Simulator User Group/Transcripts/2012.10.19

Simulator_User_Group
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== List of Speakers ==
Andrew Linden 	Ardy Lay 	Baker Linden
Cheesey Linden 	Dahlia Trimble 	DrFran Babcock
Fenix Eldritch 	Inara Pey 	Kennylex Luckless
Mike Denneny 	Moundsa Mayo 	Nalates Urriah
Oskar Linden 	Rex Cronon 	Simon Linden
TankMaster Finesmith	Theresa Tennyson	Yuzuru Jewell
== Transcript ==
[16:00] Inara Pey note to self, when being tp'd, during off snapshot DoF first...
[16:00] Inara Pey: Hi, people!
[16:00] Simon Linden: which one, Ardy?
[16:00] Rex Cronon: hi
[16:01] Andrew Linden: Hello.
[16:01] Mike Denneny: hello andrew
[16:01] Rex Cronon: hi andrew
[16:01] Ardy Lay: Simon: https://my.secondlife.com/ardy.lay/snapshots/5081dbb611b3cf1e04000001
[16:01] Andrew Linden: Ah yes, Mike Denneny, welcom. I believe we've talked over email.
[16:01] Mike Denneny: haha
[16:01] Mike Denneny: yes
[16:02] Simon Linden: is that coming from the stalk-eye monster thing? I have it on "midnight" but it's not that bad
[16:02] DrFran Babcock: wow, I thought I was seeing things, thanks, Ardy
[16:02] Simon Linden: yeah, that's the source
[16:03] Simon Linden: I wonder why it's so strong in your viewer
[16:03] Mike Denneny: I did respond to the last one fyi
[16:03] Mike Denneny: figured your busy putting out fires
[16:03] Theresa Tennyson: It looks different with lighting and shadows on.
[16:03] Ardy Lay: Graphics Card: GeForce GTX 570/PCIe/SSE2
[16:03] Simon Linden: yeah, must be different settings
[16:04] Andrew Linden: Yeah, which leads into my news for today...
[16:04] Andrew Linden: I'm still fixing bugs with my interestlist code but I'm starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel for this first pass.
[16:05] Theresa Tennyson: The 10-18 version on Aditi-Ahern seems fine to me.
[16:05] Andrew Linden: I really really wanted to get it done today, but I was interrupted by some things...
[16:05] Andrew Linden: technical problems on my end, and some rotations problems someone else was having.
[16:06] Andrew Linden: Theresa, 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
[16:06] Andrew Linden: which means that my interestlist wasn't doing as good of a job of loading initial content.
[16:07] Andrew Linden: 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.
[16:07] Kennylex Luckless: IHi Andreew.
[16:08] Theresa Tennyson: At least I'm not crashing into invisible houses anymore.
[16:08] Ardy Lay: Make concentric rings of colored prims, relog at the center.
[16:08] Andrew Linden: Which should help the initial login sorting.
[16:08] Andrew Linden: Ah yes... turns out that bug was caused by misused API on my part...
[16:09] Andrew Linden: The invisible houses were caused by calling foo(x, y, bar) when it actually expected foo(y, x, bar)
[16:09] Andrew Linden: Thanks for trying it out. It should actually be ready pretty soon
[16:09] Andrew Linden: ok, so that's all my news.
[16:09] Mike Denneny: Thanks for sharing
[16:09] Simon Linden: I can talk about next weeks releases ...
[16:10] Simon Linden: On Tuesday the code that's in the Magnum RC channel is scheduled to roll out to the main grid
[16:10] Simon Linden: That has some work that makes things run better on new hardware
[16:11] Simon Linden: On Wednesdays the RC channels will get updated with that code, as well as some new stuff
[16:11] Simon Linden: LeTigre will remain the one with the new Havok library
[16:12] Simon Linden: Bluesteel is getting some more invisible changes that should help us deal with some problems like full disks that make servers very unhappy
[16:12] Andrew Linden: BTW, we did move Blake Sea LeTigre regions to the Magnum RC channel last Tuesday.
[16:12] Andrew Linden: To avoid region crossing problems for mesh vehicles.
[16:12] Baker Linden: This week, I wrapped up my investigation concerning teleport timeouts. Another Linden was working on multithreading region crossing, and his new code disables the offending code which (I think) is the main cause of timeouts when teleporting. Once that code gets in, I'm hoping we'll see a decrease in the amount of timeouts while teleporting.
