Have your Alpha Modes changed to "None"?

[Pamela Galli]

Still happening.

[Qie Niangao]

Yep, it's still happening. I can't say for sure which viewer version caused it to recur. I've been having terrible trouble with texture corruption on every LL RC viewer I tried (I'd been trying to use the 64-bit stuff), so I've cycled through a lot of them, even the latest Firestorm, then the current LL standard release, which is what I was running when I discovered a dozen or so random Masked alpha surfaces switched to None on two sims where I have content rezzed. I haven't had the courage to look much further yet. The mode switching happened within the week certainly, probably just the past day or so.

[Callum Meriman]

So that's what happened to my home's windows last month, and also to all undersides of the Botanical douglas firs in a photo-sim I went to last week.

 I've been having terrible trouble with texture corruption on every LL RC viewer I tried

Pink and yellow diamonds?

Edited January 5, 2018 by Callum Meriman

[Qie Niangao]

43 minutes ago, Callum Meriman said:

Pink and yellow diamonds?

It's pretty random, but there may have been pink and yellow diamonds in the mix. Earlier I was going to try to file a jira about the texture corruption problems, but when I searched it seemed there were already confusing reports of the problem, from which I got the vague impression it had to do with some change in network transport with newer viewers. Or something. I was just so fed up with it all at that point that I reverted to the standard release, after which I haven't encountered the corruption. Now, though, texture loading is even slower than before for me, which may or may not be related to anything more than my always awful ISP.

[Callum Meriman]

Happened to me yesterday - all the HPMD Sweet Grass in my home region lost it's alpha.

What a pain.

[badboymercy]

2021 , 6 years later, ressurrected.

This still happens too often and it is very annoying. Imagine having a whole forest, with trees and plants setup and ALL of their alpha modes go to normal. This happened to me more than once, the worst time was that time with the whole forest area glitching.

I've seen this happen in other peoples sims as well, it is too common to be over looked for 6 years. What is even going on?

[ChinRey]

7 hours ago, badboymercy said:

What is even going on?

Simplified explanation: Your viewer (or the viewer of somebody else who has eiditing rights for your objects) doesn't receive the alpha mode info from the server right away and assumes it's Alpha Mode 0. This incorrect data is sent from the viewer to the server who assumes it's an edit, not an error.

Simple(ish) solution: Lock any object that has the problem.

Edit: Also, check if you have any packet loss. That's almost certainly the root cause and it has oher negative effects too.

Edited September 20, 2021 by ChinRey

[Echelon Alcott]

I'm so glad to have found this thread. I've been experiencing this issue on a regular basis. Having said that, almost everything in my sim is locked. I noticed that this issue is also happening to objects that are locked. Any thoughts?

[Hedy Heartsong]

This started happening to me and another friend on a different region Oct 26th after maintenance and it continues today.  I will look around the region and a bunch of the same and different textures have gone to none. Some still show blending but are also solid. It is not all of that texture I have on the region.  I change them to blending (even the ones that still show blending) which corrects it fr the moment and the next day or two after a different bunch of some other items has done the same.  My PC, viewer, etc is the same as it was before this started.

[ChinRey]

12 hours ago, Hedy Heartsong said:

This started happening to me and another friend on a different region Oct 26th after maintenance and it continues today.

Oh no, not again!

I have to repeat my advice from precious posts: Lock the troublesome object. It's actually a good idea to make it a habit to lock all stationary objects on your land anyway. It prevents a couple of other accidents too and there's no real downside to it. If you want to move or edit the object later, you can always unlock it.

 

12 hours ago, Hedy Heartsong said:

Some still show blending but are also solid. It is not all of that texture I have on the region.

Hmmm, the bug shouldn't affect faces with alpha blending at all, only those with alpha masking or alpha emissive. Maybe there's something else going on in this case.

[Qie Niangao]

14 hours ago, Hedy Heartsong said:

Some still show blending but are also solid.

