Second Life Simulator v1.20.0.84105 pre-release is on the Beta Preview
Sunday, April 6th, 2008 at 6:02 PM by: Sidewinder LindenOverview
Second Life Simulator v1.20.0.84105 resolves several important issues discovered through deployment of our new simulator to all of Second Life last week.
In particular there are fixes that should improve performance on Openspace regions, camera behavior and the physical representation of dimpled spheres. Details of these fixes are provided below.
Note: This Announces A Beta Preview Release Only
Please note that this blog post announces the release of the updated version to our Beta Preview Grid for testing. You will need to install the Beta Viewer, available on our test software page, if you wish to test this release on the beta preview (or make a few custom modifications to your release viewer if you’re comfortable with that process).
If testing of this release on the Beta Preview is positive, we expect to deploy this version to the main Second Life system later in the week. A separate blog post will announce the deployment of this simulator to Second Life when testing has completed.
Changes In This Update:
Note that items starting with “DEV” were entered internally, and items starting with “SVC” were reported on the public jira.
DEV-13002: Improved physical representation of some thin shapes (As originally reported, this appeared to be a problem with a prim floor becoming phantom after conversion. It turned out to an inaccurate physical representation that left “holes” in the floor in some areas)
SVC-1531: Physical representation of dimpled, hollowed spheres improved
DEV-12725: Camera position is no longer affected by phantom objects or avatars (resolution of this bug removed a cause of rapid shifts in camera position for reasons not obvious from the scene in view)
DEV-12841: Removed a simulator crash mode
DEV-13080: Reduced tendency of avatar’s feet to fold up to waist climbing stairs
SVC-1989: Avatar no longer becomes phantom when sitting
Improved performance of openspace regions
Next Steps
We are continuing to collect issue reports for resolution, and expect to have another simulator update in the next week or two, depending on the criticality and status of the open items list.
Please report items in the public jira, and if they are physics-related, please be sure to set the Component to Physics so that we see them as soon as possible.
Best regards,
Sidewinder Linden
Havok4 Program Manager
April 6th, 2008 at 6:10 PM
um, thats great and things have improved, but sicne the deployment, for at least some of us, the whole pay menu seems gone.
April 6th, 2008 at 6:10 PM
“In particular there are fixes that should improve performance on Openspace regions”.
…technical?
April 6th, 2008 at 6:16 PM
@1 Erinyse: Could you provide some more specifics on the pay menu issue? Is this the viewer update you’re talking about? /Sidewinder
April 6th, 2008 at 6:17 PM
What about fixing the problems people are having with over reacted falling down stairs/over prims and the fact that now all the cars physics have been completely borked
April 6th, 2008 at 6:18 PM
@2 Vittorio:
“…technical?”
The simulator was allocating too much memory at startup on Openspace regions (which are set up for four regions per processor), which caused thrashing when the memory allocation would exceed physical memory and require virtual memory disk swapping. We now allocate less memory for Openspace regions at startup. /Sidewinder
April 6th, 2008 at 6:20 PM
@4 KellyM: If you would please provide me specifics in a jira or inworld we can address the issues. As mentioned before, many vehicle manufacturers were involved in the beta process, and it is really not the case that “all the cars physics have been completely borked”. If you are seeing specific issues I would be happy to address them. Regards, Sidewinder
April 6th, 2008 at 6:25 PM
Man, need to give the testers more time before deploying these for stability, was only great for one day when Havok4 was released, then went to hell. Figure out server issues as well, always die the most on weekends.
April 6th, 2008 at 6:28 PM
@7 Vasile: The issues that happened over the weekend were not due to Havok4 problems, they were due to a serious set of issues with the Internet Service Provider who provides connectivity for our data centers. In fact, the Havok4 final release was tested for far longer than one day! Please see previous posts that describe the six month process that led to the final release… /Sidewinder
April 6th, 2008 at 6:28 PM
sidewidner im me inworld
April 6th, 2008 at 6:29 PM
Sidewinder. You really need to give yourself a day off once in awhile.
April 6th, 2008 at 6:33 PM
seems resolved nwo, but for a long time right clickign the avitars or their names when you tried to pay an avitar directly the pay menu woudlnt coem up. even now it seems shakey. other avis reported it too.
April 6th, 2008 at 6:35 PM
In the previous blog:
“Q: I am seeing performance problems on my region that didn’t seemto be present before the update. What could be causing this?
A: There are a few types of operations that seem to cause more performance impact with the new physics engine than the old one. In particular very complex shapes that are rezzed repeatedly and quickly can take more of a toll on performance than with the old simulator.
Products that we have seen create this problem include:
* Some (not all) fish rezzers
* Some (not all) wave generators
* Some (not all) special effects generators
* Some (not all) vehicles, in particular complex vehicles”
Would you please state which ones are and which ones are not causing problems? If some of the items I have are in this list, I want to know so I can remove them and get the sim I spend 99% of my time on back to the way it was before Havoc 4!
SVC-2005 in the Jira has not even been assigned yet and both Opensapce and Full Sims are affected by it. If it is just a matter of a Linden looking at the top scripts and identifying which ones are creating the highest Physics script time, then it would be wonderful if somebody would take a look and maybe identify the problem.
April 6th, 2008 at 6:37 PM
True havok4 was tested thoroughly but the viewers don’t seem to be tested as good. Just saying a week or two more could make a world of difference, since there is never enough time for testers to their job.
Speak from experience.
