A TPV developer meeting took place on Friday June 6th. The core items discussed in the meeting are reported below, with timestamps in the relevant paragraphs indicating the point at they are discussed in the video embedded here.
Note that the timestamps are not necessarily chronological; some subjects have been grouped together for ease of reading. Also, the last 8-10 minutes of the meeting is taken-up with general conversation (Oz’s vacation, trying-out the Oculus Rift, etc.), which is not reported upon here.
My thanks as always to North for the video.
SL Viewer Status
[0:18] Other than the release of the MemShine RC viewer, version 3.7.9.290582, reported upon in part 1 of this week’s report, there have been no significant SL viewer updates. If the stats on this viewer remain good, it is likely that the individual MemPlug and Sunshine AIS v3 release candidates also still in the release channel will be closed-out, leaving just the MemShine version. As the overall stats between the RCs, which apparent include the SL Zipper RC which is currently absent from the Alternate Viewers wiki page, are all so close, it is not clear which is most likely to be promoted as the next de facto release viewer.
Oculus Rift Project Viewer
[1:33] Alongside the release of the Oculus Rift project viewer, the Lab also made the code repository available to the public as well. However, TPVs are warned against integrating the code for release purposes at this time, as it is anticipated there will be significant changes to the viewer once the new version of the Oculus Rift Development Kit is available. However, the Lab is not opposed to TPVs producing experimental versions of their viewers using the code if they wish to gain some familiarity with it.
The project viewer itself is unlikely to undergo update until at least after the new Oculus Development Kit is available to the Lab, although it is expected that the viewer will undergo periodic merges with the viewer release code in the coming weeks / months so that it does not stray too far out of step with viewer releases.
As well as supporting the Oculus Rift, the code within the project viewer is also intended to support other, similar VR headsets, although the Lab obviously does not have any definitive time frames as to when such headsets will become available or when they are liable to be officially supported in the viewer.
ANTVR: to be supported by Second Life at some point? (Assuming it gets to a production status)
Group Ban and Snowstorm Viewers
[03:08] Again, as reported earlier this week, the Group Ban viewer is currently awaiting the server-side code to be fully deployed across the main grid prior to it officially appearing in a project / RC form. This is now likely to be delayed a little longer as a result of the GnuTLS issue, which promoted an additional server-side deployment which replaced the initial Group Ban deployment to LeTigre (the server code should return to the RC channel in week 24).
[03:20] There are further tweaks being made to the Snowstorm release, which should include the likes of STORM-1831, “Obtain LSL syntax table from simulator so that it is always up to date”, which has in turn been impacted by STORM-2026. Hopefully, the viewer will be heading for the release channel very soon.
Maintenance Viewer Updates (with more Cocoa Fixes)
[06:40] There are more maintenance (JIRA: MAINT) fixes coming down the pipe, none of which are expected to be particularly huge, but as things progress there could be a number of MAINT-related viewer releases.
[14:24] The next MAINT viewer to be released should include further Mac Cocoa fixes within it. Unfortunately, Oz did not have a list of what these might be, so expect an update at the next TPV developer meeting if the MAINT viewer hasn’t already appeared by then.
Upcoming Viewer Items
New Viewer Log-in Screen
[03:52] This has yet to make a public appearance, but the Lab is working on a new viewer log-in screen. Details are not clear as to precisely what is changing layout-wise, but it will not result in any actual changes to how log-ins are physically handled between the viewer and the SL servers, nor will it carry any significant updates other than to the initial splash screen. Commenting on it at the meeting, Oz Linden described it as, “yet another attempt to make a friendlier intro for new users”, as a part of ongoing attempts to smooth people through the sign-up and initial log-in activities.
It is expected that this viewer may appear as a release candidate as the current number of RC viewers in the release channel thins down (particularly if the MemPlug and Sunshine RCs are retired, as noted above).
The official viewer log-in screen is due for a revamp, although the mechanics of the log-in process will remain unchanged, and at least some of the widgets will remain in some form. In addition, at some point grid status updates *may* be returning to the screen (see below)
A TPV developer meeting took place on Friday May 9th. The core items discussed in the meeting are reported below, with timestamps in the relevant paragraphs indicating the point at they are discussed in the video embedded here. My thanks as always to North for the latter.
