Viewer Evolution User Group/Archive/2011-05-20

08:01	Wolfpup	hey Oz
	Ima Mechanique	Twisted, my solution is to revert to the 2.6.9-start tag until someone more knowledgeable fixes it ;-)
	draconis.neurocam	hello oz
	Ardy Lay	"doesn't affect LL-released versions. " -- Why not? OpenJPEG vs. KDU?
	Marianne McCann	Hi Oz
	Ardy Lay	Hi Oz
	Oz Linden	Good morning everyone (or whatever part of the day or night it is for you)
	Wolfpup	Ima the OS comunity might have to get the stub functional to have a 'fix'
08:02	Oz Linden	what doesn't affect our versions?
	The Raptor	just turned morning here :)
	Ardy Lay	convexdecomposition stub?
	Jonathan	vwr-25815
	Oz Linden	ah
	Wolfpup	nod ardy
	Ima Mechanique	the ERROR: LLViewerTextureList::addImageToList: ASSERT (mInitialized) on startup
08:03	Oz Linden	have to track down what's happening with that after this meeting
	Wolfpup	vwr-25815 < so the jira helper posts the link again
	Twisted Laws	it happens before llviewerwindow is initialized where the init is called
	Oz Linden	I think it's assigned to me, actually :-(
	Wolfpup	it is Oz
	Ima Mechanique	hmm, JIRA helper is too smart Wolf
	Jonathan	Snowstorm has loaned 2 devs to the mesh team
08:04	Wolfpup	VWR-25815
		looks like it ima
	Ardy Lay	http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-25815
	JIRA-helper	VWR-25815 Crash during viewer startup: LLViewerTextureList::addImageToList
	Oz Linden	anyway... to our agenda ....
	Ima Mechanique	jira helper has a memory. better than mine sometimes ;-)
08:05	Oz Linden	We'll go down to do the New Topics first, but before we do, I have a teaser for you....
	Jonathan	URL of agenda?
	Oz Linden	my first SL video recording (well, the first one I'm showing to anyone)
	The Raptor	grats
	Oz Linden	agenda: https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Viewer_Evolution_User_Group
08:06		This is a video showing crossing between two regions (this one and Hippo Hollow) with different Windlight settings : http://lindens.lindenlab.com/oz/WL_region_crossing.mov
08:07	Jonathan	ooo
	Qie	nice!
08:08	Marianne McCann	Heh... opening that URL in the internal browser shows a Version 1.x style play/pause button. Very cool stuff, though!
	Oz Linden	the actual region boundary is roughly half way across that bridge, so there's a small delay
	Ima Mechanique	wow, see that moon move
	Oz Linden	each setting transitions smoothly but quickly
	Ima Mechanique	looks good
08:09	Ardy Lay	I have mentioned those old buttons but kinda got ignored.
	Marianne McCann	Much nicer than I might have suspected
	Oz Linden	so a moon that's up will quickly set (as in that video), etc
	Jonathan	well done
	Ardy Lay	I like the transition.
	Oz Linden	We're getting pretty close to being able to put out a project viewer
08:10	Jonathan	How many regions will have this enabled when that project viewer goes out?
	Ardy Lay	Currently, moving form estate to estate with different time of day is an abrupt change.
	Oz Linden	there are some schedule uncertainties, partly because I loaned a couple of developers to another team
08:11		Actually, all regions already support it in theory, but of course most have only the default settings
		the project viewer will display any settings from the region (using the region settings is the default, which you can override as now)
08:12		we're re-doing the interface for editting WL settings so that it's more logically organized and a little simpler
	Ardy Lay	Windlight settings are per region, not per parcel?
08:13	Oz Linden	per region is all that the servers support
		per parcel would be pretty jarring if you were moving around
	Ardy Lay	Yeah, I suppose the per region setting is actually an estate setting then so us mainland dwellers are out of luck.
08:14	Wolfpup	unless the Linden PW's people come through and change it
	Oz Linden	It does require Estate Manager rights, which you don't get on mainland
	Ardy Lay	Yeah, lots of stuff we don't get even though we have 4 regions.
