Second Life Havok4 Beta Preview (2007-10-31) Simulator and Database Refresh starting at 5:00 PDT
Wednesday, October 31st, 2007 at 1:57 PM by: Sidewinder LindenTonight we will be taking the Second Life Beta Preview offline for maintenance starting at 5:00pm PDT. The Beta Preview is expected to be back online by late Friday, if not before. During this offline period we will be performing a set of updates, including:
Upgrade mySQL from v4 to v5
Refreshing the Preview database (the account list and your inventory will be updated to match its state at the time of the snapshot later this afternoon)
IMPORTANT NOTE: If you have test scripts on the Beta Preview environment that you have not yet backed up, now would be the right time! When we refresh the database starting at 5:00 PDT they will be wiped and reloaded with the content from your account on the main Second Life environment.
Deploying a new simulator build that includes the following fixes:
* SVC-898: center of mass is centered on the root prim (having incorrect center of mass made a variety of physical multi-prim objects behave in strange ways)
* SVC-882: avatars sitting on objects are invisible
* DEV-4611: sim crash by unlinking an object an avatar is sitting upon
* SVC-856: Havok4 - Rez from Inventory with Edit on creates an invisible object in 1.18.3.72037
Regards,
Sidewinder Linden
Program Manager
October 31st, 2007 at 2:21 PM
does this mean that you will also be upgrading the main grid’s mysql system as well? if so when is an estimated deployment time for it?
[windlight omgness]
Cant you just open up a subversion repository so we can roll our own windlight clients that you guys are testing behind closed doors?!?!?! at least then we can see what kind of progress is being made and at the same time keeping non-tech savy people out who dont know how to use svn
[/windlight omgness]
October 31st, 2007 at 2:23 PM
[...] Second Life Havok4 Beta Preview (2007-10-31) Simulator and Database Refresh starting at 5:00 PDT Tonight we will be taking the Second Life Beta Preview offline for maintenance starting at 5:00pm PDT. The Beta Preview is expected to be back online by late Friday, if not before. During this offline period we will be performing a set of updates… [...]
October 31st, 2007 at 3:16 PM
Hi, I lost all objets of my inventary
wht’s happend whit it’s?.
Lost all of them??????????
October 31st, 2007 at 3:56 PM
The fact that you are still using mySQL is mind blowing. I think one of the most effective upgrades (and and easy one at that) is investing some resources iand money nto Orcale. This most certainly answers the question of why we have so many db erros.
October 31st, 2007 at 4:26 PM
so are you going to be down in till sometime friday? or will you be up sooner.
October 31st, 2007 at 4:37 PM
@lobodraconus “so are you going to be down in till sometime friday? or will you be up sooner.”:
I am setting the expectation that the Beta Preview will be offline until late Friday. If things go smoothly we may be able to open the Beta Preview to all access before that. If we can open it sooner, we will. We will do as much as possible to keep this offline period to as short a window as possible.
October 31st, 2007 at 5:36 PM
Please just give us less lag (it has been building seriously in case you’ve not noticed) and greater reliability from crashes (they are more frequent for those of us with the most sophisticated equipment). Thank you for taking this comment seriously!
October 31st, 2007 at 6:17 PM
@ #4 Oracle?? WTF!?!
October 31st, 2007 at 6:23 PM
@4, @8: PostgreSQL FTW, dudes.
October 31st, 2007 at 6:23 PM
Are we going to get a fix for the inventory issues of 100`s of trash cans showing up ? Its occuring more and more resently. If people have to file support tickets each time this happens its really going to blog down the tech people.
U sagi M usagi
October 31st, 2007 at 6:49 PM
OFF TOPIC
Lists and discussions about possible database engine options is off topic for this blog post.
Inventory issues are also off-topic for this blog post.
