Tag: TPVD meetings 2015

SL project updates week 17/2: TPV meeting – CEF, Inventory

Posted on by Inara Pey

Fantasy Faire 2015: YoZakura; Inara Pey, April 2015, on Flickr Fantasy Faire – April 23rd to May 3rd, 2015: YoZakura (Flickr)

The following notes are primarily taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, April 24th,  a video of which is included below (my thanks as always to North for recording it and providing it for embedding), and from the Server Beta meeting held on Thursday, March 26th. Any time stamps contained within the following text refer to the TPV developer meeting video.

Server Deployments, Week 17 – Recap

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

  • On Tuesday, April 20th, the Main (SLS) channel received the server maintenance package deployed to all three RC channel in week #16, which comprises internal server logging changes and new flags for llGetObjectDetails()
    • OBJECT_BODY_SHAPE_TYPE – returned list entry is a float between 0.0 and 1.0. Anything > 0.5 is male, otherwise female; -1.0 if the avatar is not found
    • OBJECT_HOVER_HEIGHT – returned list entry is a float, -1.0 if the avatar is not found.
  • There were no deployment or restart on the three RC channels on Wednesday, April 22nd.

SL Viewer Updates

[05:50] The Tools Update viewer, version  3.7.28.300918, was promoted to the de facto release viewer on April 23rd – see my article here for details. During its run as an RC viewer, this release had around a 2% lower crash rate than the release viewer built using the “old” tool set and processes.

As a result of this, all the remaining RC and project viewers are being updated to match the release viewer code base, and updated versions should be appearing soon.

Attachment Fixes Viewer (Project BigBird)

[07:42] This viewer, current available as a project viewer – version 3.7.28.300856 – and which fixes a range of issues related to avatar attachment failures, is in the process of being updated to a Release Candidate status, and should be appearing in the release pipeline as such in week #18.

[29:28] The Lab believes that these fixes resolve all of the viewer-side issues related to attachment problems which are related to AIS v3. However, a number of the more noticeable issues  – such as problems with attachments being detached on teleporting – are server-side, and require further investigation / fixing.  Similarly, failures with requests to attach multiple items (such as during an outfit change) also appear to be simulator-related, rather than anything within the viewer or linked to AIS v3.

Oculus Rift Viewer

[07:55] The Oculus Rift viewer is now on the schedule to be updated and brought into line with more recent viewer code releases. There is no set time scale for this project (and the Oculus Rift itself, according to Oculus VR, is unlike to reach a consumer release in 2015), but the aim is to bring it back to a “more active” state.

Viewer-Managed Marketplace

[00:08] Brooke Linden gave an update on VVM – as this is of interest to a potentially wider audience than those interested in viewer development, I’ve provided a separate article on it.

Web Media (Webkit and CEF)

[08:41] The Lab is making “pretty good” progress on replacing webkit, an increasingly outdated third-party library used within the viewer for powering the built-in web browser, displaying web profiles and powering in-world media (TVs, MOAP, etc.), with the Chromium Embedded Framework. The Mac work is lagging a little behind this, but the Lab has now called-in external expertise to help move the project forward as a whole.

Request for TPV / Open-source Support for Linux

[09:17]  The Lab is seeking support from TPV developers and the open-source community to help maintain and move the Linux flavour of the viewer forward. For details, please see my  separate article in this blog, complete with an audio extract from the meeting.

Snapshots to E-mail

[12:27] The send snapshot as e-mail capability is in the process of being removed from the viewer.

The main reason for this is that wherever possible, snapshots are sent via the “secondlife.com” domain, but use the sender’s own e-mail address as the originating address in the “from” field of the sent e-mail which appears as if the “from” address is being forged. This, and other ways in which e-mails flowing out from “secondlife.com” are handled, has resulted in some ISPs regarding the domain as a spam domain, and have been pro-actively blocking it (Germany-based GMX is one such example).