I also started looking into object lag during rez. I'm trying to see if there's anything blatantly obvious to help reduce lag.
[16:12] Simon Linden: The Magnum channel is getting a bunch of bug fixes, and also Baker's big group support
[16:13] Rex Cronon: why am i getting disconnected? i don't think the sim crashed. right?
[16:13] Simon Linden: no, things are fine here
[16:13] Rex Cronon: weird
[16:14] Nalates Urriah: Yesterday Oskar said the Blage Sea regions got moved around so they would all be in Le Tigre.
[16:14] Nalates Urriah: Blake Sea^
[16:15] Andrew Linden: huh? so they would all be in LeTigre? Lemme verify.
[16:16] Nalates Urriah: Appareantly they are doing another region reorganize because of colo relocations...
[16:17] Andrew Linden: Well, that isn't what I'm seeing right now. I couldn't find any Blake Sea regions that are currently on LeTigre
[16:18] Andrew Linden: they are all on the main "Second Life Server" channel, or the "Magnum RC Server" channel so far as I can ss.
[16:18] Andrew Linden: see
[16:18] Nalates Urriah: Did they move them to a different but same channel
[16:18] Nalates Urriah: ?
[16:18] Simon Linden: I think it would be easier to put them on other channels rather than trying to get them all onto LeTigre
[16:18] Inara Pey: I thought Oskar just intimated the Blake Sea regions were all on the same channel, but didn't specify which....
[16:18] Theresa Tennyson: I'm guessing Oskar misspoke - there always were a lot of Blake Sea regions on Magnum - that's why the earlier Havok rollout was such a pain.
[16:19] Nalates Urriah: I'd have to go back and read the log... as long as sailors are not screaming, its good.
[16:19] Andrew Linden: Yeah, what I heard, and what I'm seeing, is that the Blake Sea regions are on a variety of channels, but those on LeTigre were moved to Magnum.
[16:20] Andrew Linden: Well, if anyone has problems crossing a region boundary in the Blake Sea while on a mesh vehicle then I would be wrong.
[16:21] Andrew Linden: er... if anyone has problems because of havok lib incompatibility issues....
[16:21] Cheesey Linden: screaming sailors sounds appropriate for halloween
[16:21] Andrew Linden: Ok, so I guess the table is open.
[16:21] Fenix Eldritch: A ghost(ed) ship
[16:21] Rex Cronon: they change into pirates when angry:)
[16:22] Inara Pey: Hmm.. just looking at the transcript, Nal is right:
[16:22] Fenix Eldritch: So I got a random question regarding a LSL function suggestion
[16:22] Theresa Tennyson: Baker mentioned the multithreaded region crossing - where's that at now? Because the new code on LeTigre is even worse for ground vehicle crossings right now.
[16:22] Inara Pey: we have balanced the blake sea regions
[15:27] Oskar Linden: so they are all on the new havok code
[16:23] Baker Linden: Theresa, I don't know what state that's in right now; Simon may have better insight as to when it'll be going out.
[16:23] Simon Linden: The region crossing code is in QA now and not ready for any of the RCs
[16:24] Theresa Tennyson: Is it anywhere on Aditi yet? Ideally on connecting sims?
[16:25] Simon Linden: I don't think it's on Aditi yet
[16:25] Fenix Eldritch: How much of an impact would it be to have a textureAnim() call that used a list to specify a frame sequence (as opposed to the starting frame and length of the current calls)
[16:25] Andrew Linden: Simon, I know that the region crossing work cleans up a bunch of stuff, but are its effects measurable from the user side?
[16:25] Simon Linden: yes, the lag event everyone gets when one person leaves a region should be greatly reduced
[16:26] Nalates Urriah: Yay
[16:26] Mike Denneny: Is it possible to eliminate region crossing lag?
[16:26] Simon Linden: sure, just build with islands :P
[16:26] Andrew Linden: "should be"... I'll ask Huseby Linden if he actually detected an effect.
[16:27] Rex Cronon: if u could make a island 4k*4k:)
[16:27] Mike Denneny: That would be an interesting concept
[16:27] Simon Linden: He did - I forget the numbers he measured, but he got rid of that lag event
[16:27] Andrew Linden: Mike, that is a good question. I believe it is theoretically possible, but I've heard SL dev's argue otherwise.
[16:27] Simon Linden: yeah, I shouldn't get started on "large regions"
[16:27] Mike Denneny: Well in the old days there used to be super sim options
[16:27] Mike Denneny: lol
[16:28] Simon Linden: Theresa - I checked and it's not on Aditi yet
[16:28] Andrew Linden: huh? I don't remember super sim options, at least not in SL.
