Tag: Simulator User Group 2018

A Little Bit of Soul – blog post

Server Deployments

The was no deployment to the Main (SLS) channel on Tuesday, May 29th, 2018.

RC Roll-back and Deployments

On Friday, May 25th, the deployments to the Magnum and BlueSteel RCs channels were rolled back from update #18.05.14.515432, which included server-side support for an upcoming capability to deliver estate information to estate owners and managers, to #18.05.07.515224. the roll-back was due to an unspecified bug.  The updates have remained deployed to the LeTigre RC.

There is due to be a further RC deployment on Wednesday, May 30th, 2018, but at the time of writing, details were still TBA. Commenting on the overall situation at the Simulator User Group on Tuesday, May 28th, 2018, Simon Linden said:

Let’s see … for server news, we had a roll-back last week of the RC channels for a bug. we’re going to have updates out tomorrow that have that fixed … and possibly another release that has a few other items in it. It’s all internal changes, as far as I know.

Upcoming Server-Side Maintenance Periods

The Lab has announced a series of upcoming server-side maintenance periods over the next several days (including the RC deployments these are set for:

• Wednesday, May 30th, 2018 from 06:00 SLT (and rolls into the RC deployment window).
• Thursday, May 31st, 2018 from 06:00 SLT.
• Monday, June 4th, 2018 from 06:00 SLT.
• Tuesday, June 5th, 2018 from 06:00 SLT (and presumably rolling into any planned Main (SLS) channel deployment planned for week #23).

During these maintenance periods residents may be logged off and will not be able to log in until maintenance is complete. In addition, residents may temporarily be unable to send messages or initiate group chats until the maintenance is complete.

Please refer to the Grid Status Page for more.

SL Viewer

There have been no further updates to the current SL viewers in the pipeline for the start of the week, leaving the list as:

• Current Release version 5.1.4.515016, dated May 7, promoted May 16 – formerly the Ouzo Release Candidate.
• Release channel cohorts:
  • Love Me Render RC viewer, version 5.1.5.515528, dated May 22.
  • Pálinka Maintenance RC viewer, 5.1.5.515527, dated May 21.
• Project viewers:
  • Animesh project viewer, version 5.1.4.515420, dated May 14 – project overview.
  • Bakes on Mesh project viewer, version 5.1.3.513936, dated March 30.
  • 360 snapshot viewer, version 5.1.3.513006, dated March 6 (this version can have significant rendering issues, see my hands-on update).
• Linux Spur viewer, version 5.0.9.329906, dated November 17, 2017 and promoted to release status 29 November – offered pending a Linux version of the Alex Ivy viewer code.
• Obsolete platform viewer, version 3.7.28.300847, May 8, 2015 – provided for users on Windows XP and OS X versions below 10.7.

Environment Enhancement Project (EEP)

I’m plugging away at the first project viewer for EEP, and as soon as I get a blocker out of the way we’ll be able to get something into people’s hands.

 – Rider Linden, discussing EEP at the Simulator User Group meeting, May 28th

We have a blocking problem on the back-end at the moment … once we’ve gotten that fixed, we’ll deploy the back-ends that it depends on (simulator and inventory at least), and then put out a Project Viewer. y hope/expectation is that the Project stage will go well and we’ll get feedback quickly … Once we’ve responded to that, it’ll advance to RC, and at that point we won’t object to TPVs integrating it … The good news with respect to that is that the closer we get, the higher its priority gets, and the blocker is even higher priority for other reasons, so prospects are good.

– Oz Linden discussing EEP at the Simulator User Group meeting, May 28th

The meeting exhibited some lack of understanding on how EEP will operate. In brief EEP is a set of environmental enhancements, including:

• The ability to define the environment (sky, sun, moon, clouds, water settings) at the parcel level.
  • Includes  arbitrary paths for both the sun and the moon.
  • Day cycles consist of a series of fixed skies. Each sky has a sun and a moon position.
  • In transitioning from sky to sky the sun or the moon will follow the great circle from one position to the next.
  • Can, howver be overrideen by the viewer (as per current “local” windlight settings.
• New environment asset types (Sky, Water, Days – the latter comprising multiple Sky and Water) that can be stored in inventory and traded through the Marketplace / exchanged with others.
• Experience-based environment scripted functions.
• An extended day cycle (e.g a 24/7 cycle) and extended environmental parameters.