08:15	Oz Linden	whether or not the Moles will mess with the settings on mainland is anyones guess :-)
	Qie	umm... by any chance, are the estate windlight settings assets that might be exchanged? such that parcel owners (mainland or estate) could "offer them as suggestions" to visitors in some coherent way
08:16	Marianne McCann	I wish, Qie.
	Oz Linden	The first version we release won't support an exchangable setting, but it is something we are designing to support later
	Qie	okay. that's reassuring.
	Oz Linden	we just don't want to hold up a release for that
	Qie	right! :)
08:17	Oz Linden	anyway.... watch this space for other news on that....
		So ... to New Topics
		VWR-4018 Texture animations ignore repeats per face (llTextureAnim())
	JIRA-helper	http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-4018 VWR-4018 Texture animations ignore repeats per face (llTextureAnim())
08:19	Ardy Lay	Yes, old bug is still annoying bug.
08:20		I ran into that when trying to make an animated "neon" sign for a bar.
	Qie	(huh. This explains why lots of my old stuff broke, and why my independently stumbled-upon "workaround" was so flaky)
	Ardy Lay	I had to recreate the texture and give up image crispness.
08:21	Oz Linden	I had not seen this one before.
	Ardy Lay	THe result ended up so blurry we scrapped it and did something else.
08:22	Oz Linden	It would be helpful if someone would construct an object that demos it.
	Ardy Lay	I seem to have deleted it from my inventory too.
		Hmm...
08:23	Oz Linden	If anyone knows who the Phoenix dev is that 'Toysoldier' refers to in the last comment, tell them to get in touch with me
	104	is asking in Phoenix developer chat now.
08:24	Tonya Souther	is asking in Phoenix developer chat now.
08:25	Oz Linden	I've acked it and moved it to the product backlog, but if someone's going to work on it, then I'll move it to STORM and import the fix when ready
08:26		VWR-17022 Clicking The Clock should bring up events happening right now.
	JIRA-helper	http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17022 VWR-17022 Clicking on the current time in the Viewer should bring up events happening right now.
	Marianne McCann	The "Click the Clock" proposal of Crap Mariner's
	Ardy Lay	That's a two-click operatin now, right?
		Search > Events
08:27	Marianne McCann	I believe so
	Ardy Lay	Kinda gets drowned out in that damn "Paid Classifieds" mess.
	Techwolf Lupindo	I keep forgettting that SL has an event feature...
	Ardy Lay	Those clasifieds are not for events are they?
	Techwolf Lupindo	Perhaps due to having to think about it and searching for hte events search box.
	Marianne McCann	Techwolf - indeed
08:28	Oz Linden	According to the comments in the internal clone of that issue, someone is working on it.
	Jonathan	It is not clear what results clicking the clock should show -- there are so many different types that seeing them all displayed might be a bit much, unless the output floater is just a line by line display, as in v1 viewers
	Oz Linden	There are no details on how it's being done, though.
	Marianne McCann	Hmmm
08:29	Oz Linden	It's someone in the search team (which makes sense).
	Techwolf Lupindo	I remmber when I first found the event listing. Played wiht it and seen it was destroyed by the spammers advertizing there "event" sales 24/7.
	Qie	I think just bringing up the Events Search as-is would be close enough (well... assuming the whole Search UI is up for redesign now)
	Oz Linden	I'll see if I can find out more for next week.
	Ardy Lay	Yeah, the event listing in V1 was easier for me to read but LL doesn't want to hear that. My JIRA went down in FLAMES.
	Oz Linden	Don't give up hope on search...
	Jonathan	Not having 1 line per event entry is what makes v2 search hard for me -- it takes forever to scan
08:30	Marianne McCann	Thanks, Oz. Seems an easy use for what is now a dead space on the UI
	Oz Linden	STORM-942 Make texture blending deterministic to prevent terrain texture drift
	JIRA-helper	http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/STORM-942 STORM-942 Make texture blending deterministic to prevent terrain texture drift
08:31	Ardy Lay	Ah yes, that one makes multi-camera photoshoots really silly looking.
