User:Babbage Linden/Office Hours/2009 12 09

Transcript of Babbage Linden's office hours:

[3:02]	Cerdita Piek:	Hello Babbage :)
[3:02]	Nock Forager:	Hi Babbage
[3:02]	Johan Laurasia:	Hey Bab
[3:02]	Kaluura Boa:	Hello
[3:02]	Babbage Linden:	Hi everyone
[3:02]	Imaze Rhiano:	hi!
[3:03]	Babbage Linden:	Let's give people a couple of minutes to turn up
[3:03]	Johan Laurasia:	got a quick question then
[3:04]	Johan Laurasia:	I'm trying to make a mechanical binary adder, and I need a decent way to make a physical pivot, any ideas?
[3:04]	Gunter Vandyke:	hi all
[3:05]	Babbage Linden:	OK, it's 5 past, so let's start
[3:05]	Imaze Rhiano:	fake it
[3:05]	Johan Laurasia:	yeah, was thinking about that using collision and llSetRot()
[3:05]	Babbage Linden:	This week we got a simulator with C# support deployed internally for evaluation by Lindens
[3:05]	Babbage Linden:	which is very exciting
[3:06]	Babbage Linden:	the feedback so far has been very positive
[3:06]	Babbage Linden:	we're currently setting up a test harness that can compile and run C# scripts at build time
[3:07]	Babbage Linden:	so as we find bugs we can set up automated regression tests for them
[3:07]	Babbage Linden:	I've reached out to product to find out when/how we can open the prototype up for evaluation by residents
[3:07]	Babbage Linden:	so I'll let you know about that
[3:08]	Johan Laurasia:	any ideas on how long before we can get a crack at it?
[3:08]	Johan Laurasia:	roughly
[3:08]	Babbage Linden:	not yet
[3:08]	Babbage Linden:	there is some more work we need to do on it first
[3:08]	Babbage Linden:	it's pretty crashy at the moment
[3:08]	Babbage Linden:	but the feedback we're getting from Linden's is helping find the worst bugs
[3:09]	Babbage Linden:	we need to move the prototype over to Mono 2 and implement the sandbox for scripts first
[3:09]	Babbage Linden:	so a few months of work
[3:09]	Babbage Linden:	but I'd like to make the API available before we have simulators available for test
[3:10]	Babbage Linden:	so you can look at the API and give feedback
[3:10]	Babbage Linden:	that should be sooner
[3:10]	Pirka Quintessa:	is there any documentation that describes the feature set ... for example, will we be to have pre-built libraries of objects that we can reference, that kind of thing?
[3:10]	Babbage Linden:	there is some very threadbare documentation that we've written for Lindens
[3:11]	Babbage Linden:	along with doxygen generated API docs
[3:11]	Babbage Linden:	I'd like to clean those up and make them available
[3:11]	Imaze Rhiano:	maybe setup somekind webpage that allows free discussion about API? (Discussion forum in blog.secondlife.com - is crappy...)
[3:11]	Babbage Linden:	but I need to check with product first
[3:11]	Pirka Quintessa:	any timelines for document release? roughly?
[3:11]	Babbage Linden:	yes, I'll put them on the public wiki probably
[3:11]	Babbage Linden:	hopefully in the next few weeks
[3:11]	Babbage Linden:	but again, it depends on product
[3:12]	Pirka Quintessa:	nice
[3:12]	Babbage Linden:	we've also been firming up our plans for efficient scripts
[3:12]	Babbage Linden:	the minimum feature set will be llSetLinkPrimitiveParamsNoDelay
[3:12]	Babbage Linden:	llGetLinkPrimitiveParams
[3:12]	Johan Laurasia:	woot
[3:13]	Becky Pippen:	yay!
[3:13]	Johan Laurasia:	finally!!
[3:13]	Babbage Linden:	and a PRIM_TEXT constant for setting text on a linked prim
[3:13]	Gunter Vandyke:	this year? ㋡
[3:13]	Kaluura Boa:	About llSPP-ND.... Will the rotations also be... hmmm... nonsensical?