This work involves simulator, as well as viewer changes, and includes some infrastructure updates. The document linked to above (by Rider Linden) provides a summary of the document, and I attempt to offer updates through these Simulator User Group meeting notes and my Content Creation User Group meeting notes, as and when updates from the Lab are made available.

Grid-Wide Experiences

Work on grid-wide experiences is currently at a lower priority that other work currently being carried out (e.g. EEP), and so progress is slower. As with existing experience creation, only Premium members will be able to create grid-wide experiences. However, anyone will be able to accept and participate in them.

On-Line Friends Not Showing as On-Line

The is a recurrent bug that can affect people at different times and on different regions – all friends for the affected person appear as off-line. sometimes it can be rectified by IM’ing someone known to be on-line,forcing the Friends list then re-populates itself correctly. Simon Linden acknowledged the bug with the following comments:

It’s not caps fail – it’s a lost packet. There’s work going on to convert that to a cap so it’s more reliable, I believe. A work around is to tell folks to open up the web site and look at the friends on-line list there – that should be more reliable … The fact that you get an inaccurate list when you log in, and maybe a different one if you log out/in again, is due to packet loss. When you first land at a region, it needs to look up all your friends and status and send (or not) them the “is on-line” message, and also send a list to you. At the same time you’re getting updates for all the world around you, all your off-line IMs, etc. So there’s way too much traffic at once.

– Simon Linden, Simulator User Group meeting, May 28th

There also appears to be a similar issue that can be region-specific (see BUG-7557). This generally requires a region restart to resolve, and the underpinning causes still seems to be unknown.

 

 

The Shire – blog post

It’s a quiet start to the week.

Server Deployments for week #21

There are no server deployments planned for week #21! To quote Mazidox Linden in the server deployment thread:

Hey everyone! We’ve got a bunch of things we’re still testing this week and don’t have any rolls for any channels (Second Life Server, RC Bluesteel, RC LeTigre, RC Magnum, or RC Cruller), and we don’t anticipate any rolling restarts. We’re aiming to have at least one new server version through testing by next week, and hopefully we’ll have a better view of that by Thursday. If you’re interested please join us at the SBUG meeting on Aditi.

RC Cruller is likely one of the smaller RC selections (like Snack and Cake), and is apparently named for the small cake made of rich dough twisted or curled and fried in deep fat (I can feel my arteries hardening just typing that!).

SL Viewer

The Ouzo Maintenance viewer, version 5.1.4.515016, was promoted to the de facto release viewer in week #20. As a result:

• The Love Me Render RC viewer containing rendering fixes and improvements updated to version 5.1.5.515528 on May 22nd, 2018.
• A new Maintenance RC viewer, code-named Pálinka, after the traditional fruit brandy popular in Central Europe, was release on May 21st, 2018. Maintenance RC 5.1.5.515527 contains some 36 fixes and improvements, as specified in the release notes.

Outside of these updates, the viewer pipelines are as follows:

• Current Release version 5.1.4.515016, dated May 7, promoted May 16 – formerly the Ouzo Release Candidate.
• Project viewers:
  • Animesh project viewer, version 5.1.4.515420, May 14 – project overview.
  • Bakes on Mesh project viewer, version 5.1.3.513936, March 30.
  • 360 snapshot viewer, version 5.1.3.513006,  March 6 (this version can have significant rendering issues, see my hands-on update).
• Linux Spur viewer, version 5.0.9.329906, dated November 17, 2017 and promoted to release status 29 November – offered pending a Linux version of the Alex Ivy viewer code.
• Obsolete platform viewer, version 3.7.28.300847, May 8, 2015 – provided for users on Windows XP and OS X versions below 10.7.

