Simulator User Group/Transcripts/2012.09.04

Simulator_User_Group
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== List of Speakers ==
Andrew Linden 	AnnMarie Otoole 	Baker Linden
Jonathan Yap 	Kallista Destiny 	Liisa Runo
Lomoco Binder 	Motor Loon 	Nalates Urriah
NeoBokrug Elytis 	Qie Niangao 	Rex Cronon
Sahkolihaa Contepomi	TankMaster Finesmith	Theresa Tennyson
== Transcript ==
[12:00] Kallista Destiny: Nay, it's talk like yerrr scottish day
[12:01] Rex Cronon: hello everybody
[12:01] Kallista Destiny: Hi Rex
[12:01] Rex Cronon: hi kallista
[12:01] Andrew Linden: I don
[12:01] Qie Niangao tries to channel his inner MacNiangao
[12:02] Andrew Linden: I don't think Kelly or Simon will be able to make it today. They are working on some hot issue that blocked the update today.
[12:02] Kallista Destiny takes off her sunglasses
[12:03] Andrew Linden: anybody have the link to the server RC status page?
[12:03] Andrew Linden: I wonder what was posted there.
[12:04] Qie Niangao: http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Second-Life-Server/Deploys-for-the-week-of-2012-09-03/td-p/1657949 maybe?
[12:04] Rex Cronon: this : http://status.secondlifegrid.net/
[12:04] Rex Cronon: ?
[12:04] Andrew Linden: Qui's link is the one I'm looking for.
[12:05] Andrew Linden: Qie's link, I mean.
[12:05] Andrew Linden: It mentions SVC-8208
[12:05] JIRA-helper: http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-8208
[#SVC-8208] L$ received notification not appearing when on an RC region - Second Life Bug Tracker
[12:05] Andrew Linden: which is the blocker that was discovered over the weekend
[12:05] Kallista Destiny: well that is a show stopper
[12:05] Motor Loon: Mabye its just me... but isn't that just a tiny tiny bug that don't really matter much?
[12:06] Theresa Tennyson: It would be if people knew what was going on. If you don't, you'll freak.
[12:06] Motor Loon: you can always check your transactions
[12:06] Motor Loon: ah well, probably just me
[12:06] Rex Cronon: doesn't your L$ counter upgrade?
[12:06] Theresa Tennyson mutters, "And since there isn't much of a way to send out notices of widespread temporary system glitches..."
[12:06] Andrew Linden: Yeah, could cause confusion, and it was discovered before we rolled the update to the main channel.
[12:07] Theresa Tennyson: It will update if you click on the total.
[12:07] Andrew Linden: Dunno if it would have caused an revert if we had discovered it this afternoon after the update.
[12:07] Andrew Linden: Other than that, not much news since Friday
[12:07] Andrew Linden: So I guess the table is open.
[12:08] Lomoco Binder: I found a slight problem with llCastRay and phantom avatars. It detects them whether or not RC_DETECT_PHANTOM is FALSE or not. https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-8213
[12:08] JIRA-helper: [#SVC-8213] llCastRay detects phantom avatars with RC_DETECT_PHANTOM set to FALSE - Second Life Bug Tracker
[12:09] Andrew Linden: Hrm... phantom avatars are a bug... er misfeature, btw.
[12:09] Lomoco Binder: Yeah.. but still widely used, and it'd be useful to be able to properly detect them.
[12:09] Theresa Tennyson: The payment notice brings up a recurring problem - there isn't an established way to get residents notice of glitches like that so they can look for them.
[12:09] Andrew Linden: That is, phantom avatars were not the intentional behavior.
[12:10] Liisa Runo: intentional or not, still very usefull and needed
[12:10] Rex Cronon: there is the grid status page. usually grid problems get posted there
[12:10] Theresa Tennyson: The grid status is pretty much a handful of canned phrases though.
[12:11] Kallista Destiny: ant will probably get rolled down pretty quick
[12:11] Kallista Destiny: unless refreshed regularly
[12:12] Andrew Linden: I don't know if we'll ever get to SVC-8213. I can discuss it with Falcon. However he definitely does not have a soft spot for misfeatures.