April 6th, 2008 at 6:42 PM
@12 Dytska: All of these items are possibilities, but which one is the problem for any particular for your region would not be clear without some work. If are the region owner and know how to use “Top Scripts” and “Top Colliders”, these tools can be useful in identifying the key problem areas.
SVC-2005 in public jira may not have yet been synced, but we did work on this issue internally as indicated, and when this is deployed to the rest of Second Life it should help with problems on Openspace regions where you see cyclic dips of performance for now obvious reason.
/Sidewinder
April 6th, 2008 at 6:46 PM
DEV-12725: Camera position is no longer affected by phantom objects or avatars (resolution of this bug removed a cause of rapid shifts in camera position for reasons not obvious from the scene in view)….. could this one be pushed out.. i would really like to not be thrown into first look cause someone walked behind me
Thanks
April 6th, 2008 at 6:46 PM
Oh thank heavens! Yet another update and now I can once again look forward to having my shoe up my butt, my hair trying to strangle me and I’ll see all the sweet little creatures that live underground.
Just a thought here - you think maybe you should be just a titch more concerned about your servers and the fact that they no longer seem to be able to handle the load you’ve already tossed at them?
The amount of “down time ” lately is just ridiculous! How you can expect to continue to grow and thrive, as we all want you to, when vendors can’t sell, people hosting events can’t TP people insite and the grid goes in a blazing ball of flames every few days?
You can’t and you really don’t care. Seems your theory is for every one person that leaves another noobie will be stumbling around Help Island.Well guess what? That too will end as others come in and see the mess.
So..in short..wake up..smell the coffee and give us what we pay for..service..stability and yeah..even some fun!
April 6th, 2008 at 6:48 PM
@15 Sephy: This is a server-side update. I am not fully understanding your question.. This resolves a problem that would move the camera around unexpectedly, which is from most folks’ perspective “not a good thing”
/Sidewinder
April 6th, 2008 at 6:48 PM
Well, was going to go in to the beta grid and test out some issues with megaprims I’ve been seeing since Havok 4 hit the main grid, but can’t seem to find anyplace where I can rezz anything. I’m not having much luck with SL this weekend.
April 6th, 2008 at 6:52 PM
Ever since the update this past week, I have noticed my camera would snap around of someone walked behind me. Glad to know this has been addressed. I’ve also noticed with windlight that lighted objects are MUCH more brighter, almost totally washing out other objects near it. Is there a way to turn that down in prefrences?
Also where do I activate Anti Aliasing and Anisotropic Filtering?
April 6th, 2008 at 6:52 PM
@16 Dianne: This project is a stability project that has dramatically reduced one cause of simulator crashes. None of us is happy about the downtime we have seen recently. However this project, and the results of it, are not a cause of downtime, it is improving the stability of the simulators. I will be publishing data on these results once we have it assembled.
We do care, and there are other project teams working on the issues driving other stability issues.
/Sidewinder
April 6th, 2008 at 6:52 PM
Oh i didnt mean like “first look” i means as first person view should have been more precise in what i was saying sorry, but yes i would dub that a bad thing too being forced into a view of the back of your head… although its prettty…..
:D..
and btw i love the progress made so far i have more FPS woot
April 6th, 2008 at 6:53 PM
now that ive updated, my avatar is in a permanent jesus pose, with my body floating with my crotch at head level, my head is where it should be , and long thin strips of flesh hanging down from my arms.
thanks.
April 6th, 2008 at 6:57 PM
you know, i feel really sorry for both you and the windlight team…
all the glory of your work reduced to ashes by other people who dont know how to do their jobs and by the time things will settle down, noone will remember a time pre havoc4/windlight anymore… what a thankless job
April 6th, 2008 at 7:00 PM
Will this address the constant crshes I now get since the last release?
April 6th, 2008 at 7:06 PM
@24 Bubba: This release is a simulator release - on the server side. Simulator crashes throw everyone at once off of a region. This release reduces that sort of crash. The individual viewer crashes are being worked on by the viewer team and are a project separate from this simulator/server release. /Sidewinder
April 6th, 2008 at 7:12 PM
22 Friar: Sounds like a corrupted animation in your AO. Take it off and relog, see if you look normal - then turn it on, or try each animation in it one at a time.
April 6th, 2008 at 7:13 PM
Thanks Sidewinder, not to stay off topic but is there any time-frame on that? We are working with MBC and have a live broadcast with them this weekend, and the constant crashing is putting a damper on the event. Kiya Villota is logged in now, trying to find a fix, if you need more info….Thanks again.
April 6th, 2008 at 7:20 PM
Hey Sidewinder. How’s the hair goin’? I figure you gotta be pulling out quite a bit this week.
Hey, glad to see Havok 4 finally deployed. Not sure LL was too wise in bringing a forced Windlight deploy the same week. In the words of Socrates… duh. But it’s done, so we muddle through.
Two things: my cars are borked. Brand new cars, top quality, bought ‘em just a few weeks ago (sculpty Porche.. hubba hubba). Turns like 90 degrees at the slightest touch of a button. Absolutely unsteerable.
Other things is crashes. I dunno whether it’s Havok or the recent server-side snafus, but my friends and I have been crashing like nobody’s business (and as you know, we sport killer computers). So if we’re crashing…
Would like to get one thing off my chest: Windlight prevents quite a few people from using SL. If their graphics card doesn’t support shaders, often they can’t even log in. People say, “Yeah, but you can turn off Windlight shaders”. Well yeah… but since LL saw fit to remove the Preferences function from the Client sign-in screen… they can’t log in to change that, can they?