 

The Apothecary – blog post

Server Deployments

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

• On Tuesday, May 15th, the Main (SLS) channel received server maintenance package 18#18.05.07.515224, which includes two new LSL functions: llRequestUserKey and llName2Key –  see below for more.
• On Wednesday, May 16th, the Release Candidate channels were currently marked as TBD at the time of writing. However, during the Simulator User Group meeting on Tuesday, May 15th, Rider Linden indicated there would be two RC deployments:
  • The BlueSteel and LeTigre deployment should comprise internal fixes, together with simulator-side updates for better management of estate level ban lists – although these will require a viewer update to be visible.
  • The Magnum RC update should comprise the same internal fixes, together with the simulator-side updates for abuse report categories.

llRequestUserKey and llName2Key

llRequestUserKey and llNameToKey, both of which will be across all RC channels following the Wednesday deployment, are in connection with the upcoming return of Last Names (see this blog post and this blog post for more). These functions can be summarised as:

• llRequestUserKey:
  • Requests the Agent ID for the agent identified by name from the dataserver. The name given may be either the current name of an avatar or a historical name that has been used in the past. If no agent can be found with the supplied name this function returns the value NULL_KEY.
  • It returns a handle (a key) that can be used to identify the request when the dataserver event is raised.
  • Note that agent being searched for with this function does not need to be signed on to Second Life.
  • See the llRequestRequestUserKey wiki page for more.
• llName2Key:
  • Returns a key the Agent ID for the named agent in the region. If there is no agent with the specified name currently signed onto the region, this function returns the value NULL_KEY. Names are always provided in the form “First[ Last]” or “first[.last]” (first name with an optional last name.)
  • If the last name is omitted a last name of “Resident” is assumed. Case is not considered when resolving agent names.
  • Uses a different mechanism to look up agent information to the older llKey2Name().
  • See the llName2Key wiki page for more.

Abuse Report Category Capability

As I’ve noted in my TPV Developer meeting updates, a new capability is being introduced that will allow the viewer to call abuse report categories from the simulator, rather than having them hard-cored into the viewer itself. This will help ensure abuse reports are filed using valid AR categories, while at the same time making it easier for the Lab to maintain the AR categories.

The deployment to the Magnum RC is the first phase of this work to be made to the grid. Once the simulator changes are available grid-wide, a viewer with the new capability should be made available, with a request that TPVs adopt the updates as soon as they can in their own release cycles.

SL Viewer

The Ouzo Maintenance viewer has updated to version 5.1.4.515016 (dated May 7th, but the update wasn’t listed in the Alternate Viewers page until week #20).

The Animesh viewer updated to version 5.1.4.515420 on May 15th.

The rest of the viewer pipelines remain as:

• Current Release version 5.1.3.513644, dated March 27, promoted April 13 – formerly the media update RC.
• Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself):
  • Love Me Render RC viewer, version 5.1.4.514788, April 25.
• Project viewers:
  • Bakes on Mesh project viewer, version 5.1.3.513936, March 30.
  • 360 snapshot viewer, version 5.1.3.513006,  March 6 (this version can have significant rendering issues, see my hands-on update).
• Linux Spur viewer, version 5.0.9.329906, dated November 17, 2017 and promoted to release status 29 November – offered pending a Linux version of the Alex Ivy viewer code.
• Obsolete platform viewer, version 3.7.28.300847, May 8, 2015 – provided for users on Windows XP and OS X versions below 10.7.

Other Items

Mesh Pivot Points and the Uploader

A long-time problem with the mesh uploader is that it ignores pivot points set within tools like Blender when a model is uploaded to SL. This means, for example, that doors set with a pivot point in Blender won’t work using that pivot when uploaded to SL. A feature request to enable the uploader to recognised pre-set pivot points in mesh objects was raised in 2015 – see BUG-37617 –  and more recently, Beq Janus has been looking to add further information to it.

Region Crossing Updates

Code to improve communications during region crossings went grid-wide in week #19. A further round of simulator-side updates is likely to be deployed in the next few weeks. In the meantime, Joe Magarac (animats) believes most of the minor issues relating to “partial unsits” can be handled with changes to scripting / the viewer – see BUG-214653. He’s offered to rally support to help the Lab dig more deeply into this issue, by arrange group tests, etc., if the Lab can made simulator-side changes to help improve things.

