, November 15th. The viewer includes multiple crash fixes; fixes for bugs encountered in building; fixes and improvements for the viewer UI; avatar and outfits improvements; inventory fixes; code clean-up, etc. Please refer to the release note for specifics.

The leaves the rest of the viewer release channels as follows:

  • Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself):
    • Project Bento  RC (avatar skeleton extensions), version 5.0.0.321250, dated November 2nd
  • Project viewers:
  • 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.

A further Maintenance RC viewer is anticipated, and may appear before the end of the week.

Horizons Experience

On Tuesday November 15th, the Lab introduced the Horizons Experience, a new 6-region quest-style adventure coupled with a new Mainland themed community environment. You can find out more via the official blog post, while I have a in-depth look at the new community environment and a run through the new gaming experience.