Deploys for the week of 2012-08-06

[Oskar Linden]

This is the week for Pathfinding to hit the main channel!

 

Second Life Server (main channel)

The Pathfinding code on Magnum is being promoted this week.

 

• Features and Changes
  • Havok's AI library has been added so that navigation meta data for an entire region can be computed. This data is called the "navmesh".
  • SL objects can be turned into "characters" which use the navmesh to navigate the world and avoid obstacles.
    • New LSL calls have been added to create/update/delete character behavior.
    • Characters cannot be used as attachments.
    • Characters are incompatible with some features, such as keyframed motion, being used as attachments, phantom, size changes, and others.
  • Not all objects in the world contribute to the navmesh calculations.
    • The terrain always contributes
    • By default objects are ignored for the navmesh calculations.
    • Objects may be flagged to modify the navmesh calculations in one of 4 ways:
      • "Walkable" objects add navigable zones to the navmesh.
      • "Static Obstacle" objects cannot be navigated, and create a hole in the nav mesh
      • "Exclusion Volume" objects are like static obstacles, except that they are phantom (meaning that pathfinding characters cannot move through them but other physical objects and avatars can)
      • "Material Volume" objects are phantom objects that can be set to change the walkability coefficients of an area of the navmesh
      • Material volumes and walkable objects have 4 walkability coefficients to determine how expensive they are for each category of character
    • Objects that contribute to the navmesh have special restrictions:
      • Objects that contribute to the navmesh cannot change their physical shape via LSL script (changing object position, shape parameters, scale, rotation, physics shape type, and linking/unlinking is generally blocked)
      • Objects that contribute to the navmesh can be physically changed via the build tool by avatars who have modify permission and if the avatar is in the same region as the object.
      • In other words: objects that contribute to the navmesh cannot be physically changed by avatars who are located in a different region than the object, and therefore such objects cannot be moved across region boundaries.
    • When the navmesh has been modified, either because the terrain has been edited or because an object contributing to the nav mesh was rezzed/modified/deleted, it must be manually regenerated.
    • The pathfinding project viewer can be used to modify the pathfinding settings in a region:http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Linden_Lab_Official:Alternate_Viewers#Pathfinding
    • Parcels that are set No-Entry for objects will cut the navmesh at their borders -- characters will not be able to navigate across it.
  • The collision pipeline has been reorganized. This may affect avatar collisions/control, vehicle movement, and collision callbacks in LSL scripts.
  • The terrain collision shape has been changed from a "heightfield" to a "mesh" to provide more efficient collisions, ray-trace, and navmesh computations.
    • This may change some collision details. In particular see the "Known Issues" list below.
    • When changing the terrain its visible appearance will update immediately, but its collision shape will not.
    • The server will wait at least 10 seconds since the last change before computing the new shape, and the computation time may take several seconds.
    • Where there is a discrepancy between visible and colliding terrain shapes object and avatar collisions may appear incorrect.
  • Fix for PATHBUG-77 "llCastRay returns RCERR_CAST_TIME_EXCEEDED until the sim is rebooted"
  • Avatars which are sitting on an object can no longer freeze it by selecting it, if they don't have permission to freeze it while standing.
  • More details about pathfinding can be found at http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Pathfinding and its linked pages
• Changed prim accounting for legacy prims which use the new accounting system
  • All legacy-style prims have their streaming cost capped at 1.0 (except for sculpts, which will be capped at 2.0). This provides the benefit of not penalizing prim-based creators for optimizing their content by opting into the new system and will make the streaming cost more reflective of the true network cost of the objects.
  • Server cost will be adjusted to MIN{ (0.5*num_prims) + (0.25 * num_scripts), num_prims }. This preserves the current value for unscripted linksets and reduce the cost for linksets containing fewer than 2*num_prims scripts. It provides the benefit of rewarding creators for reducing the number of scripts in their objects.
• Fixed the following bugs since the 12.06.23.260473 Pathfinding RC
  • PATHBUG-122 Ground Sit in a pathfinding region causes appearance to not match real location
  • SVC-8023 Sim crossings by objects is broken
  • Other internal bugfixes

2012-08-07, 5:00am: Release Notes: https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Release_Notes/Second_Life_Server/12

 

 

Second Life RC BlueSteel

This channel will get a new maint-server with bug fixes.