[16:28] Theresa Tennyson: Keep us posted - my stable of vehicles is waiting.
[16:29] Mike Denneny: Back in 2006 I remember seeing something about extended sim sizes
[16:29] Mike Denneny: same prims just more land.
[16:30] Meeter: Timecheck : User Group is half over
[16:30] Simon Linden: O
[16:30] Andrew Linden: I believe Simon looked into how hard it would be to implement super sim sizes
[16:30] Mike Denneny: Cloud computing?
[16:30] Mike Denneny: lol
[16:31] Dahlia Trimble: how big is super big?
[16:31] Simon Linden: I'm pretty sure that was just an idea back then, Mike, and never went out in SL. I think OpenSIm did something along those lines that emulated a lot of different regions
[16:31] Andrew Linden: and came back with a conclusion that it would be quite hard given our current code base
[16:31] Mike Denneny: Oh alright
[16:31] Simon Linden: I did spend some time investigating larger regions ... it was turning into a scary-big project
[16:32] Dahlia Trimble: job security :)
[16:32] Mike Denneny: So since your not going bigger the idea is to reduce the load that current things use?
[16:32] Mike Denneny: Compression?
[16:32] TankMaster Finesmith: they already use compression
[16:32] Mike Denneny: Well beyond what they do...
[16:33] Mike Denneny: Optimizing it.
[16:33] Andrew Linden: Well, I think there is progress that can be made with region crossings.
[16:33] Andrew Linden: Whether noticeable lag can be completely eliminated remains in debate.
[16:33] TankMaster Finesmith: oskar is working to reorganize regions so neighboring regions are on the same server
[16:34] Andrew Linden: So the question becomes: What can we do to reduce the lag in deliverable chunks that won't take forever?
[16:34] Simon Linden: We're trying to do what we can within the current system
[16:35] TankMaster Finesmith: make a new system, and a V4 client! :P
[16:35] Simon Linden: lol, that would be a fun project
[16:35] TankMaster Finesmith: hehe
[16:35] Andrew Linden: Spatial assignment of regions to the same host, or nearby hosts, will help.
[16:35] Andrew Linden: Proper collisions across region boundaries would also help.
[16:36] Rex Cronon: imo i think we need at least two viewers: one for high end computers, and one for low end computers:)
[16:36] Theresa Tennyson: Ground vehicles are the real problem children.
[16:36] Mike Denneny: I thought that was what the graphics slider was for.
[16:36] Baker Linden: We could just have a smart viewer that can detect if you're a high-end or low-end computer :)
[16:37] TankMaster Finesmith: theres changes runital is making that will better enable functions based on gpu
[16:37] Rex Cronon: that smart viewer will have low IQ if run on the lowest end computer:)
[16:37] Baker Linden: haha, true
[16:38] Simon Linden: Right, Runitai is working on much smarter behavior based on what we know about graphics cards
[16:38] Mike Denneny: Lets just do server side rendering
[16:38] Mike Denneny: haha
[16:38] TankMaster Finesmith: for one thing, untra will now be auto assigned, instead of high being the default
[16:39] Fenix Eldritch: ... am I crashing?
[16:39] Dahlia Trimble: yes
[16:39] Andrew Linden: Someday server-side rendering will be possible... I wonder if it will ever be viable given the technology of the time
[16:39] TankMaster Finesmith: region is
[16:39] Rex Cronon: who knows?
[16:40] Mike Denneny: Did you recieve the notecard on Open Gl Graphics crasher
[16:40] TankMaster Finesmith: agg, region lagbegone
[16:40] Mike Denneny: Apparently is popular around the linden lab telihubs
[16:40] Cheesey Linden: i guess we could set up a render farm...
[16:40] Andrew Linden: Yes Mike.
[16:40] TankMaster Finesmith: theres some protections in place againce things like that
[16:40] Simon Linden: The region seems pretty healthy - 16ms of spare time
[16:41] Mike Denneny: I think there is much to learn from those linden owned chat hotspots
[16:41] TankMaster Finesmith: no, but a bit ago there was no free resorces
[16:41] Mike Denneny: well tank i actually have been crashed from somone using that.
[16:41] Mike Denneny: it is unfortunate.