[3:13]	Babbage Linden:	early next year hopefully
[3:13]	Babbage Linden:	along with script limits
[3:13]	Gunter Vandyke:	great
[3:13]	Babbage Linden:	kelly wrote a hair resize script with the new functions
[3:14]	Babbage Linden:	and it uses 16K on LSL instead of 1664K
[3:14]	Johan Laurasia:	lol
[3:14]	Nock Forager:	<3
[3:14]	Kaluura Boa:	=^_^=
[3:14]	Johan Laurasia:	a tad more efficient then
[3:14]	Johan Laurasia:	lol
[3:14]	Babbage Linden:	for a 103 prim resizable hairdo
[3:15]	Babbage Linden:	so, a couple of orders of magnitude more memory efficient
[3:15]	Johan Laurasia:	just a few
[3:15]	Babbage Linden:	and easier to develop too as you only have to use 1 script, instead of managing lots of scripts sprinkled through the linkset
[3:16]	Ardy Lay:	That might cut down on "I can't teleport!" JIRA issues too.
[3:16]	Babbage Linden:	hopefully
[3:16]	Johan Laurasia:	yeah, so how do you get content creators with 50 or 100 hair products to go back and redo the scripts in all their items?
[3:16]	Babbage Linden:	you introduce script limits
[3:16]	Johan Laurasia:	I know it's an easy fix, but you're talking about them deleting hundreds of scripts from perhaps hundreds of items
[3:16]	Babbage Linden:	which limit the size of attached scripts
[3:17]	Babbage Linden:	and create a market ;-)
[3:17]	Johan Laurasia:	yeah, also, is there any consideration for some sort of script cost number simlar to ARC?
[3:17]	Imaze Rhiano:	I think that HUDs are also big user of scripts - like radars and other things like that - any plans to add client side scripting?
[3:17]	Johan Laurasia:	similar*
[3:17]	Babbage Linden:	johan, we're introducing script limits
[3:17]	Babbage Linden:	Imaze, yes, there are plans, but they are a long way off
[3:18]	Johan Laurasia:	yeah, I guess taht will force the issue.
[3:18]	Babbage Linden:	HUDs will benefit from the efficient scripts changes too
[3:18]	Ardy Lay:	SOmeone passed a game HUD to me that had well over 200 scripts in it.
[3:19]	Babbage Linden:	i've also continued to track down the problem with sim freezes on script rez
[3:19]	Babbage Linden:	it looks like a stall in the mono runtime
[3:19]	Babbage Linden:	so I'm now working with the mono developers to track it down
[3:19]	Gunter Vandyke:	will it be better to recompile all scripts in the region to LSL meanwhile?
[3:19]	Babbage Linden:	and we're planning to work on multithreading the rez/derez process next year
[3:20]	Babbage Linden:	which will hide the effects
[3:20]	Babbage Linden:	gunter, it's only an issue for mobile scripts
[3:20]	Gunter Vandyke:	ah ok
[3:20]	Babbage Linden:	if you have static scripts, you're better off using mono
[3:20]	Babbage Linden:	so, that's what I've been up to, anything you'd like to talk about?
[3:21]	Gunter Vandyke:	so this terrible lag will stay a while longer?
[3:21]	Ardy Lay:	Do you forsee needing a new simulator statistic related to multithreaded rez/derez?
[3:21]	Babbage Linden:	mono rezzing lag is not the only cause of lag
[3:22]	Babbage Linden:	there are many
[3:22]	Babbage Linden:	but we have plans to fix most of them
[3:22]	Cerdita Piek:	I would like to know more details in the progress of the freeze sim bug, as it affects us all.
[3:22]	Babbage Linden:	well, I have a callgrind profile of the simulator exhibiting the bug
[3:23]	Babbage Linden:	i need to get that to the mono developers so they can see what the problem is
[3:23]	Ardy Lay:	Is that stall getting longer as simulator uptime increases?