SL Viewer Status
[00:35] As noted in part one of this week’s updates report, the de facto viewer was updated on Tuesday May 5th with the promotion of the Interest List viewer (version 3.7.7.289461). The viewer contains what’s being referred to as a number of “non-trivial” merges, as the team responsible for the viewer took the opportunity to clean-up “a lot of old and unpleasant code”, and this “touched on a lot of things”. As such, it may be a while before this code filters into all TPVs.
[01:27] On Thursday May 8th, the SL Share-2 RC updated to version 3.7.8.289775 (download and release notes). This viewer includes the ability to upload Tweets and snapshots to Twitter and / or snapshots to Flickr, and to use pre-set filters on images being uploaded to either service and / or to Facebook, and to create your own filters.
The remaining viewers in the release channel (Sunshine / AIS and the Maintenance viewer) and the Zipper project viewer will be updated in week 20.
[02:11] There are two or three other viewers which are expected to be appearing in the near future. One of these contains a number of Snowstorm contributions (such as STORM-1831, currently awaiting two minor bug fixes), Baker Linden’s group ban work should be generating a viewer soon (see below for more), and there is a viewer which contains a series of memory leak fixes which is currently in QA.
Group Ban List
[03:40] Baker reports he has two “major” bugs and three or four “minor” bugs still to deal with; however, it doesn’t appear is if these are going to stop the viewer arriving as a project viewer. As noted in part two of this week’s report, the repository for the code has already been made public, and TPVs have been invited to pull code from the repository if they’re in a position to do so (the group ban viewer is built to LL’s 3.7.8 code base).
Obviously, and again as noted in part two of this report, the code will not be usable on the main grid until such time as the server-side changes have been deployed, and this isn’t likely to happen for a couple of weeks or so, so don’t expect it to be appearing in release versions of any viewers for a while.
The server-side code is available on a channel on Aditi (DRTSIM-234 14.05.05.289712 – which includes the Morris region where the Server Beta meeting is held and now includes the BUG-5929 fix), and there may be a grid-wide Aditi deployment of the server-side code. If this is the case, it will likely be confirmed via a Server Beta group meeting.
One aspect that has not been looked into as yet is ensuring that when someone is ejected / banned from a group, they are also ejected from group chat. Currently, due to the way the back-end services operate, if someone has the group chat window open when they are ejected from a group, they can continue to chat / spam into the group chat up until the point where they close the window. Commenting on this, and given that Simon Linden has been working on the chat service, Baker has indicated that he’ll look into things with Simon and see if this problem cannot be resolved.
Leap Motion Integration
[12:18] In November 2013, Leap Motion approached Linden Lab about integrating their gesture controller into the view. Due to the amount of work the Lab had on its plate, the work was handed-off to TPV, with members of the Firestorm team working with Leap Motion to get things integrated.
Since that time, the work has been subject to a number of hiccups – including the need for Leap Motion to update their software. As it stands, the work is slightly stalled as the Firestorm team no longer have the resources needed for the work, so a call has gone out to TPV developers who are willing to take a lead in bringing this work to fruition.
Third-party Library Work (Webkit et al)
[26:14] Monty Linden is continuing his work in cleaning-up the third-party libraries used within the viewer build process. This work has been focused of late on Webkit, which is used for a number of tasks, such as powering the built-in web browser and to display profiles, and is used with Media on a Prim (MOAP) and many in-world televisions. However, Monty has more recently been working on the COLLADA DOM library as a means of “taking a break” from Webkit. He describes this as the “last big one” on his list.
Despite still having to finish-up with Webkit, Monty is already in a position of being able to use a windows version of the viewer which makes use of his updated and cleaned-up libraries, although he emphasises the work is not ready to enter prime-time use as yet.
A TPV developer meeting took place on Friday April 25th. The core items discussed in the meeting are reported below, with timestamps in the relevant paragraphs indicating the point at they are discussed in the video embedded here. My thanks as always to North for the latter.
Release Candidate Status
Interest List, Sunshine and Maintenance RC Viewers
[01:02] All of these RC viewers have been rebuilt during the week to use the current release viewer code base (version 3.7.6.289164, formerly the VoiceMO RC), and all look to be performing reasonably well. However, none have been in the release channel for long enough for significant stats to be gathered.
