Second Life News 2019 w14

There was lots of detailed information in the third-party dev UG meeting last week. We got a bunch of information on what is happening with a couple of problems. Currently, disconnects and detachments are front lines.

Servers

From ‘How Does Your Avatar Look Today?’ 4/2019 – Click

The main channel rolls to #19.03.15.525315. This is the OS upgrade. It includes the EEP support.

The RC channels Blue Steel, Le Tigre, and Magnum will be the first version with UDP asset fetching disabled or removed. See the Tools & Tech section of the SL blog Obsolete Asset Fetch Disabled for more details.

The UDP change will mean older viewers using UDP asset fetching will stop working correctly. Avatars are likely to not render or render as Ruth/Roth. Sooner or later you will have to update…

Disconnects

The RC channels will have a change that is hoped will help with the disconnect problems people are experiencing, which seems to have started in December or January. Some think EEP is causing the disconnects. EEP is coincidental with the disconnects. The current analysis of the problem suggests it is in the TCP communication between the viewers and servers.

In the March 29, Third-Party Dev UG meeting Oz talks about the problem and why it took the Lindens so long to notice. Video Basically, the problem is not showing in the performance stats the Lindens watch.

The disconnects seem to fall into groups, those occurring during a teleport and those that are periodic (disconnect every so many minutes). People trying to chase the problem down are having problems reproducing the disconnect. They have the problem rated as #1 & #2 and have lots of people on it full time plus a QA team of remote users, meaning far from the Lab distance-wise.

There are rumors about different things one can do to stop the disconnects, change the WL/EEP sky, cancel a TP mid-teleport (cancel, open World Map – find destination region – wait for it to come up and you pop in), and others. For others the key is location, Blake Sea is a problem and Heterocera is not a problem.

For others, it is the number of crossings they make. And for yet others, none of these things cause a disconnect.

Also, older viewer users, the Obsolete Viewer & Singularity, have a higher risk of getting disconnected every 15 mins and/or having TP disconnects. Singularity created a fix for the problem. Simon Linden saw it and doubted it would work, well… solve the problem. Singularity added better error handling, a good thing. But, the problem is the error occurring outside Singularity and the server timeouts.

Simon Linden said, “The failures I’ve investigated seem to be falling into a middle-limbo where the first region thinks it’s handed you off successfully, but the 2nd doesn’t get all the data it expects and eventually times out.

But, there are other issues. I’ve noticed odd behavior after the crossing and during the crossing. When flying I’ll see my self and my heli pop down to the 0,0,0 coordinate of the destination region. I’ll sometimes see my HUDs disappear and then reappear. This happens because UDP world-update messages are received out of order. The viewer/server communication can deliver the bit of information that an attachment is an attachment and not something to rez in-world too late, so it ends up rendering at world-relative coordinates rather than as attached avatar-relative coordinates. Things correct in time or at the next update… most times.

If you have been suffering disconnects, try the RC regions to see if there is a difference. Denby is in the Blue Steel RC. As are the regions to the north and south. You can click Help->About… to see if a region is in an RC channel. If it is, the channel name will be in the About… info.

Detaching

Many of us are seeing more detachments… attachments that disappear after a teleport. Video Oz says they have found a number of things that are believed contribute to the problem. They have a theory on what is causing the problem. A couple of people have been and are working on the problem. Oz feels they are making good progress and I’ll point out they have found a way to reproduce the problem, which is always a big help in solving a problem.

Viewers

The main viewer is version 6.1.1.525446. – New this week. The previous version was the BugSplat Error Reporting version released in week #10. This viewer adds retina display support on Mac and has a variety of graphics-related fixes aka Love Me Render. This may lower your FPS. You can disable HiDPI. See the release notes.

Second Life Bakes On Mesh Viewer version 6.1.1.525409 – Released week #13.

Second Life EAM Viewer version 6.2.0.525404 – Released week #13.

Second Life EEP Viewer version 6.2.0.525808 – New. Previous version released week #11.

My previous article Big EEP Fear is about the problems with EEP. They were discussed at the Third-Party Dev UG meeting. I would not be surprised to see Rider squeeze in a fix for the issue. Several people think a solution of hiding the numbers and blocking a save would allow people to tweak a No-Mod EEP Environment. I am hoping that is added to the next iteration of this viewer.

Second Life Maintenance Viewer version 6.1.1.525401 – Released week #13.

Second Life Project 360 Snapshot Viewer version 5.1.6.515934 – Last updated in 2018 week #10. We are over one year.

Forced 32-Bit

Those with older motherboards and CPU’s may find they are forced into using the 32-bit Viewer. The Linden made SL Viewer does this switch to 32-bit when it updates. The reason is the older HD Graphics built into the CPU and chipset don’t support the needed graphics. So, they use the 32-bit to force Windows to run a graphics version that will work with HD Graphics and the SL Viewer. (That is worded poorly tech-wise but, you get the idea.)

Of course, that workaround has you running the crash-prone 32-bit viewer. While livable, it is going to be annoying.

Third-Party Viewers

Black Dragon has an informative post about shadows. So, if you are curious about the tech of shadows in SL…

Other News

There is a thing with Marketplace Search and maturity ratings. Seems regardless of the setting, PG, M, or A, the initial page presents some hardcore porn ads. I keep mine set at ‘Adult’ so I wouldn’t notice what happens with a PG or M setting.

Users have been complaining and one of the third-party dev’s is filing a JIRA feature request. You’ll have to search for it. It isn’t up as I write this… or I can’t find it.

If you want to push the Lab to get the hardcore sex ads out of your face, attend the Web UG meeting April 24 (4th Wednesday of the month) @ 2Pm SLT in Denby (map URL).

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