I hate to keep quoting Socrates…. ; )
April 6th, 2008 at 7:22 PM
I thought the last one was supposed to offer less crashes lol.
Okay, so why are there problems with some rotations on existing objects not working? The really really annoying going in to flying down mode when getting to the top of stairs or walking over low objects. Those are Havok.
Things seem to have got slower rezzing with 1.19 which is why I have gone back to 1.18 (still faster on 1.18 despite the ISP probs).
And a lot of scripted objects seem to not be talking when they normally do, but I have no idea if that has been ISP, lag, asset server problems, 1.20 itself, or the still borked comms since 1.15, or a combination of all that especially with the extra db load that Windlight and Havok with the extra capabilities and thus data throughput required, I’d rather Havok and WL rolled back and performance and full capabilities in peak times restored until you get those asset server problems fixed (which have been supposedly fixed several times already) and the extra capacity to deal with new stuff in place first.
What you should do, is hold off the next jump in coincurrency until the next time you upgrade, so you have spare capacity. It’s getting infuriating when new stuff and people are introduced that everything goes to pot, and just as it is all working again as it should, you let another 10K on and break it all again.
April 6th, 2008 at 7:23 PM
@14 Thank you for answer Sidewinder. My original Jira submission was ‘duplicated’ to SVC-2005. I am talking about Lunata sim which is a mainland sim, not an Openspace sim, and there are some mentions of other Full (non-Openspace) sims with the cyclic Dilation drop and high Script Time (Physics). In Lunata, it goes from .45 to 1.00 every 10 seconds or so! I hope this can be fixed soon and I only wish a Linden would look at the Top Colliders/Scripts and maybe do something - I can’t with a mainland sim. I already took away my 20+ Second Wildlife Squirrels in hopes they were the problem, but they were not and I don’t want to go on a wild goose hunt to find the problem, if it is a badly behaving object of mine on the 40Ksqm I own of the sim.
April 6th, 2008 at 7:23 PM
Blinders, you can get to prefs from the log in screen.
see the menus at the top? Hit edit.
April 6th, 2008 at 7:24 PM
May I take this opportunity to say - since the appropriate blog entry is closed to comment - that the decision to sporadically and unpredictably discontinue vital services as the solution to an overcrowed grid is unacceptable.
The vital services I speak of include shutting off profiles, so that there is no way for customers to reach business owners - for example, when LL yet again fails to deliver the product the customer purchased.
Given that last year LL said they would, if necessary, throttle log-ins, with preferences given to premium members and then payment-info-on-file members, it would seem that LL would rather give the shaft to business people and their customers rather than deny access to any person who may want to log in.
While throttling log-ins is not ideal, less ideal is taking away vital services just for the sake of staying open to absolutely everyone, absolutely every minute.
And taking away basic services that business people and their customers depend on - so that all manner of bots can log on unmolested - is sheer insanity.
You don’t mind if business owners tier down and quit, do you? Out of all possible solutions to these problems - including, I’ve been told, simply purchasing more servers and/or bandwidth - you pick the one that hurts us the most.
It is true that not everyone pays for SL or buys Lindens. But many of us do, to run businesses, or to purchase items from those businesses. To take away these vital functions so that those of us who pay will suffer the most is outrageous.
I can only conclude that you don’t much mind losing business owners from the grid.
That would make sense, if what you care about most is real-world companies (who don’t even have customers in world) along with as many thousands of bots and rubberneckers possible to look at their ads and, not coincidentally, inflate your numbers.
I dunno guys, this is a biggie. And no, I’m not going to suffer forever, and take all the brunt of the sacrifices, so that those who pay nothing to anyone (including hordes of exploitative bots) have no difficulty logging into a crippled world.
Either start paying attention to the people who built your world, or get ready to lose them. If that’s okay with you, why not just say so, and spare all of us from what looks to be shaping up as increasing misery for anyone who actually uses SL for anything other than something to ogle for a while as an oddity.
I realize you’re probably not the person to have to hear this, Sidewinder, but perhaps you could pass it on to those who are the right people but don’t want to listen.
coco
April 6th, 2008 at 7:25 PM
28 Blinders: You can still change preferences before logging in. From the login screen, hit “Edit”, then “Preferences”. Only thing you can’t change is logging options & busy message, same as before.
April 6th, 2008 at 7:28 PM
Yeah my crashes are way up, but sadly has nothing to do with havok4 otherwise I would imagine there’d be progress being made, or at least we would know where they stood.
@28 visit an office hour for the havok4 team and show them the car problems, otherwise complaining is just as good as doing nothing.
April 6th, 2008 at 7:30 PM
@28 Blinders: We have worked with a lot of vehicle builders throughout the process. Please check with them about updated versions, as I suspect that may be part of solution to steering problems. There are many vehicles that steer well on this simulator, and some that steer differently for various reasons. As mentioned before I’d be happy to talk with any builders having issues - we did try to reach out to as many as we could find during the beta process.
The Havok4 server dramatically reduces simulator crashes, and the viewer teams are focusing on crash reduction as well.
The “missing preferences screen before login problem”… Umm yes… I searched for that initially as well. It is still available from the Edit menu at the top of the viewer before login. If you disable Basic Shaders the minimal hardware requirement drops pretty significantly.