[12:12] Motor Loon: haha
[12:12] Motor Loon: true dat
[12:12] AnnMarie Otoole: Promotes SVC-7729. Objects entering NO-ENTRY parcels. I get about 10 a day where vehicles are trapped due to also NO-SCRIPT. Don't know how many times it happens on script OK land and they escape. Most are just trapped millimeters inside the parcel.
[12:12] JIRA-helper: http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-7729
[#SVC-7729] Physical objects can cross into no-entry parcel - Second Life Bug Tracker
[12:12] Lomoco Binder: This wouldn't necessarily be supporting the misfeature, more of enabling us to detect if someone is exploiting it.
[12:14] Andrew Linden: Ha! Good point Lomoco. This would allow people to make misfeature detectors.
[12:14] Andrew Linden: Which we hope would enable them to lecture content creators who are discovered using them, "You know Falcon doesn't like that misfeature, right?" ;-)
[12:15] Andrew Linden: Hrm... 7729...
[12:15] Motor Loon: Seems better to me that it does detect avatars dont it... say you use raycast for a gun, you want it to be able to shoot thru phantom things but always hit an avatar
[12:15] Lomoco Binder: Well, it would at the very least help those in the military community crack down on troublemakers making themselves invincible with it.
[12:16] Motor Loon: but also destroy guns based on raycasting
[12:16] Lomoco Binder: If the avatar is phantom, the raycast gun wouldn't be able to do anything anyways.
[12:17] Motor Loon: depends on the scenario
[12:18] AnnMarie Otoole: 7729 is difficult to reproduce. Appears that physics engine fails to stop the object in time so it manages to cross the parcel boundary.
[12:18] Lomoco Binder: The only way I could see fixing this "breaking" raycast guns is if the raycast gun is using parcel powers to teleport them home or something, and that would really be "enabling" them.
[12:18] NeoBokrug Elytis: Possibly because of a bout of region lag?
[12:19] AnnMarie Otoole: Possible.
[12:19] Theresa Tennyson: There seem to be a lot of issues with object position reports lately.
[12:21] Andrew Linden: I think AnnMarie Otoole's comment on 7729 is probably correct... it may have to do with the discrepancy between the avatar's location and the root location of the vehicle
[12:21] Andrew Linden: and region crossings are probably related there.
[12:22] Qie Niangao: AnnMarie, this is for vehicles without avatars, mostly, right?
[12:22] Andrew Linden: I made a note. I'll mention it to Simon and Kelly for triage, or maybe look into it myself I can find the time.
[12:23] Baker Linden: Here's my news: I'll be pushing out the server and viewer fixes for SVC-4968 this week. I'll be committing the server code and writing documentation (test plans, wiki stuff) today, and setting up a public viewer development branch tomorrow. Once the viewer code is ready, I'll be updating the jira to let people know where to get it.
[12:23] JIRA-helper: http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-4968
[#SVC-4968] Group won't load - too many members - Second Life Bug Tracker
[12:24] NeoBokrug Elytis: I can't remember if llSetRegionPos detects land settings across region borders, and returns a false if it's not allowed
[12:24] Nalates Urriah: Yay Baker
[12:24] TankMaster Finesmith: woot, just in time for that good bit of news :D
[12:24] AnnMarie Otoole: Yes Qie
[12:24] Andrew Linden: NeoBokrug, that used to be a hard bug to fix, but these days it would be possible (if it really is a bug).
[12:25] NeoBokrug Elytis: I haven't tested in a while, I know it was a problem at some point.
[12:26] Theresa Tennyson: I know you're looking at changing how vehicles cross region boundaries - there are MANY issues with vehicles that make them a pain a lot of the time.
[12:28] Andrew Linden: I don't know of specific plans on changing how vehicles cross region boundaries, but there was a project about region crossings in general for objects.
[12:29] Theresa Tennyson: That was what I was referring to.
[12:29] Andrew Linden: And Falcon has a scheme for improving collisions across region boundaries.
[12:30] Meeter: Timecheck : User Group is half over
[12:30] Motor Loon: excellent
[12:30] NeoBokrug Elytis: Potential raycasts outside the region? :)
[12:30] Motor Loon: Nothing like a good evil scheme
[12:30] Andrew Linden: Right, the region crossing project has been in maintenance mode for a while... part 1 was shipped and introduced a bunch of uncommon bugs
[12:31] Andrew Linden: those have been mostly fixed, as far as I know, so perhaps part2 will proceed soon.
