Simulator User Group/Transcripts/2011.02.04

Simulator_User_Group
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== List of Speakers ==
Andrew Linden 	Arawn Spitteler 	Bioblaze Payne
Cummere Mayo 	DogWomble Dollinger 	Flip Idlemind
flyne Parx 	Jessica Lyon 	Jonathan Yap
Kaluura Boa 	Latif Khalifa 	Melvin Starbrook
Mericatherine Quinnell	Merov Linden 	Moon Metty
Pauline Darkfury 	Psi Merlin 	RedMokum Bravin
Rex Cronon 	Siana Gearz 	Simon Linden
Skills Hak 	TankMaster Finesmith	Twisted Laws
== Transcript ==
[16:01] flyne Parx: xD
[16:01] FlipTool Add On: Hai Andrew Linden!
[16:01] Cummere Mayo: merov seriously come sit with us *hugs*
[16:01] DogWomble Dollinger: he4y andr4ew4
[16:01] Simon Linden: Hey Merov, glad to see you here
[16:01] flyne Parx: Lindens. :O
[16:01] Pauline Darkfury: Hi folks :)
[16:01] Cummere Mayo: andrew! thought you said you werent gonna be here?
[16:01] RedMokum Bravin: Hello Andrew
[16:02] Moon Metty: Andrew :)
[16:02] Flip Idlemind: lock
[16:02] Kaluura Boa: We're invaded by the Lindens!
[16:02] Andrew Linden: Hello.
[16:02] TankMaster Finesmith: houdy andrew
[16:02] Flip Idlemind: lock
[16:02] Latif Khalifa: Hi Andrew :)
[16:02] Andrew Linden: Ah yes, welcome Merov.
[16:02] flyne Parx: What is this place, exactly? o.o
[16:02] Rex Cronon: hello everybody
[16:02] Pauline Darkfury: big crowd today, did something big break? ;)
[16:02] Merov Linden: Hi, just listening to see how a truly successful OH is ran
[16:02] Cummere Mayo: flyne this is simon's office
[16:02] Andrew Linden: yeah, that's what I ws just wondering.
[16:02] Merov Linden: :)
[16:03] Jonathan Yap: flyne, it is the server group meeting
[16:03] Moon Metty: lol
[16:03] Andrew Linden: Ok everybody you heard that. Merov is watching so be on your best behavior.
[16:03] Latif Khalifa: yessir
[16:03] Simon Linden: Either something broke, or someone promised an open bar ?
[16:03] Andrew Linden: Ok first of all news...
[16:03] Merov Linden takes notes...
[16:03] Cummere Mayo hides the bar
[16:03] Mericatherine Quinnell: it's friday
[16:03] Andrew Linden: The easy stuff first: what I've been working on.
[16:03] flyne Parx whispers: It's the day of french fries. :D
[16:04] PhoenixViewerMascot: omnom
[16:04] Pauline Darkfury: might want to share your observations with Brooke, Merov, she's probably still recovering from yesterday's Commerce OH ;)
[16:04] Mericatherine Quinnell: oh that was fun
[16:04] Andrew Linden: Next Wed the maint-server project currently in RC (Magnum) will be picking up the fixes for our old "threaded-rez" project
[16:05] Andrew Linden: which should help simulator performance during logins, TP's, and rezzing of big assets.
[16:05] Andrew Linden: Hopefully without attachment corruption and simulator crashes this time.
[16:05] Moon Metty: and derezzing .. :)
[16:05] Cummere Mayo: heh i almost got banned there
[16:05] Latif Khalifa: you forgot threaded derez again *sigh*
[16:06] Andrew Linden: I've just about finished my "object deletion cleanup" work. Don and I were reviewing it today.
[16:06] Mericatherine Quinnell: not strictly your area, but any ideas why the megaprims disappeared?
[16:06] Pauline Darkfury: any idea how much a difference it makes to TP freeze, or small compared to the Mono component?
[16:06] Andrew Linden: I *think* it may fix a memory leak that is causing some slowdown for regions that have long uptimes.
[16:06] Moon Metty: aha
[16:06] Latif Khalifa: that would be good
[16:06] TankMaster Finesmith: nice work
[16:06] Cummere Mayo: memory leak fixes are always good!
[16:07] Andrew Linden: It isn't 100% clear because I never was able to actually find the memory leak, but the new code is faster and tighter.
[16:07] flyne Parx: Question: Why does servers log you out when a TP request fails when you are killed now, instead of the standard 'Your teleport could not be completed in a timely fashion'?
[16:07] Andrew Linden: So we'll see.
[16:07] Andrew Linden: Also during testing I'll have some debug stuff enabled which should alert us if we find some leaks before official deployment.
[16:07] Andrew Linden: That will go up for testing next week. Maybe Monday.
[16:08] Moon Metty: so that's magnum?
[16:08] Andrew Linden: Ok that's all the news I've got for me. Simon?
[16:08] Jonathan Yap: Linden Doors news? or is that passe?
[16:08] Pauline Darkfury: I've long been convinced that leaks are the real killer for very heavy/busy sims, as 24-48h regular restarts make a huge difference sometimes
[16:08] Andrew Linden: Yes, the current main-server project is on Magnum. It will probably stay on that channel for its update next week.