[3:24]	Babbage Linden:	I've tracked down the problem to to System.Reflection.Assembly::Load(byte[])
[3:24]	Gunter Vandyke:	yes ardy, it looks like this on my sim
[3:24]	Babbage Linden:	the code that implements that is inside the mono runtime
[3:24]	Gunter Vandyke:	must restart 4 times a day
[3:24]	Babbage Linden:	I was seeing 203 calls to that function taking 4s
[3:25]	Imaze Rhiano:	http://go-mono.com/forums/#nabble-td26594897
[3:25]	Babbage Linden:	I had a single linked object with ~200 default scripts compiled to (different) mono scripts
[3:25]	Babbage Linden:	and when I rez it the sim would freeze for 4s
[3:25]	Babbage Linden:	so I'm reasonably sure this is the problem
[3:26]	Babbage Linden:	I could repro it consistently with a newly started sim
[3:26]	Babbage Linden:	so I don't think it's a problem that gets worse over time
[3:26]	Babbage Linden:	that lag may be due to simulator memory bloat
[3:26]	Babbage Linden:	we are testing the TCMalloc sims on aditi at the moment
[3:27]	Babbage Linden:	when we get TCMalloc in to production, we will be in a better place to analyse memory use over time in production
[3:28]	Cerdita Piek:	could it be possible to 'force' an automatic restart of the sim, when it detects that the memory is too laggy and too much, instead to wait a manual restart?
[3:28]	Johan Laurasia:	Andrew said a new employee with alot of Havok experience has SL running on Havok 7.
[3:29]	Babbage Linden:	cerditi, yes you could
[3:29]	Babbage Linden:	but it probably wouldn't be a good idea
[3:29]	Babbage Linden:	as you don't want it restarting in the middle of an event
[3:29]	Babbage Linden:	and it would be better if simulators could keep running indefinitely#
[3:30]	Babbage Linden:	yes, falcon linden has just started in core and has a lot of havok experience
[3:30]	Babbage Linden:	i didn't know he had sl working with havok 7 though
[3:30]	Babbage Linden:	very cool
[3:30]	Johan Laurasia:	I heard he had it running under windows, not Linux yet
[3:30]	Cerdita Piek:	well, if the event is lagging everybody to a time dialtion lesser than 1.25 and with sim freezes of 30 seconds evert 2 minutes, i think it would be the only solution
[3:30]	Cerdita Piek:	0.25, i mean
[3:31]	Babbage Linden:	cerdita, yes, but i'd like to know why the sim is lagging and fix it
[3:31]	Babbage Linden:	rather than just let performance degrade and restart
[3:31]	Morgaine Dinova waves quietly to all
[3:31]	Babbage Linden:	don't fret: we are looking at it
[3:32]	Babbage Linden:	and have more engineer time assigned to lag and freezes next year
[3:32]	Cerdita Piek:	i was thinking on that as a temporal solution until you can finish the fix. :)
[3:33]	Johan Laurasia:	it's fairly easy to get LL to reboot a sim that needs it bad enough.
[3:34]	Ardy Lay:	Support is good at restarting mainland regions when I ask them to do so. I am sure they look it over first to make sure it needs to be restarted.
[3:34]	Gunter Vandyke:	limitate attached scripts will help, ppl arrive on my sim with 300 scripts in hair and my sim stops for 20 seconds
[3:35]	Johan Laurasia:	We got them to restart an estate sim once too.
[3:35]	Babbage Linden:	right, gunter, that sounds like the mono rez sim freeze that I'm looking at
[3:35]	Gunter Vandyke:	and on my sim every 2 minutes soneone arrive
[3:35]	Gunter Vandyke:	L ㋡ L
[3:36]	Babbage Linden:	It's strange as we tested Mono script rezzing when we were developing Mono and it worked fine with no pauses
[3:36]	Gunter Vandyke:	anything we can do meanwhile?
[3:36]	Babbage Linden:	we haven't made many changes to that code
[3:36]	Babbage Linden:	and we haven't upgraded Mono
[3:36]	Babbage Linden:	so, I don't know what's changed to cause the problem
[3:36]	Babbage Linden:	possibly some interaction between the runtime and the os
[3:36]	Ardy Lay:	Did the underlying OS get changed?
