Tag: Simulator User Group 2021

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, April 6th, 2021 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting.

Server Deployments

Please refer to the server deployment thread for the latest news and updates.

• There are no planned SLS Main channel deployments.
• Wednesday, April 7th: the SLS RC channels should all be updated with simulator release 557694, defined as containing “internal fixes an tweaks”.

Last week we ran into an unanticipated glitch and had to push the RC roll back to this week. So, this week we’ll be pushing out the next Maintenance simulator to all the RC channels.

– Rider Linden on the upcoming deployment

SL Viewer

There have been no official viewer updates to mark the start of the week, leaving the pipelines as:

• Release viewer: Custom Key Mappings RC viewer, version 6.4.17.557391, dated March 24, promoted March 27 – NEW.
  
• Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself):
  • Maintenance RC viewer – Eau de Vie, version 6.4.17.557412, dated March 25.
  • Love Me Render (LMR) 5 project viewer, version 6.4.14.556118, dated 23, 2021.
• Project viewers:
  • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.4.11.550519, dated October 26.
  • Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, dated December 9, 2019.
  • Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.532999, dated November 22, 2019.
  • 360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, dated July 16, 2019.

Group Chat

On Monday, April 5th, Maestro Linden posted on changes made to Group Chat to try to improve overall message handling. The change appears to have met with with mixed results, with some seeing no real change in how their group chat sessions are affected. There may also been some related unintended consequences, some some reporting the following:

• Some people are finding they have to make multiple posts for group chat to finally open and their chat to be seen by everyone, otherwise their group chat remains silent. It is not clear if this happens across all their groups, or just some.
• Messages for some still appear to be failing with a degree of measurable regularity.

Commenting on the situation, and in lieu of Jira reports, Rider Linden commented:

As far as group chat. We know that it is a problem and we’re going to continue to work on it from our end.

New LSL Capabilities?

This from Rider Linden:

I’m proposing the following three LSL functions llOrd, llChar and llHash. llOrd() will return the ordinal of the first character in a string, llChar() given an integer will return a single character string, and llHash() is a non-cryptographic 32 bit hash. I was looking for a way to just have an integer that had a reasonable change of being unique for an arbitrary string.

Use case I can see: Given an owner of two objects I want to select a chat channel with a low probability of colliding with other agents in the area.

This approach wouldn’t be cryptographically secure, but would be convenient.

This many be the start of ongoing work to provide new  / improved LSL capabilities, with it being indicated that feature requests BUG-227663 “[Feature Request] llGetInventoryAcquireTime()” and BUG-227641 “Play/Loop/Stop sounds in linked primitives other than the primitive where the script exists” may also be considered  for implementation.

In Brief

• Some people are reporting Voice issues – Voice failing to start, or Voice simply not working in a region unless others are already there and using it. It’s not clear have widespread these issues are, or whether bug reports have been raised.
• BUG-229871 “Unable to re-enter or teleport to a region that I’ve been to during same session” – Linden Lab is still trying to consistently reproduce this issue. In discussing the problem, Maestro Linden noted:

One interesting case was somebody reporting that they were able to reproduce the issue 100% of the time until they replaced a faulty coaxial cable  – which makes me think that packet loss could somehow be to blame (disconnecting from the simulator the first time in some unclean manner due to time-out?).

• Getting inventory syncing between Agni and Aditi working once more is also being worked on, with the hope that the fix will be available Soon™.
• Work on Map tiles is progressing, but still no ETA on when the remaining fixes are liable to be deployed. Again, in lieu of a fix, people can use the following alternatives, each with its own functionality:

• • Chaser Zaks: world map.
  • Eddy OFarrel: world map.

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, March 30th, 2021 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting.

Server Deployments

Please refer to the server deployment thread for the latest news and updates.

• Tuesday, March 30th: no planned deployment or restart.
• Wednesday, March 31st: the SLS RC channels should all be updated with simulator release 557505, defined as containing “internal fixes”.

On Region Restarts

There is a general assumption that region restarts result in a region and its simulator being relocated to a new server. However, this is not always the case, as Rider and Simon Linden explained:

Simon Linden: the host change isn’t burnt into the design for a restart. basically you stop the region, and another part of the system sees the region is down and hands it out to a system to run it. Based on random timing that might end up on the same host.

Rider Linden: We simply do not guarantee that you will remain on the same host after a restart. Where a region comes back up depends on a lot of factors that are outside the realm of predictability.

Simon Linden: [However] during a version update, that’s VERY unlikely since the old ones get replaced with new ones.

SL Viewer

There have been no official viewer updates to mark the start of the week, leaving the pipelines as:

• Release viewer: version 6.4.13.555567 (Jelly Doll improvements) originally promoted February 17th.
  
• Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself):
  • Maintenance RC viewer – Eau de Vie, version 6.4.17.557412, dated March 25.
  • Custom Key Mappings project viewer, version 6.4.17.557391, dated March 24.
  • Love Me Render (LMR) 5 project viewer, version 6.4.14.556118, dated 23, 2021.
• Project viewers:
  • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.4.11.550519, dated October 26.
  • Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, dated December 9, 2019.
  • Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.532999, dated November 22, 2019.
  • 360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, dated July 16, 2019.

In Brief

Region Crossings

• While they were not intended to directly benefit vehicle region crossings, there have been reports by some that the changes made in the deployment over the previous two weeks have improved things. However, and equally, others are reporting declining smoothness of crossings. As it is, Rider noted that the team haven’t yet had the chance to dig deeply into the code since uplift.
• BUG-229871 “Unable to re-enter or telport to a region that I’ve been to during same session” – this remains an issue. Unfortunately, issues with testing the upcoming simulator release been the work on a fix has been delayed.

