Simulator User Group/Transcripts/2012.08.17

Simulator_User_Group
Prev 2012.08.14	Next 2012.08.21
== List of Speakers ==
Andrew Linden 	Ashiri Sands
Dahlia Trimble	Drongle McMahon
Fenix Eldritch	Jane1 Bookmite
Nalates Urriah	Rex Cronon
Simon Linden 	Tiberious Neruda
== Transcript ==
[16:06] Andrew Linden: Hello. I was busy reinstalling linux and got carried away.
[16:06] Tiberious Neruda: no, nothing's too horribly busted...
[16:06] Ashiri Sands: re-installing? You broke it?
[16:07] Andrew Linden: er... installing anew, to new hardware
[16:07] Rex Cronon: hi andrew
[16:07] Andrew Linden: My only news is that I've got a fix for the llApplyAngularImpulse() bug that needs review...
[16:08] Andrew Linden: lemme look up that jira number...
[16:08] Andrew Linden: SCR-372
[16:08] JIRA-helper: http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SCR-372
[#SCR-372] Invalid force in llApplyRotationalImpulse bug on Magnum (pathfinding)
[16:08] Andrew Linden: I wanted to get that committed today, but ran into technical difficulties
[16:09] Andrew Linden: Simon, is the next maintenance project up to bat for an RC position?
[16:09] Andrew Linden: I'm wondering if I have time to get that fix in there or not.
[16:10] Simon Linden: YEs, we're likely to have two different maintenance releases in RC next week
[16:10] Simon Linden: The current one on Bluesteel and LeTigre will get a minor update
[16:10] Simon Linden: There will be a new one, a superset of what's out already, on Magnum
[16:11] Simon Linden: The code on Magnum is going to be promoted Tuesday
[16:11] Andrew Linden: ok hrm...
[16:12] Andrew Linden: well, I'll try to figure it out after this user group
[16:12] Andrew Linden: that's all the news I've got. I wasn't able to look into Kitto
[16:12] Andrew Linden: Kitto's rez bug yet, but that next on my list
[16:13] Andrew Linden: That's all the news from me. Simon, did you already go?
[16:14] Andrew Linden: Well, I guess the table is open.
[16:14] Rex Cronon: crashed:(
[16:14] Andrew Linden: Ah.
[16:15] Rex Cronon: .
[16:15] Tiberious Neruda: my question... how much server work will it take to implement the 'materials project' that's finally been actually announced?
[16:15] Simon Linden: yes, sorry, I have no other news
[16:15] Simon Linden: That's a medium-sized project, Tiberious
[16:16] Andrew Linden: I don't know how much work that will be Tiberious. I believe Falcon is currently working on a demo.
[16:16] Andrew Linden: Where medium would be... a month?
[16:16] Andrew Linden: That is a complete guess.
[16:16] Tiberious Neruda: I'm guessing it will use textures as they are
[16:17] Dahlia Trimble: a month estimate is 5 years? *hides*
[16:17] Simon Linden: lol, sometimes it turns out like that
[16:17] Tiberious Neruda: where you'll upload the normal/specular maps as regular textures
[16:17] Simon Linden: I've seen the materials design evolve -- the last (and final, I think) design seemed pretty well-tuned to add the feature without causing alot of new work
[16:18] Simon Linden: at least not too much server-side
[16:18] Tiberious Neruda: ...how ambitious was it at first?
[16:18] Dahlia Trimble: is the design public?
[16:19] Tiberious Neruda: ...I ask 'cause there were a couple things I'd kept wanting that apparently didn't make it into the final design, and, well, kinda bums me out
[16:19] Simon Linden: Originally it had materials as a full-blown new asset type, essentially a special texture. That requires changes all over the place
[16:20] Andrew Linden: I don't know. I didn't participate in the design.
[16:20] Tiberious Neruda: eeeyuk...
[16:20] Simon Linden: I think it was also a bit too open-ended - we could have had some horrifically bad builds with tons of different materials
[16:21] Drongle McMahon: Where is the final design?