[16:08] Simon Linden: Let's see ... the 'interest list' code that's been in RC is scheduled to roll out to the full grid next week, I think
[16:08] Cummere Mayo: yay!
[16:08] Simon Linden: ... which should give a performace boost.
[16:08] Andrew Linden: Linden Doors is fixed in Magnum and BlueSteel.
[16:09] flyne Parx: No, I cannot hear you. xP
[16:09] Andrew Linden: We're using text chat.
[16:09] Simon Linden: It seems to be running smoothly, and I haven't heard much either way about breakage nor improvements
[16:09] Flip Idlemind: I can hear you but Office Hours are done in text so they can by logged :D
[16:09] Moon Metty: no office hour should ever be in voice
[16:09] Simon Linden: I've been working the past few days on our low-level messaging, and I think there is some good performance wins possible there
[16:10] Arawn Spitteler thinks the Meeter should start keeping logs.
[16:10] Andrew Linden: So if you own a homestead parcel with scripts not running you can do the following:
[16:10] Bioblaze Payne: yea please turn off voice :) thanks
[16:10] Bioblaze Payne: unless you are a linden then please talk
[16:10] Andrew Linden: (1) Enable scripts on your parcel
[16:10] TankMaster Finesmith: *teens* :P
[16:10] Andrew Linden: (2) Contact support and ask them to move your region over to Mangum or BlueSteel RC
[16:11] Bioblaze Payne: What does BlueSteel Support?
[16:11] Andrew Linden: Simon that messaging improvements will translate to the viewer too, right?
[16:11] Andrew Linden: (Once it gets ported to the viewer.)
[16:11] Simon Linden: You mean the code might end up there?
[16:11] Simon Linden: It could, yes
[16:11] Pauline Darkfury: What specific parts of messaging might we see an improvment on? The dreaded group-chat lag and reordering?
[16:11] Andrew Linden: BlueSteel is running Simon's "interest list" improvements.
[16:11] Latif Khalifa: this in order to support more avatar in a single sim?
[16:11] Andrew Linden: And also has the Linden Door script bug fix.
[16:12] Simon Linden: It's down in the LLTemplateMessageBuilder class -- the part of the code that assembles bits of data into a packet
[16:12] Andrew Linden: No Pauline, just less CPU time spent sending UDP messages, i think.
[16:12] Jonathan Yap: Pauline, group chat fixes are being done by another group
[16:12] Arawn Spitteler came tardily: What's the Linden Door Script Bug?
[16:12] Andrew Linden: I doubt it is going to help the current group chat system.
[16:12] Pauline Darkfury: oh, right, low level network messages, wasn't sure just what type of messaging you meant
[16:12] Simon Linden: Less time putting together the packets, to be specific
[16:13] Latif Khalifa: should help busy sims cope with a lot of avatars
[16:13] Andrew Linden: Ok the other thing I've got for the agenda today relates to some changes to these office hours.
[16:13] flyne Parx: :O
[16:13] flyne Parx: :O
[16:13] Andrew Linden: I'm not changing the times, or the content, or the format really.
[16:13] Pauline Darkfury: ahh, that might help a bit with the lag spikes I get on my full sim which has most of the prims at terrain level, see a fairly big component of net time when a new person arrives
[16:13] flyne Parx: Then what are you changing? lawl
[16:14] Arawn Spitteler: Will the format change, of the User Group Paradigm?
[16:14] Andrew Linden: However we now get to call this meeting the "Simulator User Group" instead of "Andrew's Office Hours"
[16:14] Latif Khalifa: hehe
[16:14] flyne Parx: lawl
[16:14] Pauline Darkfury: oh, is that a company-wide thing that OH is no longer trendy enough? ;)
[16:14] Flip Idlemind: Didn't Linden Lab decide a long time ago not to call us "Users"? (Rather, "Residents")
[16:14] Moon Metty: is that because Merov is here to eavesdrop?
[16:14] Jonathan Yap: How about SLUG :P
[16:14] flyne Parx: lawl
[16:15] Andrew Linden: This is to agree with some conformance changes from some PR and Marketing types, yes.
[16:15] Arawn Spitteler: Simulator User Group Office Hour, alla Andrew
[16:15] Latif Khalifa: Which user group will adopt Kellt? We need a scripting guru in one of them :)
[16:15] Cummere Mayo: pauline in theory they think that all office hours should be topic hours and not linden specific
[16:15] Latif Khalifa: Kelly
[16:15] Andrew Linden: But also some other changes...
[16:15] Andrew Linden: mostly more work for me.
[16:15] Bioblaze Payne: haha
[16:15] Bioblaze Payne: Sorry to laugh but Yea that sucks.
[16:15] Cummere Mayo still thinks a mix of usergroups and traditional hours would have been better
[16:15] Andrew Linden: For instance, they want the meetings documented
[16:15] Bioblaze Payne: oh?
[16:15] Merov Linden: my OH are not called "Viewer Design and Coding" FWIW
[16:16] Andrew Linden: so that means I'll have to get off my lazy butt and actually post the transcripts.
[16:16] Pauline Darkfury: just give them the transcript URLs? ;)
[16:16] RedMokum Bravin: I couldn't find the minutes of 2011 yet.
[16:16] Moon Metty: hehe ok Andrew
[16:16] DogWomble Dollinger: andrew, will the name change come with fancy group title that we can wear for posterity?