• VWR-5044: Attachments only change/inherit the active group when they're "rezzed
• VWR-25762: group owned objects appear as owned by (nobody) in Top Scripts and Top Colliders
• VWR-20320: Show in search and set for sale remain enabled after owner changed
• SVC-7760: Large object instant messages can corrupt returned object location URL making it impossible to determine the object's location.
• STORM-1840: Searching legacy names in the "Choose Resident" floater with a period returns no result
• SVC-7525: Selected objects move when a new keyframe motion is started
• SVC-7793: Scripted agents can't abandon land on private estates
• SVC-7917: Please automatically unmute avatars who have muted themselves, and prevent this from occuring server-side.
• SVC-7968: When TPing using a landmark the server sends two TeleportStart packets
• SCR-247: Scripts created by Residents who are limited to only the General maturity rating do not function as expected when inside an object that the scripter created that is running in a Moderate or Adult region
• SCR-318: llInsertString & llSubStringIndex support for 4 bytes characters broken since 12.02.06.248938
• SCR-359: The http_request() event fails to trigger in child prims that do not use llHTTPResponse() after it has received 64 HTTP requests and will not trigger again even if the script is reset.

2012-08-08, 7-11:00am: Release Notes: https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Release_Notes/Second_Life_RC_BlueSteel/12

 

  

Second Life RC LeTigre

This channel will have an infrastructure project that has no intentional changes to existing behaviour. There are perhaps unintentional changes to existing behaviour. If you find some please let us know!

2012-08-08, 7-11:00am: Release Notes: https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Release_Notes/Second_Life_RC_LeTigre/12

 

 

Second Life RC Magnum

This channel will have a different maint-server than the one that is on BlueSteel.

 

• Bug Fixes
  • llAttachToAvatarTemp fixes
• llTeleportAgent and llTeleportAgentGlobalCoords fixes
  • Output a script error when a teleport is aborted because the agent to be teleported is not the owner of the object trying to teleport them.
  • SVC-8100: "llTeleportAgent fails silently when user is not the owner"

 

2012-08-08, 7-11:00am: Release Notes: https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Release_Notes/Second_Life_RC_Magnum/12

 

We will be monitoring this thread during the next week so please feel free to post issues that you feel have been introduced by the new code. Please file a JIRA for issues you find and post the JIRA link into this thread. It really helps us out. When determining if issues are relevant or not research is key. Tracking down exactly the right situation where an issue is occurring greatly speeds up the development process to get fixes in place.

I appreciate your help. Have a good week!

 

__Oskar

 

p.s. If you are interested in helping test SecondLife in beta please join the group "Second Life Beta" in-world. We also have an email list where we communicate upcoming projects and how you can help. (https://lists.secondlife.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/server-beta ) Once a week we meet on ADITI to discuss new features, new bugs, new fixes, and other fun stuff. You are more than welcome. Information is here:https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Server_Beta_User_Group

 

[Marianne McCann]

I'm easily confused: Pathfinding is going out on main, but it not on LeTigre and BlueSteel?

[WolfBaginski Bearsfoot]

The usual practice would be Pathfinding code on all channels, but after that last few weeks I shall believe that when I see

it.

 

Sorry, Oskar, but you people managed to FUBAR the Blake Sea pretty thoroughly with this project. 

[Pandorah Ashdene]

Hello Oskar,

you keep repeating:

Changed prim accounting for legacy prims which use the new accounting system

• All legacy-style prims have their streaming cost capped at 1.0 (except for sculpts, which will be capped at 2.0). This provides the benefit of not penalizing prim-based creators for optimizing their content by opting into the new system and will make the streaming cost more reflective of the true network cost of the objects.

But this is NOT how it works! Some of us are still waiting for the answers to the questions we brought up in the thread for the deploy of 2012-07-09 (http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Second-Life-Server/Deploys-for-the-week-of-2012-07-09/td-p/1595111 )

Would you please be so kind to clarify?

[arton Rotaru]

Hi Pan,:cathappy:

 

I asked this last week at the pathfinding meeting. It's just like it's described in the release notes. The keyword here is "streaming cost", which is the "download weight" in the viewer. Only the download weight is capped. The physics weight is unchanged. So if the physics weight of a legacy prim is greater than 1, it's land impact will be greater than 1 as well.

[Pandorah Ashdene]

---

arton Rotaru wrote:

Hi Pan,:cathappy:

 

I asked this last week at the pathfinding meeting. It's just like it's described in the release notes. The keyword here is "streaming cost", which is the "download weight" in the viewer. Only the download weight is capped. The physics weight is unchanged. So if the physics weight of a legacy prim is greater than 1, it's land impact will be greater than 1 as well.

---

Hello Arton,

It took me a while to wrap my head around your clarification, but I am seeing the problem clearer now; thank you very much.