SL Share 2
[01:26] The SL Share 2 viewer was issued as a release candidate viewer on Friday April 25th, version 3.7.7.289497 (download and release notes). This viewer provides options to upload Tweets and snapshots to Twitter and / or snapshots to Flickr, and includes optional post-process filter capabilities which can be applied to snaps being uploaded to Flickr, Twitter and / or Facebook. See my review of the project viewer for further details.
Snowstorm Viewer
[02:30] The next Snowstorm viewer, featuring third-party code contributions from the open-source community (including Ima Mechanic’s BUG-1831 LSL syntax highlighting work, developed with the help of Cinder Roxley and Oz Linden), is now with LL’s QA team, and it is hoped this will be appearing as a project viewer in week 18 (week commencing Monday April 28th), assuming no issues are uncovered during the QA process.
Oculus Rift Viewer
[04:05] Other than bug fixes, the current Oculus Rift closed beta viewer is not expected to go through any significant updates for the time being. However, it is anticipated that there will be further work on the viewer once the Lab has access to the new Rift SDK, and that this may well be “very significant”.
Zipper Project Viewer
[04:30] It is anticipated that the faster installation “zipper” viewer (currently version 3.7.5.288507 – download and release notes – dated March 28th) will become a release candidate viewer “very soon”.
Mac / Cocoa Update
[06:48] There is still no single project at the Lab which is focused on Mac Cocoa issues. However, fixes are being developed and are starting to appear as a part of overall viewer development and release process.
The current release viewer (version 3.7.6.289164), includes a Vivox update to the 4.6.x libraries, and so should resolve Mavericks-related voice issues (among other voice issues). Also, the Maintenance RC (version 3.7.7.289405) has a number of Mac / Cocoa fixes, including: MAINT-3135 “Cocoa Viewer: Mac Maximizing the viewer leaves garbage on the screen”; MAINT-3288 “MAC – Fullscreen mode issue in Viewer 3.6.7 (281793)”; MAINT-3506: “Copy & Paste on mac viewer often generate undesired special characters at the end of the pasted line sometimes leading to crash “; and MAINT-3642 “Mac viewer can no longer export textures to TGA format”. However, as there is no over-arching project for Mac / Cocoa fixes, it is a case of checking the release notes for new RC and project viewers as they appear.
The infamous ALT-camera Cocoa bug (see FIRE-12241 (MAINT-3171) is an issue the lab has been looking at but have so far been unable to work out why it is happening. Oz Linden invited TPV developers to consider poking at it and contributing code if they felt it is something they might be able to resolve.
Webkit Update
[12:01] Webkit is a third-party library used within the viewer for a number of tasks. For example, it powers the built-in web browser, and is used to display profiles (unless you’re using a viewer supporting legacy profiles). It is also used with Media on a Prim (MOAP) and many in-world televisions.
There have been an increasing number of issues with webkit. The libraries used within SL are out-of-date, for example, something which has caused the Lab and TPVs a considerable amount of pain (see BUG-4763 and FIRE-12642, and FIRE-11057). Given these problems, Monty Linden has been focusing on trying to improve matters, notably by creating a new lqtwebkit library repo, which he describes as “extremely experimental”.
Firestorm have re-worked webkit for themselves, updating to version 5..2.1 for Windows, which seems to be resolving issues. They’re working to do the same with Linux and Mac, although there is a problem with the latter where buttons embedded in a Flash video will not work.
As reported last time, a further problem here is that the qtwebkit (on which lqtwebkit is based) has been deprecated by QT, so the Lab is faced with a decision as to what to do going forward. One option may be to go with CEF, but which direction the Lab will take has yet to be decided.
A TPV developer meeting took place on Friday April 11th. The core items discussed in the meeting are reported below, with timestamps in the relevant paragraphs indicating the point at they are discussed in the video embedded here. My thanks as always to North for the latter.
Release Candidate Viewers Status
[00:34] The VoiceMO RC (version 3.7.6.288881) combines the former SL Voice RC (3.7.5.288516) and the former Merchant Outbox RC (3.7.5.288408), both of which have now been withdrawn from the release channel. Both of these RCs were performing well, and it is hoped that by combining them, they’ll both have an accelerated path through to formal release status.
The Lab is keen to see the Vivox updates for voice gain wider traction in viewers, as these not only improve people’s voice experience, they also lighten the load on the back-end servers.
The Interest List RC updated to version 3.7.6.288879 and the Sunshine / AIS v3 RC updated to 3.7.6.288822, both dated April 10th, and appearing on the wiki page on April 11th.