[16:16] Bioblaze Payne: I just wrote a Script to pull all of the "Linden" Coversation out of the text HAAHAHAHA
[16:16] Andrew Linden: Also, I may start posting the agenda before the meeting... if I'm really on top of it.
[16:16] Latif Khalifa: Andrew, you can crowd source it :)
[16:16] Bioblaze Payne: Cant read what lindens are saying.
[16:16] Merov Linden: "different bark, same dog"
[16:16] flyne Parx: Lindens should have different colored names in chat.
[16:17] Moon Metty: Andrew, your meetings (and Simon's) don't need an agenda
[16:17] Jonathan Yap: flyne, use Radegast
[16:17] flyne Parx: Radegast?
[16:17] Jonathan Yap: Google it
[16:17] Andrew Linden: I think the "topics of conversation" will be largely the same
[16:17] Jonathan Yap: text viewer
[16:17] Pauline Darkfury: Well, could happily just make the agenda a standing thing of "Current server issues, 1 hour", unless there's something exceptional which doesn't fit in that
[16:18] Pauline Darkfury: I'd reckon most of us would be happy with that
[16:18] Andrew Linden: I think Kelly will eventually organize a "script engine" user's group
[16:18] Andrew Linden: until then we can talk about scripting here
[16:18] Latif Khalifa: boiler plate agende 1) news from the server development 2) bugs we have killed 3) stuff we made so the experience is awesome
[16:18] DogWomble Dollinger: aaah you forget
[16:18] Latif Khalifa: copy paste and there you go ;)
[16:18] Andrew Linden: or maybe I'll have Kelly Linden attend here for a focus until he sets it all up
[16:18] Arawn Spitteler: I hope they wn't narow the scopeof digession
[16:18] DogWomble Dollinger: 4) this is the most awesome offie hour ever
[16:18] Moon Metty: fast, easy and ... what was that last part again?
[16:19] Jonathan Yap: fustrum
[16:19] Andrew Linden: I think that's about all for the impending changes.
[16:19] Latif Khalifa: lol
[16:19] Simon Linden: Maybe someone can make some Official Server User Group hats or something
[16:19] Andrew Linden: I need to set up a new main wiki page.
[16:19] Cummere Mayo: andrew is there going to be an inventory related usergroup?
[16:19] Arawn Spitteler: Comments from most awsome users
[16:19] DogWomble Dollinger whispers: Simon i'll work on those for next week :)
[16:19] Cummere Mayo: or is that covered here too?
[16:19] Pauline Darkfury: Mmm, I think we need official per-group bears or something ;)
[16:19] Andrew Linden: I'll try to start posting the transcripts with this meeting, but probably won't get it up until next week.
[16:20] Andrew Linden: That's all I had for the agenda. The table is now open.
[16:20] Latif Khalifa: beer anyone? ;)
[16:20] DogWomble Dollinger: andrew, can i request i funky group repreesnting the new name?
[16:20] Andrew Linden: Oh... inventory related user group? Not that I know of, not yet.
[16:20] DogWomble Dollinger: so that we can at least all feel speshul as part of the change?
[16:20] Simon Linden: Thanks Latif, already have one :)
[16:20] Arawn Spitteler: User Group Linden Beers?
[16:20] Cummere Mayo: so still bring stuff here?
[16:21] Andrew Linden: No, I don't think inventory issues would fall under my domain
[16:21] Andrew Linden: that is moving to the new "agent inventory services" (AIS) system
[16:21] Andrew Linden: and I don't know much about how that works.
[16:21] Cummere Mayo: okay. if you happen to hear anything about which groups would cover them please let me know
[16:22] Andrew Linden: However... I might be able to recruit an engineer to show up and have an inventory focus meeting.
[16:22] Merov Linden build failure I need to attend... :/ see ya...
[16:22] Pauline Darkfury: was the megaprim issue just griefer-control gone wrong?
[16:22] Latif Khalifa: perhaps there should be "undo" functionality next to the big red button that purges content? ;)
[16:22] Simon Linden: Pauline - I don't know the exact details on that incident, but yes, it was along those lines
[16:23] Andrew Linden: I don't know much about the "megaprim" issue. I heard some rumblings about it but was too focused to be distracted.
[16:23] Latif Khalifa: last year it was opensource mlp scripts
[16:23] TankMaster Finesmith: tc merov
[16:23] Simon Linden: The megaprims got removed due to their creator, I believe
[16:23] Simon Linden: ... but megaprims were not the target of the removal
[16:23] Latif Khalifa: It has nothing to do with megaprims per se, some content was removed by mistake.
[16:23] Twisted Laws: Simon, I was wondering about the interest list work.
[16:23] Pauline Darkfury: seems some specific sizes made by Crowley Avro got blacklisted and went *poof* from the world causing much anguish
[16:24] Simon Linden: Sure, what do you want to know?
[16:24] Twisted Laws: Working with a slightly modified viewer I noticed that with 64m draw range, all the objects up to 4096 in the sandbox were being sent to the viewer.
[16:24] flyne Parx: Why did that happen? o.o
[16:24] Twisted Laws: just not rendered by the viewer
[16:24] TankMaster Finesmith: 4096? wow
[16:24] Simon Linden: 4096, as in altitude?
