Tag: Simulator User Group

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, March 2nd, 2021 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting.

Server Deployments

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

• Tuesday, March 2nd saw a rolling restart of servers on the SLS Main channel as a refresh, but no deployment.
• Wednesday, March 3rd should, if the notes are comments have been understood, see the following:
  • Server update 2021-02-17.556138 will be deployed to the Oranges RC channel (formerly part of the BlueSteel channel said).
  • “A couple more region tests” (per Rider Linden) planned for LeTigra and Magnum.
• In addition, a fourth mini-RC channel, called Ferrari has been set-up.

Restarts are described as still having the kinks worked out within the new environment.

SL Viewer

On Tuesday, March 2nd, the Simple Cache project viewer, version 6.4.14.556088, dated February 22nd 2021, was promoted to de facto release viewer.

The rest of the current pipelines remain as:

• Release channel cohorts:
  • Love Me Render (LMR) 5 project viewer, version 6.4.14.556118, February, 23, 2021.
  • Custom Key Mappings project viewer, version 6.4.12.553437, January 7, 2021.
• Project viewers:
  • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.4.11.550519, October 26.
  • Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, December 9, 2019.
  • Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.532999, November 22, 2019.
  • 360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, July 16, 2019.

In Brief

• “Good progress” continues to be made on fixing the Map tile update issue, including the map stitching when zooming out (which was seen as the last problem to be resolved), but there is still no date as to when a fix may be deployed.
• An extensive discussion took place regarding a delay in scripts starting in rezzed objects which can be variable for reasons unknown – other than the fact the delay seems to be minimal when a region has been recently restarted, but grows in time to 2-3 seconds the longer the region is up. However, the delay does not appear to relate to the usage of the region or its complexity (scripted objects within it).
  • Some appear to believe the delay is related to changes made in 2019 to try to improve script performance in general (and thus can be “easily fixed”).
  • Others have suggested the issue could be the result of some for of throttle being triggered.
  • The problem is having something of a “knock-on” effect in that some users have taken to pre-rezzing items and having them in an alpha / transparent mode around their avatar until needed – which is impacting region performance further.

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

Server Deployments

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

• Tuesday, February 23rd: no deployment to the SLS Main channel.
• Wednesday, February 24th: all RC channels should receive server release 556138 (or a variant thereof). This release was originally deployed to the Apples test RC channel, and contains performance optimisations and internal fixes.

SL Viewer

• On Monday, February 22nd, the Simple Cache viewer updated to version 6.4.14.556088 (dated February 19th).
• On  Tuesday, February 23rd, the Love Me Render (LMR) 5 viewer updated to version 6.4.14.556118, February.

The rest of the current pipelines remain as:

• Current release viewer: Project Jelly viewer (Jellydoll updates), version 6.4.13.555567 and dated February 5th, 2021, promoted February 17th.
• Release channel cohorts:
  • Custom Key Mappings project viewer, version 6.4.12.553437, January 7th.
• Project viewers:
  • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.4.11.550519, October 26th.
  • Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, December 9th, 2019.
  • Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.532999, November 22nd, 2019.
  • 360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, July 16th, 2019.

In Brief

There wasn’t really a meeting, and for a special reason: as he announced earlier in February, Oz Linden, the Lab’s Vice President of Engineering, is retiring at the end of the month with Friday, February 26th marking his last day with Linden Lab.

As such, the meeting was given over to a farewell party, with around 60 people in attendance. I  managed to get a few shots of the event, as shown here. For those interested, I wrote something of a look back at Oz’s time at the Lab in Oz Linden announces his forthcoming departure from Linden Lab.

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

Server Deployments

At the time of writing,  this is yet another week without published release notes. However, there was no deployment to the SLS Main channel on Tuesday, February 16th, leaving it on simulator release 555570.

Simulators on the BlueSteel channel are due to be subject to “some experiments” – one of which apparently involves splitting up the simulators currently on that channel into smaller channels.  It is not anticipated that any of these experiments will have any user-visible impact.

Mazidox Linden also indicated that the LeTigre deployment channel may also be subject to being split into smaller channels, although this has yet to be confirmed.

The aim of this work is to hopefully to make it easier to tune groups of simulators for better performance on their underlying servers, with Oz Linden noting:

We have many more possible system types than we had before… we picked one for the initial uplift, but there are lots of others and many configuration options…. finding the best combinations requires lots of experimentation.

SL Viewer

The Simplified Cache viewer, which incorporates a replacement for VFS caching, was promoted to Release Candidate status on Tuesday, February, 16th, 2021 with the issuing of version 6.4.13.555641.

