Simulator User Group/Transcripts/2013.04.30

Simulator_User_Group
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== List of Speakers ==
Andrew Linden 	Baker Linden 	Duckie Dickins
Inara Breen 	Kallista Destiny	Kitto Flora
Lucia Nightfire	MartinRJ Fayray 	Qie Niangao
Rex Cronon 	Simon Linden 	Sylvie Etoile
Whirly Fizzle 	Yuzuru Jewell 	
== Transcript ==
[11:59] Sylvie Etoile: .... cough cough
[11:59] Duckie Dickins: Greetings Andrew
[11:59] Andrew Linden: Hello everyone.
[11:59] Sylvie Etoile: Hi Andrew!
[11:59] Kitto Flora: Hi Dr. Andrew
[11:59] MartinRJ Fayray: Hello Andrew
[11:59] Kallista Destiny: Ave Andrew
[12:00] Meeter: Welcome to the Server User Group
[12:00] Yuzuru Jewell: Hello, Andrew.
[12:00] Andrew Linden: I'm waiting for Simon, hoping he shows up.
[12:01] Andrew Linden: I missed the last two Simulator User Groups.
[12:01] Andrew Linden: Since the last one I've been working on fixing intrestlist bugs, in particular the one that is breaking Meeroo (Meeroos?)
[12:01] Andrew Linden: when you turn around
[12:01] Andrew Linden: What is the plural of Meeroo?
[12:02] Duckie Dickins: meeri?
[12:02] Sylvie Etoile: I would just exterminate the little buggers personally
[12:02] Yuzuru Jewell: Hello, Simon and Kelly.
[12:02] Kitto Flora: Wonderful World of Meeroos | What will you discover?
www.worldofmeeroos.com/
[12:03] Sylvie Etoile: Hi Simon and Kelly!
[12:03] Andrew Linden: Thanks Kitto, Meeroos it is.
[12:03] Qie Niangao: They travel in packs. Meeroos, I mean, not Lindens.
[12:03] Baker Linden: Lindens do as well
[12:03] Andrew Linden: Anyway, I think I've got a fix for them. I just finished it this morning
[12:03] Qie Niangao: :D
[12:03] Andrew Linden: but haven't yet actually tested it on any Meeroos.
[12:03] Sylvie Etoile: Yes but do lindens breed like meeros?
[12:03] Lucia Nightfire: can somone c/p the last 3 minutes and IM it to me
[12:03] Lucia Nightfire: crashed for some reason
[12:03] Duckie Dickins: 2 bullets to the cranium.
[12:03] Simon Linden: Not as often, Sylvie
[12:04] Sylvie Etoile: Is that good or bad?
[12:04] Whirly Fizzle: OOh me too please. Sorry Im late :D
[12:04] Kallista Destiny: Unfortunatly
[12:04] Yuzuru Jewell: Hello, Baker.
[12:04] Lucia Nightfire: Whirly and her bug chasing
[12:04] Andrew Linden: Lucia, we haven't actually started....
[12:04] Lucia Nightfire: yeah, but I came in on this: [12:03:26] Andrew Linden: Anyway, I think I've got a fix for them. I just finished it this morning
[12:04] Lucia Nightfire: w/o knowign what you fixed
[12:04] Whirly Fizzle: lol same
[12:04] Lucia Nightfire: I have a guess though, lo
[12:05] Andrew Linden: Ah. I think I've got a fix for the interestlist bug that is breaking meeroos when you turn around and suddenly view them again
[12:05] Sylvie Etoile: They fixed lag Lucy
[12:05] Whirly Fizzle: OOOh yay
[12:05] Rex Cronon: hello andrew
[12:05] Rex Cronon: hello everybody
[12:05] Qie Niangao: When we get to it, the Deploys forums thread is http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Second-Life-Server/Deploys-for-the-week-of-2013-04-29/td-p/1988583
[12:05] Lucia Nightfire: you so silly, Sylvie
[12:05] Andrew Linden: if you turn your camera away from a crowd of meeroos, wait several seconds, then turn back around... the meeroo will be update
[12:05] Lucia Nightfire: lag is eternal
[12:05] Andrew Linden: but not quite in the right order
[12:06] Andrew Linden: so sometimes you'll see a head move to the new position, then a fraction of a second later the rest of the body
[12:06] Andrew Linden: so I have a theoretical fix
[12:06] Andrew Linden: that doesn't crash the simulator (anymore)
[12:06] Andrew Linden: I hope to test it later today.