		"Hey look! They are not even on the same beach!"
		Hehe
	Marianne McCann	THat's something I've seen since at least '07. Ground testures are not constant, shift per viewer, and also often do not mate the "no higher than x setting an estate manager can place
		Ardy "Beach? I don't see a beach here"
08:32	Ardy Lay	Perlin noise generator at play here?
	Marianne McCann	(Which was how I first discovered the issue)
	Ardy Lay	guesses
	Oz Linden	yes, that's the issue, Ardy
	Marianne McCann	From what Igathered from Andrew, Ardy
	Qie	makes terraforming an Atoll beach, with that funky technicolor terrain, a fool's errand.
	Ardy Lay	Yeah, I probably was there when Andrew said it. I don't know what it means.
		Andrew said we need a common seed for all fiewers to use.
08:33		viewers
	Marianne McCann	Heh, me too Ardy. A known seed
	Oz Linden	It would be interesting to do some experiments with whether or not providing a seed from the region would produce stable results across different viewers
08:34		One way to do that experiment would be to temporarily add a fixed seed, then build multiple viewers with it, edit a region and see if everyone ends up seeing the same thing
	Ardy Lay	Is that seed generated within the viewer from some psudorandom elements?
08:35	Qie	internally hash the region ID to derive a stable seed?
	Oz Linden	I don't know where the current seed comes from, Ardy
		well, if a stable seed produces stable results, then we could store the seed in the region
08:36	Techwolf Lupindo	Need a consentent stable seed that doesn't changed so if regine restarts doen't cause it to look differnet all of a sudden.
	Ardy Lay	LLPerlinNoise::init(void)
		Calls rand() several times
	Oz Linden	that way, each time you edit the region you could optionally regenerate the texture map (in fact, generate a new seed) until you got one you liked, then save it
08:37		but it's not worth doing the work to store the seed unless we can determine that the results are visually at least very similar on different platforms
	Ardy Lay	Andrews also expressed a strong desire to return to using higher resolution terrain textures.
08:38	Techwolf Lupindo	Yes. Victor is very fustrated with Aggro ground textures due to that.
	Ardy Lay	SL used to have very high resolution terrain textures.
	Techwolf Lupindo	uses a few hacks to get the ground textrue to look right.
	Ardy Lay	I remember seeing screenshots from an 8 year old resident that showed them.
08:39	Marianne McCann	Ya, Ardy. They can be... disappointingly low rez at times.
	Oz Linden	If someone is interested in doing some experiments with the randomness, I'll build multi-platform viewers with it.
	Marianne McCann	Noticed that with the "grass and flowers" look we have on Livingtree now. Ends up making it looks not fully rezzed in some shots
	Oz Linden	should be an easy enough experiment to do
08:40	Marianne McCann	I'd be game on assisting, if need be. Not sure what I'd need to do, but it's bugged me long enough...
	Oz Linden	talk to me after, Marianne...
08:41	Marianne McCann	okay
	Ardy Lay	Well, when you do, watch the clouds closely. They seem to use noise too.
	Oz Linden	next: VWR-20081 "Emergency Grid Broadcast System"
	JIRA-helper	http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-20081 VWR-20081 Emergency Grid Broadcast System
	Marianne McCann	Ah... my greedy little idea.
08:42	Ardy Lay	Heh, not long ago somebody accidentally sent a meeting invitation to "everybody". I guess that caused some congestion and confusion. :-)
	The Raptor	couldn't that be delivered via rss?
	Marianne McCann	It would seem
		Ardy - yes. That was to Michael Linden's old office hour in Shamon
08:43	Ardy Lay	Hmm... somebody else did it too. Blondin I think.
	Marianne McCann	Likely
	Oz Linden	I'll ask Support and Ops what they think....
	Ardy Lay	And I have seen another mention of wanting grid status displayed in the viewer.
	Marianne McCann	Thanks, Oz.