The rest of the current pipelines remain as:

• Current release viewer Dawa Maintenance RC Viewer, version 6.4.12.555248, dated January 25, 2021, promoted February 1st, 2021 – NEW.
• Release channel cohorts:
  • Project Jelly viewer (Jellydoll updates), version 6.4.13.555567, February 5, 2021.
  • Custom Key Mappings project viewer, version 6.4.12.553437, January 7, 2021.
• Project viewers:
  • Love Me Render (LMR) 5 project viewer, version 6.4.12.553511, issued on January 7, 2021.
  • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.4.11.550519, October 26.
  • Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, December 9, 2019.
  • Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.532999, November 22, 2019.
  • 360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, July 16, 2019.

In Brief

What does it look like when Second Life is lagging (or otherwise performing poorly) for you. What does it look like when Second Life is performing well?

This rather open question was asked by Mazidox Linden in an attempt to gain as wide a view as possible response – be it about “lag” that might be more directly attributable to viewer-side activities (e.g. rezzing / rendering, which are down to the viewer and may be using data already locally cached), or which are dependent on network connectivity or which may be attributable to definable viewer / server interactions (e.g. drops in general performance when the viewer receives the data relating to an avatar arriving in a region, slow script processing, etc.). From this, it is hoped a more detailed breakdown of server-side impacts for which metrics can be obtained can be drawn up.

It has been noted that some timing appear to be “off”. Examples include:  landmarks failing to refresh, SLurl failing to copy correctly, through to issues of attachment load with RLV that sees the latter engage before all of the former have properly loaded in the viewer). LL are not aware of any Uplift changes that may have caused this (although some – such as the RLV issue were known to exist prior to Uplift).

Land Store – the recent Land Store issues (non-availability of new regions) appears to be down to assumptions made prior to Uplift that “didn’t hold up”, resulting in the need for a back-end bug fix. In the meantime, regions can be obtained by filing a ticket with Support.

The next SUG meeting – Tuesday, February 23rd – will be a farewell party for Oz Linden, who is retiring from the Lab on Friday, February 26th – see: Oz Linden announces his forthcoming departure from Linden Lab.

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, February 9th, 2021 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting.

Server Deployments

At the time of writing,the release notes for the week had yet to be produced. However, deploys can be summarised as:

• On Tuesday, February 9th, the SLS Main channel was updated to server release 555570, previously deployed to the RC channels. This update comprises: feature request BUG-230026 Extended error return for llHTTPRequest – see here for documentation – and the following fixes:
  • BUG-228783 llSitOnLink() is not generating Notifications nor logs in Events in the viewer.
  • BUG-8265  (BUG-230131) CONTROL_ML_LBUTTON and CONTROL_LBUTTON not working when llTakeControls called in the experience_permissions event
  • SL-14802 experience notifications are sent to frequently.
• There is no deployment to the RC channels planned for Wednesday, February 10th.

The Tuesday 9th Feb deployment means that all simulators should currently be running the same version.

Rider Linden also indicated that additional micro-channels (along the lines of the Cake and Snack, etc., mini-RC channels generally used for specific testing or code and fixes) are to be created, but this work will be done outside of the normal Tuesday / Wednesday deployment time frames. These new channels are described as being need because “We want to run some controlled tests on small manageable numbers of regions at a time.”

SL Viewer

No start-of-week changes to the current list of available official viewer versions, leaving the pipelines as follows:

• Current release viewer Dawa Maintenance RC Viewer, version 6.4.12.555248, dated January 25, 2021, promoted February 1st, 2021 – NEW.
• Release channel cohorts:
  • Project Jelly viewer (Jellydoll updates), version 6.4.13.555567, February 5, 2021.
  • Custom Key Mappings project viewer, version 6.4.12.553437, January 7, 2021.
• Project viewers:
  • Love Me Render (LMR) 5 project viewer, version 6.4.12.553511, issued on January 7, 2021.
  • Simple Cache project viewer, version 6.4.11.551403, November 12.
  • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.4.11.550519, October 26.
  • Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, December 9, 2019.
  • Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.532999, November 22, 2019.
  • 360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, July 16, 2019.

In Brief

• Work is continuing on trying to get the Map tile updates working, but no ETA.
• Questions were (again) raised on the new Linden Research board for directors and things like Town Hall meetings. for the latest available information, see:  Linden Lab’s board of directors: snippets of news).
  • In terms of board members appearing in-world at public meetings, it is worth pointing out that the last time a board member appeared in-world was likely SL5B in 2008, when former board member gave his (in)famous keynote address

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, February 2nd, 2021 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting.