[12:31] Andrew Linden: Falcon
[12:32] Andrew Linden: Falcon's scheme involves sending the collision data for all neighboring "navmesh" objects to each region.
[12:32] Andrew Linden: Their collision data would go into the local region's physics engine, which would allow for better bridges that cross region boundaries
[12:32] Andrew Linden: you wouldn't have to double up prims at the crossing
[12:32] Motor Loon: less need to invisible "crossing prims" like we're used to?
[12:33] NeoBokrug Elytis: That's be nice
[12:33] Motor Loon: thats very silly btw
[12:33] Andrew Linden: and might actually allow for raycasts into neighbors... but it wouldn't work for dynamic objects initially
[12:33] Qie Niangao: hmmm. so the navmesh can (does?) affect non-pathfinding things. I didn't know that.
[12:33] Motor Loon: seems anything there would be an improvement
[12:34] Andrew Linden: No Qie, but the idea would be to only transmit objects that are part of the navmesh for such cross-region collision purposes
[12:34] Qie Niangao: oh, okay
[12:34] Andrew Linden: because, we'd want to first include the objects that are not changing shape/position/rotation very often
[12:34] Qie Niangao: oh... yeah, got it.
[12:35] Andrew Linden: What to do about colliding against the neighbor's moving objects, within the local physics engine, would be a follow up project.
[12:36] Andrew Linden: This cross-region collision feature is one that I've been wanting to get done for a very long time.
[12:36] Andrew Linden: We punted the problem a very long time ago, and figured we'd get around to solving it in the short term.
[12:37] Andrew Linden: But that turned into the very long term, and we still haven't done it yet.
[12:37] Andrew Linden: Falcon's scheme involves using some black magic features from the Havok physics engine to stream the collision data efficiently.
[12:37] Motor Loon: put more good minds on it
[12:38] Andrew Linden: And with some of the foundation work done in the pathfinding project, it is much easier to achieve today than it ever was before.
[12:38] Rex Cronon: come on. there is no black magic in havok
[12:38] Rex Cronon: :)
[12:38] TankMaster Finesmith: yeay for PF :D
[12:38] Theresa Tennyson HOPES the changes to the terrain will be good for more than making it feel like the ground has been covered with tar.
[12:39] Andrew Linden: Well, nearly black magic. They've got a system for writing C++ class data directly from memory in one process and loading it up into another, and then fixing any pointer lookups after the fact.
[12:39] Motor Loon: superglue?
[12:39] Theresa Tennyson: Of course, right now people are blaming Pathfinding for everything from lag to Hurricane Isaac.
[12:39] Motor Loon: you mean its NOT responsible for Isaac?
[12:39] Qie Niangao: that's technology sufficiently advanced to be indistinguishable from magic.
[12:40] Theresa Tennyson: Superglue would be okay. Everyone knows that superglue only sticks to your fingers.
[12:40] Lomoco Binder: How else did Isaac plot its course?
[12:40] Motor Loon: lol
[12:40] Motor Loon: I thought PF was about going AROUND obstacles?
[12:40] TankMaster Finesmith: voodoo
[12:41] TankMaster Finesmith: you can use PF to go to an object/av
[12:41] NeoBokrug Elytis: There is no spoon.
[12:41] Lomoco Binder: Anyways, someone mentioned some parcel access problems... I've encountered some very weird behavior when an avatar is parcel banned in a region that they have EM in. You might want to have the parcel access code looked at as a whole and see if it deserves some overhauling /91568203 rewriting. https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-8217
[12:41] JIRA-helper: [#SVC-8217] Strange behavior when estate managers are parcel banned - Second Life Bug Tracker
[12:41] Lomoco Binder: (Darn that crazy gesture is replacing my slashes again.)
[12:42] Andrew Linden: Estate Managers have special handling on parcel operations, yes.
[12:42] Andrew Linden: So I'm not too surprised that there might be inconsistencies there.
[12:43] Lomoco Binder: From that page: "they may still enter the parcel, and they may rez objects from inventory, but they may not create new objects from the build menu or chat in local. "
[12:43] Andrew Linden: Looking at SVC-8217 I'd say the bug is that the EM is not able to rez new objects in that case.
[12:43] Andrew Linden: Er.. the bug is that they cannot build new prims there.