[16:24] Latif Khalifa: Twisted, yes, interest list is 2D
[16:24] Skills Hak: Z value doesn't matter
[16:24] Twisted Laws: yes
[16:24] Twisted Laws: ah
[16:24] Moon Metty: it has always been that way, i think
[16:25] Pauline Darkfury: I've observed that before on Phoenix's Area Search, you sometimes get matches high in the sky, but within the XY draw dist
[16:25] Latif Khalifa: yep
[16:25] Moon Metty: vwr-5588
[16:25] JIRA-helper: http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-5588
[#VWR-5588] Objects within draw distance not rendered when standing away some meters
[16:25] Simon Linden: It's fuzzy ... it does get used in some of the calculations, not in others
[16:25] Andrew Linden: Yeah, the interestlist doesn't discriminate along Z at the moment.
[16:25] Simon Linden: I _think_ it won't get used for 'static' objects, or stuff that's not scripted or moving around
[16:25] Twisted Laws: seems that would help a lot to stop sending that stuff up there :p
[16:25] Cummere Mayo: hmmm would it be useful to change that?
[16:25] Cummere Mayo: to make it include the z?
[16:26] Twisted Laws: yes
[16:26] Arawn Spitteler: Send some Model Overflights, as a griefer mode
[16:26] Kaluura Boa: Very useful! It's waste of CPU for the sim and the client to care about things you can't see
[16:26] Cummere Mayo notes her question was more rhetorical
[16:26] Moon Metty: typically, your camera is pointed towards the horizon
[16:26] Simon Linden: Well, for the static objects it's doing that to simplify the calculations ... if you can see a particular area (4x4m) it sends you the stuff there. This avoids calculating distance for every single object
[16:27] Twisted Laws: its really bad when griefers fill the heights and residents have short draw distance
[16:27] Simon Linden: The distance math is somewhat costly, as it's the sum of 3 squares
[16:27] Flip Idlemind: And even if you are looking up, you shouldn't be getting data about stuff that's 4000 meters up
[16:27] Twisted Laws: it doesn't have to be a sphere, but clipping it at the range in height would be good
[16:27] Simon Linden: There might be a simpler way ... just not send stuff if the Z difference is over some limit
[16:27] Jonathan Yap: could you cheat a little and do a if my_height+draw_distance < z of object send details?
[16:28] TankMaster Finesmith: well it should if your DD is set to 4k :P
[16:28] Andrew Linden: Right Simon, it would be possible to add Z-only distance culling.
[16:28] Simon Linden: I've actually been thinking of a similar change ... if we took the height into consideration, it would add a bit of privacy to skyboxes
[16:28] Pauline Darkfury: yeah, you could rapidly discard if the delta Z is beyond current dd
[16:28] Arawn Spitteler: Just send heights within draw distance? Siden is really laggy, and th detail is all at 700 meters
[16:28] Twisted Laws: yes, i could move my camera to 4096 and see the stuff rendered
[16:28] Simon Linden: Right Pauline, that would be pretty easy
[16:28] Cummere Mayo: even if you culled the hight arbitraily by 1000 either way of the avi that would help
[16:29] Andrew Linden: Unfortunately we don't have Z sorted object management. That is, the objects are "stored" in a 2D array and that is the array that the interestlist walks.
[16:29] Simon Linden: Using the draw distance makes sense to me
[16:29] Andrew Linden: So that needs to be fixed. it was one of the possible projects in the interstlist rewrite, which has only just started.
[16:29] Moon Metty: in patches of 16 m^2, Andrew
[16:29] TankMaster Finesmith: the server sknow what DD i set, right?
[16:29] Andrew Linden: correct Moon, 16^2
[16:29] Simon Linden: yes, Phoenix*
[16:30] TankMaster Finesmith: thought so, thx
[16:30] Latif Khalifa: Andrew, then when sending that 16^2 add simple delta-z filter
[16:30] Pauline Darkfury: maybe even make it dd+64 for the Z culling, to be certain you won't cull something which would otherwise get drawn (it should normally be based on the prim coords, I think, but if there's a chance of a corner case, a small padding might be useful)
[16:30] Latif Khalifa: no need to reorganize it
[16:30] Andrew Linden: Yes Latif.
[16:31] Cummere Mayo: I agree with pauline
[16:31] Simon Linden: Right, that's one of the compliactions of megaprims ... we're using the prim location, not it's full bounding box
[16:31] Simon Linden: I'll add a note to check that out, it seems like a good idea
[16:31] Andrew Linden: I think that would work fine. The Z range of the region is much larger than its X and Y spans.
[16:31] Arawn Spitteler: If our viewers won't render something, due to altitude, does it cost that much server time not to send?
[16:31] Jonathan Yap: is it a little more complicated than z-distance? If you have a 10m prim you want to see the side of it even if the center is past your draw distance
[16:32] Pauline Darkfury: If you pad by 64, it gives a smarter viewer the chance to base drawing on the edges of any reasonable prim
[16:32] Pauline Darkfury: Need to think in terms of 64m prims now ;)
[16:32] Flip Idlemind: Costs network time (right?)