[16:21] Dahlia Trimble: normal for SL :)
[16:21] Simon Linden: well, typical for SL, but we've learned to put some sane limits on things now
[16:21] Ashiri Sands: yay!
[16:21] Tiberious Neruda: of course, the kinds of things I'd wanted were a little more difficult...
[16:21] Tiberious Neruda: at least the big one, anyway
[16:21] Simon Linden: I'm not sure what has been published or not with that design -- some of you viewer-centric folks would probably know more than me
[16:22] Ashiri Sands: This will, as usual, be the end of Second Life (for some commentators)
[16:22] Tiberious Neruda: bluntly, the sooner I can replace these particle generators for single-plane billboards, the better
[16:23] Rex Cronon: how will materials help u replace them?
[16:23] Tiberious Neruda: well, that's one of the things I'd hoped a materials system could allow for
[16:24] Dahlia Trimble: I would probably consider a billboard to be a special case of geometry, not a material
[16:24] Dahlia Trimble: but I'm wierd like that ;)
[16:25] Tiberious Neruda: and the other was being able to add a custom shininess texture
[16:25] Ashiri Sands: oh, we won't have that?
[16:25] Dahlia Trimble: they had specular maps in the blog post
[16:25] Simon Linden: Does anyone have the blog post link?
[16:26] Tiberious Neruda: I'm not quite talking about specular maps...
[16:26] Nalates Urriah: http://blog.nalates.net/New Open Source Project to Improve Graphics Rendering Performance
[16:26] Tiberious Neruda: I mean the texture that gets 'overlaid' on an object when you enable shininess
[16:26] Nalates Urriah: Wrong link sory
[16:26] Simon Linden: Nice 404 page, however
[16:26] Nalates Urriah: http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Tools-and-Technology/New-Open-Source-Project-to-Improve-Graphics-Rendering/ba-p/1637559
[16:26] Dahlia Trimble: overlaid? I thought it was a shader trick
[16:27] Tiberious Neruda: ...I'm not sure exactly how it's done, but it does appear to be some kind of texture
[16:27] Dahlia Trimble: I think it's just math but I havent looked at the source for LL implementation
[16:28] Dahlia Trimble: I kinda wonder if normal maps can affect specular highlights by changing the reflectance angle
[16:29] Simon Linden: The video in the blog post is pretty good about showing the basic power -- I'm sure after people get their hands on it better examples will come out
[16:30] Andrew Linden: The server-side work needs to store the extra materials data for each face and provide an API for changing them.
[16:30] Andrew Linden: But the viewer is where the real detail work needs to be done.
[16:30] Tiberious Neruda: will using a material in this way affect an bject's LI?
[16:30] Meeter: Timecheck : User Group is half over
[16:30] Rex Cronon: if u use only mesh u have only one face
[16:31] Dahlia Trimble: is the protocol defined yet?
[16:31] Drongle McMahon: Uh?
[16:31] Simon Linden: Tibrious - I don't think there's much of a direct land cost. It is probably mostly hitting the bandwidth and rendering time
[16:31] Dahlia Trimble: the protocol for server telling viewer which map assets to apply to a face
[16:31] Andrew Linden: dunno. prototyping work has begun so I guess they have a plan for the protocol.
[16:32] Simon Linden: yeah, I think it was some additional data for each side, but I forget where it was tucked in
[16:32] Rex Cronon: i think is an attribute associated with each object.
[16:32] Simon Linden: It's with each object side, I think
[16:33] Tiberious Neruda: but now with objects having a distinct download cost with it, is it possible these extra textures will inflate that cost?
[16:34] Simon Linden: It's possible, Tiberious - I don't know the definitive answer
[16:34] Drongle McMahon: But it's two 2d maps, specular and normals, isn't it? That's 3 for each face with the diffuse texture alraedy there, No?