[12:06] Andrew Linden: Ok Simon, go ahead. That's all my news.
[12:06] Kitto Flora: So its a link-set update issue?
[12:07] Duckie Dickins: I still get issues with normal stuff not appearing until you select it...like part of the railing around the roof here just disappeared on me
[12:07] Whirly Fizzle: Great! Thank you :)
[12:07] Andrew Linden: Duckie, that is a viewer bug. We think maybe it is fixed in a new viewer
[12:07] Andrew Linden: but this new viewer I mention happens to be very crashy
[12:07] Andrew Linden: so we haven't opened up the source code for it yet
[12:08] Andrew Linden: nor have we submitted it to our QA team
[12:08] Andrew Linden: since they'll just crash
[12:08] Whirly Fizzle: lol
[12:08] Whirly Fizzle: I thought devs loved persecuting QA :P
[12:08] Andrew Linden: This is the viewer that goes with our new interestlist changes
[12:09] Andrew Linden: which I mentioned a few weeks ago and people were wondering when the code would be put up on a public repo.
[12:09] Kitto Flora: Weird - that 'stuff dont appear until you click on it' affects the Coll VL Viere - which is based on 1.23. If its a 'new client bug' then they must have imported NEW code from NEW clients into the old 1.23 code.
[12:09] Lucia Nightfire: I can think of more annoying bugs, lol
[12:09] Sylvie Etoile: Having to right click everything is pretty darn annoying tho
[12:09] Kallista Destiny: It's a very old bug(I think) enhanced by server side changes
[12:10] Lucia Nightfire: yeah, I get it on Phoenix alot as well
[12:10] Andrew Linden: Kallista is correct.
[12:10] Whirly Fizzle: Enhanced a lot :D
[12:10] Kitto Flora: Yeah Kallista- that sounds a lot more likely
[12:10] Kallista Destiny: Because I remember seeing it years ago.
[12:10] Andrew Linden: Although.... I tested on the old official 1.23 viewer and I think it did not reproduce for me there.
[12:10] Kallista Destiny: It's somewhat inconsistant.
[12:10] Whirly Fizzle: 1.23 has no separate object cache I don't think?
[12:10] Kitto Flora: So the server packet got changed in a way that clients dont like
[12:11] Andrew Linden: Hrm... maybe my 1.23 viewer still had the mis-named object cache file bug.
[12:11] Andrew Linden: So maybe the object cache wasn't even working at all.
[12:11] Rex Cronon: u know. the client doesn't have crash if it doesn't like the taste of packets that it gets. it can render them as balls:)\
[12:11] Rex Cronon: :)
[12:11] Andrew Linden: The viewer bug is a problem with loading objects from the cache.
[12:12] Kitto Flora: Whirly - I dont know . Cool VL Viewer is maint. by Henri Beauchamps.
[12:12] Lucia Nightfire: Kitto and JayR's chair didn't render until I drag selected them, heh
[12:12] Lucia Nightfire: they were air sitting
[12:12] Kitto Flora: I dont know what inside it - only that (apart from these common bugs) its the best client around.
[12:12] Duckie Dickins: it should render them as hippos instead of balls. :)
[12:12] Whirly Fizzle: If you purge objet cache and set it read only, that pretty much stops the missing prims - not all but its greatly redused (for me anyway)
[12:12] Kallista Destiny: You can also toggle view Alpha
[12:12] Whirly Fizzle: *reduced
[12:13] Duckie Dickins: well with me the rail behind andrew was there..I cammed around the area and came back and the rail was gone.