These, together with the Maintenance RC (version 3.7.6.288799), released on Wednesday April 9th, are now the four remaining release candidate viewers in the release channel. As these are all recent updates, data is still being gathered on all four, so it is unlikely that any of them will be promoted to the de facto release viewer in week 16 (week commencing Monday April 14th).
Google Breakpad Reporting and Issue
[01:40] The Google Breakpad changes mean that all viewers with the updated Breakpad code have the marker files for crash reporting created much sooner in the initialisation process and deleted much later in the viewer shutdown process. This means that more crash stats are being collected, but it also means that the crash rate measurement has gone up slightly as a result.
[03;30] Whirly Fizzle has identified an issue occurring with both the Maintenance RC and the current viewer release (3.7.5.266464) which appears to be linked to the Google Breakpad updates. BUG5707, “While logged in, crash reporter pops up, sends in a crash report but the viewer does not crash”. Whirly describes the issue in part as:
The crash reporter window does not just sometimes flash up briefly at viewer launch or viewer close, the crash reporter stays on-screen and appears to be actually sending in crash reports – I see the “Sending to server…..” window, which stays onscreen for some time.
Often I have more than one “Sending to server….” window open – often as many as 3 of them will all open at the same time.
This is happening on viewer launch, on viewer close and even while logged in.
When it occurs while logged in, the viewer does not crash, I am still logged in and the viewer appears functional.
Commenting on the situation, Oz Linden said, “Yeah, we’ve got people looking at some of the Google Breakpad crash reporting issues … I’m not really sure what that’s about … we’ll see if that can get some refinement.”
Oculus Rift
An update to the Oculus Rift project viewer, currently on closed beta, is expected in the next week. The lab is still accepting applications from those who have the hardware to join the closed beta the requirement being that applicants actually have the Oculus hardware. Applications should be addressed to sl_oculus_beta@lindenlab.com.
Further updates to this viewer are expected, particularly once the Lab received the SDK2 headsets, although these are not anticipated to be arriving for another couple of months. The viewer most likely won’t be opened-up publicly until after these latter updates have been made, so TPVs will not be able to integrate the code for some time to come.
SL Share
[05:26] Merov Linden was on-hand to talk about the recent changes to the SL Share capability in the SL viewer – notably the updates which allow people to post pictures to Flickr, post text and images to Twitter and once again post images to Facebook. It is likely that this viewer will be progressing to release candidate status in week 16.
As I’ve previously noted, an important thing to remember about SL Share is the all of the capabilities are opt-in. No-one is forced to use them, and the Facebook option in particular has nothing to do with trying to “push” SL users to Facebook, and while Facebook may not allow people to have accounts in their avatar names, there are a lot of people who are happy using it to connect their SL account with their real life account on Facebook.
One issue that did cause a problem was the inclusion of SLurls with photos being uploaded to Facebook, which caused the image upload capability to be blocked by Facebook. The SL Share updates have removed the “include location” option in the photo upload tab of the Facebook floater, and as a result, Facebook have removed the block once more.
The SL Share photo upload panel as it was prior to the change (l) and as it appears in the SL Share project viewer and some RC viewers since the change (r)
The issue here was not so much that SLurls were being included in uploaded photos, but the fact that they were being added automatically as a part of the automated processing of snaps during the upload process. Apparently, a requirement in using the Facebook API is that all text uploaded or appended to images must be manually entered by the user …
As well as restoring the upload capability, Facebook also restored photos with SLurl include which had been uploaded prior to the block coming into effect, again apparently because of the SLurls being automatically added.
One of the most interesting parts of the new capabilities is that of the preset filters within the upload panels for Facebook, Twitter and Flickr, and the ability for people to create their own filters.
When SL Share 2 appeared, questions were asked on various blogs on whether the filter capabilities would be added to the viewer’s snapshot floater, so that they could be used with the snapshot options there – most notably with the profile feeds option.
A preview example of a snapshot using one of the SL Share built-in filters
I took the opportunity at the TPV developer meeting to ask, and Oz Linden replied:
The SL Share project doesn’t include putting the filters in to the snapshot floater, but Niran [NiranV Dean, creator of the Black Dragon viewer] is working on that. So we may get that as another open-source contribution.