[3:37]	Babbage Linden:	we deploy security patches
[3:37]	Babbage Linden:	and the simulator hosts have gone from running debian sarge to debian etch since we shipped mono
[3:38]	Babbage Linden:	anyway, I'll be working with the mono engineers this week to look in to it
[3:38]	Imaze Rhiano:	How are memory limitis coming together? When we can see script memory usage? :P
[3:38]	Morgaine Dinova:	Maybe those security patches broke the non-blocking mode of something.
[3:39]	Babbage Linden:	script limits just needs the UI developing
[3:39]	Babbage Linden:	which is going to happen in the next couple of weeks
[3:39]	Babbage Linden:	we have all the analysis we need doing to determine the limits
[3:39]	Babbage Linden:	but need to discuss them internally
[3:40]	Babbage Linden:	to try to find the sweet spot between improving sim performance and inconviniencing heavy script users
[3:40]	Babbage Linden:	once that's done Jack is going to take the job of communicating the limits
[3:41]	Babbage Linden:	the UI should be available in the next major version of the viewer
[3:41]	Babbage Linden:	which will be available next year
[3:41]	Kaluura Boa:	Will we also have Top Scripts on parcel?
[3:42]	Babbage Linden:	kaluura, the UI will include a top scripts style list of scripts
[3:42]	Kaluura Boa:	Good
[3:42]	Morgaine Dinova:	Per parcel?
[3:42]	Babbage Linden:	that will include functionality for finding and returning scripted objects
[3:42]	Babbage Linden:	so everyone will be able to find and clean up the scripts they don't need
[3:43]	Babbage Linden:	before we start enforcing limits
[3:43]	Cerdita Piek:	Could someone 'return' an attachment?
[3:43]	Morgaine Dinova:	But Kaluura asked whether "per parcel" or not.
[3:43]	SirMartinRJ Lupindo:	I think 'returning' an attachment is a feature which only Lindens should be allowed to use.
[3:44]	SirMartinRJ Lupindo:	that's like pulling some skirt off from a person IRL
[3:44]	SirMartinRJ Lupindo:	xD
[3:44]	Babbage Linden:	the scripts you can see depend on who you are
[3:44]	Gunter Vandyke:	but disable special attached script would be fin
[3:44]	Johan Laurasia:	yeah, I dont see that happening
[3:44]	Babbage Linden:	everyone can see their attachments
[3:44]	Babbage Linden:	no one else can see or return your attachments
[3:44]	Babbage Linden:	if you are a parcel owner you can see the scripted objects in your parcels in the region
[3:45]	Babbage Linden:	if you are a region owner you see all scripted objects in all parcels
[3:45]	Babbage Linden:	if you are an estate owner or manageryou also see all scripted objects in all parcels
[3:45]	Babbage Linden:	so estate managers can help manage the parcels they rent out
[3:46]	Imaze Rhiano:	would it be possible to se limitations for avatar attachment usage who is entering to region/parcel? like if your attachments are using more than 1MB - you are not allowed to enter?
[3:46]	Babbage Linden:	Imaze, we're planning to set an SL wide limit on attachments
[3:47]	Babbage Linden:	so you don't get stuck unable to TP
[3:47]	Babbage Linden:	or have some of your avatar attachments disabled when you TP somewhere
[3:48]	Babbage Linden:	in the future we'd like region owners to be able to trade off number of avatars vs parcel script limits vs physics, but we're not there yet
[3:48]	Babbage Linden:	i don't want to have variable limits for attachments though
[3:48]	Morgaine Dinova:	Sims are not fixed in capability nor capacity, they improve as technology improves. Are these limits going to be raised correspondingly with time?
[3:48]	Babbage Linden:	it would be confusing and frustrating for newbies
[3:48]	Babbage Linden:	morgaine, there's no reason they shouldn't be
[3:48]	SirMartinRJ Lupindo:	yes
[3:49]	Babbage Linden:	as long as we always raise limits, it shouldn't cause any problems
[3:49]	Gunter Vandyke:	yes, but nerwbies attach all they can find and use 10% od script time on a sim then
[3:49]	Babbage Linden:	gunter, right so we want to set the avatar script limit to something "reasonable"
[3:49]	Babbage Linden:	that allows sensible use
[3:50]	Babbage Linden:	but not 100s of un needed scripts
[3:50]	Gunter Vandyke:	i think that will help a lot
[3:50]	Babbage Linden:	I'd like to know what you think reasonable usage would be
[3:50]	Babbage Linden:	most of the avatars I've seen with 100s of scripts just have them for resizing
[3:50]	Babbage Linden:	are there any legitimate uses for more than 100 attached scripts?