And yes.. I’m hoping to still have reasons to get my hair cut going forward.. we’ll see
Regards,
Sidewinder
April 6th, 2008 at 7:30 PM
It is distressing to not see SVC-2006 being adressed beyond the statement “we are aware of the issue”. The malfunction of the physics engine when a sphrere, or any object, rolls or moves across another surface would seem to rate a HIGH degree of interest from LL. As of this writing golf (which provides the reason for existance for 3 sims in SL and partical reason for existance of 4 ohters is now dead. And if you read SVC-2006 you will see that there is a slew of other products, activities and programs tha are equally borked by this bug. Can you please update us as to why SVC-2006 remains unassigned?
April 6th, 2008 at 7:32 PM
@29 Montana: I have seen a number of reports of rotating objects stopping rotating in various circumstances, and have collected a set of cases to work on. We will be working on this issue, but are not sure of the cause yet. In some cases a simulator restart solves the problem, and in others restarting the simulator stops the rotation until they are “poked”… This one is a bit puzzling but we will work on it. /Sidewinder
April 6th, 2008 at 7:34 PM
@32 Coco: I will pass on your entire post to the people involved in that decision. Thanks, Sidewinder
April 6th, 2008 at 7:39 PM
Hey, Sidewinder! Thanks for taking the time to respond personally on the blog here. if you can, could you give us an idea why swimming HUDs like Siggy’s and the L-Word version “borked” on Havok4’s deployment. Is there anything that the user might try?
Also, about borked Fish Rezzer. I have a wonderful one from Splash and simply taking it into inventory then re-rezzing it worked.
Keep up the good work, Sidewinder!
April 6th, 2008 at 7:39 PM
@32 Cocoanut Koala, if you had read it properly you would see the reason they took profiles and all that offline is because over the next 2 weeks they are sorting out the code so that in the future you wont need to complain about search not working a profiles staying blank because they are implimenting new code to speed it up. you can complain and whine but when every blog that has comments inabled turns into a “lets put a downer on linden labs” you realy think there going to listen? gee wow a bit of downtime compaird to uptime on a 3d vitual world that holds 30gb of asset data and 60,000+ user a day is nothing short of a damn good job.
on an up note, Damn good job sidewinder, lets hope we catch this damn rotation thing soon
April 6th, 2008 at 7:42 PM
@Sidewinder
All of SL’s trains are borked because of the way H4 handles the collisions on the tracks.
April 6th, 2008 at 7:44 PM
@36 MarkTwain: SVC-2006 duplicates several other internal items we have related to this issue. It is not going unaddressed, but we do not have a full resolution to the general case of this issue yet. The basic technical issue is that occasionally the physics engine will detect an edge, or detect “around” an edge of a seam where it should not. Removing that false positive without suppressing other correct behaviors has turned out to not be as easy as you might expect.
The synchronization between external and internal jira is at this point unfortunately manual, and is thus not necessarily fully updated. If you have questions about a specific item please feel free to IM me inworld about it. I do attempt to get time to re-sync them but have found that I have not prioritized that above other things that I think are more critical to project success. I apologize that this makes it hard at times to figure out status of issues, and can only say that I am making what I believe to be the best decisions at any point in time about time allocation for things like this.
At the same time, please note that SVC-2006 was created this past Thursday, which is only a few days before this point. It is not, I think, that unreasonable to find a bug that new to be not yet addressed in any software project.
As you know personally, I am happy to talk with builders inworld about issues, and to reprioritize our development queue if we missed or misunderstood the signfiicance of an issue.
Regards,
Sidewinder
April 6th, 2008 at 7:46 PM
@29 “Okay, so why are there problems with some rotations on existing objects not working?”
I, too, have noticed that the standard rotations script seems to function as it sees fit or that some object using that function will suddenly stop. Case it point: If I’m wearing a 7Seas pet fish that swims around my body via a rotation script it works well. But I’ve noticed while standing at the Isle of Lesbos, near the landing zone, the pet will stop swimming when one of the LL Performance Tester bots teleports into the sim. Detaching then reattaching the pet usually works, but not always. If you’d like, Sidewinder, I’ll send a pet or several to you for testing.
BTW … cute making the bots into cubes. i guess my suggestions worked.
April 6th, 2008 at 7:53 PM
@43 Uccello: Sure.. that would be helpful, although as I mentioned this problem is known, and we have several open cases to work with - it’s really a matter of figuring out where the problem is coming from, and we don’t know yet. We will work on it… just can’t promise when we’ll find the cause! /Sidewinder
April 6th, 2008 at 7:56 PM
RE: DEV-12725
HALLLEEELUUUUUJAAAHHH!!!!!!
*ahem* Yea. That’s been buggin’ the crap outta me since Havoc4 went in. Glad to see a fix!
April 6th, 2008 at 7:56 PM
@ 22, Friar Homewood
I have also come across this, it is a graphics card issue. I don’t know what graphic card you’re using, but when I found it on mine, here is how I solved it:
Edit -> Preferences -> Graphics tab
Click the Custom check box so a lot more options pop down underneath
Under the heading Avatar Rendering, set it with Avatar Imposters turned on, and Hardware Skinning turned off (no check box).
Cleared it right up on my ATI graphics card.
April 6th, 2008 at 7:56 PM
Coco@32: they were also only off temporarily while they worked on the database. I understand the frustration, but this is not ‘disabling features’, this is ‘fixing stuff that’s broken’.
April 6th, 2008 at 8:07 PM
Sidewinder,
I have two issues. First, since the roll out of Havok4, Hugs have been almost impossible. If you try to hug someone, the AO just goes a little crazy. I guess people who do beta testing don’t hug others.