Map Tiles

Map tiles continue to be worked on, but not fully fixed. There are now a couple of user-developed alternatives available, each with mixed functionality:

• Chaser Zaks: world map.
• Eddy OFarrel: world map.

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, March 23rd, 2021 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting.

Server Deployments

Please refer to the server deployment thread for the latest news and updates.

• Tuesday, March 23rd: the SLS Main channel received simulator update 556847, which includes the optimisations for crossing and teleporting into a region. This should result in less of a performance hit being felt with lots of people entering a region.
  • Anecdotal evidence from reports after this update was deployed to RC regions suggested vehicle region crossing had improved.
  • The update also states that BUG-226851 – “Only 30 – 50% of scripts run on regions since SLS Main server roll of April 18th” – has been resolved. However, there are reports that the deployment appears to have made little or no difference.
• Wednesday, March 24th: the SLS RC channels should all be updated with simulator release 557269, defined as containing “internal tweaks”.

On the Teleporting / Region Access Changes

The basic change seen in 556847 mean that instead of multiple avatars trying to get into a region at once, they are now, in a manner of speaking, waiting in line, thanks to the order in which things are handled, as Mazidox Linden described.

Previously, when you teleported to a new region, we stopped the world, grabbed all the data, and injected it into the simulation before resuming the world. Now when you teleport to a region, we grab all the data, stop the world, inject the data into the simulation, and resume the world. Very, very, very approximately.

– Mazidox linden on the changes to how avatars enter a region.

Rider Linden that added that the performance hit people feel in busy regions is not so much the result of the avatars in the region, but all of those trying to get into it, which the new approach should now help eliminate.

SL Viewer

There have been no official viewer updates to mark the start of the week, leaving the pipelines as:

• Release viewer: version 6.4.13.555567 (Jelly Doll improvements) originally promoted February 17th.
  
• Release channel cohorts:
  • Custom Key Mappings project viewer, version 6.4.17.556726, dated March 15.
  • Maintenance RC viewer – Eau de Vie, version 6.4.14.556149, dated March 4.
  • Love Me Render (LMR) 5 project viewer, version 6.4.14.556118, dated 23, 2021.
• Project viewers:
  • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.4.11.550519, dated October 26.
  • Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, dated December 9, 2019.
  • Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.532999, dated November 22, 2019.
  • 360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, dated July 16, 2019.

In Brief

• In terms of monitoring changes as a result of fixes for issues such as BUG-226851, the Lab do check the data they are collecting, but it can take time after an initial deployment of fixes.
• There are reports that mesh uploads are generating more HTTP 499 errors (the so-called “Linden catch all”) since the AWS transition. There is no known reason why this might be so, and it is not clear whether or not a bug report has been raised on the matter.
• BUG-229871 TP issues: some people are experiencing teleport issues whereby they cannot teleport back to any region they’ve previously successfully teleported to previously in the same session, but are disconnected – still under investigation.
• Map tiles continue to be worked on, but not fully fixed.

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, March 16th, 2021 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting.

Server Deployments

Please refer to the server deployment thread for the latest news and updates.

• Tuesday, March 16th: no deployment to the the servers on the SLS Main channel.
• Wednesday March 17th: all RC channel will receive simulator update 556847, comprising the following fixes / improvements:
  • Optimisations for crossing and teleporting into a region.This should result in less of a performance hit being felt with lots of people entering a region.

We were unwrapping the entire package of avatar data on arrival as soon as we got it. That processing is now being deferred, so the actual arrival may be a bit slower in high volume situations but you won’t get the hit on the main simulation frame that you did.

– Rider Linden on the changes to how avatars enter a region.

• • Fixed max values clamp of llSetAgentEnvironment().
  • Better LSL error messaging when hitting the 5xx throttle with llHTTPRequests.

SL Viewer

The Custom Key Mappings RC viewer updated to version 6.4.17.556726, dated Monday, March 15th.

The remaining official viewer pipelines are as follows

• Release viewer: version 6.4.13.555567 (Jelly Doll improvements) originally promoted February 17th.
• Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself):
  • Maintenance RC viewer – Eau de Vie, version 6.4.14.556149, dated March 4th.
  • Love Me Render (LMR) 5 project viewer, version 6.4.14.556118, dated February, 23rd.
• Project viewers:
  • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.4.11.550519, dated October 26th.
  • Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, dated December 9th, 2019.
  • Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.532999, dated November 22nd, 2019.
  • 360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, dated July 16th, 2019.

In Brief

• Map tiles continue to be worked on, but still not fully fixed. However an unspecified “technical hurdle” has been passed in getting the issue corrected.
• Inventory syncing between Agni (the main grid) and Aditi (the Beta grid) is currently not working following the migration to AWS. The issue is being addressed, but there is currently, but no ETA at present.
• BUG-226851 “Only 30 – 50% of scripts run on regions since SLS Main server roll of April 18th [2019]” – a long-standing issue for which LL now has some ideas on how to address, but no promise on a possible deployment date.
• BUG-230415 “Region Lordshore (Jeogeot) cannot be entered via vehicle and will not rez objects (either on ground or on avatar)” – this is an issue that appears similar to a former griefing vector. It appears confined to the one region, and data is being gathered.
• BUG-229227 “Offline group invites not working” – no update on this long-standing issue, however it has been noted by the Lab that the entire methodology with off-line message handling could benefit from a “revisit”.