[12:14] Kitto Flora: I'd not be surprised that it has a cache problem - There seems to be a lot of reloading-from-server going on when stuff SOHULD be still in the cache
[12:14] Andrew Linden: That's all the news from me. Simon or Kelly, got anything?
[12:14] Simon Linden: I can talk about the release news ...
[12:15] Lucia Nightfire: lost PF fixes again, I'm making a sad tiger face atm
[12:15] Simon Linden: this morning we updated the main channel servers back to a previous version. The one promoted last week was causing a performance problem with one of the back-end services
[12:15] Simon Linden: The usual forum links are here: http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Second-Life-Server/Deploys-for-the-week-of-2013-04-29/td-p/1988583
[12:15] Sylvie Etoile: Which one?
[12:16] Whirly Fizzle: Was it the "Slight region performance improvement when there are no pathfinding characters present " that was a problem?
[12:17] Lucia Nightfire: the problems I saw on mc were mostly comm and cap related
[12:17] Simon Linden: Nope, not that ... it was with regions locating their neighbors
[12:17] Lucia Nightfire: same as the week prior on RC's
[12:17] Simon Linden: but the performance problem was really showing up between any one region trying to locate another on the grid ... the system was actually working, but too close to the cliff for comfort
[12:18] Kitto Flora: Regions locating neighbors was a problem a week or to back and earlier
[12:18] Simon Linden: I should say *usually* working ... we did see troubles with it
[12:18] Simon Linden: That's going to go back to what it was before last Tuesday, Kitto
[12:18] Lucia Nightfire: I take it part of that host work was to address that or try to
[12:18] Kitto Flora: Oh
[12:19] Kitto Flora: well i hav not seen that failure in the last week
[12:19] Kitto Flora: BUt
[12:19] Kitto Flora: Also Wengen has been unmolested in the last week or so
[12:19] Simon Linden: I've been working on a better fix for the problem that should give the grid the fast response so neighbor regions appear quickly after re-start, but our back-end servers don't melt
[12:19] Kitto Flora: Either Bullet is on holiday, or locked up, or finally banned :)
[12:20] Lucia Nightfire: or got bored
[12:20] Kitto Flora: The adgacent link problem showed up after a region crashed and recovered
[12:20] Kitto Flora: He didnt get bored for a year - why now?
[12:20] Simon Linden: yeah, it could take hours sometimes for them to talk nicely to each other
[12:20] Lucia Nightfire: maybe he found a significant other
[12:22] Andrew Linden: Ok so... the table is open?
[12:22] Andrew Linden: I mean: I think the table is open.
[12:22] Kitto Flora: Border crossings - riding moving objects?
[12:22] Kitto Flora: Problem that Av is left sitting stuck at the border
[12:22] Simon Linden: The invisible table is open!
[12:22] Kitto Flora: unrecoverable, often
[12:22] Lucia Nightfire: riding mesh = roll the dice
[12:23] Kitto Flora: and the moving object carries on across the border
[12:23] Kitto Flora: No mesh involved
[12:23] Sylvie Etoile: Region crossings seemed to get better and then worse to me lately
[12:23] Lucia Nightfire: wearing mesh + region crossing = roll the dice
[12:24] Andrew Linden: Kitto, this is a new rash of problems? Or you're asking about a long standing problem? (I'm guessing the latter)
[12:24] Kitto Flora: me no wear mesh either
[12:24] Inara Breen: I've had it with both mesh and prim vehicles
[12:24] Kitto Flora: Probably the latter
[12:24] Simon Linden: Mesh brings in more data for the region crossing, which means more lag and possible trouble
[12:24] Kitto Flora: I'm seeing it (again) because I have been testing railway trains
[12:24] Whirly Fizzle: Theres been grumblings about vehicle crossing problems on the fiyms too
[12:24] Whirly Fizzle: *forums
[12:25] Kitto Flora: multiple 'vehicles' crossing border, with riders
[12:25] Whirly Fizzle: New grumblings I mean
[12:25] Whirly Fizzle: http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Second-Life-Server/Vehicle-sim-crossing-problems-cropping-up-again/td-p/1986053 and http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Second-Life-Server/Problems-in-sim-crossing/td-p/1987699 for example
[12:26] Kitto Flora: Humm - looks like several different combos of vehicle types and Avs are having different problems
[12:27] Andrew Linden: Yeah, region crossings are... complicated. There are multiple ways they can fail.