I'm not sure what this means, now that I read it again. They "still show blending" in that the "Alpha mode" shows as "Alpha blending"  in the Build Tool? Or is it something about the surface's appearance that looks blended somehow?

I'm puzzled how it could change anything to set to "Alpha blending" a face that's already showing as "Alpha blending"—I'm not even sure how one would convince a viewer to do it, unless maybe more than one face is selected at the time?

Anyway, especially if this is happening with some regularity, this surely needs some Linden attention and likely an update to the jira. Same for @Echelon Alcott's observation that it's even happening to locked objects, which would be a whole new level of gawdawfulness for this hideous old bug.

[Echelon Alcott]

I have not experienced this issue for a while (god, hope I'll not jinx it by saying this).

After reading this thread, what I did was to remove the "Edit, delete or take my objects" permission I had given a few other avatars. The one remaining avatar who still has that permission enabled (my RL spouse) does not visit my build. All has been good so far.

Hope this helps.

[Hedy Heartsong]

On 1/2/2022 at 12:55 PM, Qie Niangao said:

I'm not sure what this means, now that I read it again. They "still show blending" in that the "Alpha mode" shows as "Alpha blending"  in the Build Tool? Or is it something about the surface's appearance that looks blended somehow?

I'm puzzled how it could change anything to set to "Alpha blending" a face that's already showing as "Alpha blending"—I'm not even sure how one would convince a viewer to do it, unless maybe more than one face is selected at the time?

Anyway, especially if this is happening with some regularity, this surely needs some Linden attention and likely an update to the jira. Same for @Echelon Alcott's observation that it's even happening to locked objects, which would be a whole new level of gawdawfulness for this hideous old bug.

When you look at the alpha mode it is alpha blending but object or portion of object looks solid.  Click the alpha mode selection drop down.  It shows blending selected but click on blending again and like magic, its corrected. For a while

[Hedy Heartsong]

On 1/2/2022 at 10:30 AM, ChinRey said:

Oh no, not again!

I have to repeat my advice from precious posts: Lock the troublesome object. It's actually a good idea to make it a habit to lock all stationary objects on your land anyway. It prevents a couple of other accidents too and there's no real downside to it. If you want to move or edit the object later, you can always unlock it.

 

Hmmm, the bug shouldn't affect faces with alpha blending at all, only those with alpha masking or alpha emissive. Maybe there's something else going on in this case.

Thank you, 

I don't think we should really have to lock but will try to see if it resolves the issue. It happens on masking and blending for me.  Sometimes I see none in the alpha mode too.  I have grass that is one object with two faces and sometimes  only 1 of the faces that is mucked up.  In past when this occurred it would be all of the same texture that solidified.  Now its areas. 

[Pamela Galli]

Okay, LL, time to fix this ancient bizarre bug.

[DillanStiff]

April 19, 2022

Still happening

[Nova Murray]

June 30,2022. Still happening.

[Devyn Grimm]

Adding a bit more info about Nova's report above - I was in the sim as well and saw the same issue - the texture settings were altered for several objects across the sim without any intervention by us, as in this closed bug: https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/BUG-11333

We're both running Firestorm 6.5.3 (65658). Example location: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Noctilucent/186/153/21

Here's a screenshot of what we saw before I fixed it by switching "Alpha Mode : None" back to "Alpha Mode : Alpha Masking" :

This also happened on the same sim about a couple weeks ago in a much worse incarnation, with many of the trees on the sim affected.

[Devyn Grimm]

Digging into this a bit more I confirmed the following: 

BUG-11333 was supposedly fixed in the "Maintenance Dawa" release on February 3rd, 2021, per the release notes here: https://releasenotes.secondlife.com/viewer/6.4.12.555248.html

Firestorm merged the "Maintenance Dawa" code as of version FS version 6.4.13.63251, per these release notes: https://wiki.firestormviewer.org/changelog:firestorm_change_log_6.4.13.63251?s[]=dawa

Since we're seeing the issue in Firestorm 6.5.3 we can assume the bug was possibly not fixed after all, or a more thorough fix needs to be implemented. It seems odd to me that the code on either the viewer or server side would even allow such powerful object alterations sim-wide without the user explicitly going into edit mode with the objects, or a user script directly pushing the changes.