Three major issues for vehicles are No Script parcels / regions, ban lines and scripted security systems. The  former can be harder to deal with, as there is no advanced warning that scripts are disabled until the boundary is crossed. Scripted security systems tend to provide some warning which can generally allow those straying into a private area time to get out (unless the delay time has been set ridiculously short). Ban lines are somewhat insidious, however, as they can physically “snag” a vehicle whilst ejecting the occupants – with the vehicle often remaining in place with no auto-return.

There has been a feature request to handle ban lines better (BUG-216276), with another request for ban-lines to “deflect” vehicles, rather than allowing vehicle to cross them and becoming snagged when the occupants are ejected. It’s not clear if the Lab will adopt these ideas.

Luane’s World – blog post

The following notes have been taken from the Simulator User Group, held on Tuesday, May 1st, 2018.

Server Deployments

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

• On Tuesday, May 8th, the Main (SLS) channel received server maintenance package 18#18.04.30.515008, which includes updates to simulator communication protocols aimed at improving region crossings and teleports.
• On Wednesday, May 9th, all three main RC channels should receive server maintenance package 18#18.05.07.515224, which includes two new LSL functions: llRequestUserKey and llName2Key –  see below for more.

Region Crossing Updates

Commenting on the region crossing updates, Simon Linden revealed he’d be out of the office for next week, but:

After I’m back I expect to continue region crossing work … the servers are now doing a better job tracking all the attachments and objects you may be sitting on. The goal is to know when the region thinks that’s all done, and the viewer acknowledges it. If that doesn’t happen, it can do better fixing it.

llRequestUserKey and llName2Key

llRequestUserKey and llNameToKey, both of which will be across all RC channels following the Wednesday deployment, are in connection with the upcoming return of Last Names (see this blog post and this blog post for more). These functions can be summarised as:

• llRequestUserKey:
  • Requests the Agent ID for the agent identified by name from the dataserver. The name given may be either the current name of an avatar or a historical name that has been used in the past. If no agent can be found with the supplied name this function returns the value NULL_KEY.
  • It returns a handle (a key) that can be used to identify the request when the dataserver event is raised.
  • Note that agent being searched for with this function does not need to be signed on to Second Life.
  • See the llRequestRequestUserKey wiki page for more.
• llName2Key:
  • Returns a key the Agent ID for the named agent in the region. If there is no agent with the specified name currently signed onto the region, this function returns the value NULL_KEY. Names are always provided in the form “First[ Last]” or “first[.last]” (first name with an optional last name.)
  • If the last name is omitted a last name of “Resident” is assumed. Case is not considered when resolving agent names.
  • Uses a different mechanism to look up agent information to the older llKey2Name().
  • See the llName2Key wiki page for more.

SL Viewer

There have been no SL viewer updates for the start of the week, leaving the current pipeline as:

• Current Release version 5.1.3.513644, dated March 27, promoted April 13 – formerly the media update RC.
• Release channel cohorts:
  • Ouzo Maintenance RC, version 5.1.4.514802, April 27.
  • Love Me Render RC viewer, version 5.1.4.514788, April 25.
• Project viewers:
  • Animesh project viewer, version 5.1.4.514468, April 16 – project overview.
  • Bakes on Mesh project viewer, version 5.1.3.513936, March 30.
  • 360 snapshot viewer, version 5.1.3.513006,  March 6 (this version can have significant rendering issues, see my hand-on update).
• Linux Spur viewer, version 5.0.9.329906, dated November 17, 2017 and promoted to release status 29 November – offered pending a Linux version of the Alex Ivy viewer code.
• Obsolete platform viewer, version 3.7.28.300847, May 8, 2015 – provided for users on Windows XP and OS X versions below 10.7.

Other Items

Region Restarts and Server Moves

Once upon a time, the Lab used to put effort into trying to ensure adjacent regions in the same server or nearby server. This was most notably done through server re-balancing exercises (see my notes on one of them here, for example), carried out a couple of times a year and which could take some 6 weeks to complete. These operations generally required additional restarts for the regions being moved, and were thought to bring improvements to teleports and physical region crossings.

