#SL News 2 Week 45

Some interesting things are happening. The Server Beta User Group met Thursday in Morris, ADITI. This was Oskar Linden’s weekly meeting. Oskar is gone, it is fact. Maestro Linden is taking over the meeting… or may be Coyot Linden. I’m not sure it has been decided. But, it is the intention to keep the meetings going. Also the Deploy threads in the forum will continue.

First Server Beta w/o Oskar 11/8/2012

I think it looks like Maestro Linden will run the meetings. Maestro hopes to get more developers from the server project attending the meeting. There are a number of server enhancements and features moving forward. We hear very little about them. Getting more developers involved may give us more information.

In News 1 I covered the roll out packages, so I won’t repeat that information.

They have found a new crasher bug in the code running in Magnum. Maestro says they have already found a fix for that problem.

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#SL News 1 Week 45

This week the main channel got the code that had been running on Blue Steel and Le Tigre. This means the new version of Havok 2012.1 is going to be running in all channels as of Wednesday. So, the region crossing problems for vehicles should stop… well those caused by the Havok version difference.

The release notes are here for version: 12.10.26.266333. I’ve listed them several times in previous articles so I’ll skip providing them again.

Blue Steel & Le Tigre

This channel is getting a maintenance package. It will include bug fixes generated from code running on the Magnum channel in week 44. The most notable change is in BUG-166Something invisible pushes avatars around on Dore. This fix has to do with link sets larger than 64m failing to rez.

What was happening is griefers were rezzing 256x256x256m mega prims, which users can’t see, unless they have estate manager status. It looks like the Lindens are bringing back restrictions on rezzing objects larger than 256x256x10m. That size was selected because some race tracks make legitimate use of large thin objects to achieve seamless race tracts.

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#SL News 2 Week 44

Well the roll out went nowhere near as planned. There were problems starting out that pushed the rolls back one day, from Tuesday to Wednesday. And that pushed Wednesday’s roll back a day. But, then the actual roll to the main channel rolled out the wrong version…

Server/Scripting Meeting

The Main channel was to get the code running on Blue Steel. Instead, an older version of the server code from a couple of weeks ago was rolled out. So, the main channels has regressed. I don’t know which version. Lydia Craig reported end up on version 12.10.12.265813 when the release notes said it should be 12.10.19.266079, which would be a one week regression.

Only a few people have noticed the glitch and posted in the forum Deploy thread.

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#SL News 1 Week 44

The Tuesday roll out to the main channel has been postponed to Wednesday. Wednesday’s Release Candidate roll outs have been postponed to Thursday. This delay is from some backside problems.

Main Channel

As expected the main channel is getting the package running on Blue Steel & Magnum. This is what they call a backend infrastructure change. We won’t see any changes in operation, unless it breaks something.

Mesh Alpha Rendering Problem – See Invisaprim Below

Blue Steel

This is getting an upgrade of the code now running on Le Tigre… I’m not sure whether this is supposed to mean Blue Steel and Le Tigre will run the same code or not. Until the detail release notes come out I won’t know.

This channel may get the server fixes that are hoped to fix some of the Sudden Massive Lag problem event managers are seeing. BUG-355  Continue reading

#SL News 2 Week 43

I’ve been distracted on weekends, so I’m just getting to writing up the last of the news from last week (43). There is no great news, but there are some interesting things.

Large Group Edit

The code for this change rolled out Wednesday. It had problems and was rolled back the same day. It is however currently running on the Snack Release Candidate Channel. You can get the details of that in: Second Life Large Groups Edit Week 43.

Server Scripting Meeting Oct. 2012

Part of the reason for getting this change up and running is to get it where Third Party Viewer Developers can test their viewers against the new server code. To use the new Group Editing code on the server viewers need to change the viewer code. Getting the code on a release channels allows TPV Dev’s to get their QA people and Beta testers involved.

The Problem

The package with the Large Group Edit code had a problem with the llSenor() function. It stopped returning a sorted list of objects. The sort is on distance. Not being able to figure out what is close or far meant breedables were not able to find food or each other… you know… to breed… The lack of loving was tragic.

The problem has been fixed. So, this week (44) we should see it move into one of the main release candidate channels.

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#SL Large Groups Edit Week 43

Getting this update out is proving to be a problem. Not so much the large group editing as the things it is packed with. You know, everyone bundles…

Oskar Linden posted in the SL Forum about the problems with the roll out to the Magnum Release Candidate Channel. See: Large Groups Fixes LIVE on AGNI.

The short story is the roll out was rolled back Wednesday due to issues in the llSensor() function.

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Second Life News 1 Week 43

Interest List

Andrew Linden is still working on rewriting the interest list code. He says he is seeing light and should have working code soon. He hopes to have it done this week (43).

Server-Scripting Oct 2012

Andrew told us, “…Dan Linden noticed that the “number of objects in view” right after the login curtain comes up, in a busy region, is less in my code than server-trunk, which means that my interest list wasn’t doing as good of a job of loading initial content. But I think I’ve got that fixed, and am planning on implementing the “gradually increase camera far clip on login” behavior that some 3rd party viewers have already hacked on their end, which should help the initial login sorting.Continue reading

#SL News 3 Week 42

Blake Sea and Le Tigre

You probably remember the region crossing problems sailors and pilots had with the previous Havok Physics Engine update. Putting different versions of Havok on adjacent regions creates problems. Havok was never designed for use across multiple versions of Havok. It’s use by Linden Lab™ is the only known use that encounters that problem. So, we will likely have crossing problems with each update of Havok.

Morris Region, ADITI Grid

With the addition of Pathfinding and possible other gaming features to Second Life™ we are likely going to see more updates of Havok, but fortunately, less crossing problems. ‘More’ is like a couple a year.

Region Organization

Some weeks ago the Lab tried placing adjacent regions in the same or adjacent servers, physically adjacent servers. This made what Oskar Linden described as a ‘MASSIVE improvement’ in performance. Now it is standard operating procedure to keep the regions and servers organized.

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