To rectify these problems, the Lab is reviewing how e-mails from “secondlife.com” are being managed as a whole, and eliminating those uses which may conceivably lead to the domain In the case of the snapshot floater, the Lab’s perspective is that the easiest way to fix the problem is to remove the option from the snapshot floater; however as was pointed out to them in the meeting, this will break content such as wardrobe HUD systems which utilise the snapshots to e-mail functionality.

Other Items

HTTP and CDN Use Expansion

[20:35] The Lab is working on increasing the number of assets such as animations, sounds, and gestures, consumed by the viewer to being delivered via HTTP the CDN, and removing the reliance on UDP. This is for a number of reasons:

  • It further fees-up resources on the simulator to do what they do best – simulate the world around us, rather than using them for managing UDP file transfers
  • The use of UDP is not the most efficient or robust means of carrying out these transfers
  • UDP is bad for the network; there’s no flow control packet or congestion control behaviour, it can result in high packet losses which may occur anywhere between the the server and the viewer, and thus be hard to identify and prevent in future, etc.

As this work progresses, the Lab will be removing the server-side support for the UDP messaging currently used by such transfers. This has already happened with inventory fetching (and the option to disable HTTP Inventory is due to be removed from the viewer), and will be happening soon with texture fetching (which will also see the removal of the option to disable HTTP Textures in the viewer).

To help with this, TPVs are being encouraged to work with the Lab to identify specific / reproducible  issues users are encountering vis HTTP, etc., so that more work can be put into fixing them, and the Lab is asking TPVs not to recommend to users to switch back to the “old ways” of doing things when potential HTTP problems are encountered, as the 2old way may not be around for much longer.

Continue reading “SL project updates week 17/2: TPV meeting – CEF, Inventory” →

SL Project updates week 15/2: TPV Developer meeting

Posted on by Inara Pey

Tillicum Island; Inara Pey, March 2015, on FlickrTillicum Island (Flickr) – blog post

The following notes are primarily taken from the TPV Developer (TPVD) meeting held on Friday, April 10th, and from the Server Beta meeting held on Thursday, April 9th. A video of the TPVD meeting is included below, with any time stamps in the following text referring to the video. My thanks as always to North for the recording and providing it for embedding,

Server Deployments Week 15 – Recap

As always, please refer to the server deployment thread in the forums for the latest information and updates.

  • On Tuesday, April 7th the Main (SLS) channel received the server maintenance update previously deployed to the three RC channels, which sees UDP inventory messaging deprecated (HTTP Inventory in the viewer MUST be enabled for your inventory to fetch correctly / your avatar to render in your view –  details here and further notes below)
  • On Wednesday, April 8th all three RC channels received a new server maintenance package comprising a crash fix, minor CDN configuration updates and an internal server configuration update.

HTTP Inventory

[15:18] The Lab is still planning to remove the HTTP Inventory option and setting from their viewer “soon”. In addition, as a part of their overall work on improving inventory handling, the Lab is planning on removing the viewer-side code for UDP inventory fetching from their viewer, citing the time frame in which this is likely to happen as being “weeks or months, more likely months”.

Firestorm has already removed the option in preparation for their upcoming release, and has set that viewer so that if anyone currently has HTTP Inventory disabled, it will automatically be re-enabled in installing the new release over their older version.

Forthcoming Deployment

A new change destined for the RC channels is an update to llGetObjectDetails(), which adds new functions for avatar shape identification and hover height:

  • OBJECT_BODY_SHAPE_TYPE – returned list entry is a float between 0.0 and 1.0, -1.0 if the avatar is not found
  • OBJECT_HOVER_HEIGHT – returned list entry is a float, -1.0 if the avatar is not found.

SL Viewer

Avatar Layer Limits

[03:00] The Avatar Layer Limits viewer updated from project to RC status with the release of version 3.7.27.300567 on April 9th. This allows users to wear up to 60 wearable layers (jackets, shirts, tattoo, alpha, etc.) in any combination. Until these updates reach the main viewer (and all TPVs), those using it will find their layers will only adhere to the new global limit whilst using this RC viewer.

A update to the baking service which will enforce the new global limit  will be deployed once it has passed LL’s QA testing.

