Simulator User Group/Transcripts/2012.11.20

Simulator_User_Group
Prev 2012.11.13	Next 2012.11.27
== List of Speakers ==
Baker Linden 	Chieron Tenk 	Davido Chrome
Inara Pey 	Jonathan Yap 	Motor Loon
Nalates Urriah 	NullSubset Burner	Qie Niangao
Rex Cronon 	Simon Linden 	Sonya Haight
Tankmaster Finesmith	Theresa Tennyson 	Whirly Fizzle
Yuzuru Jewell 	 	
== Transcript ==
[12:00] Davido Chrome: Simon must have a script that TPs him on the exact time.
[12:01] Simon Linden: I'm really just a well-programmed bot
[12:01] Sonya Haight: inside a little more please Simon, some couldn't hear you in the other corner last time
[12:01] Davido Chrome: Bring out the Turing tests!
[12:01] Tankmaster Finesmith: howdy simon!
[12:02] Tankmaster Finesmith: heyas baker!
[12:02] Baker Linden: 'ello 'ello
[12:02] Simon Linden: ok, I'll over over here -- does that cover the roof?
[12:02] Simon Linden: Hover over*
[12:02] Sonya Haight: I think so
[12:02] Yuzuru Jewell: Hello, Simon.
[12:02] Tankmaster Finesmith: I can read your type fine
[12:02] Davido Chrome: According to my ring when camming on you you cover everyone now.
[12:03] Simon Linden: Hello Everyone ... I can get started with the news, which is pretty slim
[12:03] Simon Linden: There are no updates to the servers this week due to the holiday in the USA
[12:03] Davido Chrome: You can always turn on that feature that shows if people are in speaking range via name tag colour.
[12:03] Tankmaster Finesmith: davido, thats only in phoe/fs
[12:03] Davido Chrome: Oh.
[12:03] Rex Cronon: hello everybody
[12:04] Tankmaster Finesmith: hi rex
[12:04] Simon Linden: Next week there will likely be an update to the RC channel, but I'm not sure about Tuesday's main channel
[12:04] Rex Cronon: hi tank master
[12:04] Yuzuru Jewell: Hello, Rex.
[12:04] Simon Linden: We're going to be discussing that later today at the Lab
[12:04] Rex Cronon: hi yuzuru
[12:05] Simon Linden: So that's it for my news
[12:05] Davido Chrome: https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/BUG-800
[12:05] Simon Linden: I guess the table is open...
[12:05] Sonya Haight: what about the world map missing strips, any news on that?
[12:05] Baker Linden: I'm working on improving object rezzing and trying to make it a bit faster -- it's slowly coming together, but I don't have any news on when it'll be done
[12:06] Simon Linden: BUG-800 would be a nice feature to have, but I can't give any guesses on how long it would take
[12:06] Nalates Urriah: Baker, That is a follow on to Andrew's Interest List work?
[12:06] Tankmaster Finesmith: or montie's http stuff?
[12:07] Davido Chrome: IS it related to objects following you from the last sim for a second during simcrossings?
[12:07] Simon Linden: Monty's http stuff is going in the viewer ... I know the first part is somewhere in the QA pipeline but dont' know the recent status
[12:07] Tankmaster Finesmith: its in viewer beta
[12:07] Baker Linden: The interest list is more of a process of which assets to load
[12:07] Nalates Urriah: Thx
[12:07] Baker Linden: what I'm trying to improve is the speed at which an object is rezzed
[12:07] Simon Linden: Baker's rezzing work is to get rid of a lag event when rezzing objects
[12:08] Nalates Urriah: ...does that include avatars?
[12:08] Baker Linden: If you get a really complex object, with many large meshes, or large LLSD files, it takes a while to rez into the world
[12:08] Simon Linden: I believe it will help reduce lag when rezzing AVs attachments
[12:08] Baker Linden: I'm trying to reduce that.