With hardware and infrastructure improvements over the years, coupled with other sets taken to improve overall grid performance, these operations are no longer carried out – although efforts are taken to ensure multi-region events are placed on simulators all located on the same or adjacent servers. However, nowadays, for the majority of region, they are moved purely as a part of the weekly rolling restarts.

Those wishing to know which regions might be sharing a server with their own can use Tyche Shepherd’s Grid Survey (use the region search and then click the region name link in the results). However, keep in mind not all the result may be up-to-date.

Next Meeting

As noted above, Simon Linden, who usually leads the Simulator User Group meeting will be out of the office in week #20. However, the meeting for the week will still go ahead as scheduled.

Green Story – blog post

The following notes have been taken from the Simulator User Group, held on Tuesday, May 1st, 2018.

Server Deployments

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

• The was no deployment or restart for the Main (SLS) channel on Tuesday, May 1st. The channel remains on server maintenance package 18#18.04.13.514504, containing internal fixes and a fix for BUG-214702.
• On Wednesday, May 2nd, the simulator release candidate channels should be updated as follows:
  • BlueSteel should receive server maintenance package 18#18.04.20.514703, which includes two new LSL functions: llRequestUserKey and llName2Key –  see below for more.
  • Magnum and LeTigre should receive server maintenance package 18#18.04.30.515008, which includes updates to simulator communication protocols aimed at improving region crossings and teleports, deployed for the last week to a number of selected regions on Blake Sea via the Snack RC channel.

LlRequestUserKey and LlName2Key

The Lab has released two new LSL functions: llRequestUserKey and llNameToKey, both of which are in connection to the upcoming return of Last Names (see this blog post and this blog post for more):

• llRequestUserKey:
  • Requests the Agent ID for the agent identified by name from the dataserver. The name given may be either the current name of an avatar or a historical name that has been used in the past. If no agent can be found with the supplied name this function returns the value NULL_KEY.
  • It returns a handle (a key) that can be used to identify the request when the dataserver event is raised.
  • Note that agent being searched for with this function does not need to be signed on to Second Life.
  • See the llRequestRequestUserKey wiki page for more.
• llName2Key:
  • Returns a key the Agent ID for the named agent in the region. If there is no agent with the specified name currently signed onto the region, this function returns the value NULL_KEY. Names are always provided in the form “First[ Last]” or “first[.last]” (first name with an optional last name.)
  • If the last name is omitted a last name of “Resident” is assumed. Case is not considered when resolving agent names.
  • Uses a different mechanism to look up agent information to the older llKey2Name().
  • See the llName2Key wiki page for more.

SL Viewer

There have been no updates to the current SL viewer pipelines, leaving them as follows:

• Current Release version 5.1.3.513644, dated March 27th, promoted April 13th – formerly the media update RC.
• Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself):
  • Ouzo Maintenance RC, version 5.1.4.514802, dated April 27th.
  • Love Me Render RC viewer, version 5.1.4.514788, dated April 25th.
• Project viewers:
  • Animesh project viewer, version 5.1.4.514468, dated April 16th – project overview.
  • Bakes on Mesh project viewer, version 5.1.3.513936, dated March 30th.
  • 360 snapshot viewer, version 5.1.3.513006, dated March 6th (this version can have significant rendering issues, see my hand-on update).
• Linux Spur viewer, version 5.0.9.329906, dated November 17th, 2017 and promoted to release status 29th November 2017 – offered pending a Linux version of the Alex Ivy viewer code.
• Obsolete platform viewer, version 3.7.28.300847, May 8th, 2015 – provided for users on Windows XP and OS X versions below 10.7. This viewer will remain available for as long as reasonable, but will not be updated with new features or bug fixes.

Environment Enhancement Project (EEP)

Rider Linden re-confirmed that while EEP will allow different Windlight settings at altitude above a region / parcel, the zones will be set at 1000 metre intervals (1,000, 2,000, 3,000 and 4,000) and set by the simulator – they will not be user-configurable as can be done with Firestorm (viewer-side only). His hope is also to have scripted per-agent Windlight settings as part of the initial deployment of EEP; however, this is TBC.