[12:43] Lomoco Binder: Is there a difference, in terms of permissions? Are the permission checks for rezzing and creating different blocks of code?
[12:45] Andrew Linden: Yes, they are. Rezzing an item from inventory can produce several objects at once, that span multiple parcels.
[12:45] Motor Loon: makes sense
[12:45] Andrew Linden: So the code there is different from the handler for a request to build a single prim in one spot.
[12:45] TankMaster Finesmith: i bet the code for that is really simple.... *coughs*
[12:45] Andrew Linden: 8217 shouldn't be hard to fix, especially since it is a bug in the simpler case.
[12:46] NeoBokrug Elytis: I'm thinking about making a new feature request in that an estate can override any land setting. I imagine that'd be very had and a lot of work.
[12:46] NeoBokrug Elytis: Such as force object entry on/off for everywhere
[12:47] Lomoco Binder: That exists: https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-508
[12:47] JIRA-helper: [#SVC-508] Estate override for parcel settings - Second Life Bug Tracker
[12:47] NeoBokrug Elytis: Oh, well I'll vote it up then :)
[12:48] TankMaster Finesmith: LL doesnt look at votes anymore
[12:49] Motor Loon: That would be highly useful in private estates
[12:49] NeoBokrug Elytis: Yeah but watching makes my inbox explode.
[12:49] Andrew Linden: In some sense, I can see how that would be a desired feature... everybody wants more control. But how would it be used the most?
[12:49] Motor Loon: spamfilter Neo
[12:49] Andrew Linden: To prevent people from enabling land settings? or forcing them to be enabled?
[12:49] Motor Loon: either likely
[12:50] Lomoco Binder: In the simplest case, just having the ability to change them.
[12:50] Liisa Runo: I think LL should watch the votes. Vote means that the voter agree with the JIRA entry, while vote can also mean that the watcher is intrested, but does not agree
[12:50] Andrew Linden: EM's can currently modify parcel settings, right?
[12:50] NeoBokrug Elytis: Andrew, in my estate I run an opt-in game, as well as lease land out. It's 11 regions all connected. I have NPCs that roam, objects that zip across the land to rez other lootable objects, etc.
[12:50] Lomoco Binder: No
[12:50] Liisa Runo: while watch*
[12:50] Lomoco Binder: You could also just have some sort of permissions setting, where the Estate Owner can designate which EMs can access parcel settings.
[12:50] Andrew Linden: Oh really? Hrm... should they be able to ?
[12:50] TankMaster Finesmith: LL stoped looking at votes after there was a lot af 'froud' going on with them
[12:50] NeoBokrug Elytis: If someone sets scripts to off, that puts a stop on some of it's ability to work
[12:50] Sahkolihaa Contepomi: Andrew - nope.
[12:50] Sahkolihaa Contepomi: never have been able to.
[12:50] TankMaster Finesmith: some would create an issue, then use/create 2 dozzen alts and vote for it
[12:50] Sahkolihaa Contepomi: It's something we've love to have, though. >.<
[12:50] Sahkolihaa Contepomi: we'd*
[12:51] Motor Loon: We, for example, require our residents to leave public access open on their parcels - and only ban indivuals. Object entry is nice if allowed normally... but during a griefing it may be nice to be able to disable entry & rez on the whole sim regardless of parcel settings and ownership
[12:51] NeoBokrug Elytis: Part of my covenant is that people leave object entry on, but not everyone reads. :(
[12:51] NeoBokrug Elytis: What Motor said too
[12:51] Andrew Linden: That would probably be easier to do than to create per-region or per-estate overrides for various parcel features.
[12:51] Motor Loon: per region would be fine
[12:51] Motor Loon: better probably
[12:52] Lomoco Binder: Could do that, but also just give EMs access to the parcel settings directly
[12:52] Motor Loon: different regions may very well have different "rules" set by the EMs
[12:52] Motor Loon: thatd be nice but too time consuming Lomoco
[12:52] NeoBokrug Elytis: To be honest, I like all these options
[12:53] Sahkolihaa Contepomi: The regions I help look after require build for everyone to be turned off. A lot of people don't turn it off though.