[12:09] Rex Cronon: there is always going to be some lag, at least for complex objects that r rezzed for the first time
[12:09] Nalates Urriah: thx of the additional explanation.
[12:09] Nalates Urriah: thx for^
[12:09] Baker Linden: correct, Rex. But the reading and parsing of the large files is not done asynchronously, which is what I'm adding
[12:09] Simon Linden: I'm not sure how much faster it's going to get (if at all) but the sim fps should lag less for big complex stuff
[12:09] Yuzuru Jewell: http texture is very slow from Japan.
[12:10] Tankmaster Finesmith: monty is working on draskicly improving http image fetching
[12:10] Yuzuru Jewell: We test Project Viewer. It is faster than official Viewer. But it is slower than UDP.
[12:10] Simon Linden: Hopefully some of Monty's work will help with that, Yuzuru, but it is sending data halfway around the world
[12:10] Tankmaster Finesmith: drastically*
[12:11] Yuzuru Jewell: We think it is because Japanese network environment.
[12:11] Baker Linden: It should help ease rezzing the object sim-side, but there may not be any major gains viewer-side
[12:11] Davido Chrome: I think it's the same in Sweden actually.
[12:12] Davido Chrome: http: textures are slower than the alternative.
[12:12] Tankmaster Finesmith: the second fase will be server side changes, and based on his bug report he filed, it speed things up to the point where the server almost can't keep up :D
[12:12] Nalates Urriah: Is HTTP COmpression in use in any of the current test HTTP stuff from Monty?
[12:12] Simon Linden: On pathfinding for swimming characters - does pathfinding currently run underwater? Is that usually a walkable surface?
[12:12] Yuzuru Jewell: In japan, UDP not causes error.
[12:13] Simon Linden: I don't know details about Monty's work - the viewer forums or user group would be a better place to ask
[12:13] Davido Chrome: Simon, there isn't even a Navmesh under water. It stops dead where the land goes under water.
[12:13] Nalates Urriah: Simon Navmesh stops at water's edge...
[12:13] Simon Linden: ah, ok -- I suspect that's a fair amount of work then
[12:13] Yuzuru Jewell: And HTTP eats much CPU Power..
[12:13] Simon Linden: It would have to be a new surface category, I think
[12:14] Davido Chrome nods. I really wanted to amke fish,
[12:14] Qie Niangao: Davido, that thing you mentioned about objects "reflecting" from the opposite side of the sim you just left: Do we know if that's a viewer bug or a sim thing? (In the past, I've seen parcel names "reflect" like that, and even thought I got collisions from those objects, so I'm thinking something server-side.)
[12:14] Nalates Urriah: I think it would be hard to keep a fish in the water as it swam toward the shore.
[12:14] Davido Chrome: And flying creatures. The Navmesh doesn't seem to have any interface for flying charachters.
[12:14] Simon Linden: Fish would be cool - but I wonder how much support there is for volumetric pathfinding. If it was possible to do fish, then it would seem possible to do birds
[12:15] Nalates Urriah: Yeah, I think birds would be easier. No ceiling.
[12:15] Tankmaster Finesmith: yeah, right now its just 2d
[12:15] Simon Linden: Adding the 3rd dimension may be a really fundamental change to the pathfinding engine ... and I have no clue what it really supports
[12:15] Rex Cronon: the fish would have to constantly check if they r under water:)
[12:15] Davido Chrome: Isn't pathfinding volumetric per default? Just put exclusion volumes to cover your houses.
[12:16] Nalates Urriah: Alve, no. Only the exclusion ting is, AFAIK
[12:16] Tankmaster Finesmith: no, right now its just 2d, you can't move up or down away from the surfice of the ground ot object
[12:16] Davido Chrome: Rex. Well, they would just need to check what height they are on. That data is in the normal operation, right? Because it needs to know where it is anyway?
[12:18] Rex Cronon: if u suddenly raise/lower the water level the fish might be in trouble if only checked the height
[12:18] Davido Chrome: But. use the workaround solution I mentioned. Then we can make fish PF chracters with the visual part below the physical part.
