This is an informal test and I use the word ‘test’ very loosely. I just wanted to see what the commotion about crossing in the new AWS servers was about. There is no hard data in this experiment. My computer and connection are irrelevant IMO. The Viewer is Firestorm 6.4.5 Beta, which I used because I have it setup to work with OBS.
I started my trials in Blake Sea – Half Hitch, Aditi (SLURL). If you search for the region in Aditi, include the Blake Sea part.
There is a long 1 sim wide run from Blake Sea – Azimuth to Blake Sea – Bering of 17 regions. That is a 4.352 kilometer run or about 2.7 miles for the metric challenged. Plenty of room to max out my Bandit 380R (The Mesh Shop – Map URL).
I want to mention The Rubber Bunny. That HUD on the left is made by Kaliska Dismantled of Rubber Bunny. Kaliska makes easy to modify HUDs for various boats and vehicles. I’ve bought a couple (L$49). Plus making some fun vehicles. Among them hovercraft which are a novel SL driving experience.
In my previous article, I recount how I sailed across dozens of region-crossings without crashing. Now I am reading of others testing the new cloud-based region servers having the same experience.
Cloud-based? You probably know the Second Life™ system is moving to the cloud. We don’t get to hear much about it as user knowledge of changes messes up the bug reporting. But Mazidox Linden posted, Blake Sea is now up on Aditi! (July 20, 2020) And wow…
Those invisible region crossing walls…
If you don’t know, Aditi is the beta test grid for the Lindens. Also known as the Preview Grid. They allow us to use it too. Only selected parts of the main grid are in Aditi. Plus, the Aditi grid changes… a lot and unexpectedly and often goes down as they restart tests. Unexpectedly for we mere mortal users. Aditi is the Linden workspace and their testing takes first priority.
Every so often the Lindens need some genie pigs… er… beta testers. The Thursday UG Server Beta meeting is usually the place for those requests. Meeting participation there has been declining since most server news over the past few months was just internal fixes and other stuff they couldn’t talk about. The servers run on proprietary software and contain the security for the system. So, there are limits on what they can say, which makes sense.
Whether that is the reason Maz posted in the SL Forum’s Tech->Server section or not, there the post is.
The post tells us they are testing region crossings. The test scenarios are for regions within the same host and in different host servers. The article has links to the test regions in Aditi. Plus, there are a few accounts from people participating in the testing.
The majority find the crossings are ‘barely noticeable’ or a total fail with the vehicle lost and never returned. To me this sounds like progress. It also tells me the Lindens are getting close to having region servers running in the cloud. The region servers are a huge part of the system using a large number of computers.
This should make for dramatic changes in SL. The Lindens are excited. It leaks out here and there and user complaints at UG meetings about annoying problems are often addressed with an intimation that will sort of get solved with the move, ‘uplift’, to the cloud.
Whatever, I think it interesting and exciting. Only time will tell if this is the big FIX we all hope for.
Last Friday there was a Third-Party Dev UG meeting that ran 48 minutes. The video is here. I’ve included the interesting stuff mixed in.
Servers
The main channel will stay with version #19.04.22.526534. No restart. This is the version pushed to reduce disconnects. In my experience, things are much better.
Blue Steel, Le Tigre, and Magnum will update to version #19.04.25.526669 on Wednesday. The version is listed as having Internal Fixes and Fixed EEP Regressions.
Rider Linden met with an SL group, Visionaire, to explain EEP. It is an hour plus video.
From the Server-Scripting UG: [12:34] Oz Linden: And we’ve already put in place a bunch of improvements [think detectors & stats] to our RC monitors to help prevent a similar recurrence (with more coming soon)
As of the 4/18 server change was to roll the server OS back. In doing so some are seeing less script time available. One or two have seen a drop from 100% of scripts to only 30% to 60% run.
Oz says they have lots of performance data for that metric. So, they will be checking as they move to re-upgrade the OS. The simulator OS has to update as part of the pre-move to the cloud.
There are other script performance things planned. So, the Lindens will add in a look at the script slowing issue along with those. Continue reading →
There is news. Everyone has been back to work long enough post-holiday
for things to be getting completed. So, changes are in progress. I am behind,
again. So, I’m just getting this converted from my notes to something readable.
Servers
We did get a Deploy post, appearing Tuesday afternoon.
The Rainforest Photo Contest, Entry # 2
The main channel
updates to version #19.01.09.523003. This version is listed as having logging
collecting data to build a baseline performance measure. Also, more internal
logging.
My empirical take is things have degraded. But, without some
objective measure that is only an opinion. As I started flying a complex Shergood
helicopter in July 2018 my perception of region reliability has likely changed.
But, my observation of what happens when crossing region boundaries is more
factual.
Using the Firestorm Viewer, I have the option to cross
regions in two ways. The default is to cross using the basic viewer prediction
of what should happen for a smoother appearing crossing. The other is sort of
stop-action crossing. (Preferences->Move
& View->Movement->Movement at region crossing: Predict or Stop)
