Linden Lab

Check out the Second Life Pic of the Day, "Landscape at Neva River", photo by Valkyrie Morgwain. Don't forget to check out Second Life on Tumblr, Facebook and Google Plus!

Check out the Second Life Pic of the Day, "Swinging Away ...", photo by Skye Donardson. Don't forget to check out Second Life on Tumblr, Facebook and Google Plus!

Check out the Second Life Pic of the Day, "Kei Summer 2", photo by Keira Lewellen. Don't forget to check out Second Life on Tumblr, Facebook and Google Plus!

Somewhere below the regolith in the Linden Lab secret lunar base, some of the Lab’s top minds have been tackling performance issues in Second Life. The areas of focus range from infrastructure improvements to server-side texture compositing to object caching. This year, Linden Lab is making the single largest capital investment in new server hardware upgrades in the history of the company. This new hardware will give residents better performance and more reliability. Additionally, we are converting from three co-locations to two co-locations. This will significantly reduce our inter-co-location latency and further enhance simulator performance. The Shining project is the name given to a recent Lab effort to identify and measure delays and other problems with streaming avatars and objects and to propose and implement solutions. During the Shining project, several small improvements have been identified and deployed. The next small improvement from Shining to be deployed will be pre-rendering the starter Avatars to improve the new resident experience. As a result of the Shining investigation, the project has been split into three larger performance projects: Project Sunshine, Object Caching, and HTTP Library. All together, the hardware upgrades and the Shining projects should improve avatar and object streaming speeds significantly. Depending on your unique situation, your mileage will vary. Project Sunshine (Server-side Baked Texture Generation & Storage) Currently, all client viewers are responsible for compositing their own Avatar textures, then sending the results back to the Sim for other viewers to access. This method can lead to slowdowns and errors. The actual calculations for compositing textures are straightforward and not particularly time-consuming. However, in order for the viewer to do the calculations it first has to download a lot of individual assets from the Sim, and must then upload large results back to the Sim. This pushes a lot of bits through the Sim / Viewer connection, which can be slow and unreliable. Depending on client hardware to do the compositing and uploading of the resulting baked textures can introduce erroneous results (like way too much pink). In order to handle these errors, a number of retry and fallback mechanisms have been put in place. This adds further load and overhead to the whole system. Project Sunshine stands up a Texture Compositing server that is separate from the Sims servers. When a Viewer needs to render an Avatar, it sends a message to the Sim, which in turn sends a message to the Texture Compositing Server. The Texture Server then performs the texture compositing and sends the results back to the Viewer. The Texture Server has access to a database of previously generated Avatar textures. If the Sim is asking for the baked textures for an Avatar that has been previously calculated, the Texture Server can pull the results out of the database instead of recalculating. Even if it’s not the same Avatar, but the set of clothes is the same, the Texture Server can use the previously calculated results. An additional advantage of having a Texture Generation server is that the heavy HTTP communication about the individual assets that make up an Avatar will happen on reliable, fast internal network connections instead of external connections. Object Caching & Interest Lists Caching objects on a resident’s hard drive is intended to provide faster drawing of objects that are most likely to be redrawn later in a resident’s session or in the next session. The current object cache implementation has room for improvement. Currently, the viewer only caches objects at the point the resident disconnects from a region and only objects currently in view are cached. The current caching communication between Sim and Viewer when a scene is initially being loaded is inefficient and resource intensive. The new system is designed to make sure that a viewer never has to download object information that it already has and is still valid. This will reduce the load on the Sim and on the Sim / Viewer connection. With the new system, when the Viewer connects to a region, the Sim first says to the Viewer, “Here’s a list of all my object groups by UUID.” The Viewer checks its cache and replies, “Here are the timestamps for the object groups that I found in my cache.” (If an object group is not found in the cache, the timestamp is 0.) The Sim checks the Viewer’s timestamps against its own data and responds, “Here’s a list of object groups in your cache that are still valid.” While the Viewer starts drawing valid objects from its cache, the Sim starts streaming the new object data that the Viewer needs, based on the particular Viewer’s object priorities. HTTP Library Top performance for the Shining initiatives depend on the speed and reliability of HTTP messages initiated by both the Viewers and the Sims. The third part of the Shining project, the new HTTP Library, implements modern best practices in messaging, connection management, and error recovery.

Check out the Second Life Pic of the Day, "Sharp dressed man.", photo by Sam Laszlo. Don't forget to check out Second Life on Tumblr, Facebook and Google Plus!

Check out the Second Life Pic of the Day, "Temp and Alon - biking around the field", photo by Alon Alphaville. Don't forget to check out Second Life on Tumblr, Facebook and Google Plus!

Check out the Second Life Pic of the Day, "TOSL 2nd Birthday Hunt", photo by MaribelButton. Don't forget to check out Second Life on Tumblr, Facebook and Google Plus!

Check out the Second Life Pic of the Day, "Glam Affair Skinf for Suicidedolls", photo by Kittynes Hendrassen. Don't forget to check out Second Life on Tumblr, Facebook and Google Plus!

