User:Andrew Linden/Office Hours/2008 01 22

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Transcript of Andrew Linden's office hours:

[11:04] Gaius Goodliffe: Good morning sir!
[11:04] tx Oh: hey andrew
[11:04] Andrew Linden: Hey everybody. Sorry I'm late
[11:04] tx Oh: i don't have alot time
[11:04] Anders Falworth: Hi, Andrew.
[11:04] Arawn Spitteler: Good Afternoon, Andrew.
[11:04] Kitto Flora: Hello Andrew, everyone
[11:04] Andrew Linden: We're currently moving out of the building I'm in, and I was carrying boxes.
[11:04] Kitto Flora: plywood ones?
[11:04] Gaius Goodliffe: Hehe... at my work, we have interns for that. :)
[11:04] tx Oh: i made the pair of scales behind me and they don't work on havoc4
[11:05] Andrew Linden: We have some plywood boxes, actually
[11:05] tx Oh: no script. plain physical prims
[11:05] Andrew Linden: I think they are a little too big... not quite 0.5 meters
[11:05] tx Oh gave you scales package.
[11:05] Arawn Spitteler reminds: It's the contents that count
[11:05] Andrew Linden: Sidewinder should be here in a bit, I think
[11:06] Kitto Flora: You really need llSetPos() for your objects.
[11:06] Gaius Goodliffe: Ah, but that will only move them 10m.
[11:06] Kitto Flora: Further wit ha repeat loop
[11:06] Andrew Linden: Ok, so here are some announcements
[11:06] Gaius Goodliffe: :)
[11:06] Arawn Spitteler idly kicks a thought about: With Havoc 4's ability to eject by penetration, definition of Density becomes possible, with Phantom being a special case.
[11:07] Andrew Linden: some of them I'll try to repeat at the end of the hour in case anyone shows up later
[11:07] Andrew Linden: (1) I think Havok4 was pulled from the main grid over the weekend
[11:07] Andrew Linden: There was a bug where anyone could rotate you objects
[11:07] Andrew Linden: That has been fixed, and
[11:08] Andrew Linden: (2) the latest build is in QA now... hopefully an update on Wed
[11:08] Kitto Flora: Is MG all presently H1?
[11:08] Andrew Linden: (3) Not many vehicle bugs fixed in the next update... just one that should affect hover vehicles having troubles near the ground
[11:09] Andrew Linden: Yes, I think all of MG should be H1 right now
[11:09] Kitto Flora: That may explain the broken engine here...
[11:09] Gaius Goodliffe: Yeah this is H1 right now. :(
[11:09] Andrew Linden: (4) Joel and I are scheduling a special hour on Thursday where people with buggy vehicles can bring them by for demo/testing
[11:10] Andrew Linden: The plan is to hold it the hour before the normal Thursday office hour
[11:10] Andrew Linden: We'll have to hold it in a H4 region
[11:10] Andrew Linden: so the location hasn't been picked out yet
[11:10] Andrew Linden: any suggestions?
[11:10] Kitto Flora: Unlikely to be able to visit that
[11:10] Arawn Spitteler suggests holding it across regioin boundaries
[11:10] Kitto Flora: Bad time
[11:10] Gaius Goodliffe: If this gets back to H4, here would be fine.
[11:11] Andrew Linden: Gaius, is this a "void" region?
[11:11] Arawn Spitteler: It's H1 and H4 behaviour should be conveninet for comparison
[11:11] Gaius Goodliffe: Ah, I believe it is, yes....
[11:11] Kitto Flora: It is
[11:11] Andrew Linden: We'll probably want a normal region for testing.
[11:12] Andrew Linden: Maybe I'll bring up a special region
[11:12] Andrew Linden: or maybe we already have a special region I can hijack
[11:12] Andrew Linden: I'll ask Dan Linden to see if he has anthing I can borrow
[11:12] tx Oh: will you write a note in the wiki?
[11:12] Andrew Linden: Yeah, I'll update the wiki later today with info
[11:13] Andrew Linden: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/User:Andrew_Linden
[11:13] tx Oh: ok. then i can run away now
[11:13] tx Oh: ty
[11:13] tx Oh: bye
[11:13] BabTBilbo Bisnovat: bye
[11:13] Andrew Linden: tx, I also post the transcripts from these office hours
[11:13] Andrew Linden: so you can review todays later
[11:14] tx Oh: thats good.