[05:23] Again, please note that this update only applies to avatar wearing (clothing) layers; it does not apply to attachments, which remain at the global limit of 38. The Lab currently has no plans to alter this, not only because they’re work to resolve a series of attachment issues, but also because large numbers of attachments on avatars can impact viewer performance due to the way in which they are handled.

[11:38] The above notwithstanding, a further update to the attachment fixes project viewer (currently at version 3.7.27.300377) is expected soon, possibly in week #16.

Maintenance Viewer

[06:36] The Maintenance RC viewer updated to version 7.27.300636 on April 9th. This viewer includes multiple fixes and improvements. It now appears that all of the issues reported against this viewer when first released have now been resolved, and subject to the performance of this new version as an RC, it looks set to be promoted as the next de facto release viewer.

Tools Update Viewer

[08:50] The “final” set of fixes and updates for the Tools Update RC viewer (currently version 3.7.27.300242) are with the Lab’s QA team. If all goes according to plan, these should be appearing shortly in an update to the RC viewer, which should then place it as the next-in-line for promotion to the de facto release viewer  after the Maintenance RC has been promoted.

Once this viewer does reach release status, it will mean the Lab will have switched to the new viewer build process. As a result, the official viewer will no longer install on Windows XP or versions of Mac OS X below 10.7. This will also be true of any TPVs which fully switch to the the new build process in the future.

Viewer-Managed Marketplace

[00:00] The first element of the server-side deployment occurred in week #15. However, there are two further elements awaiting deployment, which will roll-out to the servers over the next two weeks. So the Lab is hoping that things might be ready for wider beta testing to commence in the week #17 (commencing Monday, April 20th).

Continue reading “SL Project updates week 15/2: TPV Developer meeting” →

SL Project updates week 13/2: TPV Developer meeting – HTTP, VMM and more

Posted on by Inara Pey

Matoluta Sanctuary, Sartre; Inara Pey, March 2015, on Flickr Matoluta Sanctuary (Flickr) – blog post

The following notes are primarily taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, March 27th,  a video of which is included towards the end of the article (my thanks as always to North for recording it and providing it for embedding), and from the Server Beta meeting held on Thursday, March 26th. Any time stamps contained within the following text refer to the TPV developer meeting video.

Server Deployments Week 13 – Recap

As always, please refer to the deployment thread in the forums for the latest updates / news.

  • On Tuesday, March 24th, the Main (SLS) channel received the server maintenance package deployed to the three RCs in week 12, comprising updates which allow the Lab to make various configuration changes without having to necessarily run a rolling restart when they have done so. It contains not actual functional changes to the simulator software
  • On Wednesday, March 25th, the three RC channels received the same new server maintenance package, which is focused on inventory loss issues, and provides the Lab with better error detection and logging, improving their ability to look at some of the failure places and the removal of unused code. This updates does not remove the server-side messaging used in support of RTLP.

SL Viewer Update

Avatar Layers Project Viewer

Vir Linden’s work on a new global limit for system layer clothing was released as a project viewer, version 3.7.26.299805. With this viewer, a user can wear any combination of clothing layers (wearables), up to a maximum of 60, rather than being limited to (in general, and as with the official viewer) to a maximum of 5 items per layer type. Note that these changes do not apply to body part wearables (skin, shape, hair, eyes), for which the limit is still one of each, and do not affect attachments, for which the limit is still 38 total.

[07:18] There is already an update in the pipe for this viewer, which should be appearing next week.

Camera Positioning / Handling

[05:12] While there are no specific details as yet, the lab is hoping to put some work into improving camera positioning and handling in the not too distant future, in the hope of removing various glitches and issues.

Build Tools Viewer

[05:54] There have been a few fixes added to this viewer (currently version 3.7.26.299443), so a further update to the release candidate version is with the Lab’s QA team and should be appearing in week #14 (week commencing Monday, March 30th).

Maintenance Release Viewer

[06:29] Currently at version 3.7.26.299845, the latest Maintenance release viewer has a range of issues, many of which have hopefully been addressed with a series of fixes, so an update to that viewer is also with the Lab’s QA team. However, given the scope of the updates, it is proving a little harder to pass the QA process.