	The Raptor	having in world communication for grid status updates is a good idea
08:44	Marianne McCann	I use a scripted widget in my workroom to give me that now. saves my butt to know from that when assets are going pear shaped
	The Raptor	in order to check the current grid status you either have to be in a group like awg or break immersion to check the page every so often
		^.^
		nice
	Haravikk	Crap, majorly late as my calendar reminder didn't trigger for some reason. Anyway, I just wanted to add to VWR-4018 that any object with texture animation can demonstrate the issue so long as the animated side(s) have texture repeats other than <1.0, 1.0>. Unfortunately there's no way to trigger the issue that I know of, it just happens seemingly randomly. My best working theory is that the code for texture animations takes a copy of the values it needs to animate, and is becoming out-of-sync with the texture repeats value(s)
08:45	Oz Linden	it wouldn't be hard to prototype this, if you limited it to polling the rss feed at some frequency
	Marianne McCann	nods
	The Raptor	polling? :/
08:46	oobscure	i wonder how many "normal" users would understand / pay attention to grid status updates
	Ardy Lay	I know somebody that used to use a script to poll stats for number of users logged in and sound an alarm when it dropped sharply.
	Marianne McCann	Heh
	Ardy Lay	Unfortunately he hasn't been around since December 10th.
	Wolfpup	i have a grid watch hud for grid status
08:47	oobscure	another point is, by the time a status update is published on the blog, you usually may already have screwed up something
	Oz Linden	Whether or not polling is the right long term solution is an issue to think about, but it's certainly fine for a prototype to evaluate the user experience
	Marianne McCann	That doesnt sound like a good reason to not warn people
	The Raptor	mm
	Oz Linden	well, there are updates like rolling restarts that would benefit
08:48	Wolfpup	i wish grid status and other things was in the home tab
	The Raptor	I would suggest a different icon to an envelope though
	oobscure	Oz +1 and Wolfpup +1
	Jonathan	Yellow triangle with a !
	Ardy Lay	There is a menu bar color flag now. What is that used for?
	draconis.neurocam	the home tab is theoretically just a website, and i believe the url entry is in a debug setting, so someone could make a webpage and replace the home tab personally, theoretically at least
08:49	Oz Linden	I never pick icons... there are people who are paid to make those mistakes... uh.... decsions.
	Wolfpup	Ardy that is for when the lindens go into god mod
	The Raptor	you could also have it deliever the RSS feed if the user clicks on the symbol
	Marianne McCann	Perhaps. I'd be more keen on seeing the information given more visibility than having to head to the sidebar
	Qie	right, Marianne
	Marianne McCann	If there's a tornado heading my way, the cable box doesn't show me a warnign icon... it scrolls on my screen
	Wolfpup	you could have it flicker the home tab when there is an update
	The Raptor	yap
	oobscure	that'd be cool
08:50	Wolfpup	and there is a sound to go with it
		and iritating beep
	The Raptor	depending on the post
	Ardy Lay	Well, any event the viewer knows about it can trigger a sound and/or a notification, even an entry in chat history.
	The Raptor	^.^
08:51	Oz Linden	great.... we don't get beaten up enough for the intrusiveness of the v2 UI, and y'all want to add flashing colors and annoying beeps?
	The Raptor	lol
	oobscure	heheheee
	The Raptor	who said flashing?
	Oz Linden	you're supposed to be helping here...
	Ardy Lay	Well, I don't know what we want yet. ;-)
	Marianne McCann	Oz - so asking for "Clipy" would be a bit much, then?
	Wolfpup	the vieewer could even post a notice to nearby chat saying to check the home tab as there is an imortant message
	oobscure	xD
	Oz Linden	just remember - I'm going to post this archive, and when people complain, I'm going to blame _you_ :-)
08:52	Jonathan	Maybe just having a noticeable icon appear would suffice
	The Raptor	lol
	Ardy Lay	WE used to get a notification in the upper right corner AND a line in local chat.