[16:34] Dahlia Trimble: and if there is an additional cost, will that cost be reduced for "instances" of the same object using the same materials in close proximity to each other? o.0
[16:34] Andrew Linden: Yeah, there was a definitely a discussion about that question internally. Dunno what they decided, or if it is even settled yet.
[16:34] Ashiri Sands: are the present bump and shimy already sent to the viewr as textures?
[16:34] Rex Cronon: it really doesn't matter what cost ll assigns to things. what really matters is how fast they can get to u, and how fast can your computer deal with them
[16:35] Dahlia Trimble: well you only need to send an asset once to display it on many objects
[16:35] Andrew Linden: Dahlia, computing non-linear near-field effects of download cost sounds like a hard thing to do well.
[16:36] Dahlia Trimble: well I tried ;)
[16:36] Drongle McMahon: The maps used in the demo are geometry/object specific, but you could have generic ones, as you do with plain textures.
[16:36] Andrew Linden: So I guess I would say "No, we are definitely not working on computing higher order correction terms on download costs."
[16:37] Dahlia Trimble: :(
[16:37] Drongle McMahon: I guess it all depends on the details of how it's done, which is wht I would like to know them.
[16:37] Tiberious Neruda: I only ask because I know that if people go hog-wild, they might gripe if an increase causes some returned objects
[16:39] Dahlia Trimble: some kind of instancing discount might actually encourage builders to make more efficient content
[16:39] Drongle McMahon: There's no instancing discount for mesh.
[16:39] Dahlia Trimble: there should be
[16:40] Drongle McMahon: I agree
[16:40] Tiberious Neruda: weren't we told there would be?
[16:40] Andrew Linden: I don't remember that in our internal discussions about mesh costs, but then I wasn't present for all of them.
[16:41] Drongle McMahon: I think it's because the emphasis shifted from strictly download volume control to rendering complexity control.
[16:41] Rex Cronon: what exactly does this mean " instancing discount for mesh"? that if u rez multiples of same mesh it should have a lower cost?
[16:41] Andrew Linden: I was added to that project later, in the second half.
[16:41] Dahlia Trimble: I think I asked a couple times and never got an answer
[16:41] Dahlia Trimble: Rex, yes
[16:41] Andrew Linden: Yeah Rex, a discount for reusing multiple copies of a mesh.
[16:41] Rex Cronon: thanks:)
[16:41] Drongle McMahon: Yes Rex ... when it was download volume, that made sense
[16:41] Simon Linden: I believe so Rex -- the problem is that means costs change depending on what other objects are around
[16:42] Simon Linden: I understand the reasoning, but am horrified at thinking about how to make something like that work
[16:42] Andrew Linden: There are some very texture-heavy regions in SL, where thousands of distinct textures are packed into a very small space.
[16:42] Rex Cronon: if i were to have machine gun that fires fancy mesh bullets, that would make a lot of sense:)
[16:43] Drongle McMahon: Really "download weight" is not really consistent with the objectives of costing it, although it is how it is calculated.
[16:43] Andrew Linden: So an instancing discount would, I guess, cost some amount for the first instance, and a lower amount for subsequent instances.
[16:43] Dahlia Trimble: that might work
[16:44] Andrew Linden: But my mind boggles when wondering how to compute that final cost... it would be such a dynamic number.
[16:44] Fenix Eldritch: I would think prims would be best suited for throw-away items like bullets
[16:44] Andrew Linden: And who gets the cost? Can you get discounts for rezzing copies of instances already in use by other people?
[16:44] Drongle McMahon: I think the current download cost calculation is complicated enough ... as fpr the physocs weights .....
[16:44] Dahlia Trimble: who has time to inspect a flying bullet when its coming at you anyway?
[16:45] Rex Cronon: matrix style. everything starts moving in slowmo:)
[16:45] Andrew Linden: And what happens when they suddenly delete all of their original instances -- if we computed your cost against your parcel... your cost might actually go up should your neighbor delete all of their preceding instances.