[3:50]	Gunter Vandyke:	yes
[3:50]	Kaluura Boa:	No
[3:50]	Gunter Vandyke:	or gangsta neacklages with 100 bling scripts
[3:51]	Melchizedek Blauvelt:	disabled folks maybe
[3:51]	Morgaine Dinova:	Babbage: are you going to make it easy for your devs to test raised limits, or are the limits going to be compiled in? The latter would act as a disincentive for LL to keep the limits moving upwards as technology improves.
[3:51]	Johan Laurasia:	I dont think so, no
[3:51]	Johan Laurasia:	well, plus hair resizers should code so the scripts can be removed once the hair is sized.
[3:51]	Babbage Linden:	morgaine, the limits will be controlled by settings
[3:51]	Cerdita Piek:	there are some complex attachments nedded for roleplaying, and combat. but i dont know if they need 100 scripts or less.
[3:51]	Morgaine Dinova:	Cool
[3:51]	Johan Laurasia:	make the item copy/no trans, and then keep the original with the scripts, but when worn, after sizing, delete all the scripts.
[3:52]	Babbage Linden:	johan, efficient scripts should make resizers just require a single script
[3:52]	Gunter Vandyke:	most have that Johan, but the ppl dont know that and dont delete the script
[3:52]	Babbage Linden:	so, after that hopefully we won't need to allow 100s of attached scripts
[3:52]	Imaze Rhiano:	ah.... that is another interesting problem - what is going to happen those items that have scripts over limit and are no mod...
[3:53]	Babbage Linden:	Imaze, there is going to be a long period where limits will be visible, but not enforced
[3:53]	Morgaine Dinova:	Lindens will make a refund ... of course.
[3:53]	Babbage Linden:	people will be able to see that they're over the limit and remove scripts until they are under the limit
[3:53]	Gunter Vandyke:	that means you will have to walk with a bald
[3:53]	Babbage Linden:	Jack is going to be communicating this to people
[3:53]	Babbage Linden:	when the limits are enforced, you will end up with objects being returned
[3:54]	Babbage Linden:	but hopefully everyone will have enough time to manage their attachments before that happens
[3:54]	Pirka Quintessa:	what about sales of objects, say via XStreetSL or in an in-game store where somebody doesn't actually see the object before it is delivered to them?
[3:54]	SirMartinRJ Lupindo:	will there be a nice error message, that tell me which attachment I just got returned
[3:54]	SirMartinRJ Lupindo:	*s
[3:54]	Babbage Linden:	i wouldn't buy any object that didn't list its prim count and script usage
[3:54]	Morgaine Dinova:	Jack is going to have a lot of fun explaining how "Your costly hair whose creator is no longer available is now broken" fits with the "No breaking content" policy.
[3:55]	Aimee Trescothick:	Xstreet will need another field for it next to prim count
[3:55]	Babbage Linden:	right
[3:55]	Aimee Trescothick:	to encourage people to list it
[3:55]	Cerdita Piek giggles at Morgaine
[3:55]	SirMartinRJ Lupindo:	it is not too easy to count the scripts inside a linked object, is it
[3:55]	Pirka Quintessa:	that might be okay for you and me, but there are lots of SL users that don't "get it" they don't know what prim counts and script usesage are
[3:55]	Johan Laurasia:	right, content creators (smart ones) will communicate the efficiency of their scripted items
[3:55]	Babbage Linden:	Morgaine, it might be usable at some point in the future when limits are raised
[3:56]	Babbage Linden:	;-)
[3:56]	Johan Laurasia:	good point Bab
[3:56]	Babbage Linden:	but, I would hope that most content creators would provide efficient versions of items to purchasers
[3:56]	Babbage Linden:	that work within the script limits
[3:56]	Johan Laurasia:	I'm on my 3rd generation scripts for my clocks, working on a 4th
[3:56]	Gunter Vandyke:	but most of them use old laggy scripts bcs dont know how to script
[3:57]	Johan Laurasia:	I was a newbie coder when I started, well, new to LSL, and made the usual newbie coding mistakes
[3:57]	Babbage Linden:	right, so Lindens and content creators need to communicate that there are more efficient ways of doing things
[3:57]	Johan Laurasia:	but I've continued to improve them, and still continue.