[16:42] Nalates Urriah: Rendering client then compressing and pushing all that data to the client which ten decompresses it and loads it into video ram doesn't seem faster than just rendering the 3D data...
[16:42] TankMaster Finesmith: in some TPVs you can turn glow off
[16:43] Ardy Lay: Debug setting RenderGlow=FALSE do the same thing?
[16:44] TankMaster Finesmith: yes
[16:44] TankMaster Finesmith: thats all the TPV is exposing in preference
[16:44] Mike Denneny: Well i can't imagine why I would want to disable an effect that enhances my experience.
[16:44] TankMaster Finesmith: so you dont crash?
[16:44] Dahlia Trimble: what happened to that web viewer thing LL had a while back, didnt that use a render farm?
[16:45] Mike Denneny: But for that reason?
[16:45] TankMaster Finesmith: i think that got abandoned
[16:45] Andrew Linden: Right. I'm in favor of making the viewer smarter so it can detect when an avatar, object, or collection of objects becomes to expensive to render.
[16:45] Andrew Linden: However, I guess if it were easy someone would have done it by now.
[16:45] Dahlia Trimble: I think the company that did the rendering went under
[16:45] Cheesey Linden: one issue is the expensive is an arbitrary term
[16:45] Theresa Tennyson: There are some TPV's that theoretically have the ability.
[16:46] Dahlia Trimble: I thought some TPVs would adjust draw distance to maintain FPS
[16:46] Theresa Tennyson: And usually people who are going to try and crash a sim act like goombas before they do it so you can preemptively block them.
[16:46] TankMaster Finesmith: im not aware of any TPVs with dynamic draw distance
[16:47] Dahlia Trimble: cant remember names but I think it was one (or some) that are used for combat like games
[16:47] Mike Denneny: Well maybe there needs to be more tools available for reputation?
[16:47] Andrew Linden: I recall that there were OnLive and Gaikai
[16:47] Andrew Linden: two competing server-side-rendering services for games
[16:47] Rex Cronon: those tools can be gamed
[16:47] Dahlia Trimble: ya I think OnLive went bust
[16:47] Theresa Tennyson: Turning glow off before entering an infohub would be the equivalent of a malaria shot - it's no fun but you need it some places.
[16:47] Nalates Urriah: THe only thing like that I remember was the Fast Rezzer that was a script changing draw distance after you TP'd into a region...
[16:48] Mike Denneny: back in 2006 you were able to rate people
[16:48] Rex Cronon: things change
[16:48] Fenix Eldritch: I remember those ratings!
[16:48] Mike Denneny: but i understand they can be used maliciously.
[16:48] Andrew Linden: Nalates, that FastRezzer dynamic draw distance is something I'm trying to test on the server side right now.
[16:49] Andrew Linden: For teleports and logins.
[16:49] Cheesey Linden: OnLive and Gaikai weren't rendering server side. They were hosting games server side and then setting up compressed streams to user's machines. They need massive amounts of hardware, which entails massive expenses, and then going bust.
[16:49] Mike Denneny: I've heard philip in the past talk about how he wanted secondlife to govern itself
[16:49] Mike Denneny: so it would be interesting to see if it could make more options available to go that rout.
[16:50] Andrew Linden: Cheesey, so you're saying that the games were rendered by a remote game client that would then serve streaming video?
[16:50] Nalates Urriah: Andrew, the Fast Rezzer from the MP was a client side attempt to do what I hope you pull of on the server side. The Fast Rezzer was apparently a problem for the servers.
[16:50] Cheesey Linden: Basically. The only thing sent from client to server was input from the controller.
[16:50] Mike Denneny: yes
[16:51] Mike Denneny: I have onlive as well
[16:51] TankMaster Finesmith: speedrezer was not good for the simulator
[16:51] Mike Denneny: its quite nice besides the small delay
[16:51] Cheesey Linden: Thus I could play a high end game on my 2005 era graphics card
[16:51] Nalates Urriah: Speedrezzer... yeah that thing...
[16:51] Andrew Linden: Nalates. Yeah, I could belive that sliding the camera's draw distance dynamically would cause problems with the old servers. I'm guessing that it won't hit my new code as hard.
[16:51] TankMaster Finesmith: the issue with it is it would change the DD ro 0 after the client had entered the region ans asked the region for everything in the DD at that time
[16:51] TankMaster Finesmith: so it was basicly asking for data twice
[16:52] TankMaster Finesmith: it also only worked on certain TPVs, most of which blocked changing the DD by a gesture
[16:52] Nalates Urriah: I thought asking multiple times...