[11:14] tx Oh: ahoi
[11:14] Andrew Linden: You can find links at that same wiki page
[11:14] Andrew Linden: One problem with troubleshooting vehicles is that I often don't have a copy of the particular vehicle that is broken
[11:15] Andrew Linden: another problem is that the owner/creator is often the best person for pointing out exactly how it breaks (if the breakage is subtle)
[11:15] Gaius Goodliffe nods.
[11:16] Andrew Linden: anyway, if you have a broken vehicle, and have the time to show up... we'll be holding a special test and burn session on Thursday 16:00 - 17:00 at a yet to be determined location.
[11:16] Disconnected from in-world Voice Chat
[11:16] Gaius Goodliffe: Excellent. I'll be there. Does that include attachments too?
[11:16] Andrew Linden: one minute... Sidewinder needs a TP...
[11:17] Sidewinder Linden: sry guys
[11:17] Andrew Linden: Ah there you are Sidewinder
[11:17] Anders Falworth: nice table landing
[11:17] Sidewinder Linden: for some reason a map search didn't find content to hover...
[11:17] Sidewinder Linden: hehe
[11:17] Andrew Linden: sorry it was taking me a while to figure out how to TP these days... in some ways I'
[11:17] Andrew Linden: I'm a total newbie
[11:17] Sidewinder Linden: np :)
[11:18] Andrew Linden: I just announced the Thurday vehicle session
[11:18] Andrew Linden: however we don't yet have a dedicated location
[11:18] Sidewinder Linden: ahh ok... we're talking about the hour before normal office hours right - 4pm pst?
[11:18] Andrew Linden: When I figure it out I'll update my main wiki page with it.
[11:18] Andrew Linden: Yes
[11:19] Sidewinder Linden: hmm i suspect we'll end up moving around a bit, as some folks are in to sailing - which is on a set of void sims
[11:19] Sidewinder Linden: i guess we'll pick a starting spot on the beta preview and leave a sign there
[11:19] Andrew Linden: oh right
[11:19] Andrew Linden: Ok, so it is going to be somewhere on the beta
[11:20] Gaius Goodliffe: In that case, Dogfight Atoll is a full sim and available... no voids sims attached though...
[11:20] Arawn Spitteler wonders if recent MG builds could be transported across
[11:20] Sidewinder Linden: that's ok
[11:20] Sidewinder Linden: we can move around
[11:20] Sidewinder Linden: arawn i can move any recent bulid that you'd like - refresh the sim on beta is what yo're after?
[11:21] Arawn Spitteler: I'd mostly be watching, since I've nothing I couldn't whip up fresh
[11:21] Gaius Goodliffe: Naw it's fine right now, was just saying if you need a spot for testing... :)
[11:21] Sidewinder Linden: ahh ok
[11:21] Andrew Linden: Lessee... what else? I already mentioned that we should have an updated H4 sometime this week.
[11:22] Gaius Goodliffe: There's even a meeting room in the sky castle, although it's hard to get around right now with the flying bugs.
[11:22] Sidewinder Linden: i think we'll be using mostly ps csu199for cars and the water sims for sailboats, and flying anywhere
[11:22] Sidewinder Linden: do you guys know names of folks that i should invite - in particular folks who do not usually make it to these office hours?
[11:23] Sidewinder Linden: for the vehicle walk through and bug-fix/tuning discussion on thursday
[11:23] Andrew Linden: Ok, well perhaps we can have some kind of expected agenda... like 20 min in csu199 and then some more time elsewhere
[11:24] Sidewinder Linden: sounds good... i'll try to get a sense of who will be ther, and that may make it easier
[11:24] Sidewinder Linden: to know timing
[11:25] Andrew Linden: Sidewinder, do you have any other announcement before we open the floor?
[11:25] Gaius Goodliffe: It might be a good idea to invite "Creem Pye", he's the lead developer for THI and was complaining last weekend to me about the state of H4. :p
[11:25] Andrew Linden: THI?
[11:25] Gaius Goodliffe: They do aircraft.