[12:27] Whirly Fizzle: & the OP on one there says the same as you, that his avi gets stuck at the border
[12:27] Inara Breen: This has been typical for me: http://modemworld.wordpress.com/2013/04/04/of-flying-and-forests/test-4/
[12:28] Simon Linden: I can't get a clear idea of which version people think it got worse in
[12:28] Andrew Linden: Browsing the forum posts, and considering Kitto's comments, I was wondering if I'd see any clues to a certain failure mode.
[12:28] Andrew Linden: However, it is not clear.
[12:29] Kitto Flora: Well - the painful one is when the av is left stuck at the border
[12:29] Kitto Flora: Theres one crossing point on SLRR where it has frequently happened
[12:29] Kitto Flora: Almost rates as 'reproducable'
[12:30] Meeter: Timecheck : User Group is half over
[12:30] Andrew Linden: Where is it Kitto?
[12:30] Inara Breen: I've had it frequently between Blake Sea Half Hitch and Blake Sea Barbaroosa
[12:30] Kitto Flora: Uh.. over there up the track aways :)
[12:30] Kitto Flora: Id have togo find it to get the sim names
[12:30] Kitto Flora: Are you interested, Andrew?
[12:31] Andrew Linden: Somewhat. It is something I'd like to work on, but I'm still trying to wrap up my interestlist project.
[12:31] Qie Niangao: Inasmuch as it's such a chronic / recurring problem, it might be useful if QA ran a sim-crossing performance test on each release, just to see if things are trending up or down.
[12:31] Andrew Linden: I thought I was nearly done... it has been "two more weeks" for about six weeks now.
[12:32] Sylvie Etoile: Yes some trending data would be v useful
[12:32] Kitto Flora: Does Interest List also control updates to the client when theres multiple moving objects in view?
[12:32] Kitto Flora: I mean the timing of updates?
[12:32] Andrew Linden: If I were to work on it I'd first try to figure out how to reproduce it so I could find out exactly why the avatar is being left behind.
[12:32] Andrew Linden: Kitto, you where zero attachments? or just zero mesh attachments?
[12:33] Andrew Linden: er... *wear*
[12:33] Kitto Flora: Andrew - zero mesh attachments. I have typically 3 huds attached. All low load small scripts
[12:33] Andrew Linden: Kitto, the interestlist figures out which updates to send to the viewer, for all moving or changing objects.
[12:35] Andrew Linden: Ok, one failure mode I know about for region crossing of the avatar is if the source region is having trouble sending all attachment data to the recipient region.
[12:35] Kitto Flora: Andrew - for the new trains I working on - the client display of the relavive position of the vehicles jup around a lot - but the vehicles think they are in the right place. Smells of the updates not being sent in a timetly fashion
[12:35] Kitto Flora: Yes, I am wearing those 3 huts now.
[12:35] Kitto Flora: huds
[12:36] Andrew Linden: Kitto, the avatar is actually sitting on the vehicles?
[12:36] Kitto Flora: Yes andrew. The vehicle don use VEHICLE code tho. Its phantom and non-phys. Its using KeyFrameAnimation.
[12:37] Kitto Flora: Er
[12:37] Kitto Flora: Key FrameMotion
[12:37] Andrew Linden: Er... Kitto the "relative position of the vehicles jump around a lot"... the vehicles relative to each other? or relative to the avatar position?
[12:38] Kitto Flora: The jumping around - When the av sits on one of the vehicles they tend to see the other vehicles jittering around a lot
[12:38] Kitto Flora: Whne Av stands on the ground and watches them pass by they appear better behaved.
[12:39] Andrew Linden: Ah. Yeah that is a quirk of the SL update system... each "vehicle" is a distinct object right? So the updates come in distinct packets.
[12:39] Kitto Flora: Right
[12:40] Andrew Linden: Unfortunately I don't see an easy way to fix that... without setting up some sort of hierarchy that supports trains.