Merov then added:
It’s not overly difficult to do that. Actually, I did it for a demo once, so it’s pretty easy to add. I didn’t do it because the snapshot UI on the official viewer has plenty of … how can I put this nicely? …. Oddities, let’s say … so if I really wanted to do it, I’d have to re-do everything …. so I went to the designers and said, “You know, we should really re-do all this,” and they said, “Yes, but not now.” so I’m not working on that just now. but yes, it’s possible … so if you want to put it into your own snapshot floater, I won’t be offended!”
One of the aspects of the SL Share 2 capability that didn’t get to be in this initial update is a filter editor capability such that the filters can be more easily combined to create custom filters. Oz invited any TPV developers who might like to take this on to do so and to consider contributing it back the Lab should they do so.
The authentication aspect of the SL Share capabilities is all handled by the Lab’s back-end to the capability, so that the viewer-side code can be taken by TPVs and amended without any risk of users’ private information being leaked or tracked.
Webkit Woes
Monty Linden
[15:48] Webkit is a third-party library used within the viewer for a number of tasks. For example, it powers the built-in web browser, and is used to display profiles (unless you’re using a viewer supporting legacy profiles). It is also used with like Media on a Prim (MOAP) and many in-world televisions.
There have been an increasing number of issues with webkit. The libraries used within SL are out-of-date, for example, something which has caused the Lab and TPVs a considerable amount of pain (see BUG-4763 and FIRE-12642, and FIRE-11057).
Monty Linden has been poking at the problems, and gave a further update on his work:
I’m doing a bunch of damage, and then trying to move forward, just to get to 4.7.4 first, and then the 4.8 a little bit later on. I’m just about at the end of that … my goal is to kill the current third-party lqtwebkit library repo and I’ve created a new one that’s a little healthier and working a little bit better.
It’s not clear at the moment when Monty’s work will appear in a release stream. A further problem here is that the qtwebkit (on which lqtwebkit is based) has been deprecated by QT, so the Lab is faced with a decision s to what to do going forward. One option may be to go with CEF, but which direction the Lab will take has yet to be decided.
The Firestorm team have reported they have re-worked webkit for themselves, updating to version 5..2.1 for Windows and are looking to do the same for Linux and Mac. This work appears to have fixed issues with Media on a Prim and it is hoped it may also resolved the YouTube issue of videos failing to play on in-world TVs, etc.
Firestorm are going to liaise with Monty with regards to the work they’ve done. currently, the Windows updates are still subject to internal testing by Firestorm, although they plan to make the work visible to all once they are confident enough that it behaves as expected.
Mac / Cocoa Update
[22:45] There has been some progress in addressing the Mac / Cocoa issues, with some fixes now in the Maintenance RC release, including:
MAINT-3135 Cocoa Viewer: Mac: Maximizing the viewer leaves garbage on the screen
MAINT-3288 Mac: Fullscreen mode issue in Viewer 3.6.7 (281793)
MAINT-3642 Mac viewer can no longer export textures to TGA format
MAINT-3674 Mac: “Hide NewApplication” under Second Life menu, should be “Hide Second Life”
Referring to Cocoa issues in particular, Oz again confirmed that “all of them” are on the Lab’s to-do list, but not all of them are getting done as yet. In particular, there is no news on the long-standing ALT-cam bug.
Other Items
We’re all aware that there are options within the viewer to run more than one instance (so if your computer doesn’t grind to a halt, you can run two versions of the official viewer or two versions of Firestorm, etc). However, what some people may not be aware of is the fact that while the viewer can allow multiple instances, this is not actually a supported feature. It should also be remembered that because of the way voice is handled, it is currently not always possible to run two instances of a viewer (or two different viewers at the same time) with voice enabled without encountering significant issues and potential lock-ups (although Singularity has a fix for this).
What also may not be realised is that because some of the viewers use different mechanisms to detect how many instances they are running, it is possible to encounter conflicts and issues when running, for example, the SL viewer and the Firestorm viewer simultaneously on a computer.
So if you are running multiple instances of the same viewer or multiple viewers on the same computer, and start experiencing unexpected issues, try shutting all but one instance / viewer down and seeing if the problems go away before seeking support assistance.
A TPV developer meeting took place on Friday March 28th. The core items discussed in the meeting are reported below, with timestamps in the relevant paragraphs indicating the point at they are discussed in the video embedded here. My thanks as always to North for the latter.