@Linden Lab What's the best way to get this looked at again? Could we have BUG-11333 re-opened or should we file a a new bug in the Jira? I think an issue which can randomly corrupt the visual experience of an entire region for all users should be a pretty high priority to resolve.

[Jenna Huntsman]

12 hours ago, Devyn Grimm said:

Adding a bit more info about Nova's report above - I was in the sim as well and saw the same issue - the texture settings were altered for several objects across the sim without any intervention by us, as in this closed bug: https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/BUG-11333

We're both running Firestorm 6.5.3 (65658). Example location: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Noctilucent/186/153/21

Here's a screenshot of what we saw before I fixed it by switching "Alpha Mode : None" back to "Alpha Mode : Alpha Masking" :

This also happened on the same sim about a couple weeks ago in a much worse incarnation, with many of the trees on the sim affected.

I've just dropped by the location in that LM - I notice that the object in question is scripted - for the sake of argument, have you tried removing the script from one of those problematic objects and see if the problem reoccurs?

[Qie Niangao]

1 hour ago, Devyn Grimm said:

Since we're seeing the issue in Firestorm 6.5.3 we can assume the bug was possibly not fixed after all, or a more thorough fix needs to be implemented. It seems odd to me that the code on either the viewer or server side would even allow such powerful object alterations sim-wide without the user explicitly going into edit mode with the objects, or a user script directly pushing the changes.

Yeah. Just a note that the fact the fix is in the viewer means that only viewers with the fix are safe to use in regions where the account has permission to modify anything with alpha-channel textures. Earlier versions could corrupt those texture settings and that would be visible in viewers patched and unpatched alike. That said, because this all is so long ago now, one would think nobody would now enter a region while still using an unfixed viewer, so the question remains whether the fix was fix enough.

[Devyn Grimm]

On 7/1/2022 at 12:34 PM, Jenna Huntsman said:

I've just dropped by the location in that LM - I notice that the object in question is scripted - for the sake of argument, have you tried removing the script from one of those problematic objects and see if the problem reoccurs?

Thanks for taking a look and that is a great observation. I'll check into if any of the other affected objects were scripted or not, and try removing some of the scripts for alpha masked objects to see if that changes the behavior in any future occurrences.

23 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

Yeah. Just a note that the fact the fix is in the viewer means that only viewers with the fix are safe to use in regions where the account has permission to modify anything with alpha-channel textures. Earlier versions could corrupt those texture settings and that would be visible in viewers patched and unpatched alike. That said, because this all is so long ago now, one would think nobody would now enter a region while still using an unfixed viewer, so the question remains whether the fix was fix enough.

This is a great point - and even if folks are not using very old viewers they could be using less mainstream viewers which may not have received the needed maintenance update for some reason.

Edited July 2, 2022 by Devyn Grimm
Grammar

[Qie Niangao]

Just had it happen again on one of my parcels, to some old bushes that were rezzed a couple weeks ago as part of a several years-old build. Their scripts were all removed those years ago, so it's not scripts, and everybody who has permissions to change my stuff (all alts) use only the latest viewers, so the defect sure seems to be back.

Haven't seen it anywhere else yet.

[Pamela Galli]

Finally, the bug can no longer fixed by replacing the affected object — it is borked from rez. 

[ChinRey]

7 hours ago, Pamela Galli said:

Finally, the bug can no longer fixed by replacing the affected object — it is borked from rez. 

It can't? In that case it may be a completely different issue. Can somebody who has been hit by it file a bug report?