[12:40] Andrew Linden: So I'm not going to try to fix that in my current interestlist work.
[12:41] Andrew Linden: I agree that region crossing on vehicles needs more work.
[12:41] Kitto Flora: Thing is - it seems to be worse for KFM motion than old physical VEHICLE code.
[12:41] Kitto Flora: OK.. well the border crossing suuff is killer - it leaves Av trashed, mostly.
[12:41] Kitto Flora: The jitter just looks bad
[12:42] Andrew Linden: I can't promise that I'll be working on that as soon as I'm done with this interestlist project, but I'll try to bring it up in the next "what do we work on next" brainstorm that we have.
[12:42] Kitto Flora: Good :)
[12:43] Andrew Linden: Yeah. I wonder if it would be possible to reduce the jitter... the system would have to know that the train of objects are somehow "together".
[12:43] Kitto Flora: Well yea - kinda hints at the 'heirachy' of linking....
[12:44] Rex Cronon: kitto. make them all pathfinding and have them follow the first one:)
[12:44] Andrew Linden: The jitter might be worse because of the pathfinding feature... I think I've seen some pathfinding objects that appear to jitter as they navigate around.
[12:44] Andrew Linden: Rex, I think that is what he's doing.
[12:44] Qie Niangao: Kitto, does the KFM path update frequently? I'm wondering if you're seeing updates in path, then position updates of where that path was really supposed to begin, repeatedly = jitter.
[12:44] Kitto Flora: No pathfinding involved
[12:45] Kitto Flora: Its following track prims
[12:45] Andrew Linden: Oh. Kitto how do these new vehicles move around?
[12:45] Andrew Linden: They are not using the scripted vehicle feature, right?
[12:45] Kitto Flora: KeyFrameMotionll()
[12:45] Andrew Linden: Oh right.
[12:45] Kitto Flora: Not VEHICLE code
[12:46] Kitto Flora: So they are very smooth and un-griefabel, and dont suffer from HAVOK bugs, and are about 1/10th the sim load of old trains
[12:46] Andrew Linden: Hrm... maybe the jitter really is a problem with the interestlist then.
[12:47] Andrew Linden: The interesetlist is measuring the velocity and acceleration of objects, and transmitting that info to the viewer when it thinks it will help the viewer extrapolate their motion.
[12:47] Kitto Flora: Its like the client update time for each moving object is randomized
[12:48] Andrew Linden: It could be that inaccuracies in the velocity/acceleration measurements would cause a relative jitter.
[12:48] Kitto Flora: The moving objects are all moving at almost exactly the same speed
[12:49] Andrew Linden: right, but each object's velocity is measured independently, so the values may differ across the train
[12:49] Andrew Linden: and the jitter isn't huge right? but is noticeable to the human eye
[12:50] Kitto Flora: The jitter is mostly a meter or less
[12:50] Andrew Linden: oh, pretty big
[12:50] Andrew Linden: Kitto, do you have some example objects that would work on the beta grid (aditi)?
[12:50] Andrew Linden: You have to lay a track down for the vehicle to work, right/
[12:51] Kitto Flora: Well I'd hope to servio the relative positions to < 0.1 meter but - it only maintains that under good conditions
[12:51] Kitto Flora: Andrew - yes it needs track. Or a pre-assembled layout
[12:52] Kitto Flora: I doubt any of this is in Aditi - last I looked I cound not even rez inv in Aditi. And I no longer have any land there
[12:52] Qie Niangao: Kitto, you say it's worse when the avatar is seated on one of the KFM objects, right? That should be a clue, but it's not getting me very far.
[12:52] Andrew Linden: Do you have a complete track on a region in the main grid (agni)?
[12:52] Kitto Flora: Qui - yes thats true
[12:52] Kitto Flora: Andrew - yes. I have a demo train set up
[12:53] Kitto Flora: permanently
[12:53] Andrew Linden: It is pretty easy for me to just copy a whole region to beta to test content. At least, usually easier than assembling the content myself.