Release Candidate Viewers Status
Stat Test RC and Google Breakpad RC
[00:10] The Stat Test release candidate viewer (version 3.7.5.288371 at the time of writing) is not intended to ever move to a formal release status. Its function is to help with identifying how big an impact a bug within the Google Breakpad RC was having on viewers by comparing crash rates.
The fix contained in the Stat Test viewer is now also in the Google Breakpad RC, which was updated on Thursday March 27th to version 3.7.5.288464 (download and release notes). It’s thought that this RC is getting “pretty close to final form”, something that will likely be confirmed once the new update has been in the release channel sufficient long enough for decent statistics to be gathered in week 14 (week commencing Monday March 31st).
Interest List RC and Merchant Outbox RC
[01:00] As noted in part 2 of this report, the Interest List RC returned to the release channel wither version 3.7.5.288404 (download and release notes). This RC had been removed from the release channel on March 21st due to the number of RC viewers in the channel at that time.
The Mechant Outbox RC, which contains fixes for accurately detecting Merchant status and improves recovery for Merchant Outbox errors, was updated on Friday March 28th to version 3.7.5.288408 (download and release notes). This update means that as of Friday March 28th, all RC viewer in the release channel were up-to-date with the current release version of the viewer.
Voice RC and Sunshine / AIS v3 RC
[01:35] These two release candidates were withdrawn from the release channel on March 21st to reduce the number of RC viewers vying for promotion to release status. These have yet to be updated with the current release viewer code, however, it is anticipated that the Voice RC will be returning to the release channel early in week 14, and that the Sunshine AIS will hopefully reappear later in the week.
The binaries for the Vivox updates are currently available to TPVs for testing an incorporation, so the removal of the Voice RC from the release channel should not have unduly impacted any work being undertaken by TPVs in updating or offering Vivox 4.6.x to Windows and Mac users. Unfortunately, Vivox have yet to supply updates for Linux.
Project Viewers
Project Zipper
[01:52] The Project Zipper “fast installer” viewer was updated to version 3.7.5.288507 on March 28th, also bringing it up to parity with the current release viewer, although it remains at project status (download and release notes).
Oculus Rift
The Oculus Rift project viewer is currently on a closed beta, and so the code is not publicly viewable. The beta is reported to be going “really well”, although other sources indicate that there is a lot of dissatisfaction in how the UI works, up to an including demands that the entire UI needs to be re-thought.
Given any change in the viewer UI tends to attract a high degree of negativity right out of the gate (and also given the fact I’ve not actually seen the “Riftlook” UI), it’s hard to say how many of the concerns are objective as opposed to subjective in nature (e.g. the issue is genuinely one of ease-of-use as opposed to it being one that is considered “unusable” because it’s either not how it’s worked in the past, or requires a re-training of muscle memory) . However, if the issues are objective and indicate significant issues of usability, it will be interesting to see how the Lab responds.
Upcoming Viewers
Group Bans
[02:24] The Group ban viewer is progressing, as noted in part 2 of this report, a new version is available through the Server Beta wiki page, and can be tested on the Morris region on Aditi. There is yet more work to be done on this, so it’s unlikely to move to an official project viewer or RC status in the short-term.
Snowstorm
A new Snowstorm RC viewer is in development, and Oz Linden is hoping to include a few more things in it. I believe this viewer may include the LSL syntax updates of STORM-1831, although the hope is apparently to get some more items into it alongside what is already there. As there are already so many viewers either in, or queuing-up for RC status, there is currently no rush to move this viewer forward.
Release Viewer
[04:02] Commenting on the current release viewer version: 3.7.4.288138, formerly the FmodEx Hotfix RC, Monty Linden indicated that there are almost a year of fixes the stream threading between the current viewer and previous versions. These include many fixes for issues where the viewer can drop a stream entirely. However, whether these include a fix for the issues where a stream containing externals ads (for cars, insurance, etc. – see FIRE-12798) can be completely dropped by the viewer and require a re-log in order to reconnection, is unclear. However, Monty has offered to take a poke at things.
SLS Share / Facebook Photos Upload
[07:26] As reported on March 20th, the ability for users to upload photos from the viewer to their Facebook accounts was disabled by Facebook, apparently because of the inclusion of SLurl with the photo uploads.