[12:18] Baker Linden: I imagine it'll be a lot of work to implement a nav volume rather than a nav mesh, but it would be possible -- I'm also unsure of what our current pathfinding stuff supports
[12:18] Baker Linden: so I could be totally off-base
[12:18] Simon Linden: I wonder how the pathfinding code handles a low tunnel now ... if it has any concept of how tall the character is.
[12:19] Theresa Tennyson: I think pathfinding characters are all actually boxes but the system checks how tall the box is.
[12:19] Tankmaster Finesmith: whatever happened to the PF folks joining this UG? :P
[12:19] Simon Linden: That sounds reasonable, Theresa
[12:20] Jonathan Yap: Simon, it does have a defined "height" for the characters, Falcon had to come up with some large-ish number
[12:20] Simon Linden: Sometimes Falcon drops by
[12:20] Davido Chrome: Also, the sim I am janitoring/landscaper at is archipelago like. If I can't have water PF I would at least want to have Islands as different zones, so it would be a lot less hazzle to make workarounds...
[12:20] Simon Linden: Have any of you built or come across some good pathfinding objects or critters ?
[12:21] Davido Chrome: I made a snake, but all it does is follow me as yet.
[12:21] Simon Linden: Nice
[12:22] Davido Chrome: This roof isn't walkable....
[12:22] Simon Linden: I was playing with the settings here and the house is a problem ... ideally I'd like the roof to be walkable, but my first attempts froze the doors
[12:22] Davido Chrome: Froze the Doors??
[12:22] Rex Cronon: why don't u guys have competition of who makes the smartest/fastest/interesting/weird PF object:)
[12:22] Davido Chrome: Are they in teh same linkset?
[12:22] Simon Linden: They stopped working because they're linked
[12:23] Nalates Urriah: Put a prim over the roof, make it invis and walkable...
[12:23] Simon Linden: yeah, I need to do something like that
[12:23] Theresa Tennyson: Has anyone looked at the extreme physics memory allocation that was reported at Jinxies earlier? Because it looks like I'm seeing something similar on another sim.
[12:23] Motor Loon: I have a sim that does that
[12:24] Motor Loon: and when it happens you cannot rez or attach items anymore
[12:24] Simon Linden: Yes, I believe Maestro looked at Jinxies but didn't find anything
[12:24] Whirly Fizzle: That seems to be happening a lot lately on homesteads
[12:24] Theresa Tennyson: Lolita Park was up to 595 megabytes earlier today. I didn't notice problems attaching things though.
[12:24] Motor Loon: Reed Linden knows a bit about it
[12:24] Theresa Tennyson: Motor, what goes on at that sim?
[12:25] Nalates Urriah: That pop up is really annoying.
[12:25] Simon Linden: One theory is the physics memory is also being used by pathfinding, so it's easier to hit the limit
[12:25] Baker Linden: Falcon just told me it'd be about 3 months of work to get volumetric pathfinding -- and that still wouldn't handle dynamic avoidance (which is the hard part). Theoretically, it's not that hard -- it's having to rework some havok systems to work with intermediate data
[12:25] Motor Loon: Reed's response to our tickets: http://pastebin.com/X6r6y5eW
[12:25] Davido Chrome: Hum, I guess you can make birds if you make invisible tracks for them in the sky.
[12:26] Rex Cronon: u make tubes in the sky for birds to follow?
[12:26] Chieron Tenk: that wouldnt really be nice for people flying around
[12:26] Davido Chrome: Well, tubes are so inefficient. Would they fall off if it didn't have a railing or something?
[12:27] Simon Linden: Motor - what's the content like there? Is there any type in particular that gets heavy usage?
[12:27] Davido Chrome: What about workaround; Walkable surfaces that are phantom for everything but defined pathfinding characters?