[12:53] NeoBokrug Elytis: Maybe it can be a tree of estate/region settings
[12:53] Motor Loon: mabye both
[12:53] Lomoco Binder: Well, otherwise you're going to have to add all of those parcel overrides into the estate management floater, which might demand a separate tab all of its own
[12:53] Andrew Linden: Well, EM capabilities to modify parcel settings would be relatively simple, and would help, but would cause some confusion
[12:54] Andrew Linden: as people find their parcel settings have been changed. They could change them back and have a settings-war with the EM.
[12:54] Sahkolihaa Contepomi: That's where a simple IM and poking them to read the covenant helps.
[12:54] Kallista Destiny: Notify parcel owner on override?
[12:55] Meeter: Timecheck : User Group is almost over
[12:55] Lomoco Binder: In that case, having the override ability would be useful.
[12:55] Andrew Linden: Nevertheless, I'd prioritize that first, and then look into whether more per-region settings make sense.
[12:55] Motor Loon: Any extra abilities for EMs would certainly be highly appriciated Andrew
[12:55] Jonathan Yap: How about being able to see a list of parcel settings in a region without having to visit them one at a time?
[12:55] Andrew Linden: We already have some per-region settings, but they typically have an on-off state and override parcel settings in only one of those states.
[12:55] Andrew Linden: For example, scripts can be disabled region-wide
[12:55] NeoBokrug Elytis: I think per-region/estate would save a lot of time for estate managers, especially those mega estates with 100s of regions
[12:56] Andrew Linden: but that is for debugging and anti-grief tools, rather than for full-time settings
[12:56] Sahkolihaa Contepomi: It doesn't work well for anti-griefing.
[12:56] Sahkolihaa Contepomi: If at all.
[12:56] Motor Loon: We have hundreds of regions, and I'd have no problem putting a staff member on doing each region - providing it only had to be done once.
[12:57] Andrew Linden: I don't think there are any per-region parameters that have a three-state option: on, off, or unspecified (in which case the parcel setting wins)
[12:57] Lomoco Binder: You'd have to get some user interface specialists to work that one out.
[12:57] NeoBokrug Elytis: That'd be nice though Andrew :)
[12:58] Andrew Linden: Jonathan, a big list of region settings is not very hard, for the server-side.
[12:58] Andrew Linden: We could add another capability that provides that info.
[12:58] Kallista Destiny: actually If you have 2 bits it would be ON/OFF and OVERRIDE/Don't Override
[12:59] Andrew Linden: Kallista, you're right. That would enable the most control.
[12:59] Kallista Destiny: On don;t menas only in those places that arenlt part of parcles
[12:59] Kallista Destiny: etc.
[13:00] Meeter: Thank you for coming to the Server User Group
[13:00] Rex Cronon: tc everybody. have nice day:)
[13:00] Kallista Destiny: Or easier have to tables of bits, one for state, one for override.
[13:01] Andrew Linden: I wish all the region settings were just a text config file... but I'm a linux user so that shouldn't be too surprising.
[13:01] NeoBokrug Elytis: :)
[13:01] Sahkolihaa Contepomi: Hah
[13:01] Lomoco Binder: That would be fun
[13:01] NeoBokrug Elytis: Thanks for considering it.
[13:02] Lomoco Binder: I'd vote for that.
[13:02] Andrew Linden: That is, I'd prefer an interface for controlling estates, regions, parcels, and maybe even objects as just editing a series of config files.
[13:02] Kallista Destiny: Oh can Jira be set for vote for and against? or watch for watch against?
[13:03] Andrew Linden: The UI could then be "User Interface Sugar" on top of the config file system.
[13:03] Kallista Destiny: Andrew you'd need serious error checking with no replace on error (as in crontab)
[13:04] Andrew Linden: Right, a config sanity test
[13:04] NeoBokrug Elytis: Andrew: or a non-inside-sl web interface
[13:04] Lomoco Binder: Oh please no
[13:04] Kallista Destiny: Yeah rigorous
[13:04] Andrew Linden: oh well, it is in the land of my pipe dreams.
[13:05] Andrew Linden: Thanks for coming everyone.
[13:05] TankMaster Finesmith: have a good week
[13:05] Lomoco Binder: No more web interfaces to replace native floaters... please
[13:05] Qie Niangao: Thanks Andrew, Baker, all. Have fun all!
[13:05] TankMaster Finesmith: and thx for your time, baker and andrew
[13:05] Sahkolihaa Contepomi: Not until slplugin works properly.
Simulator_User_Group
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