The Lab has made changes in the viewer and in the intermediate server layer which should address Facebook’s concerns, however, Facebook has yet to unblock the upload capability at their end, and at the time of writing there has been no word on when this might be done.
The viewer-side updates have yet to reach the release viewer, but are currently in all of the release candidates in the viewer release channel.
The SL Share photo upload panel as it is in the current release viewer (3.7.4.288138) on the left,complete with the option to include a SLurl; and as it appears in the RC viewers on the right, with the SLurl option removed to meet Facebook’s requirements
Mac Issues
[08:30] A request has been made for the Lab to provide a list of Mac / Cocoa issues to help TPVs keep track of things. As reported last time this issue was raised, the Lab are hampered in trying to deal with Cocoa-related issues, as their Mac developers are working on a number of projects, and so specific issues are dealt with individually, rather than as a part of an overall project.
HTTP Issues
Monty Linden:
[19:53] The Firestorm team asked if the Lab had any data on how well the HTTP code changes were going and if they were seeing anything unexpected with server-side loads. The prompt from this question came by the fact that as downloads of the Firestorm 4.6.1 release have increased, so the number of user complaints which appear as though they might be related to HTTP have increased. Monty Linden replied:
Not that I can tell. Nothing is getting to me if there is any such story. I’ve heard the anecdotes, and whenever I’ve looked into them, the stories behind them are generally pretty random. It’s people associating recent changes with behaviour they’re seeing and assuming some correlation where there isn’t any.
Now, that said, there are some patterns that continue to persist that have existed for the past few years that I’ve been dealing with transport issues. The simulators always have had problems in the lib services with connection quotas being exceeded, and that’s still going on today. A busy region on a busy sim hots is still a problem, but I can’t say it’s worse than before. It should be better, but the data I’m getting – which is almost none – doesn’t point to any problem. I’m sorry that’s not definitive, but it’s all I’ve got at this point.
It has been reported that HTTP downloads on sims which have a lot of textures and objects, but few avatars are significantly better than HTTP downloads where there is a large number (20+) avatars. In the latter circumstance, it has also been reported that switching back to UDP appears to improve downloads. However, Monty warned against this, as UDP puts significantly more load on the simulator, which can have a noticeable impact for every user connected to that simulator.
In discussing how to confirm whether or not users really are seeing HTTP issues, Monty continued:
The first thing would be to look at the log file. If you’re getting permanent failures in texture HTTP, it’s going to show up in the log file with a fail on a final retry with an error code and a bunch of related information.So you can pretty much confirm pretty quickly whether or not they’re getting serious permanent failures for texture operations … and these will be distinct from 404s. 404s are nots founds, and you’ll see those every now and then simply because the texture reference is not valid. But other reasons for a permanent failure would be interesting.
When I updated the texture console, I put mesh errors in, but I didn’t do anything about HTTP errors, but there would be another useful area to put things in the future for monitoring error counts. but for now the log file will have the truth. Let me know what you find, because that will point us in one direction or the other.
On our services, I absolutely definitely see busy sim hosts having their input channels saturated. And when that happens, you are going to have retries, and I’ve seen some pretty hard cases of that. Some of the big social things that get put on Second Life [such as RFL] often get put on concentrated sim hosts, and these really get victimised by this problem. But again, permanent failures, they’ll be in the logs and you can look at that. Beyond that, I’ll se what i can find out.
A problem with obtaining logs is that people will often encounter problems like this a few times and the revert back to an earlier release of the viewer. So, if you are using a viewer (SL or Firestorm) with the HTTP updates and encounters persistent rendering issues or failures when moving around SL, please consider taking a couple of minutes to fill-out a JIRA, attach your log file and submit it. Monty is very sensitive to HTTP issues, but in order to respond to them, he needs data, not anecdotes.
Other Items
AIS v3
[02:56] Oz Linden reported that ther server-side AIS v3 code will be enabled across all three RC channels (LeTigre BlueSteel and Magnum) in week 14. As BlueSteel and LeTigre had AIS v3 enabled with server update 14.03.07.287758 and Magnum with update 14.02.21.286985, I can only assume that it was disabled again with the Magnum update 14.03.12.288004 in week 13.