[12:27] Motor Loon: Not really... regular homestead setup with a shop and some decor/plants
[12:27] Rex Cronon: if u r in a tube how can u fall out? unless it has holes in it:)
[12:29] Qie Niangao: Motor, that pastebin is fascinating... that particle emitters might (maybe) be where the bug resides.
[12:29] Theresa Tennyson: If you put a network of tubes with characters going through them on your sim the server will PROBABLY dcatch fire.
[12:29] Motor Loon: basically, when it happens you get "[12:00] Second Life: Unable to create item that has caused problems on this region." when trying to rez or attach anything... also creating a new object (like a standard box) does produce the box, but it becomes oddly-phantom
[12:30] Theresa Tennyson: Actually it seems to be a big problem with, um, strip clubs.
[12:30] Motor Loon: sim restart solves it, but it comes back after an hour or so
[12:30] Simon Linden: I'm not sure what the connection with particle emitters would be .... they should really have no interaction with physics memory
[12:30] Meeter: Timecheck : User Group is half over
[12:30] Davido Chrome: Woot, oit works!
[12:30] Qie Niangao: would have to be quite a strange bug
[12:30] Theresa Tennyson: I remember hearing something similar happening with a train on the Wengen region or someplace.
[12:30] Motor Loon: I'm sure there's emmiters there... but then again, I've seen lots of sims with more extensive use of such without an issue.
[12:31] Simon Linden: Under the hood, the region realizes it's using too much physics memory, so stops adding stuff to world that would take up even more
[12:31] Motor Loon: nods
[12:31] Rex Cronon: a particle emitter is a physical object?
[12:31] Simon Linden: So the behavior you're seeing is the region trying to stay alive by not using too much physics memory, which is a common griefer attempt
[12:31] Davido Chrome: Anyway, what about a way for PF characters to recognize drawbridges?
[12:32] Rex Cronon: what i u were to make those particle emitters phantom?
[12:32] Simon Linden: Normally you hit that with a ton of collisions - take a bunch of phantom objects, make them all overlap, then set them physical - there's a geometrically expanding number of collisions there
[12:32] Whirly Fizzle: OOh thats interesting about the particle emitters. My Homestread maxed out the other day, it was about 260Mb memory allocated & I couldnt rez. A restart fixed it. But I do have a lot of particle emitters rezzed at the moment for poking at a particle bug.
[12:32] Nalates Urriah: Alve just use movable pims... They will show up in the Navmesh.
[12:33] Davido Chrome: The current limitations are big enough to really put a damper in my will to work with it.
[12:33] Simon Linden: With the current feature set, it seems you're pretty much stuck on dry land
[12:33] Qie Niangao: *if* it actually has anything to do with particles, it would have to be something really obscure and nonsensical. But it would be fun, if true.
[12:34] Rex Cronon: could it be that each particle generated is an actual objects that havok sees?
[12:34] Davido Chrome: Nal, my drawbridges doesn't show up. Giving them a PF option is greyed out.
[12:34] Simon Linden: yeah, I'd really be curious how particles could affect physics memory -- they're really 99% viewer side
[12:34] Theresa Tennyson: What's the actual limit on physics memory for a full sim?
[12:36] Theresa Tennyson: Okay, the physics memory for this sim is skyrocketing as we speak.
[12:36] Theresa Tennyson: It's back down.
[12:36] Simon Linden: I think it's a GB or something insanely large like that -- homesteads are typically 1/4 full region limits
[12:37] Simon Linden: I see 120 MB - that seems huge to me
[12:37] Simon Linden: Davido - can you walk around a bit more? Let's see if the snake has an effect
[12:37] Theresa Tennyson: It was over 200 minutes ago when the snake was following AlveKatt.
[12:37] Davido Chrome: This is a deceptively simple PF shape. All the visual parts are set to physics shape none. The only physical part is the invisible root box.
[12:38] Simon Linden: hmmm, seems to be stable at 116 MB
[12:38] Davido Chrome: There seems to be a decidely big effect when it needs to recalculate it's intended path.