[3:57]	Babbage Linden:	and that some items can be replaced with more efficient versions
[3:58]	Gunter Vandyke:	for example put a bling script with ON/OFF llListen into a neckalge with 100 bling prims
[3:58]	Johan Laurasia:	right, that's because up to this point, resources have been free and limitless
[3:58]	Babbage Linden:	all objects will be rezzable in to sandboxes
[3:59]	Johan Laurasia:	so people either outright abuse, or just dont consider efficiency
[3:59]	Ardy Lay:	Hehehe... "Crash boxes". :-)
[3:59]	Morgaine Dinova:	Babbage: if your analysis shows that the number of existing attachments caught by the new limits is sufficiently small, I would advise the limits being applied differently to old scripts and new scripts. Breaking old paid+closed content is in a different category to preventing new content being badly written.
[3:59]	Johan Laurasia:	I avoid public sandboxes
[3:59]	Johan Laurasia:	like it's the plague
[4:00]	Babbage Linden:	morgaine, yes, it's worth considering
[4:00]	Johan Laurasia:	to a point, yeah, but you have to draw the line in the sand at some point.
[4:00]	Babbage Linden:	right
[4:01]	Johan Laurasia:	computers (on both ends) have limitations
[4:01]	Babbage Linden:	another thing to consider is whether to return scripts or attachments
[4:01]	Babbage Linden:	turn off bling or return bling?
[4:01]	Johan Laurasia:	or perhaps just disable them?
[4:01]	Morgaine Dinova:	Babbage: if you add the notion of two categories old and new, you can always elide it later if it proves unworkable. If you don't add it, it'll never happen.
[4:02]	Johan Laurasia:	rather than return, just selectively disable an object that is too much of a resource hog.
[4:02]	Gunter Vandyke:	just turn them off
[4:02]	Babbage Linden:	technically tracking old and new content is unfortunately hard
[4:02]	Babbage Linden:	disabled scripts still take up memory, so that doesn't help
[4:03]	Ardy Lay:	I don't see how "disabling" an attachment magically removes the memory requirements of hosting its scripts.
[4:03]	Babbage Linden:	anyway, it's 4, so I should go
[4:03]	Babbage Linden:	thanks for the discussion
[4:03]	Johan Laurasia:	thanks for the time Bab.
[4:03]	Becky Pippen:	thanks, Babbage
[4:03]	Ardy Lay:	Thank you Babbage.
[4:03]	Gunter Vandyke:	maybe somthing like a ban list for bad scripts we dont want to have on a sim
[4:03]	Babbage Linden:	lots of good points that I will bring up with Jack
[4:03]	Imaze Rhiano:	Thanks babbie
[4:03]	Pirka Quintessa:	but isn't the problem with the scripts that they are CPU hogs not memory hogs? Even 200 bling scripts aren't going to use 64K a piece
[4:03]	Melchizedek Blauvelt:	much appreciated Babbage
[4:03]	Babbage Linden:	see you all next week hopefully
[4:03]	Cerdita Piek:	Thanks, Babbage. Take care :)
[4:04]	Babbage Linden:	which will be my last office hour of 2009
[4:04]	Gunter Vandyke:	Thanks Babbage
[4:04]	Pirka Quintessa:	thanks babbage
[4:04]	Babbage Linden:	as I'm on vacation after that
[4:04]	Babbage Linden:	see you next time
[4:04]	Johan Laurasia:	c ya
[4:04]	QUTAdmin Queler:	oh
[4:04]	Nock Forager:	Seeya.