Secondly, is there going to be any better support for the ATI series of video cards? I just purchased my second ATI card and enabled Crossfire on my computer, and my frame rates actually went DOWN! Right now, I can’t afford to go build a new computer (saving for my island, you know…
) With an older nvidia card, on a lesser computer, I’m doing much better. I’d really like to see some advancements in the ATI arena, if that’s possible.
I would like to thank you and all the Havok4 team for working to get this better for us. I know that you put up with a lot of crap from residents, and all you’re trying to do is your job. I thank you for doing it. It’s never going to be perfect, but I think that people expect too much. At least you aren’t like Creative, where you intentionally disrupt your stuff.
Hugs and ATI support, please Sidewinder.
Gennie
April 6th, 2008 at 8:13 PM
Weirdest new bug I’ve seen is SVC-2079. Sticky walls!
April 6th, 2008 at 8:14 PM
Did H4 make all the Linden trees shrink? Something did.
April 6th, 2008 at 8:18 PM
All I Can Say Is Way To Go Linden Labs!!! Thanks For The Great Weekend…
April 6th, 2008 at 8:20 PM
@48 Gennifer: We *did* test many huggers! (In fact, yours truly has filed a few jiras over the course of the project on hugger issues… yup it’s on the radar, and all of the ones we know of appear to be working with this build.)
I have run into a few since the rollout that appeared to be having problems, but in most cases the issue has turned out to be something else.
What sorts of problems are you seeing? Have you contacted the hugger builder to see if they know of any issues? I would be happy to check this out - please contact me inworld so that we can figure out where the problem may be. In a couple of cases product vendors had made assumptions that were very specific to Havok1, and will be issuing updates.
ATI support is a viewer issue, and I am just not involved enough with the viewer work at the moment to be a reliable source of information on it. Please contact the viewer team, and in particular filea jira with your specific hardware configuration and the specific issues that you are encountering, so that it can be added to the worklist.
Thanks,
/Sidewinder
April 6th, 2008 at 8:21 PM
Wow. Thank you Sidewinder for being so responsive in this post. I have never seen this level of attention and response to comments before, and honestly, this is what I naively expected when I first started reading the blog after joining SL in June 07. I am glad to see some of the more annoying bugs with this latest release will be dealt with so swiftly. Kudos and keep up the good (albeit hard) work!
April 6th, 2008 at 8:26 PM
Fix the lag and the asset server problems. All these fixes are cosmetic. with the exception of the simulator crash fix.
April 6th, 2008 at 8:26 PM
I have found the upgrade and new viewer to be working fine. I am sure a lot of the issues ppl have been seeing since the upgrades to both were part of the ISP related issues. Frankly, not counting that, it has been one of the smoother server updates I have seen, and I have seen a bunch.
I am still seeing the clocks off in some regions. I was told ops was going to a clock scan, but then all the ISP issues started, and maybe it got sidetracked. I would think having servers with their clocks not synced could cause some issues.
A good example is Monawai. The clock there is drifting slow and has been since Friday. Here are a couple of quick results just taken:
This was Monawai - GMT PST Time Test: GMTClock is: 83168.000000 WallClock is: 57968.000000
This is Yelas, which is correct - GMT PST Time Test: GMTClock is: 12028.000000 WallClock is: 73228.000000
Took a few seconds to TP, but as you can see Monawai is running 254 minutes slow.
Hope this helps.
DRD
April 6th, 2008 at 8:33 PM
@55 DR: I had thought this was resolved. Please feel free to ping me inworld if you see it again. I’ll check in with the operations group again about this. To make tracking these easier, I’ve created a meta-issue in pjira for this. Please feel free to add a sub-task (sub-task rather than a comment, so that each one can be noted done as it is resolved) to capture each host discovered to have this problem.
I’ve added your note about Monawai as the first one.
Thanks,
Sidewinder
April 6th, 2008 at 8:33 PM
spheres are not the only holed items that are messed up:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Playboy/133/107/38
Take the elevator at that location. All is fine until you get to the top and you don’t pass through the hole in the floor. You did for that past 10 months but not now. Very very odd considering the elevator itself is phantom. The same happens to the down shaft.
Even stranger, it DOES work if I shrink the elevator model.
Did I mention the elevator is phantom?
April 6th, 2008 at 8:41 PM
I REALLY want more room to build. When will the ability to build above 768m be implemented on the viewer side?
April 6th, 2008 at 8:54 PM
@12 @14: The rezzer issue you mentioned is true. I was happily using Supa Shang’s free swimming fish for many months. When my sim (Gallifrey) joined the Havok4 beta, I had to remove all of those fish as they lagged the sim down to 10 fps or less.
The problem still persists. I attempted to restore a few of these fish last week, but it’s still lagging my sim to death. Worse, not one of those objects shows up in top scripts or top colliders. I have to assume it’s due to a change in volume detect, as Supa’s fish are phantom, physical, and use llVolumeDetect to stay inside the tank.
April 6th, 2008 at 8:59 PM
Items I have purchased - pool table and pinball - are having issues and is the motorcycle I bought. But I have also noticed that trying to change objects (glow) is not changing at all.
Does anyone else notice the this is one of the first blogs posts that someone from LL is answering almost immediately where in other posts they are either locked or no one answers. How about doing this for the Branding questions (not to be off topic)
Jaca
April 6th, 2008 at 9:01 PM
Sidewinder, I’m very glad for the fixes, and please dont think I’m underestimating your work. However, I will say that my hugger is still having issues. I’ll have to see about getting a new one perhaps.
I was curious if you had any releasable info about when scripted glow and the 4096m build limit would be implemented? I was very much looking forward to that, and I got the impression that it would be the viewer that came after the server upgrade, but found that it was not the case. Would it be possible for you to clear this matter up a little as to a timeframe?