[11:25] Sidewinder Linden: i don't have anything else at the moment... just hopefully optimistic about getting our new build out :)
[11:26] Gaius Goodliffe: I entirely forget what it stands for... Tumansky Heavy Industries or something like that.
[11:26] Sidewinder Linden: thanks gaius
[11:26] Kitto Flora: Kanker Greenacre? Has he mentioned anything about sail boats?
[11:27] Andrew Linden: Kitto probably can't make it, but he already mentioned some trains in a previous office hour. I should take the time to find them and test them myself.
[11:27] Andrew Linden makes a note
[11:27] Andrew Linden: Oh, I already made a note... train in Periwinkle
[11:27] Andrew Linden: I should read my notes.
[11:27] Kitto Flora: I dont have any other vehicles that are broken, they all seem to work, cept the strange lean on the helix.
[11:28] Kitto Flora: Periwinkle train is a collision problem
[11:28] Zwagoth Klaar: I have a few broken vehicles, but most of its related to mouselook and hover bouncing, two things that I believe are fixed in this coming build.
[11:28] Kitto Flora: Slotcars will need work.
[11:29] Sidewinder Linden: kitto.. when you've talked about physics load and efficiency, has that been from experiments on periwinkle?
[11:29] Sidewinder Linden: is there a "test sequence" we can run - step by step - to see the differences?
[11:29] Sidewinder Linden: h1 - h4
[11:29] Kitto Flora: No. The main reported tests were in Wish/H4/Beta
[11:30] Kitto Flora: However, any H4 sim I start up a vehicle in - usually an airplane, The observed Time(Physics) shoots up
[11:30] Gaius Goodliffe: I was seeing it in Content to Hover last Thursday after the meeting, too.
[11:30] Sidewinder Linden: hmm
[11:30] Kitto Flora: Well a basic test is very simple-
[11:31] Sidewinder Linden: andrew.. i noticed on a sim that the physics time was noticeably higher (maybe 10ms) after rezzing one of those h1 sim-crashing "cute and bite-free panthers" at menorca
[11:31] Kitto Flora: Open the ctrl-alt-1 stats panel, expand 'Time'
[11:31] Kitto Flora: Watch Time (Physics)
[11:31] Sidewinder Linden: could high physics time on those be due to scripting problems?
[11:31] Kitto Flora: Start up an airplane.
[11:32] Kitto Flora: Well something that uses 0.1uS on a H1 MG sim uses 3.5uS on a H4/Class5, and 15uS on a H4/Class 4
[11:32] Simon Linden: Sidewinder - if we have an object that used to crash H1, then it's probably complex and thus will take a bit of physics time in H4. It shouldn't ever get to the point where it freezes up, however, it will get slow
[11:32] Sidewinder Linden: it will be interesting totry the new build on this...
[11:32] Sidewinder Linden: right
[11:33] Sidewinder Linden: the panthers didn't "on their own" crash h1 right away, but had a tendency to after a while
[11:33] Sidewinder Linden: well i think we'll just need to try this new build when it's out... we'll have a large enough sampling to see what's going on
[11:33] Simon Linden: sure, I'm just guessing they are one of those complex shapes that used to send H1 into a "deep think"
[11:34] Rex Cronon: hello everybody
[11:34] Andrew Linden: oh btw, I think we just recently added some new stats to the CTRL+SHIFT+1 info... some stats from the RCCS
[11:34] Sidewinder Linden: hey rex
[11:34] Sidewinder Linden: i think that may not show in the release viewer though... i'm still working on getting an updated beta viewer working
[11:35] Rex Cronon: i almost forgot about these office hours
[11:35] Simon Linden: Andrew - those need a viewer update
[11:35] Rex Cronon: hi
[11:35] Kitto Flora: Hi Rex
[11:35] Andrew Linden: Simon, I don't think so...
[11:35] Sidewinder Linden: so... we're awfully quiet this mroning/afternoon/night (depending on where you are...) did everyone forget coffee? :)
[11:35] Andrew Linden: As I recall Kelly said athe packet was general enough to handle a new stat automagically
[11:36] Gaius Goodliffe is not a morning person.
[11:36] Rex Cronon: so, did i miss any important announcments?
[11:36] Andrew Linden: but I'll ask again
[11:36] Andrew Linden: Yes Rex, you missed the announcement that we're going to have a special vehicle demo/debugging session on Thursday
[11:37] Saijanai Dagger: Andrew, did you see this? https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-1225
[11:37] Rex Cronon: nice, where?