[16:32] Cummere Mayo: yeah
[16:32] Andrew Linden: yes Jonathan, hence the DD+64 suggestion
[16:32] Simon Linden: Right, so draw distance + 64 (or 32?) would be good
[16:32] Cummere Mayo: 64
[16:32] Twisted Laws: its the textures being transfered is how i first noticed... so yes it does take time
[16:32] Cummere Mayo: that way a prim right at the edge wouldnt get culled
[16:32] Pauline Darkfury: 64 should be completely safe, but 32 would probably work
[16:33] Pauline Darkfury: both are a big saving over 4096 for a multi-level sim
[16:33] Latif Khalifa: it takes time to construct the update packages, etc etc, it would be a good optimization
[16:33] Arawn Spitteler: Why use squares?
[16:33] Cummere Mayo: and i -think- the calculation time lost might be made up for in transmission time and calls?
[16:33] Jonathan Yap: 32 would not be quite enough--what if you have the pointy end of a cube overhead?
[16:34] Cummere Mayo: and it would ceertainly reduce viewer lag anyways
[16:34] Pauline Darkfury: yeah, needs to be sqrt(32*32+32*32), I guess
[16:34] Twisted Laws: a person could increase there draw distance if they wanted to see something protruding, i'd vote for clipping it at distance
[16:34] Simon Linden: 64 is easy enough to use, I don't think dropping it tighter would make much of a difference in overhead and extra data
[16:34] Latif Khalifa: yep
[16:35] Latif Khalifa: the point is not to get updates for objects 1000m above you
[16:35] Pauline Darkfury: Yeah, 64 is a nice round number and should be beyond all corner cases
[16:35] Moon Metty: :)
[16:35] TankMaster Finesmith: 42 would be better :P
[16:35] Moon Metty: lol 42
[16:35] Latif Khalifa: hehe
[16:35] Cummere Mayo: and if the server doesnt have to send those updates wouldnt that more then make up for calculation time?
[16:36] Simon Linden: Cummere - yes, it should help
[16:36] Twisted Laws: its the textures that could really save you time :p
[16:36] Jonathan Yap: would this have any effect on viewing off-sim megaprims -- some very large ones are used for backgrounds
[16:36] Pauline Darkfury: shouldn't be any texture download if the viewer decides not to render it, should there?
[16:36] Andrew Linden: Right. 50% of the data we stream out is textures (or used to be).
[16:36] Cummere Mayo: so basically this would be a win for performance all the way around ?
[16:36] Twisted Laws: i don't think so Jonathan
[16:36] Andrew Linden: I wonder what the fraction is now. I think we've got a little bit better texture caching viewer side, right?
[16:37] Twisted Laws: 64m draw range, you don't see them usually
[16:37] Cummere Mayo: and possiibly allow non gaming machines to be useable again
[16:37] Simon Linden: Yes, the viewer actually make the request for textures, but I don't know (and doubt) it's doing much culling on it's side
[16:37] Twisted Laws: in sandboxes where things change a lot it makes a difference i think, Andrew
[16:37] Pauline Darkfury: It needs validated against some typical off-sim stuff, but should be ok if the root prim is within DD, I'd have thought
[16:37] Arawn Spitteler: I think Textures were supposed to burden a different server, but there's a lot of prim_type data to send.
[16:38] Pauline Darkfury: yeah, just getting rid of the prim data should be worth it, less work for both server and viewer
[16:38] Cummere Mayo: we can always revisit textures later if we need to
[16:39] Twisted Laws: Well I just hope it can fit into your interest list work to see if its feasable. :)
[16:39] Simon Linden: I've put it on our 'backlog' , which is essentially the list of work we consider
[16:40] Twisted Laws: thanks
[16:40] Moon Metty: do you have product owners on the server side too?
[16:40] Cummere Mayo: im all for anything that makes performace better enough that cheaper machines can run sl
[16:41] Jessica Lyon: cheaper machines will be cut off once mesh is released anyways
[16:41] Cummere Mayo thinks its stupid a $500 computer cant run sl
[16:41] Cummere Mayo: shouldnt jessica
[16:41] Pauline Darkfury: Not just cheaper machines, Cummere, my 2.8 GHz Core 2 Extreme iMac with Radeon 2600 Pro isn't exactly low spec, but does suffer a bit on some places even on 64m dd
[16:41] Andrew Linden: Cummere, a $500 laptop? or a $500 tower?
[16:41] Jessica Lyon: any system that can't run sse2 will be cut off. And there are a lot of people on machines that can't run sse2
[16:41] Cummere Mayo: either
[16:41] Arawn Spitteler: U$500 should run, as long as there's a graphics card, which mine hasn't got
[16:42] Simon Linden: That's also one area I'd like to experiment with ... I have a little netbook that runs at about 2fps. I've wondered if I decreased the draw distance even more than currently possible if it would get faster
[16:42] Latif Khalifa: mesh can be rendered faster tham prims in some cases jessica
[16:42] Flip Idlemind: Cheap machines, and expensive machines from 3 years ago
[16:42] Jessica Lyon: SSE2 is the issue
[16:42] Rex Cronon: whas is sse2?
[16:42] Andrew Linden: I thought there were some $50 graphics cards these days that could actually run SL fairly well.
[16:42] TankMaster Finesmith: set the DD to 0 and find out, simon :P
[16:42] Jonathan Yap: I thought basically all cpus from the last 5 years supported sse2
[16:42] Simon Linden: exactly :)
[16:42] Latif Khalifa: Andrew, yes
[16:42] Cummere Mayo: not anymore andrew though the real issue lately is more ram then graphics
[16:42] Arawn Spitteler: What's SSE2?