Server Deployments

At the time of writing,the release notes for the week had yet to be produced. However, Rider Linden summarised the state of play as follows:

We unfortunately found a bug in last week’s RC so did not promote it to SLS today. We instead will be rolling a new and shinier version back to the RCs tomorrow.

Also in tomorrows release the simulator will try and be “nicer” about how often it sends notifications about privileged script calls being made in an experience. It won’t send more than 1 per event per experience per agent every 30 seconds. So, calling llGetCameraPos followed by llGetCameraRot will only generate a single notification. There is an additional key now in the LLSD that comes down from the simulator “EventCount” that will tell the viewer how many times that particular event had occurred.

– Rider Linden

SL Viewer

The Dawa Maintenance RC viewer, version 6.4.12.555248, was promoted to de facto release status on Monday February 1st. All other official viewer pipelines remain as follows:

• Current release viewer version 6.4.11.551711, formerly Cachaça Maintenance RC viewer promoted on November 12 – No Change.
• Release channel cohorts:
  • Project Jelly viewer (Jellydoll updates), version 6.4.12.553798, January 7, 2021.
  • Custom Key Mappings project viewer, version 6.4.12.553437, January 7, 2021.
• Project viewers:
  • Love Me Render (LMR) 5 project viewer, version 6.4.12.553511, issued on January 7, 2021.
  • Simple Cache project viewer, version 6.4.11.551403, November 12.
  • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.4.11.550519, October 26.
  • Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, December 9, 2019.
  • Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.532999, November 22, 2019.
  • 360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, July 16, 2019.

In Brief

• The lab is working to correct the on-going issues with Group chat (notably BUG-229936 “Group Notices not expiring after 14 days” and BUG-230116 “Sorting group notices by date disconnects the viewer”. A fix for the former should be available very soon, and does not require a simulator-side update (it’s a back-end fix).
• What’s the difference between a viewer crash and a disconnect?
  • The Lab see a “crash” as being “my viewer exited without displaying any message”.
  • The viewer exiting SL with a message to the user (such as “you have been disconnected”) is not regarded as a viewer crash.
• A change intended to fix BUG-228783 “llSitOnLink() is not generating Notifications nor logs in Events in the viewer”, and which improves notifications in general (including for llTakeControls), resulted in breaking a work-around for BUG-8265, affecting certain weapons in SL. This should be resolved following the February 3rd RC deployments.

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, January 26th, 2021 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting.

Server Deployments

At the time of writing,the release notes for the week had yet to be produced. However, Rider Linden described the RC release planned for the week thus:

So, this week we are rolling to all of the RC channels tomorrow. The main feature we added is the extended error reporting.There is also some extended handling when origin servers return 5XX errors to a script that should reduce some load on the simulator.

– Rider Linden

SL Viewer

The Dawa Maintenance RC viewer updates to version 6.4.12.555248 on Monday, January 25th. The rest of the official viewer pipelines remain as:

• Current release viewer version 6.4.11.551711, formerly Cachaça Maintenance RC viewer promoted on November 12 – No Change.
• Release channel cohorts:
  • Dawa Maintenance RC Viewer, version 6.4.12.555248, January 25, 2021.Project Jelly viewer (Jellydoll updates), version 6.4.12.553798, January 7, 2021.
  • Custom Key Mappings project viewer, version 6.4.12.553437, January 7, 2021.
• Project viewers:
  • Love Me Render (LMR) 5 project viewer, version 6.4.12.553511, issued on January 7, 2021.
  • Simple Cache project viewer, version 6.4.11.551403, November 12.
  • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.4.11.550519, October 26.
  • Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, December 9, 2019.
  • Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.532999, November 22, 2019.
  • 360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, July 16, 2019.

Group Notices

• BUG-229936 “Group Notices not expiring after 14 days”: this is a known issue for the Lab, which in the words of Mazidox Linden means: “We’re troubleshooting [it]. By which I mean we’re finding the root of the trouble, and shooting it.”
• BUG-230116 “Sorting group notices by date disconnects the viewer”: this is a new issue, but one that is potentially causing some serious issues for those who attempt to carry out such searches (which Firestorm apparently does by default).
• BUG-229075 “VWR-4137 / SL-13093 Missed opportunity to fix group notice date sorting” has now been accepted.
• Beq Janus has been carrying out an extensive investigation into Group notice issues, the short form of which is that notice culling needs to be re-enabled (which the Lab to do “soon”) lest a lot of people start being impacted with failures in handling group notices, and she also have code contributions she may be submitting to the Lab to assist with group notice issues.