April 6th, 2008 at 9:02 PM
@28
Try the test viwer, much more stable than the new “stable” release viwer. there seem to be a lot of people crashing usin that one, the test 1.19.1(4) is very stable and fast, very little lag on full settings and even on a full sim with settings turned down a little.
April 6th, 2008 at 9:11 PM
It is absolutely ridiculous that you are forcing people to update to the 1.19.1.4 viewer in order to play SL. For one, I’ve crashed repeatedly more times in the past two days, than I was previously crashing, which was quite a lot already. The only ounce of stability I had was using the Nicholaz Viewer 1.18.3(5) Dinosaur version of SL before you implemented all the apparent memory leaks. Now that I can’t use that version, I’m basically going to have to say good bye to SL because I cannot run the 1.19.1.4 viewer. Thank you very much SL for not listening to a word anyone has said on your blogs and for not careing either, which is completely obvious by the bait and switch you used to tell us you were not going to make it a mandatory update, and then a day later.. saying it was mandatory. So when I want a game I can play where I crash repeatedly, well then I guess I’ll give SL a go again. Until then enjoy your stability for some and the rest of us get screwed over viewer 1.19.1.4.
April 6th, 2008 at 9:12 PM
@60 Jaca: Could you please create a jira (one each) for the items that are not working, and make sure that the Component is set to Physics for them.
April 6th, 2008 at 9:15 PM
@63
You have not been “forced ” into anything, 1.19.1(4) is a test viewer with very wide settings, I can even run it on my low spec laptop by making the settings similar to the way SL looked a few releases back, it is very fast and stable run that way, if you find it hard to move a few sliders, I feel sorry for you .
April 6th, 2008 at 9:20 PM
@60.
Sidewinder seems to be the only person that cares enough about the results of their work to actually read the bloggs, HUGE kudos Sidewinder .
April 6th, 2008 at 9:25 PM
Well, I have to say it has been the worst day for SL performance at SLCN that we have had in the last 500 shows!
Yet, I have to believe that improvements have their cost and a lot of our show producers are really pushing the envelope because they have scripted objects like cars for the dirt racing, and simboarding issues…. ended up cancelling a couple shows because of such stuff. But probably that’s the price we pay for progress.
We have had reasonably good performance, and even stability, with 1.19.1(4), but the graphics settings, now including windlight and Havok 4 are becoming like voodoo. Can I recommend that some more extensive “improving performance” documentation which explains exactly what is going to “cost” and “not cost” in terms of performance? While it is simple (very nice) to use the new Good/Better/Best sliders in the preference, for more dedicated users it is hard to say whether atmospheric, mesh detail, skinning, etc, are going to reduce/increase frame rate, and how much things like kTris count matters, and if so, how much etc. I know these are esoteric issues they are all present in that increasingly cryptic graphics prefs panel that everybody has to decipher. I think many users, even those not doing machinema and sports coverage, would love a “complete guide to the user-settable graphics features”. Our team will even beta test the documentation.
(keep up the good work, just still sweating bullets today)
April 6th, 2008 at 9:30 PM
@59 - Thank you for information! I have always enjoyed Supa’s fish (and Frogs and the Crab) the best and have quite a few in my inventory, but none out on the sim at this time.
For an experiment, I took out my Dance Platforms, Particle generators and some other kind of dance things that are the only items left that have any kind of physical properties in their scripts, yet the cyclic problems exist in the sim. I also go on the fish hunt, and do not find any that the other 3 neighbors own.
AND, I also used http://neighbours.maxcase.info/index.php to find out which sims also share the same server as Lunata and I go there, but the companion sim on the same server is not having any performance problems shown on Statistics Bar, so, it must be something in the sim itself that is causing the cyclic performance drops.
It is a strong case to present the residents should be allowed to VIEW the Top Scripts and Top Colliders in the client so they can at least sometimes identify those objects that cause lag on a mainland sim. I could probably do this, and if it is not my object, contact the friendly neighbor and tell them about a problem and LL would be none the wiser, but now, I sit unhappy and wait…
April 6th, 2008 at 9:32 PM
Thanks Sidewinder!! Very happy here, to hear of the fix for the crazy camera wobbling in and out. And even more happy to hear that there is a performance fix on the way for openspace regions!
Rw. Cocoanut, I agree with pretty much everything you’ve said. Today was just another straw towards the last one. Some aspects of it may have been acceptable or understandable if it were a rare and unusual situation, but sudden loss of vital services has been nearly daily now; it’s bad enough when they happen unexpected by themselves, but when its done intentionally and with only a short warning, that takes the cake. They had several hours of downtime yesterday when they could have tinkered with things. All I could think of during that time was, are they sitting around waiting for their ISP to fix it, or are they taking the opportunity to try and fix other things while the grid was empty.
Anyhow, back on topic - WTG Sidewinder, you and the H4 team rock!