[16:43] Andrew Linden: SSE2 is special set of CPU instructions for optimized floating point manipulation.
[16:43] TankMaster Finesmith: SSE2 - its a CPU instruction set
[16:43] Pauline Darkfury: Some Lindens use Macs, don't you? If you've got an approx 3yr old MacBook, that's a good test. It has a GMA950 in it as a GPU. If you can make the experience reasonable on that, you're on a winner.
[16:43] Jessica Lyon: some support it, but just fail at it. Have seen it a lot in support
[16:43] Jonathan Yap: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SSE2
[16:43] TankMaster Finesmith: Oz i think uses a mac
[16:43] Pauline Darkfury: The GMA950 is I think officially below spec for SL, but it does work and was popular in a lot of notebooks
[16:43] Andrew Linden: The new mesh code is going to rely on SSE2, I think.
[16:43] Melvin Starbrook: i have an old nvidia in my notebook, still works great after three year :)
[16:43] Cummere Mayo: hell i had a 7 year old laptop that ran sl jsut finee till it died. mesh was smooth and pretty on it
[16:43] Jessica Lyon: it's shocking how many people use SSE only systems for sl.
[16:43] Simon Linden: I have a Mac but confess to booting into Windows all the time
[16:44] Latif Khalifa: i'm still on snowgoble too :)
[16:44] Latif Khalifa: fasterst viewer ever :)
[16:44] Pauline Darkfury: doesn't matter which OS is on it, just if you've got something with the GMA950, as that's pretty low power, shares main memory for GPU RAM, nominally 64MB for the GPU
[16:44] Moon Metty: really Latif, did you check that with Q?
[16:45] Latif Khalifa: lol
[16:45] Moon Metty: :D
[16:45] Latif Khalifa: Q is a Jihadist :P
[16:45] Moon Metty: i'm still on the best viewer ever
[16:45] Latif Khalifa: good :)
[16:45] TankMaster Finesmith: viewer 2.1?
[16:45] TankMaster Finesmith: :P
[16:46] DogWomble Dollinger: viewer 1.0?
[16:46] Moon Metty: no, i use 1.23.5
[16:46] Simon Linden: Hmm, we seem to have again reached the what-viewer-is-best topic ... any server questions out there? LSL?
[16:46] Arawn Spitteler: Why would a viewer see our CPU Code?
[16:46] Twisted Laws: no religious war
[16:46] Moon Metty: i just don't zoom out the map :)
[16:46] Jessica Lyon: Might want to start getting used to Viewer 2
[16:46] Latif Khalifa: Jessica, when they pry snowglobe from my cold dead hand ;)
[16:47] Jessica Lyon: lol
[16:47] Cummere Mayo: anyways yeah its great sl wants to do so much for better systems... but remember especially in this ecconomy not everyone can afford great systems... and if LL wants to make money it would be good if a $500 laptop or desktop could run SL "out of the box"
[16:47] Arawn Spitteler: The failure of Viewer 2 is a topic Lionden Labs doesn't want to see amongst the User Group Transcripts
[16:47] Latif Khalifa: hehe
[16:47] TankMaster Finesmith: the CPU has code internally that it con process much faster than other types of code, using that code gives a performance boost to the application
[16:47] Andrew Linden: I was just kicking back thinking, "How nice I don't have to make up any answers."
[16:47] Pauline Darkfury: any chance of getting per-parcel script counting, equivalents of llGetParcelPrimCount, and llGetParcelPrimOwners, for landlords & land managers?
[16:47] Flip Idlemind: Solution: Fix the failurw of viewer 2
[16:47] Jessica Lyon: Simon, i've had reports from users during region crossings having their hair/attachments left behind in the sim the left
[16:47] Moon Metty: lol Andrew
[16:47] Jessica Lyon: I'm sure it's compression related?
[16:47] Pauline Darkfury: i.e. on the same basis that we got the per-object script counting recently
[16:48] Simon Linden: +1 Cummere ... we've found there's a significant number of new residents that sign up, download the viewer, log in, but they are are pretty low-end hardware like netbooks. They usually don't last very long
[16:48] Siana Gearz: flip, i'd be thinking you're in the wrong OH to say that :)
[16:48] Latif Khalifa: for best results, teleport naked (and remove all your friends).
[16:48] Twisted Laws: Viewer 2 is getting much better. If you can code maybe you can help it be even better thru Snowstorm.
[16:48] Latif Khalifa: friends cause teleports to be slow, believe it or not ;)
[16:48] DogWomble Dollinger: andrew/simon, you may remember me mentioning i think last week about how it'd be nice to be able to have script time visible to people as well as sim memory
[16:48] Moon Metty: viewer 2 is getting better, certainly
[16:49] Jessica Lyon: ^
[16:49] Cummere Mayo: viewer 2 is much better .... but itts still not there yet
[16:49] Rex Cronon: i guess friends r considered dead weight:(
[16:49] Cummere Mayo: getting closer though
[16:49] TankMaster Finesmith: you dont need friends! :P
[16:49] Siana Gearz: Simon, i've been thinking of "crunch" mode in my viewer in which it agressively reduces detail in ways which would never get past Nyx, but at least allow to resognize environments and avatars even from a last-gen netbook
[16:49] Andrew Linden: Yes DogWomble. Those would be useful feedback stats.