[11:37] Andrew Linden: 16:00 - 17:00, right before the normal office hour
[11:37] Andrew Linden: the location yet to be determined
[11:37] Zwagoth Klaar: caffine makes me twitchy, I avoid it. As for the new stats, from my experience with the viewers code, it only displays ones it already knows about. Because of unknown low-high values.
[11:37] Andrew Linden: but will be announced on my wiki page later today
[11:37] Sidewinder Linden: hi saijanai
[11:37] Sidewinder Linden: ahh yes sai we talked about this at our internal meeting yesterday
[11:37] Sidewinder Linden: "the ant" :)
[11:37] Saijanai Dagger: The Ant...
[11:38] Andrew Linden: Oh the ant
[11:38] Andrew Linden: Well, it turns out that the ant is not actually a Havok4 specific problem
[11:38] Andrew Linden: so I don't want to add it to the project
[11:38] Andrew Linden: I'd much rather another developer fix it in a separate branch
[11:39] Saijanai Dagger: its a generic lag problem but good for testing how things respond to extremem lag
[11:39] Rex Cronon: making a blog post, would be a good idea to let others know about this vehicle testing session:)
[11:39] Andrew Linden: Hopefully we'll have a new update later today or tomorrow. it is currently in QA
[11:40] Andrew Linden: If we blog about the update then we could add info about the vehicle session
[11:40] Saijanai Dagger: in fact, I'd suggest NOT fixing it specifically, but keep it around as a test case
[11:40] Sidewinder Linden: hi rex... i'm actually really planning to do this as an invite thing... i think we have a really good selection of strong scripters
[11:40] Sidewinder Linden: and if we blog it the place will likely get overrun
[11:40] Sidewinder Linden: i think we'll get far more done with a moderate number of people, since what we are trying to do
[11:40] Andrew Linden: Right. We've only got an hour.
[11:41] Sidewinder Linden: is have serious discussion and have demo's from folks who still have unresolved problems
[11:41] Gaius Goodliffe: A lot of us are probably suffering from the same problems anyhow...
[11:41] Sidewinder Linden: so that we can see directly the behaviros
[11:41] Sidewinder Linden: right - from what i've seen, a lot of the issues appear to be linked to a much smaller number of root causes
[11:41] Rex Cronon: oh, ok. can i come and watch?
[11:42] Sidewinder Linden: sure... but pls don't talk this up outside of the folks who are actually building serious vehicles
[11:42] Rex Cronon: np
[11:42] Sidewinder Linden: the simple ones, equivalent to the kart, are working pretty well
[11:42] Sidewinder Linden: it's the advanced attachment-based ones that do really odd stuff, and folks like sailing and 'stock car racing' who care fervently about details of the dynamics
[11:42] Sidewinder Linden: who have found remining issues from what we've seen
[11:43] Rex Cronon: attachments are considered vehicles?
[11:43] Gaius Goodliffe: For that matter, the ubiquitous "Flight Feather" still has problems...
[11:43] Sidewinder Linden: hmmm i think we have afix for that in this build... ?
[11:43] Sidewinder Linden: "another" fix ;)
[11:43] Zwagoth Klaar: I have found that anything that provides hover type recreations have big problems.
[11:44] Kitto Flora: Verticla drift on hover?
[11:44] Gaius Goodliffe: More than just on hover. Worst is when you attempt to move.
[11:44] Simon Linden: fwiw I'm working right now on some flight attachment buoyancy problems - MystiTool can make you float up/down in some odd ways. It's not in the build we're about to send out.
[11:44] Gaius Goodliffe: I get literally blowed through the floor of my castle if I try to fly in it.
[11:44] Sidewinder Linden: ahh ok - i wasn't sure whether that made it
[11:44] Zwagoth Klaar: no, things like bouncing and flipping up into the air when hovering standing still.
[11:44] Sidewinder Linden: hmm
[11:45] Zwagoth Klaar: in hover height vehicles
[11:45] Sidewinder Linden: zwagoth could you write up one or two specific cases, with the specific vehicle and location (region x/y/z) so that we can test those cases when we've gota new build (after this one)
[11:46] Zwagoth Klaar: I have the two vehicles somewhere, full perm, I will look for them.