April 6th, 2008 at 9:32 PM
Wow, such a responsive Linden… I’m this close to contacting you inworld to show you the hugger I used to use but it now makes me look like I have problems with my nerves (LOL, I had to script my wife’s hugger and swap kissing animations so now she is the only one to use it as it works nicely for her). I won’t contact you though, until I try to script it or figure out why on earth it does that on my avatar only and not when others use it…
A few comments, just for you to know:
Well, for the ISP thing… LL is making $$$ every month… I don’t really know your infrastructure guys (I assume you buy colo space in 3-4 DC in the US)… I mean… just buy direct fiber links, guys… Why on SIM do you have to rely to public internet for SL exchange packets? That’s inexcusable (for me without knowing your topology but just assuming) at the prices of fiber the last 5 years… it’s just a couple thousands per month and you could have your own network for SL deamons to talk to each other reliably. Also, if you have many DC to offload problems or for locality reasons, why don’t you get at least one DC in Europe for your European customers? Getting ping from 195ms down to 10ms (via AMS-iX for example) would make a huge difference to UK/NL/DE/FR customers and the rest of Europe could be at 50-70ms also.
Open spaces tend to be very slow at times, even for basic 1 avatar use. I hope your fixes make things much better.
As a last comment, don’t think that people underestimate your work. On the contrary… People who know and read and think can spot a good Linden. But many times people get frustrated with SL (you can imagine why). A day’s downtime costs me more than 2500L in tier alone for my land and many lost sales - I’m sure others are much worse than me.
So thank you, keep up the good work and hopefully one day (soon) we reach to a state where SL is stabilized and offers peace and an environment to build (not lose uniquely scripted items), play, meet and enjoy this game.
Thanks a lot for Havoc 4 and thanks for constantly trying to make it as good as possible.
April 6th, 2008 at 9:36 PM
after allmost a week with h4 i have to say great job guys
and i adore your patience in this blog sidewinder!
i still have to give you guys the skirt demo -.- i allways forget the office hours. sorry about that…
ok bedtime
ps: give andrew a hug
and when you are at it, give the guys who work on the database a friendly boot to the ass
April 6th, 2008 at 9:41 PM
How about not making these downloads mandatory so players can have an option whether to download or not. Not all computers being used by players will accept certain changes causing them not be able to log in.
April 6th, 2008 at 9:43 PM
What about the broken sit vector offset script issues that have been re-introduced since the server updates? These are killing a LOT of furniture manufacturers and businesses who’ve gone to the no-poseball furnitures.
April 6th, 2008 at 9:59 PM
@61 Your Conscience
Glow has been implimented in LSL for some time now. I am using it now in several lighting objects and it works quite nicely. This has been posted several times, but here it is one more time.
llSetPrimitiveParams([25, side, float 0.0 to 1.0]);
So
llSetPrimitiveParams([25, ALL_SIDES, 0.0]); would set glow to off on all sides, and
llSetPrimitiveParams([25, 1, 1.0]); would set side 1 to full glow.
DRD
April 6th, 2008 at 10:27 PM
Thanks sidewinder for all the hard work!
April 6th, 2008 at 10:28 PM
Will this make the web page Friends On
Lov, June Line give the correct info. on who is in world?
April 6th, 2008 at 10:31 PM
@73 Nack: The sit targeting on the original simulator was far from consistent. This one is somewhat different in some cases, but close in most that we tested. Are you a furniture manufacturer? Do you know one? I solicited everyone to test and be involved, and our experience in managing sit targeting was that we didn’t get much concrete feedback, and that sit targeting with Havok1 was quite inconsisent, and very highly dependend on AO behavior. We made the Havok4 sit targeting as reasonably close as we could, and it appears to me and to others on the team to be pretty consistent with the old simulator in the cases we tested.
If you have specific items that do not sit target correctly, please file a jira explaining the specific issue and we’ll take a look at it.
Thanks,
Sidewinder
April 6th, 2008 at 10:38 PM
*waves to sidewinder*
I know it is frustrating hearing all the complaints here so instead of complaining I just want to say thank you, to all of you who work a LOT to give us this playground to play in. Sure the sand gets dirty and other kids like to pee in the sandbox, but you guys all work hard to clean it out and get rid of the kids who like to mess it up. For that, I thank you each and everyone of you. PS I tried the skeeball game on havok4 works really well *grin*
April 6th, 2008 at 10:39 PM
Okay, Sidewinder, I’ll do so, though we’ve been having all our folks vote on Jira SVC-1952, listed as Critical but and it was assigned but now it isn’t?
Before the Havok IV rollout, all of our furniture (yes, we make furniture and have made a lot of items in our roleplay sim pose-ball free) worked. Poses were consistent, once we’d set the XYZ offsets for the particular pose. Now? Not so much. Different avatars sit on an object and end up offset in different ways, sometimes they are even correct, but usually they are floating 2 feet up, or sunk down into the chair (or barstool or couch or stack of crates, whatever).
April 6th, 2008 at 10:42 PM
Sidwwinder, your work has always been good and you actually seem to care. Your days at Linden’s must be numbered, you are giving them a yardstick that they so conspicously fail to meet.
The fiasco over the weekend was standard Lindens, poor communication, little real information and no avenue for people to ask questions or even vent. How difficult would it have been to allow comments, on the three “closed” blogs? True, some of senstive lindens may have cringed at what people really think of SL but is that a bad thing? To live in the sheletered workshop that LL is means most Lindens obviously care little for the paying customers. A friend’s buisness was crippled and a lot of hours destroyed, care factor from Lindens = zero. I will make one prediction, the happy stats released each month WILL NOT have any reference to the outage nor the constant ongaing asset server issues. That way Linden staff can keep doing their happy dances and ignore the world outside.
Not everyone in SL are IT geeks who get off at looking at explicit pictures of video cards and whisper driver code to one another as foreplay, some people here have a life, want to generate an economy and community and Lindens ignore them.
To “pass comments onto the relevant team” is a cop out though. Why hasn’t the relevant team posted a blog and engaged in a diaglogue such as Sidewinder does.