So it is the physics setting to 'Prim' (which is the default when you rezz them) that is the 'source' of the landimpact explosion, which has to be switched to 'Convex hull' to avoid the effect; which is not practical, in case you want the prim to have an 'inside', say a hollow cylinder, that you want to use as walkable canal pipe;

I see a lot of grief in this implementation and not the intended "encouragement" to switch to the 'new' accounting;

[Theresa Tennyson]

My understanding of the accounting is that hollow objects like tubes or torii are hateful for physics calculations which is why they're penalized. However, you can set the physics type to "none" for your tube and put simpler invisible shapes inside it for the walking surface, or you can sandwich together two scooped out half-cylinders.

[Ayesha Askham]

Oskar

As I read this it looks like the code to be rolled to LeTigre is "TBD", since the wording is identical to last week's post, despite date changes.

I repeat my question from last week's post:  Will the Planned Maintenance, scheduled for 5am PST today interfere with the Roll to Main Server?

Considering all the issues with sim performance under Havok 7 physics, rolling this code to Main Server is a risky venture at the least. 

You must know that many folk are not able to use the project viewer that would enable "turning off" of Pathfinding?

I have to say that Linden Lab is beginning to resemble a runaway train, still heading in the original direction, but with no control over what consequences your action may have.

[Oskar Linden]

---

Marianne McCann wrote:

I'm easily confused: Pathfinding is going out on main, but it not on LeTigre and BlueSteel?

---

Each weeks RC code gets that weeks promotion code added to it. When the RC get updated on Wednesday they will have the pathfinding code in it.

__Oskar

[Oskar Linden]

---

Ayesha Askham wrote:

Oskar

As I read this it looks like the code to be rolled to LeTigre is "TBD", since the wording is identical to last week's post, despite date changes.

I repeat my question from last week's post:  Will the Planned Maintenance, scheduled for 5am PST today interfere with the Roll to Main Server?

Considering all the issues with sim performance under Havok 7 physics, rolling this code to Main Server is a risky venture at the least. 

You must know that many folk are not able to use the project viewer that would enable "turning off" of Pathfinding?

I have to say that Linden Lab is beginning to resemble a runaway train, still heading in the original direction, but with no control over what consequences your action may have.

---

The code is the same as last week on LeTigre. That's how we usually do it. If the code is TBD I write TBD. Also if planned maintennance will interfere with server rolls I would tell you. I think in general you should stop worrying so much. :-)

__Oskar

[Marianne McCann]

---

Oskar Linden wrote:

Each weeks RC code gets that weeks promotion code added to it. When the RC get updated on Wednesday they will have the pathfinding code in it.

__Oskar

---

Thanks, Oskar. Was my assumption, but I've learned to never assume. 'cuz, you know. :-)

[Darien Caldwell]

So I'm already seeing group notices like this:

"Linden Labs are rolling out the dynamic pathfinding software on the grid today. For the moment, I see no use for that software, that may consume as much as 15% of the sim resources in an unoptimized sim. I will therefore, as Linden Labs install pathfinding, manually block the function in all the sims I am in charge of. The blocking will require an extra sim restart. So all sims will be restarted TWICE today."

 

Is Pathfinding really going to be that laggy and take up 15% of the sim resources?  Or is this Chicken Little stuff?

[Marianne McCann]

---

Darien Caldwell wrote:

So I'm already seeing group notices like this:

"Linden Labs are rolling out the dynamic pathfinding software on the grid today. For the moment, I see no use for that software, that may consume as much as 15% of the sim resources in an unoptimized sim. I will therefore, as Linden Labs install pathfinding, manually block the function in all the sims I am in charge of. The blocking will require an extra sim restart. So all sims will be restarted TWICE today."

 

Is Pathfinding really going to be that laggy and take up 15% of the sim resources?  Or is this Chicken Little stuff?

 

---

I think this is the source of all that.

"Linden Lab has assured me the impact will be at most 4ms on main regions and 1ms on homesteads. In layman's terms, this is around 18% of region performance."

My personal take is that all sounds like the typical knee jerk reaction, the "ZOMG LL IS DOING SOMETHING SO I AM GOING TO RESIST TIL MY LAST BREATH." You know, what one sees still from many in regards to mesh, or what one can *still* find from a handful of users about sculpts and even windlight (!).

I'm sure that someone more authorativie will be along to talk about that, and how "region performance" may be something different from "sim resources," etc. I will say, from a purely subject viewpoint of someone who has land in a Magnum RC mainland region (as well as some non-Magnum ones), I've not seen the sort of performance hit I would *expect* if 18% of the sim resources were suddenly gobbled up.

As an estate manager, I am going to be watching our region's performance with the code* first* before I take measures to optimize or disable. 