Check out the Second Life Pic of the Day, "Burelesque 2", photo by Viola Bluebird. Don't forget to check out Second Life on Tumblr, Facebook and Google Plus!

Check out the Second Life Pic of the Day, "Mimikri - Linette", photo by Lila Quander. Don't forget to check out Second Life on Tumblr, Facebook and Google Plus!

Check out the Second Life Pic of the Day, "Kayaking @Mojo Surf Point", photo by Caitlin Tobias Don't forget to check out Second Life on Tumblr, Facebook and Google Plus!

Check out the Second Life Pic of the Day, "Sin", photo by Mavi Beck Don't forget to check out Second Life on Tumblr, Facebook and Google Plus!

SL9B Image by Caitlin Tobias taken at Magical Meeroo Cave II There have been fabulous parties and events going on in celebration of Second Life's 9th birthday. The fun is continuing! If you have photos or videos of any of these celebrations, we would love to help you share them. Here are some ways you can let the community enjoy your SL9B images and videos: Post your snapshots on my.secondlife.com. Helpful tips on how to take a snapshot inworld. Use #SL9B on twitter to tag your SL9B related tweets Add your pictures to the Offical Second Life Flickr group. Read the details there and don't forget to tag your image with "SL9B". We may feature your images as Pic of the Day or on our social media sites. SL9B videos can be shared with us at video@lindenlab.com. Please just send us the YouTube link. Your video might be shown on the website or our social media sites. Fun! Enjoy the rest of your SL9B community celebrations!!

Check out the Second Life Pic of the Day, "Avenue Magazine | June 2012" , photo by Miaa Rebane Don't forget to check out Second Life on Tumblr, Facebook and Google Plus!

Summer Fun! One of the great things about Second Life is that you can enjoy any season any time you wish, no matter what part of the globe you trot, or what time of the year it is. We are hot for summer right now and to celebrate, we’re having a Summer Fun Photo Contest!. If this sounds like something you’d be interested in, then we have a contest for you! Take an inworld image that you feel really captures the spirit of summer fun. Get creative — but keep it clean! Summer fun could be anything related to a summer theme - for some that means laying out by the pool and getting some sun, and for others it could mean hitting the surf or going sailing. Whatever you enjoy in Second Life that says summer has arrived - could win you L$5,000 Read all the contest details and then submit your photo. Photo by Ivani Miles and used with permission. The Challenge: Find what screams summer to you inworld and capture it in a snapshot. Share that with us in the forums for a chance to win L$5000! There will be one grand prize winner (L$5000) and three runners-up (L$1000 each). For all the details on prizes and how to enter, please read the Summer Fun Photo Contest Wiki page. How to participate: Entries can be posted from June 20 (at noon PT) through July 31, 2012 (at 11:59 p.m. PT). Take your snapshot, save the image to your computer so you can upload your submission for the contest. Keep an eye out for the contest to go live in the Official Contest Forum. How to vote: Votes will start at midnight PT on August 1, 2012 and last until noon PT on August 8, 2012. To vote for your favorite, simply Kudo the image of your choice. Only one vote per person! For some tips on how to take good pictures in Second Life, take a look at the Knowledge Base article. Best of luck!

Check out the Second Life Pic of the Day, "Giant - Thoughtful", photo by Zandy Oh. Don't forget to check out Second Life on Tumblr, Facebook and Google Plus!

Check out the Second Life Pic of the Day, "Queen's army", photo by bamboobarnes. Don't forget to check out Second Life on Tumblr, Facebook and Google Plus!

Check out the Second Life Pic of the Day, "Castle", photo by Mazzori. Don't forget to check out Second Life on Tumblr, Facebook and Google Plus!

Check out the Second Life Pic of the Day, "Voc linda reopen", photo by YukaChoco Magic. Don't forget to check out Second Life on Tumblr, Facebook and Google Plus!

Check out the Second Life Pic of the Day, "Wall the Wait", photo by sadbab shan. Don't forget to check out Second Life on Tumblr, Facebook and Google Plus!

Check out the Second Life Pic of the Day, "Untitled", photo by Isolde Spitteler. Don't forget to check out Second Life on Tumblr, Facebook and Google Plus!

Check out the Second Life Pic of the Day, "Argus", photo by Anita Witt. Don't forget to check out Second Life on Tumblr, Facebook and Google Plus!

Check out the Second Life Pic of the Day, "Mister Virtual World", photo by Hikaru Enimo. Don't forget to check out Second Life on Tumblr, Facebook and Google Plus!

Check out the Second Life Pic of the Day, "Did I forget something?", photo by Jshawn Thirdborn. Don't forget to check out Second Life on Tumblr, Facebook and Google Plus!

Check out the Second Life Pic of the Day, "The Mystic Dream", photo by Shasta Laval. Don't forget to check out Second Life on Tumblr, Facebook and Google Plus!