[16:45] Fenix Eldritch: Aye, good point Andrew
[16:45] Andrew Linden: Unless we split the cost discounts.
[16:46] Dahlia Trimble: or do it per-parcel
[16:46] Drongle McMahon: It could work just within linksets. I made a tree that was about 30 instances of the same small mash at different scales (ie a fractal tree).
[16:46] Andrew Linden: The parcel accounting stuff is already pretty complicated...
[16:47] Andrew Linden: which reminds me about something I was wondering about when considering how to do virtual worlds completely differently...
[16:48] Drongle McMahon: Is there any chance we could see the physics weight calculating code? I would love to understand it. The wiki seems to be wrong.
[16:48] Andrew Linden: what if the smallest chunk of land was a full region, so no parcels within a region... that would really simplify a lot of server-side logic
[16:49] Drongle McMahon: As long as the tier is $5 per region :-)
[16:49] Andrew Linden: Right, the cost per region would have to go down of course.
[16:49] Dahlia Trimble: then my neighbor's laggy scripts woudlnt lag mine :D
[16:49] Fenix Eldritch: If you want to dole out test regions, I'd be happy to take one :D
[16:49] Andrew Linden: This is along the lines of "if we could do it all over again, how would I do it differently?"
[16:50] Andrew Linden: I'd really like to get away from parcel subdivision
[16:50] Rex Cronon: i believe there should be no sims/regions. u should have a whole planet:)
[16:50] Andrew Linden: but what I don't know is... would that eliminate any really compelling content/experiences that work in SL but wouldn't work in this hypothetical virtual world?
[16:50] Drongle McMahon: But people need their private 512s.
[16:50] Rex Cronon: at least the users shouldn't see them
[16:51] Rex Cronon: a region could be any shape/size
[16:51] Andrew Linden: That raises another idea Drongle. This hypothetical world should have per-avatar private rooms.
[16:51] Dahlia Trimble: Andrew it might have ruined the people who used to split mainland regions into may 4x4 parcels and put spinning cubes on them
[16:51] Drongle McMahon: But the overhaed woul;d be too much for smaller regions?
[16:52] Tiberious Neruda: I know there ARE grids with variable-sized regions now
[16:52] Andrew Linden: Oh really Tiberious? Variable sized regions in OpenSim?
[16:52] Tiberious Neruda: I'm pretty sure
[16:52] Simon Linden: I think parcels are worth having, but any new world should definitely have large and small regions
[16:52] Andrew Linden: Interesting. I wonder what viewer's they use.
[16:53] Dahlia Trimble: OpenSim has "megaregions" which are groups of contiguous regions all running on a single simulation
[16:53] Andrew Linden: Are there OpenSim-only viewers yet?
[16:53] Simon Linden: Yes Andrew - they use the SL viewer and emulate multiple regions
[16:53] Dahlia Trimble: the idea is to eliminate crossing effects
[16:53] Andrew Linden: Ah I see. So larger variable sizes, but not smaller.
[16:53] Dahlia Trimble: megaregions work with normal viewers
[16:53] Andrew Linden: Yeah, that makes sense. In fact, we've kicked that idea around the lab ourselves
[16:53] Rex Cronon: if things happen behid the scenes it doesn't matter size of parcel
[16:53] Drongle McMahon: What is certain is that affordable ownership anmd/or access and building control are absolute requirements for most paying residents.
[16:55] Andrew Linden: Yup.
[16:55] Rex Cronon: things might be so much simpler if ll were to license others to run the sims/regions:)
[16:55] Meeter: Timecheck : User Group is almost over
[16:55] Simon Linden: I'd also posit that building might be limited to paying residents ... there has to be some system design that could help with the griefing problems
[16:56] Drongle McMahon: Rx ... that's what they do already with estate owners, isn't it?
[16:56] Rex Cronon: on your physical server drongle:)
[16:56] Andrew Linden: Simon, you mean in the hypothetical alternate virtual world?