[11:46] Kitto Flora: Humm - I've not noticed anything that bad with flight feather
[11:46] Sidewinder Linden: ok... a jira would be best, marked components physics and affects version havok4 beta
[11:46] Andrew Linden: Those sound like good candidates for the vehicle session on thursday
[11:46] Andrew Linden: or give me copies today, mabye I can debug them before then
[11:46] Gaius Goodliffe: I didn't notice until my sim got up on beta and I tried using the content at 640m.
[11:46] Sidewinder Linden: true - zwagoth will you be able to be there on thursday?
[11:46] Sidewinder Linden: wherever "there" ends up being?
[11:46] Gaius Goodliffe: The problems with flight feather seem to get worse with altitude.
[11:47] Kitto Flora: and one old hover I tried, seemed to work ok, cept theres a bug thats also on the MG - if you recompile the old script a certain control input test method appears to quit working.
[11:47] Zwagoth Klaar: will it be at the regular time?
[11:47] Zwagoth Klaar gave you Halo Ghost.
[11:47] Sidewinder Linden: 4-5pm pst... the hour before regular office hours
[11:48] Sidewinder Linden: which region have you seen this behavior on, so i can put it on the beta preview before the session?
[11:48] Zwagoth Klaar: this one, but this sim has changed dramaticly
[11:48] Sidewinder Linden: umm meaning the simstate should be refreshed to match "now"?
[11:48] Sidewinder Linden: can do that
[11:49] Rex Cronon: btw, are there a set of test, that we can run the attachment through, to determine if they behave normally?
[11:49] Andrew Linden: Zwagoth, could you repeat in one sentance the main problem with the "Halo Ghost" vehicle you gave me?
[11:49] Andrew Linden: That is, how to reproduce the problem?
[11:49] Rex Cronon: tests*
[11:49] Andrew Linden: Do I need to do certain things first?
[11:49] Sidewinder Linden: rex... i'm not sure i understand your question
[11:49] Sidewinder Linden: which attachment?
[11:50] Rex Cronon: attachments used as vehicles
[11:50] Zwagoth Klaar: the v10 when you use it and sit still above ground, it will begin to wobble side to side and eventually flip up into the air and roll out of control.
[11:50] Zwagoth Klaar: the normal one is a mouselook issue where it fails to turn
[11:50] Andrew Linden: ok, thanks Zwagoth
[11:51] Rex Cronon: like for example trying to tunnel through things, maybe even through ground
[11:51] Rex Cronon: or using it while ridding a car, or a plane
[11:51] Andrew Linden: Rex, I don't think we have any standard tests available.
[11:51] Andrew Linden: The best tests are... make sure your content works as expeted.
[11:51] Rex Cronon: or trying to see how far and fast can u push yourself
[11:52] Sidewinder Linden: rex - what i meant about attachment-baseed is that some vehicles are part vehicle, and part generated by an attachment, to get around vehicle complexity limits
[11:52] Sidewinder Linden: but the attachment is vehicle-specific... not a general vehicle attachment
[11:52] Andrew Linden: Oh right, the 200 prim BMW hack
[11:53] Sidewinder Linden: that one's a particularly tricky example
[11:53] Gaius Goodliffe: Cubey's excellent bi-planes. :)
[11:53] Rex Cronon: oh, so u mean like like having to attach the hood of the car to yourself, because the car has no more prims available?
[11:53] Sidewinder Linden: heh basically
[11:53] Kitto Flora: Has Cubey done any H4 testing?
[11:53] Sidewinder Linden: that jet only fully assembles after you get a popup asking if it's ok to attach to you
[11:53] Andrew Linden: Yes, he did a while ago
[11:53] Gaius Goodliffe: He did a bug report. Still open I think
[11:54] Andrew Linden: and reported several bugs in the public jira, or commented on them at least
[11:54] Gaius Goodliffe: Of course, he did multiple bugs in one report. I've been trying to break mine down.
[11:54] Kitto Flora: I think you have fixed many of the problems he reported in the that general bug report
[11:55] Andrew Linden: Yes, I suspect so. That is the main reason I haven't sorted through it yet.