[16:52] Mike Denneny: What about offering residents options for indexing there inventory
[16:52] Mike Denneny: for example if they search 4 terms often
[16:52] Mike Denneny: they can index them?
[16:53] Cheesey Linden: the problem OnLive ran into is that they quickly found out their streams degraded over a number of hops. So, they needed Colos everywhere to give people good performance. Not a good strategy for making a profit.
[16:53] Andrew Linden: It turns out... modifying the database schema for user inventory is kinda hard to do.
[16:54] Andrew Linden: Possible, in theory, as most things are when talking about software
[16:54] TankMaster Finesmith: pfft, just pur a colo in every county/providence, what could go wrong with that? :P
[16:54] Andrew Linden: but it would take a lot of devs, much coordination, and a significant amount of time
[16:54] Rex Cronon: even better put one in every house:0
[16:54] Andrew Linden: so... maybe someday, but not right now
[16:55] Meeter: Timecheck : User Group is almost over
[16:55] Mike Denneny: What about hardware upgrades, should we expect our islands to be running on anything new soon?
[16:55] TankMaster Finesmith: some got upgraded last monday i think
[16:56] Nalates Urriah: I thought they had been upgrading fro a few weeks now...
[16:56] Mike Denneny: Last i remember was class 5 in 2007
[16:56] Dahlia Trimble: does HW upgrade mean faster sim, or does it mean more sims/server?
[16:56] Andrew Linden: We do have some hardware upgrades in the works. I don't know much about it, but one of the "helps with backend issues" server upgrades that either just went out, or is going out soon, is part of that effort.
[16:56] TankMaster Finesmith: yes
[16:57] Nalates Urriah: Does the Lab run on Intel or AMD?
[16:57] Mike Denneny: Is there any tech spec to show the difference between the old class 5 servers and theses?
[16:57] Andrew Linden: Both of those improvements we hope, Dahlia.
[16:57] Theresa Tennyson: Server hardware is apperently on the "If we tell you we have to kill you" list.
[16:57] TankMaster Finesmith: faster clock speed = faster regions, more cores = more regions on a host
[16:58] Nalates Urriah: The US Weather Service just turned on their new super computer. It uses AMD. It pulls 3 to 4 megawats when running.
[16:59] Andrew Linden: I think the new servers will provide more RAM per simulator process, which will probably help.
[16:59] TankMaster Finesmith: their loss for using AD
[16:59] Nalates Urriah: I hear the get 200FPS when running SL...
[16:59] TankMaster Finesmith: AMD*
[16:59] Mike Denneny: lol
[16:59] Dahlia Trimble blames global warming on the US weather service...
[16:59] TankMaster Finesmith: more ram would be good, can never have to much ram
[17:00] Mike Denneny: I'm just interested by january 2013 should we expect any big improvements with secondlife performance.
[17:00] Meeter: Thank you for coming to the Server User Group
[17:00] Nalates Urriah: The funny part is they put it in Wyoming to use cheap coal fired electrict generators...
[17:00] Andrew Linden: I certainly hope so Mike.
[17:00] Andrew Linden: I'm hoping some of my work will help there, and will be delivered before then.
[17:00] TankMaster Finesmith: monty's HTT work should help a bit
[17:00] TankMaster Finesmith: HTTP
[17:00] DrFran Babcock: Thanks all. Informative, as usual.
[17:01] TankMaster Finesmith: have a good weekend, everyone
[17:01] Mike Denneny: I have some plans to bring schools any and anything you can do to reduce the amount of bandwidth required would help.
[17:01] DrFran Babcock goes to watch Jon Stewart and Obama
[17:01] Moundsa Mayo: Andrew, Simon, Cheesey, thanks for your time!
[17:01] Nalates Urriah: Thanks Lindens...
[17:01] Rex Cronon: tc all those leaving
[17:01] Andrew Linden: Thanks for coming everyone.
[17:01] Moundsa Mayo: And Baker!!
[17:01] Cheesey Linden: Dance baker!
[17:01] Dahlia Trimble waves
[17:02] Yuzuru Jewell: Thank you Lindens.
[17:02] Mike Denneny: thank you
[17:02] Inara Pey: Thanks, Simon, Andrew, Baker, Cheesy and everyone else.
[17:02] Rex Cronon: have fun everybody:)
[17:02] Simon Linden: Thanks everyeone for coming today. See you next time
Simulator_User_Group
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