ON TOPIC
This blog post is about a refresh of the Havok4 Beta Preview, a project that is working towards replacement of the earlier version Havok physics engine with a more current version. The Havok4 project has already removed many simulator crash modes, and improved the simulator’s resistance to overload dramatically. Please see the Havok4 Beta Preview initial blog post for more information about the project:
http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/09/28/havok4-is-here-on-the-beta-grid/
In addition there is a wiki with information about this update posted here:
https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Havok_4_Beta_Home
Please join us at Havok4 office hours if you are participating in testing the Havok4 physics engine update. Office hours are held at:
Brampton Linden Stage
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Brampton/106/166/25/
Tuesdays 16:30-17:30 PDT, also known as 4:30-5:30pm PDT (ongoing)
Thursdays 08:00am PDT (ongoing)
Thanks for helping to keep this thread on-topic, and thanks for your help in helping to be sure that the Havok4 release will be well tested.
Best regards,
Sidewinder Linden
October 31st, 2007 at 7:03 PM
@Sidewinder
I don’t believe MY question about the databases in the main grid were off topic could you perhaps answer my question? see #1
October 31st, 2007 at 7:29 PM
@1 Elindir: My apologies - I was walking around your Windlight sidebar and forgot to answer the mySQL roll-out question.
Yes, mySQL will be upgraded across the Second Life public grid, and this process has already started. The upgrade will occur in phases over the next few weeks. Three database hosts have been converted and running mySQL5 in production already. The final portions of the conversion will occur during a release downtime slot and be explained in a blog entry when it happens.
Sidewinder
October 31st, 2007 at 10:23 PM
@4: An aging, over-patched, buggy database system kept alive by aggressive marketing and hostile takeovers is not what LL needs.
October 31st, 2007 at 10:58 PM
I can sign on my account and see SL then my computer goes to a blank black screen, Is this due to the update????
November 1st, 2007 at 1:40 AM
@15: you shouldn’t be trying to log on now…. the beta grid is down for maintenance update.
(Try actually read the blog first before you post.)
November 1st, 2007 at 1:53 AM
thanks lindens.
Now i own my land in the beta grid too XD
Then i can play there when the maingrid is crashed again
November 1st, 2007 at 3:16 AM
how will the upgrade benefit us?
November 1st, 2007 at 3:47 AM
Overall, tracey, when Havok 4 starts to be deployed on the main grid, it will mean a substantially lower need of the sim’s CPU do deal with all elements requiring the physics engine (like simple things tracking down how gravity pulls you down when falling
). The reduction of CPU needs should be pretty much dramatic, meaning that it can deal with other things more efficiently (like tracking positions of more avatars and send textures faster to your computer). Just for that it should be more than enough.
Then all building activities that require linking will be much smoother and not fail as before. Think about linking together a 7000-prim-building in a few seconds, rotate it 30º, and move it around to a new place — or taking it into your inventory and place it elsewhere. Right now, this is a nightmare, and is usually done with so-called “packing scripts”, breaking up the whole building in manageable chunks, and taking several hours for that.
Finally, we’ll have the nice new features
Thousands of physical-enabled objects can fly all around the place, and not lag the sim. Dozens of vehicles can roam the grid, crash into each other, and the sim will peacefully continue to go on without any decrease in performance. This is now “reality” (minus a few quirks being debugged) — routinely, a dozen people stay in one sandbox on the Preview Grid, each rezzing a thousand objects, filling up the sim, setting them all to physical, and watch as they interact with each other with minimal performance loss.
But this is only the beginning — the tip of the iceberg — where the current engine, seven years old, is replaced by a recent version (that can also be further upgraded with more ease), without adding new functionality. The next step is to explore the new functionality allowed by Havok 4. That will give LL’s team of developers a whole year to introduce things that we have never been possible in SL before. Watch the videos on this page — this could be how SL behaves in mid-2008 or so, bringing it up to the current state-of-the-art of most rendering engines out there.
November 1st, 2007 at 5:16 AM
Then, They will update it, and break the whole thing.
November 1st, 2007 at 5:50 AM
awsome, that there is also something being done to the database.
i hope this will “fix” inventory loss, instead of making it even worse.
i havent had it that bad, but some friends had it pretty bad, and lost thousand of items in a sudden.
people pay for their objects, and inventory loss makes them lose it, and no refund, and filing a ticket, takes ages, probably a year or something.
@ 19 Gwyneth Llewelyn
you cant link 7000 prims, it still holds the 254 prim link limit.
November 1st, 2007 at 5:51 AM
@20:
Pfffpppbbttllrrrttffftttttt.