	Wolfpup	i said flicker not flashing
	The Raptor	llDialog(rss feed post1)
	oobscure	anyway i guess such a feature should be optional
08:53	Ardy Lay	Just do NOT make it something that takes UI focus and has to be ack'd.
	The Raptor	avoid flicker even, anything more than 3 changes per second can cause an epileptic siezure (according to WCAG2)
	Techwolf Lupindo	The RSS feed or whatever that gets the data should be either restricted to problems or coded in such a way that the client can only "scream" when there is actually IS a problem with the grid. No notices should trigger it, "The boy who cryed wolf" syndrome.
	Qie	a yellow "⚠" icon in the menubar would be a start. scrolling the text across the vast expanse of empty menubar space might be an option.
	Oz Linden	There are a number of possible UIs for the alerts, from local chat to various sorts of popups or overlays
	Jonathan	(Oz, Toysoldier has just added a comment to vwr-4018)
	Marianne McCann	At least turn-offable, Opensource. But don'twe want users to know where there a systemwide issue?
08:54	Oz Linden	the thing to do would be to build the backend to get the notices, and then experiment with different frontends for displaying them
	The Raptor	I think this is why Oz was saying to prototype it
	oobscure	yeah Mari, personally i'd want it and keep it enabled
	Wolfpup	i would say having it flicker @ 2/sec would be enough
	The Raptor	(chat lag)
	Haravikk	What about a thin bar that slides down from the menu bar, with the usual click to dismiss? Certainly for region-specific issues, like an imminent restart
	Jonathan	There might be other uses a user would want to send into a scrolling region at the top of the screen, too, feeds from who knows where
08:55	Ardy Lay	How about making it in the form of a bottom-bar button we can hide/show/sort and press to get details?
	Haravikk	For general purpose feeds surely the main notifications area is for precisely that kind of thing?
	The Raptor	K.I.S.S
	Ardy Lay	Maybe the button can change appearance when there are details to show?
08:56	Oz Linden	ok... we're running out of time, so let me look at the ongoing stuff....
	Ardy Lay	Hehe
	Wolfpup	Marianne this might be some thing that is more of an advanced setting and not for the basic user
	Techwolf Lupindo	The "⚠" icon would appear and flash slowly untill the user clicks on it and a popup shows the details. User click it close and the icon stay on full time, no blicking.
	Oz Linden	media filters.... on my plate to fix the test it broke (been busy w/ windlight)
		inventory exchange... no progress :-(
08:58		Display name caching.... I'm pretty sure someone's going to work on this shortly
	Haravikk	Sweet, I think it's just a timezone glitch
	Wolfpup	i think there has already been some owrk along those lines
08:59		i have seen commits for DN improvements
	Oz Linden	the various interface de-cluttering suggestions.... I've passed these on to our UX team, who are doing a lot of thinking about related stuff, so watch this space....
	Techwolf Lupindo	Too bad display name cacheing wasn't in place when it was rolled out day before x-mas, might have would avoid some issues.
	oobscure	I'm adding VWR-25321 and VWR-25363 to agenda for consideration in future meetings
	JIRA-helper	http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-25321 VWR-25321 Make user aware of the "CTRL + Up/Down Arrow" feature (which scrolls back message history)
		http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-25363 VWR-25363 Expose "Duplicate Object" feature in Viewer 2 (regression from 1.x)
	Oz Linden	actually, the names are cached... I don't know what the genesis of that problem is
09:00		ok oobscure
	Haravikk	I commented on VWR-4018 with regards to test object(s), the problem is there's no solid repro that I know of
	JIRA-helper	http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-4018 VWR-4018 Texture animations ignore repeats per face (llTextureAnim())
	Haravikk	It just eventually happens for whatever reason
	Jonathan	Haravikk, did you read the comment just entered a few minutes ago?
09:01	Oz Linden	the VWR-25714 .... no update on that....
	JIRA-helper	http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-25714 VWR-25714 Poor responsiveness of Profile and IM buttons in People search
	Oz Linden	I saw that comment from Toysoldier ... will check it out
		loves SL art galleries anyway