[11:55] Andrew Linden: The bugs that get the most attention are the ones that are easy to reproduce -- which means I need a copy of the vehicle.
[11:55] Kitto Flora: Would be good to get Cubey to try stuff again in latest version
[11:55] Andrew Linden: Which is why I want to to the vehicle session
[11:55] Sidewinder Linden: i'll add him to the invite list for thurs
[11:56] Andrew Linden: my hope is to get a collection of broken vehicles in my inventory, with the experience of seeing them working incorrectly
[11:56] Andrew Linden: so I can take them into a debug simulator and troubleshoot them
[11:56] Gaius Goodliffe nods.
[11:57] Andrew Linden: Cubey was one of the names that came up in our internal meeting. He's been making airplanes and other stuff for years.
[11:57] Kitto Flora: Yes. He knows where his towell is.
[11:57] Gaius Goodliffe nods.
[11:58] Andrew Linden: Ok, the hour is almost up. Any last minute topics?
[11:59] Arawn Spitteler is curious as to the timeline for llSetStatus(12,FALSE): Wouldn't it save on calculations, if rotations could be suppressed where not wanted?
[12:00] Andrew Linden: 12 = ?
[12:00] Andrew Linden: oh... 4 + 8
[12:00] Arawn Spitteler: STATUS_ROTATION_Y|STATUS_ROTATION_Z
[12:01] Andrew Linden: No, it doesn't really save on calculations... the calculations are still donhe
[12:01] Andrew Linden: done
[12:01] Andrew Linden: the physics engine is not optimized for that hack
[12:01] Andrew Linden: but the hack works because of how the inertia tensor is handled in the dynamics integration
[12:01] Andrew Linden: it is the inverse of the tensor that is actually used in the equations
[12:02] Saijanai Dagger: which hack is this?
[12:02] Saijanai Dagger is just learning the very basics of physics right now
[12:02] Arawn Spitteler wonders what is meant by HACK
[12:02] Andrew Linden: so if you zero out the right rows and columns it has the effect of not allowing the object to rotate about the specific axes
[12:02] Saijanai Dagger: ah
[12:02] Zwagoth Klaar: Bah, I remembered a havok linking stack bug, but its easier to demonstrate than to explain.
[12:02] Andrew Linden: I call it a hack because it isn't really a fully supported feature of the Havok physics engine
[12:02] Andrew Linden: but it works
[12:03] Gaius Goodliffe: Hack: quick and dirty solutionn to allow code to do what it was never designed for. :p
[12:03] Arawn Spitteler: It's documented, to the point of having macros
[12:03] Zwagoth Klaar: I'll fit it in at the vehicle meeting
[12:03] Rex Cronon: and what exctly is it good for?
[12:03] Saijanai Dagger: seems an obvious capabiilty though. Perhaps they just assumed everyone would do that anyway
[12:03] Andrew Linden: The "inverse inertia tensor hack" is a hack at the level of the Havok physics engine API
[12:03] Arawn Spitteler: Except for my See-Saw, I use it for not falling over.
[12:04] Andrew Linden: They support it in the sense that they leave it possible to do
[12:04] Saijanai Dagger: which happensto be 1:1 with the LSL llSetStatus call
[12:04] Arawn Spitteler: I'm not good enough in Physics to use the Official Havoc methods
[12:04] Andrew Linden: however, there isn't really an API call for invoking it... except hkRigidBody::setInvInertiaLocal()
[12:05] Andrew Linden: Ok, I've got to run now. Lots of stuff to do today.
[12:05] Rex Cronon: bye andrew
[12:05] Gaius Goodliffe: Have fun. :)
[12:05] Zwagoth Klaar: Take care Andrew
[12:05] Saijanai Dagger: Rex, its useful for many things, like an elevator platofrm that doesn't tip over
[12:05] Saijanai Dagger: Take care, ANdrew
[12:05] Arawn Spitteler wishes blessings, on the PlyWood Blocks
[12:05] Rex Cronon: ok, got it:)
[12:05] Sidewinder Linden: i have to jump as well.. thanks guys
[12:06] Rex Cronon: t u
[12:06] Simon Linden: bye everyone
[12:06] Kitto Flora: Byebye all
[12:06] Sidewinder Linden: more news soon :)
[12:06] Rex Cronon: bye sdidwinder, simon, kitto