Pinoy Hideout, Lions Hill (Flickr) – blog post



Server Deploys for Week 49

There has been no deployment to the Main channel, following-on from the lack of any deployments to the RCs in week #48.

On Wednesday, December 3rd, all three RC channels should receive the same server maintenance package, comprising the following updates: A fix for BUG-7515 “Restarting region turns off ‘block parcel fly over’” A fix for BUG-4949 (non-public) “Cannot manage block list with certain object names” A fix for BUG-7850 “Experience tools: ‘Script trying to teleport other avatars!’ script error” appears incorrectly A fix for BUG-6789 “Spelling mistake in llGodLikeRezObject” Minor server change to help configure the texture and mesh CDN.



A question was asked at the simulator User Group meeting on Tuesday December 2nd, whether the fix for BUG-4949 would also address SVC-7550, relating to previously blocked avatars reverting to being blocked after someone has cleared them from their block list. Simon indicated that while BUG-4949 would not fix this issue, it is being addressed, but requires further back-end work.

SL Viewer

On Monday, December 1st, the de facto release viewer was updated to version 3.7.20.296724, formerly the Snowstorm RC viewer, which includes update for Japanese input; improved rendering of projectors; fixes for object editing bug when rotating and for crash on exit on OS X Yosemite in full screen mode, and more – release notes.

This viewer edged-out the current Maintenance RC viewer (version 3.7.21.296734) in terms of promotion. However, the latter has had a growing list of issues, most of which are related to fitted mesh, and which may be addressed by the attachments update viewer (RC version 3.7.21.296904).

Experience Keys / Tools

There have been a lot of requests and ideas around expanding / improving the upcoming Experience Keys / Tools (for example: BUG-6912). Commenting on the general status of the project, Simon Linden indicated he’s doing some work related to attachments – although he wasn’t able to go into specifics. However, commenting on the ideas put forward a JIRAs submitted in general, he said:

To put things in perspective, this release is the first one for this feature. I’d really like to see it succeed and have us move on to an update that adds more features like these. And while they aren’t going into this first release, the JIRA’s aren’t being ignored … we’ve gathered them and had to pick an choose what we could release with and without.

Oz also added, in response to, and alongside of, Simon’s comments:

Exactly. There will doubtless be many ways to improve and expand the experience concept. We want to get more applications built with it and see which are the best ways to invest in it further.

Other Items

3D Connexions Support

3D Connexion is the brand name for the space Navigator range by Logitech. As has been reported through this and other blogs, and also on the forums. More recent versions of the 3D Connexions drivers have been causing some problems on installation. The API support for these devices within the viewer is also quite old (although Linux has been recently updated), and Cinder Roxley is working to try to improve things in this area. However, updating to the newer API support may force things to be platform-dependent, and so take longer to implement, but it might result in the support of more 3D connexions devices.

Hair Base Cloud Issue

Some users are encountering issues of seeming themselves rendered as a cloud in their own world view. This may be connected to them where a hair base with a missing texture (essentially a bad asset), which causes the server to reject the hair base when worn. The result leaves the avatar as a cloud in the user’s own view, although to everyone else they appear to be rendered correctly. An error message is actually generated on the matter:

newview/llvoavatarself.cpp(2273) : 2014-12-01T15:32:45Z INFO: LLVOAvatarSelf::getIsCloud: Self is clouded because of no hair texture

However, this only goes to the viewer log, and is not made visible through the UI. As the viewer thinks you’re wearing the hair base, the problem is not obvious to many users. So, should you find this happening, try replacing it with a different hair base.

Current Outfit Folder Issues

When Server-side Appearance (SSA) was being deployed in 2013, some users on certain TPVs encountered issued with duplicate current outfit folders being generated – see SUN-99. A fix was made to prevent this from happening, however, there have been a couple of recent reports that it is occurring one again (see BUG-7880 and BUG-7920 – interestingly, the latter case appears to have had all system folders duplicated). The cause of these problems isn’t currently known, but requests to support for tun the SUN-99 inventory fix does appear to resolve problems, once the user has cleared cache locally and re-logged.

Teleport Queueing

A feature request (BUG-7945) for a teleport queueing feature to be implemented to ease access into very busy regions. As noted during the Simulator User Group meeting, such an automated queuing system as proposed might be labour-intensive to implement and also be open to exploitation. However, commenting on the idea of improving how teleport queues and notifications might be better handled, Simon Linden said:

I was talking with someone about the incoming TP queue yesterday. It seems like it needs some attention. I don’t think we’d build a queue and later TP anyone, but it’s doing too much work before it decides you can’t get in.

Whether this will result in some clean-up to the current process of handling teleports into busy regions remains to be seen.