[16:56] Tiberious Neruda: http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Setting_Up_Mega-Regions
[16:56] Drongle McMahon: Arrghhh!
[16:57] Fenix Eldritch likes the name "Super Sims" better
[16:57] Tiberious Neruda: I don't think that restricting building to only verified people is a good idea
[16:57] Drongle McMahon: Big maney-security problems?
[16:57] Drongle McMahon: *money
[16:57] Rex Cronon: there is a simple way to affect griefing:)
[16:58] Dahlia Trimble: restricting it on a per-parcel basis :D *hides again*
[16:59] Tiberious Neruda: other VWs have tried that whole 'pay to create' approach... where are they now?
[16:59] Rex Cronon: if u say that u can't fill the whole sim unless u r alone in it, otherwise each person in sim gets to rez a percentage:)
[16:59] Simon Linden: Andrew - yes, that one
[16:59] Fenix Eldritch: I always thought paying just to get in the door (like the original $10 per account) did lots to discourage throw-away accounts and griefing of that kind?
[16:59] Andrew Linden: So Rex, you fill the region... and then someone walks into it.
[16:59] Andrew Linden: What happens?
[16:59] Simon Linden: We've tried that "anyone can build a griefing object and take down a region" approach, and it has problems too
[17:00] Drongle McMahon: I think building is a major thing that turns non-payers into payers .... so the non payers have to be allowed to get hooked on it.
[17:00] Andrew Linden: (There's a neat grief mode... just find people who are using all their current region's resources and then visit them...)
[17:00] Rex Cronon: if they try to rez, the can rez their part, and what is mine above my percentage gets returned:)
[17:00] Dahlia Trimble: if it were per-parcel then non-paying could still greif sandboxes if they allowed it
[17:00] Tiberious Neruda: yeah
[17:00] Andrew Linden: ok, visit them and start rezzing
[17:00] Meeter: Thank you for coming to the Server User Group
[17:00] Tiberious Neruda: it's a bad idea
[17:01] Rex Cronon: considering that u can have at max 100 avatars, that means at least 150 or your prims will remain in the sim
[17:01] Rex Cronon: if u leave all your prims will die
[17:01] Simon Linden: Tiberious - you'd be amazed at how much time we waste working on SL because anyone can build and distribute objects
[17:01] Tiberious Neruda: no kidding
[17:02] Tiberious Neruda: I think the biggest problem wasn't dropping the sign-up fee... but dropping the identification requirement
[17:02] Rex Cronon: the thing is, it will have a negative effect on a lot of people, me included
[17:02] Simon Linden: Agreed, payment is really identification. Maybe there could be a free option with some identity verification
[17:03] Rex Cronon: right now griefers come, rez lots of things and leave
[17:03] Tiberious Neruda: when I signed up, I had to have some kind of payment info, even though it was free
[17:03] Drongle McMahon: Turn off building on all abandoned land, and restrict to owner/group everywhere else. Timeout everyone build permissions.
[17:03] Tiberious Neruda: and if they get banned, they just roll another alt
[17:04] Rex Cronon: if everybody would have an equal share of sim resources it might be harder to crash sims, and to make so much lag
[17:04] Simon Linden: Right Rex, I think some better allocation of resources from the start would help a new world
[17:05] Simon Linden: well, I'm heading out - thanks everyone for the chat today
[17:05] Rex Cronon: right now i can fill the whole sim and stop everybody from doing anything
[17:05] Jane1 Bookmite: Bye Simon, thank you
[17:05] Dahlia Trimble: by Simon, ty :)
[17:05] Drongle McMahon: Bye.
[17:05] Rex Cronon: tc simon
[17:05] Ashiri Sands: cya and thanks
[17:05] Andrew Linden: Thanks for coming everyone.
[17:05] Fenix Eldritch: Take care, Lindens
[17:05] Rex Cronon: tc andrew
[17:05] Dahlia Trimble: ty Andrew :)
Simulator_User_Group
Prev 2012.08.14	Next 2012.08.21