[Oskar Linden]

---

Marianne McCann wrote:

As an estate manager, I am going to be watching our region's performance with the code* first* before I take measures to optimize or disable. 

---

Watching and then reacting if need be is a very sensible approach. :-) 

 

__Oskar

[badguy Boozehound]

Well i would like to remind you all of the ticket i posted on the jira less than a month ago and the problems that this has cause for vehicles and all the other phisical items in secondlife.  due to the 3d ground which i have just tested on the updated server the sculpt cars will grab the faces and resulting in a rubberband movement of vehicles only way to stop thois is to use zero boyancy . yes that a no weight car which means cars will be no more hover crafts however will get vert popular. oh wait this gets better the mesh cars will sink into the ground like quick sand from now on . this is fantastic for underground epiditions but for driving it is impossible. Im asking you please dont deploy this or give us the option to have 2d or 3d gorund thank you.

[Linnrenate Crosby]

---

badguy Boozehound wrote:

 

oh wait this gets better the mesh cars will sink into the ground like quick sand from now on . this is fantastic for underground epiditions but for driving it is impossible

---

 

 

Indeed... i just drove my Kustom Klassic on a sim and indeed it did plow through the ground with the rear part of the car like i had the statue of liberty or simething equal as heavy in the trunk

I also had a long chat with the owners of Kustom Klassic that told me that the problem we now see had been reported to LL directly in a pathfinder meeting (if i understood him right).

[Nalates Urriah]

There is a lot of confustion about Pathfinding. A number of beta testers were working with it and checking preformance. A number of the beta regions were in the main grid. They were saying the performance hit was mostly invisible, even in regions NOT optimized for PF.

That issue of having to optimize PF regions came up on New Worlds Notes and my blog. Since those articles the Lab has made a number of changes to prevent the problems we brought up. Whether the articles made a difference or the changes were already in the pipeline, I don't know. 

The amount of resources PF can use is capped. In general PF runs in the regions free script time... or free time... I forget. If there is no free time PF will degrade before other region scripts. So, those turning it off in their regions before actual testing are likely reacting to rumors rather than testing it for their self.

You can catch up on the history of PF and what users in Beta were finding in my coverage of Pathfinding. You can use site search to get even more information.

[Nalates Urriah]

What? No ChickenLittle Linden on staff?

[WolfBaginski Bearsfoot]

The number of vehicles that are hanging in mid-air over the Blake sea, stuck at sim boundaries, and the regions that might be down, there's plenty for you to watch.

[Oskar Linden]

---

WolfBaginski Bearsfoot wrote:

The number of vehicles that are hanging in mid-air over the Blake sea, stuck at sim boundaries, and the regions that might be down, there's plenty for you to watch.

---

The sim crossing issues caused there will be fixed once pathfinding is on the entire grid.

[Yuriko Nishi]

the issues described here:

 

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-8048?focusedCommentId=338221&page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels%3Acomment-tabpanel#comment-338221

 

are still not fixed.

 

this means gridwide all (faster) vehicles are broken when driving on ground.

 

also other games like for example golf are broken. or changed a lot

 

are there plans to fix this? or plans to make the ground mesh optional, or any suggestions for workarounds?

 

if not, no more golf, no more offroad racing etc at least not like you know it

(i can imagine some other issues i cant think off atm will occur now, since the changes were not realy announced, and creators will slowly find out that some of their stuff is broken now)

[phaedra Exonar]

I have land on the adult mainland, there is a lot of LL content in the region, I can't see any of it in the pathfinding linkset window, all the other content I can see is set to movable object so will need to be optimized.  Is the LL content all ready optimized or are there plans to do so?

 

 

[Pandorah Ashdene]

---

Theresa Tennyson wrote:

My understanding of the accounting is that hollow objects like tubes or torii are hateful for physics calculations which is why they're penalized. However, you can set the physics type to "none" for your tube and put simpler invisible shapes inside it for the walking surface, or you can sandwich together two scooped out half-cylinders.

---

Hello Theresa,

thank you for suggesting possible workarounds for the issue; the matter still stands that the era of one legacy prim = one landimpact is over;

[JJValero Writer]

In Venufalat region stop working the SafeJumpPost() function. I tested in other regions with the same server ("Admiranda") and still working. 

[dd Temin]

Oskar.....Will Pathfinding  get a "seperate heading" in the technology Forums?

What viewer will I need to use to turn off Pathfinding in the 2 Private island sims I Manage?

Please give a link to show how to turn OFF Pathfinding.

What is the plan to fix physics problems with Mesh  or Sculpt vehicles  on  pathfinding 3d land?

regards,

dd