Second Life News 2013-8 #4

There is a little blow back on this rollout, nothing too dramatic.

The server restarting warning changed a bit. If you have the normal human mind, you may not notice the difference. But, it is there. This change is only in the RC channels for now.

New Notification

New Notification

The threaded object rez project hit a last minute bug and was held back from RC. The problem was if you rezzed a copyable object from your inventory, the object would disappear from your inventory, as though it was no-copy. You can imagine the problems that would cause.

I’ll list some other problems that ‘some’ people are noting. We don’t know yet if these are real problems or if they are part of the Interest List change. The bet is good that if they are real problems they are associated with the Interest List. So, if you are seeing these problems, file JIRA’s and let the Lindens know. If you don’t notice things, those things don’t need to be fixed…

Object Area Search

It is currently thought that the Interest List upgrade has broken Area Search in third party viewers (TPV). You should probably file JIRA’s for this problem with your viewer developer.

AO’s Crashes

Some are reporting TPV AO’s are crashing viewers now that Interest List is out… I am not sure I believe the problem and cause are related. Lots of people blame whatever they have last heard changed, which is reasonable but often inaccurate. You should probably file JIRA’s for this problem with your viewer developer. 

Particles

Some are seeing problems with particle changes not registering in the viewer. Small items that disappear a some distance or drop from the update list when an avatar looks away, stop emitting their particle effects… well… they still emit, the viewer just doesn’t render them because the server is not sending the update information.

Lights

Like particles some lights emitting from small objects stop lighting.

Radegast 2.8 Released

An interesting note is the Radegast viewer has added support for SSAB (Server Side Avatar Baking – also known as SSB) and the new Interest List changes.

Several light weight clients for SL have not handled the Interest List changes well. I’m sure they will update quickly.

The Interest List changes are causing some odd problems here and there.

Dwarfins

Ciaran Laval is seeing some odd problems with the Dwarfins. It seems on some parcels they rez as invisible. So, that problem is being looked into…

Server Side Avatar Baking

Thursday there was a pile-on load test of the system. The idea was to arrive in the Sunshine Project’s Viewer (You can download the viewer from that link).

Once there we were asked to start changing outfits. So, change your outfit, wait for it to render then change again. We first tried the process in a region without SSAB enabled. Then moved to another region with SSAB enabled.

Some found that their outfit change failed. In some cases the outfit never completed rendering, basically an avatar-bake-fail. I saw this happen in the area withOUT SSAB.

Others changed outfits a number of times and then the Replace Outfit right-click option stayed grayed out. I ran into that while in the withOUT SSAB region.

Several ran into the same problems in the WITH SSAB region. I did not. My outfit changes went perfectly.

Toward the end of the test I logged out and switched back to the main release of the SL Viewer. The image the FS team provided of what things will look like in viewers without SSAB was what I saw. May be that is what Firestorm users will see. I have both images here. The grey avatars are what I thought we would see and what I did see.

SSAB with a Non-SSAB Viewer

SSAB with a Non-SSAB Viewer

Surprisingly there were some avatars that still rendered in the non-SSAB viewer in the region WITH SSAB. That one I cannot explain.

What you see without SSAB - In Fire Storm

What you see without SSAB – In Fire Storm

I originally assumed that the Lindens were collecting statistics on SSAB. I still think that. I believe they are sizing the backside equipment to provide adequate capacity to the service.  With 40± avatars in the region changing outfits, they should have gotten plenty.

They also ran into some bugs. They asked that those participating and experiencing problems file JIRA’s and include their viewer logs. Hopefully they will get the info they need to fix the problems.

Preview Grid

The Beta or Preview Grid (ADITI) is still having some problems. People there for the pile-on were learning the oddities of ADITI. Some were wondering why there inventories were not in sync with their main grid inventory, not knowing they have to change passwords to get updates. Others were running into inventory problems. I’ve written enough about those I won’t repeat them here. Suffice to say if you have problems change your password, wait 24+ to 48 hours then try again. Keep changing passwords and waiting until it works.

Rez vs Render

We tend to use these words interchangeably. They have different meanings in Second Life. When we rez a cube we are creating something in world. The word rez is thought to mean creating something.

Rendering something means the viewer has drawn it. So, when you put on clothes or rotate an existing cube you are making changes to things that have already rezzed. Whether you see the change is a matter of whether it renders.

In our day to day conversation that doesn’t really matter. But, if you are filing a JIRA or talking with a Linden then it does make a difference. So, if you want a better chance of getting YOUR problem fixed, be precise.

4 thoughts on “Second Life News 2013-8 #4

  1. The Area Search feature keeps working fine for me with the Cool VL Viewer in RC Magnum regions (this channel implements the new interest list code). It’s just a matter of rotating your avatar or camera so to get the objects data sent for the full 360°; increasing your draw distance also increases the number of detected objects.
    Note that this is nothing new, since these tricks already worked with the old interest list code.

    • Yay for Cool VL Viewer.

      The preliminary problems info came from the Server Beta group meeting. It is hard to tell when people are reporting problems unique only to them or not.

  2. As far as I’m aware, the SSB image shown at the FS meeting and which you reproduce here is not what people using a non-SSB viewer will see when on an SSB region.

    Rather, it is an image of what used to be seen when a COF update failed between the SSB enabled viewer and the SSB server. Even then, the image is somewhat out-of-date, as the numbers shown in the image no longer appear on outfit layers should such a failure still occur.

    I’ve cover the general appearance of avatars running both SBB-enabled and non-SSB enabled viewers in Avatar Baking: “and the clock has started!”, based on my own tests using Firestorm, the SL release viewer and the SL Sunshine project viewer.

  3. There is a very bad impact of server side backing that I just discovered yesterday. See this JIRA for details:
    https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SUN-38
    If you are also worried about the consequences, please do vote for *and* watch that issue (Lindens tend to judge about the popularity/importance of a JIRA issue based on its number of watchers).

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