Male Avatar Chest Rendering Broken / Mesh Clothes Breaking on Male Avatars
This issue related to BUG-5537, where there is a discrepancy on how the AV mesh shape is rendered/viewed by oneself and by others in the male AV chest portion, so that while an item of rigged mesh clothing looks fine to the user when viewing his avatar, other people see parts of the avatar’s chest still poking through the outfit. There has also been discussion of the issue on the forums.
The Lab is currently investigating the issue, but have no definitive answer on the problem as yet.
A TPV developer meeting took place on Friday March 14th. The core items discussed in the meeting are reported below, with timestamps in the relevant paragraphs indicating the point at they are discussed in the video embedded here. My thanks as always to North for the latter.
SL Viewer Updates
[0:01:37] The list of release candidates in the release channel remains unchanged from part two of this week’s projects updates, and as per my Current Viewer Releases page.
FmodEx RC
[0:01:44] The FmodEx Hotfix viewer RC (version 3.7.4.287875), is a fix Monty Linden has been working on, and is described by Oz Linden as:
A threading problem that at least manifests when there are various FmodEx things going on, but is not strictly speaking an FmodEx problem. We think that was a good and important fix, but it doesn’t seem to have done all we hoped it would do yet.
Whether or not this is a fix TPVs would need to implement quickly or not is down to how they have implemented FmodEx.
Voice RC
[0:02:38] The Voice RC is essentially the release viewer with the Vivox 4.6.x SLvoice plugin packaged with it for Windows and Mac. Commenting on in from a Mac perspective, Oz Linden indicated that it does appear to solve a number of issues, such as working with an iPhone headset adaptor, which was an issue with earlier versions, as well as addressing some Mavericks related issues.
[0:11:11] There has been some confusion over the latest SDK supplied by Vivox, in that only the Windows and Mac versions of 4.6.x have so far been supplied; the Linux version is still an older version. It’s unclear as to when the Linux Vivox SDK will be supplied, as this is apparently seen as a “lower priority” compared to Windows and Mac, although the Lab is working on Vivox to try to improve matters. The Lab is also working to try to get 64-bit versions of the Vivox SDK, which could then be made available to those TPVs building 64-bit versions of their viewers.
Interest List RC
[0:41:54] Concern is raised as the number of updates which form a part of the interest list RC viewer, and whether these may leave TPVs with another “CHUI situation” when trying to merge things. The repository for the viewer has been available since the viewer reached RC status, however, Oz went on to comment:
There’s a bunch of refactoring of things that people decided needed refactoring as a part of the process [and] which may or may not have been strictly needed as [a] part of interest lists; that is, part of the functional change that that branch is doing. Some of it was a new trace capability that’s used in a bunch of places where they wanted to take the measurements they wanted to take about it.
The interest list RC is working its way towards release status … slowly …
There have been various stability issues with the interest list RC, hence why it has remained an RC rather than being promoted to the de facto release viewer. However, it is now reaching the point where its stability is comparable to that of the other RCs in the release channel – and is actually better than some.
In terms of merges, there is the potential for the interest list viewer to cause TPVs some problems, as there appear to be changes to llCommons and other libraries which are causing issues for those TPVs which have attempted a merge.
Google Breakpad
[0:04:53] The Google Breakpad RC is due to make another appearance, as a “bunch of issues have been wrestled to the ground”, and the hope is that when it does appear in the release channel, it will mark the last round of updates for that particular project, and those TPVs using Google Breakpad are advised to take a look at what the Lab has done.
Overall Status for RCs
[0:04:10] Overall, it appears as if none of the RCs are performing as well as the Lab would like them to be in terms of crash rates. It had been hoped that the FmodEx Hotfix RC would get the Lab back below what Oz referred to as “an acceptable, if not admirable, crash rate”, but it has not done so as yet.However, the other RCs in the channel should see updates released in week 12 (week commencing Monday March 17th), one or more of which may improve the crash rates.
[0:43:56] In terms of what does get promoted next, the most likely candidate will be the RC which shows clear evidence that it is reducing the crash rate compared to current levels across the release and RC viewers.
[0:05:27] In the meantime, because of the volume of RCs sitting in the release channel, the Lab are holding back a number of further RCs,. These include the Project Zipper (faster installer) viewer being updated to RC status, and the group ban viewer (although there are bugs in this which are still being worked upon). There is also likely to be a further Snowstorm RC appearing with a mix of code contributions, again once the number of viewers currently in the release channel is thinned-down a little.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 