[12:39] Rex Cronon: there r quite a few avatars here. that might affect calculations
[12:39] Simon Linden: yes, but maybe that's what it takes to cause the ubg
[12:39] Simon Linden: bug
[12:40] Simon Linden: Interesting, I'm not seeing the physics memory change at all
[12:41] Tankmaster Finesmith: did the region just die?
[12:41] Motor Loon: looks hurting atleast °?°
[12:41] Davido Chrome: I can't move...
[12:41] Davido Chrome: I think we killed the sim...
[12:41] Simon Linden: Now there was an epic lag event
[12:41] Rex Cronon: nope
[12:41] Rex Cronon: laggggggggg.........
[12:41] Baker Linden: laaaag
[12:41] Baker Linden: I'm still here, Tank
[12:41] Nalates Urriah: FPS hit 1.7
[12:41] Qie Niangao: Dilation is huge
[12:41] Tankmaster Finesmith: wow
[12:41] Tankmaster Finesmith: the regions around us dissapeared, now they just returned
[12:42] Chieron Tenk: sim fps 0.3 .. at least the ping is back from 5000
[12:42] Simon Linden: Check out the performance graph
[12:42] Simon Linden: "It's not dead yet!"
[12:42] Rex Cronon: the twilight zone:)
[12:42] Motor Loon: epic region burp
[12:42] Davido Chrome: Crap, did I cause this?
[12:42] Tankmaster Finesmith: that was... interesting
[12:43] Simon Linden: So what's actually going on -- you have the PF snake, and these soldier guys are PF too ?
[12:43] Motor Loon: yeah
[12:43] Davido Chrome: I deleted the snake...
[12:43] Simon Linden: and look at the graph again
[12:43] Davido Chrome: Thought it might be smart...
[12:44] Motor Loon: Unlikely its the PH chars, I've had a tonnes of these out without problems before
[12:44] Davido Chrome: I can move again!
[12:44] Rex Cronon: one single snake was doing all the lag?
[12:44] Rex Cronon: if that is true than we r in trouble:(
[12:44] Simon Linden: Ton of which - the snake or the solider guys?
[12:44] Motor Loon: the soldiers
[12:45] Simon Linden: things seem reasonable now
[12:46] Simon Linden: Hmm, interesting ... I'll check the server logs and see if I can match up the chat times with anything interesting
[12:46] Rex Cronon: do the soldiers move their limbs?
[12:46] Rex Cronon: yes they sim to
[12:46] Rex Cronon: seem*
[12:46] Davido Chrome: It seems that the biggest disps where when other avatars were moving and got in the snakes way.
[12:47] Simon Linden: The region seems nice and fast now -- 12ms sleep time, so it's only using about half the available CPU time
[12:47] Theresa Tennyson: I saw the jump in physics memory around 12:35
[12:47] Simon Linden: That would probably cause some sort of new path generation - I can imagine that's expensive
[12:47] Sonya Haight: try the snake again?
[12:47] Motor Loon: Since when did Second Life™ need a reason to misbehave? ;-)
[12:48] Sonya Haight: odd
[12:48] Sonya Haight: seems ok now
[12:48] Rex Cronon: i think that because the soldiers move their limbs is why is the extra lag
[12:50] Sonya Haight: are we still here?
[12:50] Davido Chrome: This was why I sugegsted that thing with Rezzable avatars. Like bots, only all animations and stuff are from the avatar stuff. Rezable empty avatars that you can script.
[12:50] Rex Cronon: yes
[12:50] Sonya Haight: shew got really quiet
[12:50] Simon Linden: Physics memory is still at 116 MB, so whatever we did, it didn't change at all
[12:50] Davido Chrome: And attach clothes and stuff on the same way your own avatar.
[12:52] Simon Linden: There's only 2200 or so objects in this region, so it should be running pretty good
[12:52] Theresa Tennyson: I happened to look at the map earlier and there was a griefing attack going on in Satori (the big continent south of Nautilus) that was literally visible from space. I don't know if it's ongoing.