This fiasco naturally was “outside” so no Linden is to blame, how convienent (as always), yet who signed off on the contract? etc Obviously no back contigency existed. Not even to let customers have real information, pathetic really but LL SOP.
The “mythical” asset Server, that ones thats f*cked every day seemingly and crippling the economy. Not a peep from a Linden. Why? Why isnt that team” having the gumption to step up and face the paying public as Sidewinder does day after day?
I do pity you Sidewinder, your commitment to communication is excellent, your roll out hit by such bad timing. Who cares about it really with SL collasped for a weekend and the economy crippled? Bugs galore still rampant. Timing is everything I’m afraid.
April 6th, 2008 at 11:09 PM
Thanks for the continued work on server stability!
I’ve logged a Jira on a possible changed behavior between H1 and H4 that I would really like to test on an H1 sim (there is always the possibility that I’m simply wrong about it; however, several on the forums think they’ve noticed it as well). Are there any Hi servers left for testing on either the main or beta grid? (Bug is SVC-2062, Walking speed appears to have changed in Havok4).
Oh, and condolences on LL’s decision to make Windlight mandatory so soon after the H4 rollout. Even though both programs had long betas, I’m sure that scheduling two disruptive events so closely to each other has been the source of much confusion and consternation in support.
April 6th, 2008 at 11:11 PM
@22: “now that ive updated, my avatar is in a permanent jesus pose, with my body floating with my crotch at head level, my head is where it should be , and long thin strips of flesh hanging down from my arms”
Do you have a snapshot of that?? Sounds like something out of a Stephen King novel…
/me hugs Gennifer & others having problems with huggers… Hope that helps a little till they’re fixed!
Sidewinder, THANK YOU for taking time to respond to so many posts.
April 6th, 2008 at 11:24 PM
* In a couple of cases product vendors had made assumptions that were very specific to Havok1, and will be issuing updates. *
Is this still in relation to the huggers topic of that particular post? ( more specificly https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-1965 )
If so, it would be good just having an answer to give back to our customers
April 6th, 2008 at 11:25 PM
Sidewinder, is there any solution to avatars slowly sinking when hovering over water? I tried testing this yesterday and found that after u reach a certain altitude it no longer seems to happen. If u IM me in world I’d be happy to demonstrate it. It happens every time on any water. Totally reproducable both by me and others. Yesterday I also discovered at least one wooden dock where this happened. Presumably the slats were too far apart!
April 6th, 2008 at 11:27 PM
And on a separate note, why am I being named as Flaran3 when I’m logged in as Flaran Riggles? I don’t understand this!
April 6th, 2008 at 11:32 PM
And to anyone who doesn’t like Windlight, 1.19.0.5 is still available as are several third party viewers. This includes the Nicholaz viewer which is based on 1.18.3.5. and Boy Lane’s version of 1.19.0.5.
April 6th, 2008 at 11:36 PM
It would be nice if SL included the ability to test script times as seen in “Top Scripts”, per each users own items. Rather than trying to use benchmarks that really only test script speed, not overall script time taken on that server. It wouldn’t be that hard I think to include this option in the “Client” menu. Only other way to discover these times is if you own the sim, or have a friend willing to help you. Though it would just be nice if it was done as per the above for everyone.
April 6th, 2008 at 11:39 PM
Please don’t force 1.20.whatever down on us. This latest viewer messed things up bad enough. I’m glad the old one was still up for us to go and get.
April 6th, 2008 at 11:48 PM
Terraforming seems to be not working probily. I can’t get the land flat, the flattener is also not working.
When I try to make it flat more humps and bumbs apears, its really looking like the moon with mountains right now
April 6th, 2008 at 11:51 PM
Good work, thanks to Sidewinder and the H4 team! Now the jumping camera won’t make me puke anymore, and having the OS regions working better again, really nice. Thanks again for the quick work and the great communication!
April 6th, 2008 at 11:54 PM
This has been a rather fascinating week. On vechicles, My aircraft handle great no problems there, back to skimming the waves again. Like two others have said, one automobile made by KCC everytime I jumped into it at 400m up on a huge platform i use to drive on would flip backwards and fall. My motorcycle made by HDCC seemed to work ok. I did find it very responsive. almost to much and hard to control. I am not sure if this is because i became used to driving it in bad conditions and have to get used to the new conditions. What ever the case, things are getting better. i have seen a lot worse so no real complaints here.
April 6th, 2008 at 11:54 PM
I love the 1.19 viewer with the Windlight enhancements and am looking forward to the new improvements in 1.20 as well.
April 6th, 2008 at 11:57 PM
With regards to fish rezzers and wave generators, are you planning a fix for this? I run an underwater location and we’ve taken a performance hit since the H4 release. All of these items are essential to my half-sim.
I echo the complaints about vehicles. Most free vehicles are now borked…so newbies are just SOL now? I’ve also been having major problems with my jetskis. They turn extremely slowly, if at all. I crashed into my neighbor’s land today because my jetski refused to turn in time. Also, the surfboards I wanted to include in a free package for visitors now kick me off and send my flying 200m in the air when I try to ride them!
April 6th, 2008 at 11:57 PM
Well that’s all very well and good…but transactions are still hinkey…now aswell as the occassional timed out error i’m getting “database error” sometimes, and don’t even get me started on lag and the ammount of stuff missing from my inventory that i paid money for…could you please spend more time on the basics of sl rather than the physical representations!
April 7th, 2008 at 12:01 AM
Hi Sidewinder…………….great communication as usual