Experience Tools Viewer

[06:50] The Experience Keys / Tools viewer (currently version 3.8.0.299338) is being merged-up with the latest release version of the viewer code (version 3.7.26.299635). The updated version should also be appearing (again as an RC) in week #14.

Viewer Code

[17:27 – 19:50] There is an interesting discussion on the viewer code which, for anyone interested in how the viewer has developed over the years, and how much of it dates back some 14 years.

Viewer-Managed Marketplace

[00:00] There was a pile-on test of the new Viewer-Managed Marketplace capability on Aditi in week #12, and Brooke Linden was at the TPV Developer meeting to provide feedback. The pile-on test did not reveal any significant issues in terms of performance.

However, there is still a viewer / simulator / marketplace  communications issue which has to be resolved, which may take another couple of weeks to fix. After that, there are two grid deployments which need to take place: one for the VMM code itself, and one for updates to the Advanced Inventory System (AIS), so it is unlikely VMM will be fully deployed within the next month to two month, and the project viewer (currently version 3.7.25.298865) is unlikely to progress through a release candidate to release status until after the server components have been deployed.

Group Chat

Simon Linden has been working on significant improvements to the group chat service
Simon Linden has been working on significant improvements to the group chat service

[07:32] Simon Linden has been continuing to work on the group chat code, and all of his current updates should have been deployed to the back-end group chat servers. A broad consensus is that the issues which recently occurred as a result of some changes have been reversed, and that the group chat service as a whole is now running a lot better, both in terms of the early performance improvements Simon made, and with regards to the overall stability of the service and the servers.

[08:24] There is a further round of updating in the planning, but these require a platform upgrade to be carried out for the group chat service first. Therefore, unless unless the latest set of updates deployed by the Lab start to show issues, the engineering team will be switching focus for the immediate future, and will return to working on group chat once the necessary upgrade work has been completed.

Experience Keys  / Tools

[09:20] One of the items the engineering team want to focus on in particular is Experiences, and getting the remaining back-end issues sorted out so that Experiences can be properly deployed.

Voice Updates

[09:59] There will be a further round of voice updates which are expected to appear in a project viewer “shortly”. They include (but are not limited to) things like general code clean-up to prevent unnecessary list loading, removal of media messaging in person-to-person calls (which has never worked), fixes for issues related to microphone volume and improvements to the microphone test so that you can now hear yourself when testing your microphone, and improvements for hot swapping microphones / headsets.

[13:58] There is some confusion over whether or not a fix to voice designed to prevent someone’s voice channel being “left behind” when teleporting between regions has actually worked. It had been thought that the fix for this had been deployed in later 2014. However, bug reports are still being made still reporting issues (see BUG-8543 and STORM-2109), prompting the Lab to re-examine the status of the fix.

[19:54] Voice package updates from Vivox are also expected to be forthcoming in the future as well.

Restore To Last Position (RTLP)

Oz Linden - keeping an eye on feedback through the Firestorm blog on "restore to last position"
Oz Linden – keeping an eye on feedback through the Firestorm blog on “restore to last position”

[21:08] There have been around 400 responses to the Firestorm call for feedback on how people use the Restore To Last Position functionality found in some TPVs. As I’ve previously reported, the Lab had been considering deprecating the server-side message RTLP uses as an overall part of on-going work to reduce the amount of inventory loss issues (real or perceived) which can occur.

Firestorm’s call is helping the Lab to better understand how, as faulty as it might be, RTLP does fulfil a range of useful / valid use cases. Commenting on the fact the he has been reading through the feedback, Oz Linden said:

[21:49] Well, I understand that there are user scenarios that need to be addressed and need to be better supported. Whether the existing feature is the way to do that or not, I still consider to be an open question. I do want to take those use cases and work back through that process [of determining how best to serve them].

So the Lab still isn’t going to do anything “quickly” either way on RTLP, and people needn’t worry about RTLP vanishing / breaking “suddenly”.