[12:53] Nalates Urriah: Has anyone heard anything about: "[L4L]-Gestures & Walkers (Freebies) being s griefer gift?
[12:53] Whirly Fizzle: Yes it is
[12:53] Whirly Fizzle: Its a variation on that Exdepart
[12:53] Rex Cronon: ?
[12:54] Whirly Fizzle: http://wiki.phoenixviewer.com/exdepart
[12:54] Whirly Fizzle: [L4L]- Gestures & Walkers (Freebies) <3 is the one thats getting used a lot atm
[12:54] Simon Linden: yes, it's pretty much an ugly social-engineering griefer ploy
[12:55] Meeter: Timecheck : User Group is almost over
[12:55] Rex Cronon: lol
[12:55] Whirly Fizzle: Mems gone up o.O
[12:55] Motor Loon: 135mb
[12:56] Whirly Fizzle: Oh! Hmm when the metter said something?
[12:56] Whirly Fizzle: *meeter
[12:56] Rex Cronon: is good that it doesn't say: rez me to get free lindens
[12:56] Simon Linden: yeah, that's how to do it :P
[12:56] Motor Loon: lol... and it fell to 129mb
[12:57] Theresa Tennyson: CHEEZ BALLS!
[12:57] Tankmaster Finesmith: :D
[12:57] Simon Linden: I wonder if the memory clean up is too infrequent
[12:57] Sonya Haight: thats bad, cheese balls is what I was thinking too
[12:57] Motor Loon goes to get candy from the kitchen
[12:57] NullSubset Burner: was wondering same thing actually
[12:58] Sonya Haight: mean, I just went to the dentist
[12:58] Davido Chrome: I tried to make a sea of balls ones, you know, like at MCdonalds. That was a lagger.
[12:58] Simon Linden: well, we're almost out of time ... this was a good discussion and play trying to figure out what's going on
[12:58] Tankmaster Finesmith: lol I bet
[12:59] Tankmaster Finesmith: have a great thanks giving for all of you in the US
[12:59] Simon Linden: Thanks everyone for coming today
[12:59] NullSubset Burner: Thanks for time busy Lindens:)
[12:59] Qie Niangao: Thanks Simon, Baker.
[12:59] Tankmaster Finesmith: and a fun long weekend to all you lindens ?
[12:59] Inara Pey: Thanks, Simon, Baker, all
[12:59] Whirly Fizzle: Thank you :)
[12:59] Rex Cronon: weekend? oh thanksgiving
[12:59] Nalates Urriah: Thx Lindens
[12:59] Yuzuru Jewell: Thank you..
[12:59] Simon Linden: See you next time
[13:00] Rex Cronon: right. have fun all those that have extra long weekend:)
[13:00] Meeter: Thank you for coming to the Server User Group
[13:00] Sonya Haight: aww no answer on the missing map strips
[13:00] Simon Linden: ah, yes, Sonya - some peopel did look into that
[13:00] Rex Cronon: tc simon, baker
[13:00] Simon Linden: It seems the map generation servers were overloaded
[13:00] Motor Loon: They probably are still looking for them Sonya °?°
[13:00] Sonya Haight: will they every fix it?
[13:01] Simon Linden: Some were cleaned up, but I don't think it's 100% yet
[13:01] Sonya Haight: I'm really missing my map
[13:01] Rex Cronon: tc everybody and enjoy your day(s) off. that is if u have any
[13:01] Whirly Fizzle: Yes, after they fix the release notes :P
[13:01] Davido Chrome: Thanks for today!
[13:01] Baker Linden: See you next week everyone. For those of you in the US, have a great Thanksgiving! For those of you not in the US, have a fantastic Thursday! See you all next week!
[13:02] Tankmaster Finesmith: no meeting on thursday, just a s reminder
[13:02] Inara Pey: Happy Thanksgiving to those of you in the US.
Simulator_User_Group
Prev 2012.11.13	Next 2012.11.27