[12:54] Andrew Linden: But if it relies on communication to external servers then it probably won't work on aditi, or might confuse the external servers.
[12:54] Kitto Flora: No external servers involved
[12:54] Andrew Linden: What is the region name?
[12:54] Kitto Flora: Could copy that region over - of owners are ok with it
[12:55] Meeter: Timecheck : User Group is almost over
[12:55] Andrew Linden: And how do I find the vehicle?
[12:55] Kitto Flora: Yeodeol is the region
[12:56] Andrew Linden: Ok that appears to be a mainland region.
[12:56] Kitto Flora gives Andrew a LM for the new train
[12:56] Andrew Linden: I wouldn't bring it up on beta in a publicly available host. The machine where I do most of my testing is only available via the internal network.
[12:57] Kitto Flora: OK - what do you need then?
[12:57] Lucia Nightfire: There probably needs to be more real world testing instead of ideal conditions testing anyway, lol.
[12:57] Andrew Linden: That sould be enough. I'll try the train out on the mainland just to make sure I know how to find and use it.
[12:58] Lucia Nightfire: That can go for many things.
[12:58] Andrew Linden: Then I'll try to test on aditi and see if I can figure out what is going on.
[12:58] Kitto Flora: Lucy: Too true - I get producst working fine - sell em to 3 people and get 3 different new failure modes discovered
[12:59] Lucia Nightfire: yeah, it happens
[12:59] Kitto Flora: Yesterday discovered a 2 year old bug in product - no one found it before.
[12:59] Lucia Nightfire: sometimes your clientel can find more bugs than you ever could
[13:00] Meeter: Thank you for coming to the Server User Group
[13:00] Andrew Linden: >_>
[13:00] Kallista Destiny: Thank you all
[13:00] Sylvie Etoile: Sometimes I think my customers are the bugs lol
[13:00] Simon Linden coughs
[13:00] Andrew Linden: <_<
[13:00] Lucia Nightfire: lol
[13:00] Rex Cronon: we r a good example lucia. we find so many bugs that the linden don't even know about:)
[13:01] Andrew Linden: No we don't think our customers are bugs... but they are very good testers ;-)
[13:01] Lucia Nightfire: so when is the experience team gonn amake that announcement?
[13:01] Lucia Nightfire: lol
[13:01] Simon Linden: and they certainly do things with SL that we never think of
[13:01] Andrew Linden: "I don't always test my code... but when I do I do it in production."
[13:02] Lucia Nightfire: wonderign what those Experience Keys are supposed to be and how they're gonna work
[13:03] Andrew Linden: Thanks for coming everyone.
[13:03] Rex Cronon: on the plus side it is almost impossible for a project of this size to have no bugs:)
[13:03] Duckie Dickins: Enjoy lunch.
[13:03] Rex Cronon: tc andrew, simon
[13:03] Rex Cronon: tc everybody and have a nice day:)
[13:03] Sylvie Etoile: Thank you Simon and Andrew et al!
[13:03] Whirly Fizzle: Thank you Lindens
[13:03] Andrew Linden: No one seems to have noticed that region content is showing up faster these days on login.
[13:04] Kitto Flora: TY Simon, Andrew...
[13:04] Andrew Linden: Am I the only one?
[13:04] Baker Linden: Hey Andrew, I've noticed that region content shows up faster these days on login
[13:04] Sylvie Etoile: I think I did today
[13:04] Andrew Linden: Yay!
[13:04] Whirly Fizzle: It shows up faster cos half the prims are missing :P
[13:04] Sylvie Etoile: ...... but with the usual holes that have to be right clicked lol
[13:04] Lucia Nightfire: lmao
[13:04] Andrew Linden: D'oh!
[13:04] Kitto Flora: Any Client hacker/workers/modifiers here- if so -IM me please
[13:05] Rex Cronon: lol kitto. what r u making?
[13:05] Kitto Flora: A whole new world :)
[13:06] Lucia Nightfire: is it full of starrs?
[13:06] Sylvie Etoile: It sounds like Kitto is being Isambard Kingdom Brunel
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