In the meantime, they are working on other changes intended to address various rezzing failure situations. This work is more server-side focused, although it may be a while before updates appear on the grid as the exact nature of the updates is still being determined.

[23:42] Oz also again thanked everyone who responded to the Lab’s call for feedback on inventory losses in general, defining the feedback as “really, really useful”.

Continue reading “SL Project updates week 13/2: TPV Developer meeting – HTTP, VMM and more” →

SL projects update week 11/2: TPV Developer meeting + misc news

Posted on by Inara Pey

Armenelos, Calas Galadhon; Inara Pey, March 2015, on Flickr The Shire (Flickr) – blog post

The following notes are primarily taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, March 13th,  a video of which is included at the end of the article (my thanks as always to North for recording it and providing it for embedding), and any time stamps contained within the following text refer to it.

Server Deployments Week 11 – Recap

As always, please refer to the sever deployment thread for the latest updates and information.

  • There was no Main (SLS) channel deployment on Tuesday, March 10th
  • On Wednesday, March 11th, all three RC channels received the same new server maintenance package comprising “internal improvements for premium users”.

SL Viewer

The Avatar Hover Height viewer reached the release channel on March 10th, with the release of an RC version (3.7.26.299635). Avatar Hover Height allows you to adjust the vertical position of your avatar within some preset limits. See the wiki page and my overview.

This brings the total number of RC viewers in the viewer release channel to four, however:

  • [0:41] It is unlikely the Maintenance RC viewer (currently version 3.7.26.299610, released on March 6th) will be promoted without further update, as it has been found to contain a significant number of additional bugs which require fixing
  • [0:51] As the Avatar Hover Height RC viewer has only just been released, it is unlikely that the Lab will have enough stats on it to judge whether or not it can be promoted to the de facto release viewer in the immediate future; it is therefore likely to remain at RC status for at least another week, although initial reports suggest it is stable and doesn’t hide any unpleasantness
  • [01:07] The back-end support for Experience Keys / Tools still isn’t ready for the service to go live, although the Lab is making further progress with whatever needed to be done; it is therefore remains unlikely the that Experience Keys viewer (currently version 3.8.0.299338, released on March 9th) will be promoted to the de facto release viewer until such time as the remaining back-end work has been completed.

Tools Update Viewer and XP Users

[01:20] This potentially means that the Tools Update RC viewer (currently version 3.7.26.299443, released on March 4th) may be promoted to the de facto release viewer in week #12.

When this happens, it will obviously mean that all future builds of the official viewer will be made using the new tool chain and autobuild process. This in turn means that any Windows version of the viewer built using the new tools set (which includes MS visual Studio 2013)  will not run on any version (32-, or 64-bit) version of Windows XP. To this end, the installer is being set so that it requires a minimum of Windows Vista with Service Pack 2 installed, in order for it to successfully install the viewer.

Note that this is not a deliberate attempt to block XP users from Second Life; it is purely the result of the Lab moving towards the use of up-to-date tools for building the viewer (and which will yield positive benefits elsewhere, such as with greater tool commonality between the Lab and TPVs), and some of these tools do not support windows XP due to its age and it no longer being actively supported by Microsoft.

[16:54] Some TPVs may investigate / opt to build the viewer somewhat manually using the new tool chain in such a way that it can be used on XP, but this is reportedly requires a “very large amount of work” to achieve, requires a lot of command line input, an avoidance of VS 2013, and is “really hacky”.

Project Viewers

    • [03:28] The Viewer-Managed Marketplace project viewer (currently version 3.7.25.298865, released on February 13th) is liable to be updated in week #12 as a result of further fixes and updates that came out of the last round of testing
    • [04:20] The Mesh Importer project viewer (currently version 3.7.25.298441, released on February 3rd), is currently undergoing further update with new fixes and will be updated as a project viewer in the near future.

 

Avatar Layers Global Limit

Vir Linden - working on the new wearable layers code
Vir Linden – working on the new wearable layers code

[04:41] In response to  BUG-6258, “Popularity of Mesh Attachments Facilitates Need For More Alpha Layers”,  the Lab is working to implement a new “global” limit to the number of system clothing layers an avatar can wear.