[16:49] Twisted Laws: long friend lists seem to have negative impact on logon when you have display names on
[16:49] Latif Khalifa: I don't know what in server code does it, but people with fewer friends teleport faster.
[16:49] Jonathan Yap: ah, I have a server question -- would it be possible to send script count/prim to the viewer for use in the Object Details floater?
[16:50] Cummere Mayo: siana why do you think it wouldnt get past nyx?
[16:50] Simon Linden: Siana - that would be good. Maybe that kind of work plus even shorter draw distance could help bring up the frame rate on low end machiens
[16:50] DogWomble Dollinger: i'm just thinking andrew, you need that backed up by a JIRA or similar to get that going? coz i can put one together for you if you want
[16:50] Latif Khalifa: Jonathan, excellent question
[16:50] Cummere Mayo: nyx might just surprise you you know
[16:50] Pauline Darkfury: you could easily hack the script count via a bridge object for that, Jonathan
[16:50] Latif Khalifa: Jonathan, I was proposing a CAP to query server about script limit info per object that viewer could query
[16:50] Siana Gearz: Simon, basically another layer of lod, with some built in prioritizing.
[16:50] Jonathan Yap: It doesn't help to know your object has 400 scripts unless you can find them easily
[16:50] Andrew Linden: DogWomble, lets wait on that.
[16:50] DogWomble Dollinger: k :)
[16:51] Andrew Linden: Now that Kelly is back some projects are getting revived that have been on hold.
[16:51] Jessica Lyon: oh?
[16:51] Simon Linden: Right, I heard him swearing at mono code today :)
[16:51] Cummere Mayo: hehe
[16:51] Jessica Lyon: awesome!
[16:51] Andrew Linden: Such as the "scripts resources" project, under which that idea would fall.\
[16:52] Andrew Linden: yeah, Kelly Linden is working on finishing up some performance improvements for MONO
[16:52] Simon Linden: That may get attention soon ... I met our new CEO on Wednesday and that's one of the things we talked about
[16:52] Cummere Mayo: ooh lucky you simon
[16:52] Andrew Linden: in particular for region crossing, I think, but other good things
[16:52] Cummere Mayo really wants to talk to the ceo
[16:52] Latif Khalifa: Simon, script limits?
[16:52] DogWomble Dollinger: simon, can we put in a request for the CEO to sit in at next friday's OH?
[16:52] Andrew Linden: I sat in a meeting where he summarized the state of that stuff.
[16:53] Andrew Linden: Ultimately we may be able to actually complete the C# feature, but that would require a bigger team. We're still thinking about how to do it.
[16:53] Moon Metty: some time ago we had a visitor carrying 900 scripts
[16:53] Simon Linden: Latif - yes. He mentioned that some land owners had talked to him, and they really wanted to be able to put some sane limits on script and memory usage
[16:53] Andrew Linden: In the meantime there is a bunch of other work that needs to get done.
[16:53] Latif Khalifa: Andrew, who do we need to lobby to get c# project going again? :)
[16:53] Latif Khalifa: send cookies to the new ceo? :)
[16:53] Latif Khalifa: beer?
[16:53] Latif Khalifa: dancers?
[16:53] Cummere Mayo: latif $1000 checks
[16:54] Moon Metty: empty pizza boxes?
[16:54] Rex Cronon: lots of "scriptors" find even lsl hard, what will happen if u switch to c#?
[16:54] Andrew Linden: No, better to ask Kelly and Gez for resources to be routed to script engine.
[16:54] Simon Linden: One of the big problems is how people would experience it ... so you hit the limit, how do you know what's causing the problem, and what to remove? It has to be easy enough for non-technical residents to figure out, and that means good UI work
[16:54] Cummere Mayo: does gez have the resources to reroute andrew?
[16:54] Andrew Linden: I think maybe Gez will be leading some User Group eventually.
[16:54] Latif Khalifa: Gez is working on xmpp group chat thingie
[16:54] Jonathan Yap: <-mentions again how nice it would be to have scripts/prim displayed in the Object Details floater
[16:55] Andrew Linden: Gez is one of those server-side "product owners" that someone was asking about.
[16:55] Andrew Linden: Er... he will soon be one of those product owners.
[16:55] Cummere Mayo: simon half you thought about asking wolf linden for his imput on that?
[16:55] Moon Metty: ahhh
[16:55] TankMaster Finesmith: edumicate creators that they dont need 5 scripts in each prim just to resize them all via a hud would helpa lot...
[16:55] Andrew Linden: He's currently busy with some other stuff.
[16:55] Latif Khalifa: XMPP group chat
[16:55] Simon Linden: Cummere - no, I'm not really connected with that work, just opinionated :)
[16:55] Cummere Mayo: hes xmpp group owner he said
[16:55] Moon Metty: ,
[16:55] Moon Metty: lol
[16:55] Cummere Mayo: *group product owner
[16:55] Andrew Linden: Yes, he'll be owning the XMPP group chat project.
[16:56] TankMaster Finesmith: nice
[16:56] Latif Khalifa: Famous last words: "Hey folks, I'm going to reboot a new server image. If all goes well (knock on wood) this service should be back up in a half hour."