November 1st, 2007 at 8:20 AM
I don’t get this really..
This is Havoc4 beta.. v 1.18.3.70780..
Then you have the RC, which is NOT a release candidate suddenly, and the version number is 1.18.4.1.
Then there is the nowadays poofed First Look viewer..
At times the Beta viewer has a much lower version number than the released viewer, which makes me confused at least.
I think it’s wonderful that we are allowed to test new features, and can do so in both Beta and Main grid, but i think it’s a good idea to make things less confusing
Keep up the good work¨tho
November 1st, 2007 at 8:41 AM
I just use the client they tell me to use. I’ve never had problems with inventory loss or “lag” that is that bad. The Lindens are doing a wonderful job.
November 1st, 2007 at 9:28 AM
mySql, good grief no wonder we have scalability and reliability problems.
Has it every occurred to you that a more robust solution might bring some stability and performance benefits. Have you looked at using Oracle for instance.
November 1st, 2007 at 10:16 AM
@23 Bay: “I don’t get this really..
This is Havoc4 beta.. v 1.18.3.70780..
Then you have the RC, which is NOT a release candidate suddenly, and the version number is 1.18.4.1.
Then there is the nowadays poofed First Look viewer..
At times the Beta viewer has a much lower version number than the released viewer, which makes me confused at least.”
Hi Bay,
I’ll try to make this clearer… We have a production viewer - the released one that is the main download on the Second Life web site. We also at some times have a “First Look”, which is a beta of an upcoming public release. It is not release yet, and is still being worked on. Project such as our Havok4 project sync up to the *released* viewer code every couple of weeks to pick up changes. We purposefully do not sync to unreleased beta code so that we are not chasing unresolved bugs in the non-released viewer codeline. Does this help?
Thanks for asking,
Sidewinder
November 1st, 2007 at 11:20 AM
#19
My testing has shown me that this is not true AT ALL.
In fact unless the Havok beta grid is running on Class 3 machines Im finding it to be the same or much SLOWER in some instances that Havok 1 on my own sim.
While Havok 4 may be less crash prone is has not shown me that it is any less CPU intensive. A simple 11 object collision in a small slace STILL slowns the sim down to 0.3 TD.
I can’t find even one instance of my own experience in the beta grid that would support a single thing you said in your post. Things like 7000 prim link limits or > 30-40 meter link limits are certainly NOT going to be raised on realase, even if they might be in some far off future date. The limits that are there now are more because of limits in the archetecture of the mechanics of sim crossing which are not changing.
What you are talking about may be things that happen some years from now, but defintaly NOT with the upcomng release of Havok 4…
November 1st, 2007 at 11:46 AM
@27Farallon and 19 Gwyneth
Farallon - Gwyneth is throwing stuff out that we (and I) never claimed about Havok4. This is, as the blog posts and wiki clearly states, about stability and capacity, not raw performance improvements. The new sim design will handle far more load without falling over or crashing, but the raw single-user througput is not higher. For what it’s worth, most of the simulator hosts on the Beta Preview are Class 4 machines. To my knowledge none of them are Class 5 hosts yet.
We are purposefully *not* adding features, other than revamped linkability rules, to this release, and instead working to have this be hard to crash and support existing content with minimal breakage.
Regards,
Sidewinder
November 1st, 2007 at 11:52 AM
@25 Krista
“mySql, good grief no wonder we have scalability and reliability problems.
Has it every occurred to you that a more robust solution might bring some stability and performance benefits. Have you looked at using Oracle for instance.”
For what it’s worth, Krista, we are quite aware of other database options, and of the impact of database engines on scalability and reliability. The issues of scalability and reliability are being addressed with architecture changes that are already in motion (not completed yet, but already progressing), and frankly whether the back-end database is mySQL or Oracle or some other database engine has little to do with the effectiveness of changes that need to happen to improve on those two key areas in the Second Life environment. It is always tempting to think “if only we replace this one piece of hardware or software it will all be better”, but in the large systems arena this is rarely the case.
Let’s please leave the mySQL discussion alone please, or I will start to remove iff-topic posts, as continuing this part of the discussion is way off topic for the Havok4 beta test process.