Under the current system, there are 12 types of clothing layers or wearables (alpha, tattoo, undershirt, shirt, jacket, underpants, pants, gloves, socks,  skirts, shoes, and physics), with (generally) up to 5 of each type of wearable able to be worn at the same time, giving a maximum of 60 wearables that can worn simultaneously.

Under the new code being developed by Vir Linden, a new “global” limit of 60 wearable layers is being set per avatar, and users will be able to wear any number / combination of layers up to that limit (so you could opt to wear 60 jacket layers if you wanted, or 10 each of alpha, shirt, pants, gloves, jacket and socks, for example).

This update requires changes to both the viewer and to the server-side Appearance (SSA) service. The viewer-side changes are updates to the viewer’s logic, so it is purely checking the number of worn layers against the global limit of 60, rather than limits set for individual layers. The SSA changes will similarly support the new “global” use of clothing layers, but will also continue to support the 5-per-layer limit for viewers that do not adopt the newer code, or require a longer lead time in order to adopt the new viewer code, once it is available, thus providing a measure of “back compatibility”. The viewer code is expected to appear in a project viewer once it, and the back-end changes have cleared the Lab’s QA team.

Group Chat

[09:29]  As noted in my recent updates, changes made to the group change service in the last two weeks unexpectedly resulted in up to 20% of messages failing to be delivered correctly. Simon Linden spent a fair amount of time during week #10 stabilising things and delivering further updates to try to correct the problem. As a result, in what has been called an “educational” two weeks for the Lab, the situation has been largely reversed, although some problems still remain.

The Server Beta User Group meeting on Thursday, March 12th, saw a further set of updates from Simon undergo testing on the Beta grid, and during the TPV Developer meeting on Friday, March 13th, Oz indicated that the Lab will probably undertake a further round of “serious” upgrading of all the technology associated with group chat before they declare the project in any way “finished”. This will likely involve putting the back-end service support group chat on more up-to-date hardware and OS environments.

Continue reading “SL projects update week 11/2: TPV Developer meeting + misc news” →

SL project updates week 9/2: TPV meeting, SL roadmap notes

Posted on by Inara Pey

Less Than Three, Special One; Inara Pey, February 2015, on Flickr Less Than Three, Special One (Flickr) – blog post

The following notes are primarily taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, February 27th,  a video of which is included at the end of the article (my thanks as always to North for recording it and providing it for embedding), and any time stamps contained within the following text refer to it.

Server Deployments Week 9 Re-cap

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

  • There was no deployment to the Main (SLS) channel on Tuesday, February 24th
  • On Wednesday, February 25th, all three RC channels received the same server maintenance package, which comprises:
    • A server-side fix for BUG-8297, “Unable to teleport anywhere using SLGO”
    • Improvement to server logging.

SL Viewer

Viewer-Managed Marketplace Project Viewer

[0:35] As noted at the last TPV Developer meeting, the VMM functionality still has some issues that are being worked on. some of these appear to be on the back-end of things, rather than within the viewer itself. As such, it is unlikely that there will be further updates to the viewer in the near future while these are being addressed.

Experience Tools Viewer

[0:50] The Lab is also continuing to work on the back-end of things for Experience Tools / Keys. This work is apparently focused on overall robustness of the service prior to fully deploying it to the grid. As no viewer-side changes are anticipated as a result of this work, the viewer itself should be ready for promotion to the de facto release viewer once the Lab is ready to go with things.

Avatar Hover Height Project Viewer

[4:21]  Vir Linden is continuing to work on a couple of the bugs uncovered during testing. One of these is related to leg position issues, which can see an avatar’s leg “buckle” if the position is adjusted downwards such that the feet sink into the ground, becoming more and more pronounced the lower the avatar is set. Currently, there is no ETA on providing a fix for this.

Mesh Importer Viewer

[5:47 – via chat]  It is anticipated that the Mesh Importer project viewer (currently version ) will receive an update in week #10.