[16:56] Cummere Mayo: im happy. hes been asking for advice who to invite into giving him feedback from various standpoints... group owner, group mod, group member
[16:56] Latif Khalifa: XMPP test server, 3 hrs ago :)
[16:57] Moon Metty: it may just be lag, Latif
[16:57] TankMaster Finesmith: chat lag
[16:57] Moon Metty: :D
[16:57] Jonathan Yap: that server is still not back
[16:57] Latif Khalifa: nah, alpha testing stuff is fun ;)
[16:57] Jonathan Yap: always a good idea to make changes on a Friday afternoon
[16:58] Arawn Spitteler: 2PM Sunday
[16:58] Cummere Mayo: simon something being kicked around in two groups im in.... ability to turn off texture rendering /downloading except for avatar and sculptie textures.... would anything need to be done serverside to support that?
[16:58] Pauline Darkfury: that's going to be a very boring and grey world like that ;)
[16:59] Cummere Mayo: there ARE reasons for itt lol
[16:59] Pauline Darkfury: An interesting idea on that theme would be to cap texture size at say 256x256 or 512x512 to reduce memory need
[16:59] Andrew Linden: Cummere, perhaps a better idea would be to make the viewer only download no more than 256x256 (or 128x128) sizes.
[16:59] Cummere Mayo: mayhaps... but
[16:59] Andrew Linden: er... no larger than
[16:59] Simon Linden: Cummere - no, I don't think there's anything server-side for that. The viewer makes the texture requests, so it can decide what it wants
[17:00] Latif Khalifa: the viewr can decide which textures to download anyway
[17:00] Arawn Spitteler wonders if the Blind might not need texture downloads at all
[17:00] Jonathan Yap: does the viewer preferably download smaller textures first?
[17:00] Cummere Mayo: simon some griefers use texttures to crash viewer
[17:00] Moon Metty: and to what discard level
[17:00] Cummere Mayo: thats why im looking at this
[17:00] Pauline Darkfury: yeah, excessive use of 1024s can be a real pig on low-spec as well
[17:00] Jonathan Yap: maybe the viewer could have an interest list too
[17:00] Latif Khalifa: Arawn, they use Radegast which doesn't download any textures.
[17:00] Cummere Mayo: err andrew i mena
[17:00] Andrew Linden: Right. The viewer should be hardened against the large texture attack.
[17:00] Cummere Mayo: also
[17:01] Pauline Darkfury: is the attack from too many unique 1024s, or actual bad texture data?
[17:01] Latif Khalifa: Well except those needed for baking.
[17:01] Cummere Mayo: some machina people said it would be a great way to get a easy b/w look
[17:01] Moon Metty: today i bought a new monitor, with a different resolution .. i had to clear cache for all textures to load properly ( from cache)
[17:01] Andrew Linden: Rendering too many faces of particularly large textures can kill the viewer I think.
[17:01] Andrew Linden: So one large transparent texture can do the trick, if there are enough (large) object faces with it.
[17:02] Pauline Darkfury: right, just overwhelm the scene setup or GPU
[17:02] Simon Linden: There's also some bug still in the viewer where it will freeze for a bit when downloading a lot of textures ... you get hung up for 10-15 seconds
[17:02] Twisted Laws: shift/alt/ctlr/2 saves you from those lagger/crashers
[17:02] Jonathan Yap: probably what happened a few weeks ago with those griefers here and other places
[17:02] Cummere Mayo: also
[17:02] Andrew Linden: Right.
[17:02] Latif Khalifa: Simon, I get that a lot. But only with http textures.
[17:02] Flip Idlemind: lock
[17:03] Cummere Mayo: theres a script out there that seems to either mvoe you or tp you very rapidly around a sim faster then the viewers render can keep up.
[17:03] Latif Khalifa: Simon, my viewer freezes for 2-3 minutes with 1 frame every 30 sec or so
[17:03] Andrew Linden: Ok time for me to go.
[17:03] Andrew Linden: Thanks for coming everyone.
[17:03] DogWomble Dollinger: tc andrew
[17:03] Pauline Darkfury: Ok, thanks, Andrew
[17:03] Jessica Lyon: that's for the time
[17:03] Cummere Mayo: it causes the viewer to freeze or crash... can we discuss throttles nextime ?
[17:03] Rex Cronon: tc andrew
[17:03] Latif Khalifa: there is some race in the texture pipeline somewhere
[17:03] Moon Metty: have a good weekend Andrew :)
[17:03] TankMaster Finesmith: tc andrew
[17:03] Jessica Lyon: thanks for the time *
[17:03] TankMaster Finesmith: thx for taking the time to update us
[17:03] RedMokum Bravin: Thanks Andrew, Simon.
[17:03] Latif Khalifa: thanks for your time Andrew and Simon.
[17:03] Pauline Darkfury: Take care, have a good weekend :)
[17:03] Cummere Mayo: thanks simon and andrew :)
[17:03] TankMaster Finesmith: thank you for coming simon
[17:03] Twisted Laws: thanks, bye
[17:03] Pauline Darkfury: Thanks, Simon as well, and everyone else :)
[17:04] Flip Idlemind: go.secret
[17:04] Rex Cronon: tc everybody
[17:04] Simon Linden: Thanks everyone for coming ... great discussion today
[17:04] Psi Merlin: Thanks Andrew, Simon, Merov
[17:04] Arawn Spitteler: Will the Users'Grope be as much fun?
Simulator_User_Group
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