Tools Update Viewer

[6:56] A line has been drawn under the current set of changes to the viewer-side build tools, so the aim is now to get the viewer in the release channel.

However, there are further changes already being queued behind the current set of updates, many of them contributed by open-source developers, which the Lab believe will further improve the viewer build process. As such, it is likely that there will be further updates to the viewer in relation to the build tools, most likely in the form of a “build clean-up” viewer, which will likely include all of the agreed updates which didn’t make it into the current version of the build tools viewer code.

The hope is that, moving forward, all viewers – LL’s own and TPVs  – can, as far as possible, be built using the same tool set the only difference being whether or not a TPV sets a build switch to use proprietary libraries (e.g. Havok) or not.

Group Chat

[2:10] The Lab continues to roll-out updates as a result of this work, and updates focused on the issue of group chat servers themselves stalling, and they are confident that progress is being made. This is supported by anecdotal evidence from moderators of large groups with active chat, who are indicating the instances of visible server slow-down / stalling have been decreasing over the past week or so. Commenting on this during the TPVD meeting, Oz Linden said, “we haven’t declared victory in this yet, but it’s looking a lot more stable.”

In the meantime, some groups are reporting performance issues whereby for short periods – measured in terms of 2-3 minutes, where group chat messages won’t go through at all, and no time-out message is being displayed by the viewer, while other messages are being delayed, but then getting through, but without the massive roll of delayed messages. These may be related to previous changes made to improve the overall performance of group chat, and news of the problems is being taken back to the Lab for investigation.

Attachment Reliability

[4:39] As I most recently reported in week 8, there are on-going issues related to attachments. Vir Linden has also been investigating these, and there is a project viewer in development which includes fixes for those issues the Lab has been able to consistently reproduce. Unfortunately, the infamous BUG-6925 is not among these, but Vir hopes that the updates he’s been making will address it to some degree.

There is currently no ETA for the project viewer, but the Lab hopes that when it does appear, they’ll get some clear and constructive feedback on what it does and does not seem to address.

Continue reading “SL project updates week 9/2: TPV meeting, SL roadmap notes” →

SL project updates 7/2: TPV Developer meeting

Posted on by Inara Pey
The Centaurs' Hall - blog post
The Centaurs’ Hall – blog post

The following notes are primarily taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, February 13th. A video of the TPV Developer meeting is included at the end of the article (my thanks as always to North for recording it and providing it for embedding), and any time stamps contained within the following text refer to both it and the TPV Developer meeting.

SL Viewer

Avatar Hover Height (AHH)

[09:17] It had been expected that the Avatar Hover Height project viewer (version 3.7.25.298129) might have been replaced by a release candidate during the course of the past week. However, some of the reported issues are still being worked on, most of which are related to the code which tries to keep an avatar’s feet in contact with the ground, and problems which can occur in certain extreme cases. It is now anticipated that the viewer will be updated to a release candidate viewer once these issues have been fixed.

 Viewer Build Tools

[14:37] It had been hoped that this viewer would be updated with a release candidate version prior to the long weekend no change window (see below), however it didn’t clear QA in time. Unless something significant happens on the QA side, this viewer should therefore reach release candidate status some time during week 8 (Week commencing Monday, February 16th).

However, it is anticipated it will undergo further updates while at RC status, and so therefore is unlikely to progress directly from RC to the de facto release viewer in a short space of time. One such update might be to include various patches to further simplify the build process, notably for windows, for example.

Graphics Settings and Avatar Rendering

[19:49] This work is a combination of STORM-2082, which allows users to create and save multiple graphics settings defaults, and internal work carried out by the lab to help users improve their viewer performance by defining limited above which avatars with heavy rendering costs are replaced by a solid colour. A viewer with these updates has been under limited testing for a while,  and is liable to be appearing very soon, particularly given the Lab’s recent announcement on forthcoming improvements.

Mesh Importer

[23:43] There are a fair number of bugs and issues which have been identified with the current mesh importer project viewer (see the JIRA filter list for details), it is therefore unlikely that it will be progressing in the short term.

Viewer-Managed Marketplace (VMM)

[00:05] A new version of the Viewer-Managed Marketplace project viewer was released on Friday, February 13th, version 3.7.25.298865. This viewer includes updates as a result of feedback from initial testing on Aditi, and is available for further testing, but again must be used on Aditi in regions ACME D, E, or F.

A number of issues remain open with This update:

  • VMM-20 Include product listing ID in audit listings window results
  • VMM-18 Add “sort by age of listing creation”
  • VMM-17 Support listing folders at any level of Marketplace Listings folder.

A list of key changes can be found on the forum update announcing the release of the new version of the viewer, and further details on VMM can be found in the SL wiki FAQ.

This viewer doesn’t address all of the concerns raised during testing, as some are still being discussed internally by the Lab, and a decision has yet to be taken on whether to address the additional concerns (which are presumably non-viewer specific) prior to holding a feedback meeting, or whether to push ahead with a further feedback meeting which might encompass the use of the new project viewer. This largely depends on the likely time frame for addressing the remaining issues: it might be as little as a week or so, or it might potentially be a month or so.

Experience Keys / Tools

[06:34] The Lab is continuing to work on back-end issues which need to be sorted prior to the project progressing. It is still believed that none of these issues directly affect the viewer or will require updates to the viewer, however, it is unlikely the viewer will be updated (other than to maintain parity with any other viewer that might be promoted ahead of it), until such time as the Lab is confident they are ready to start pushing things forward again.

Group Chat

The Lab is also continuing to work on group chat, and a further mini-test took place during the Server Beta User Group meeting on Thursday, February 12th. This focuses on testing viewer-side freezes when opening and closing or swapping between group chat tabs, and chat update times when moving across region boundaries either physically for via teleports. The overall results of these tests were that users experienced almost no viewer-side freezes in comparison to the last tests, where some severe viewer lock-ups were experienced.

[10:27] Most of the effort on group chat is now being directed into these issues of stability and eliminating the need for servers to be restarted as a result of server-side freezes, given that one the whole, performance for the majority (all but some of the very largest groups) has been noticeably improved. In terms of the server freezes, progress is being made, with Oz reporting that there might only be once such instance a day now as a result of fixes already implemented, which is currently being iterated upon as a result of  the additional monitoring / logging capabilities the Lab have also introduced.

Attachment Issues

[24:52] There have been increasing reports on variations of a problem with attachment rendering following teleports / region crossings (e.g. attachments seem to detach and then re-attach, people see their attachments as missing while other see them as still attached – and vice-versa, and so on). Some of the issues are listed in BUG-6925, and the issues have been noted by the Lab.

The likelihood is that these issues are the result of more than one problem, and possibly the result of various race conditions resulting from the complexities of data packaging and hand-over required in both a region crossing and a teleport (which are both essentially the same things – the packaging and handing of data relating to an avatar and its attachments between simulators, and then passing of updated information to users’ viewers). Some also appear to be directly related to AIS v3 (as per BUG-6925) Currently, the Lab is still prioritising SL issues and problems, and  full determination as to what needs to be down to resolve these problems has yet to be made.

In the meantime, if you do encounter the problem, and you’re preferably using the official viewer, you might want to consider filing the following information via BUG-6925:

  • The specific time, origin region (the place you were crossing  / teleporting from) and destination region (the place you were crossing / teleporting to)
  • Avatar name
  • The item ID (UUID) for the attachment(s) exhibiting a problem
  • The viewer log that was recorded at the time the problem occurred.

This will at least provide the Lab with data they can use in further investigations into the issues, once matters have been prioritised.

Other Items

Presidents’ Day

Monday, February 16th marks Presidents’ Day in the United States and Linden Lab will be observing the holiday. This means that there is effectively a no change window in force from February 13th through 16th inclusive. This in turn means:

  • There will be no Open-source development meeting on Monday, February 16th
  • Any server-side deployments scheduled for the week commencing Monday, February 16th will most likely take place a day later than usual. So any Main (SLS) channel deployment will probably occur on Wednesday, February 18th and any RC channel deployments on Thursday, February 19th.