User:Andrew Linden/Office Hours/2008 12 04

Transcript of Andrew Linden's office hours:

[17:01]	Sindy Tsure:	hi simon!
[17:01]	Simon Linden:	Hi Sindy
[17:02]	Sindy Tsure arrives just in time to say...
[17:02]	Sindy Tsure:	brb
[17:02]	Simon Linden:	ok, sure, gonna wait for a few minutes hoping others show up
[17:02]	Gellan Glenelg:	hi
[17:02]	Simon Linden:	Hi Gellan
[17:02]	Gellan Glenelg:	is there an office hour?
[17:03]	Simon Linden:	Yes, this is where Andrew Linden's office hours are ... he's not able to make it today, so I'm hosting it
[17:03]	Gellan Glenelg:	ah ok
[17:03]	Gellan Glenelg:	just checking i wasn't disturbing :)
[17:03]	Gellan Glenelg:	location change confused me
[17:04]	Simon Linden:	No worries - we cover topics focusing on the simulator, the part of SL that runs regions with in-world physics and such. It sometimes wanders into other areas as well
[17:04]	Sindy Tsure:	back!
[17:04]	Gellan Glenelg:	yeah - have been to andrew's before - tho not often
[17:04]	Sindy Tsure:	hiya gellan
[17:04]	Gellan Glenelg:	hi
[17:05]	Simon Linden:	So we might as well get started ... Andrew's not able to come, so I'm pitch-hitting for him
[17:05]	Gellan Glenelg:	so - I won't have any specific questions/input - more just like to know as much as possible about what's new :)
[17:05]	Simon Linden:	Let's see...
[17:06]	Simon Linden:	The 1.25 server should be going out next week on schedule. We found and fixed the back-end memory leaks that were our big problem
[17:06]	Gellan Glenelg:	yeah - was just at vektor's and he said maybe tuesday
[17:06]	Sindy Tsure:	great!
[17:07]	Simon Linden:	Right - I think they will do the usual process of starting with one rack of systems and let that sit for a while. Then, assuming it's OK, half the grid, then the rest
[17:07]	Gellan Glenelg:	hi ellla
[17:07]	Sindy Tsure:	prospero's been quite.. that sounds like his usual MO, tho
[17:07]	Sindy Tsure:	she's downstairs raiding your fridge, simon
[17:08]	Simon Linden:	Correct, that's his usual plan
[17:08]	Sindy Tsure:	hi ella
[17:08]	Gellan Glenelg:	you see to have your head stuck in a prim..
[17:08]	Simon Linden:	That looks painful
[17:08]	Gellan Glenelg:	i blame those pesky physics-type liindens ;PPP
[17:08]	Sindy Tsure:	lol
[17:08]	Simon Linden:	I think the original landmark we gave out for this place was on the 2nd floor
[17:09]	Simon Linden:	I have no other annoucements ... have been working on bugs and an un-annouced project
[17:09]	Sindy Tsure:	oh? which project is that?
[17:10]	Sindy Tsure smiles
[17:10]	Simon Linden:	The one that I can't talk about :)
[17:10]	Sindy Tsure:	d'oh
[17:10]	Ellla McMahon:	not fridge .. drinks cupboard or chocolate Advent Calendar, I've opened today's .. hope that's OK :))
[17:10]	Sindy Tsure:	lol
[17:10]	Gellan Glenelg:	haha
[17:10]	Simon Linden:	I was thinking that I should build a serving tray with drinks on it to pass out at office hours
[17:11]	Simon Linden:	Maybe a sideboard with snacks
[17:11]	Ellla McMahon:	and pizza !
[17:11]	Sindy Tsure always has sheep if people are hungry
[17:11]	Gellan Glenelg:	some lindens have peanuts / pizza
[17:11]	Ellla McMahon:	:))
[17:11]	Sindy Tsure:	er.. and coffee
[17:11]	Sindy Tsure:	a while ago, you'd mentioned a problem with sims sending big textures more than once
[17:11]	Sindy Tsure:	did that get fixed?
[17:12]	Simon Linden:	It wasn't sending, but loading from the disk and flushing from memory too soon
[17:12]	Sindy Tsure:	oh..
[17:12]	Simon Linden:	... which required it to re-load
[17:12]	Simon Linden:	Yes, that's been fixed but it's not on 1.25
[17:12]	Sindy Tsure:	k
[17:12]	Simon Linden:	It should be in 1.26 and is waiting for QA testing
[17:12]	Sindy Tsure:	hm.. you mentioned something else that i had a comment on..
[17:12]	Sindy Tsure tries to page it back in
[17:13]	Simon Linden:	I've noticed some odd drawing for a while, which I passed to the viewer team. When I log in, far stuff gets drawn before nearby objects
[17:13]	Sindy Tsure:	oh.. i've heard talk about that before
[17:13]	Sindy Tsure:	thought it had to do with the way the interest list was sorted..
[17:14]	Simon Linden:	It's really bad when I log into here, my home location. I'm standing up in the air, but it draws the neighboring house and trees before it gets around to the roof we're on
[17:14]	Gellan Glenelg:	which viewer version? I think I've seen similar recently... 1.22.something I think
[17:14]	Sindy Tsure:	thought i heard that the viewer starts deciding what to draw before it gets the whole interest list
[17:15]	Sindy Tsure:	and the interest list doesn't really get sorted per-user/location..
[17:15]	Simon Linden:	It's the latest RC - I just downloaded it before logging in today. It's been around for a bit
[17:15]	Sindy Tsure:	hi rex
[17:15]	Simon Linden:	hey Rex
[17:16]	Rex Cronon:	hi sindy, simon
[17:16]	Rex Cronon:	hi everybody
[17:16]	Gellan Glenelg:	hi
[17:16]	Sindy Tsure remembers what she was was gonna bug simon about.. http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-2441
[17:16]	Simon Linden:	So the floor's open for questions... ok, lemme look at that one...
[17:16]	Sindy Tsure also mentions http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-22 , in case andrew reads the transcript
[17:17]	Sindy Tsure:	hm.. inventory server ate my svc-2441 repro objects
[17:17]	Sindy Tsure:	:(
[17:17]	Simon Linden:	Ah, good to get that one mentioned again :)
[17:17]	Sindy Tsure:	think last meeting you'd mentioned not doign that one because too many people rely on gravity
[17:18]	Simon Linden:	I did look at llMoveToTarget() a while ago ... I think we talked about it some months back
[17:18]	Simon Linden:	yeah, that was the problem ... if we null out the gravity effect now, it will break some existing content
[17:18]	Sindy Tsure:	yep.. that was the reason i started coming here!
[17:18]	Sindy Tsure:	even though llMoveToTarget shouldn't use gravity?
[17:18]	Simon Linden:	So it would be possible to do if we could come up with a clean way to add it to the API
[17:19]	Sindy Tsure:	i guess that makes sense
[17:20]	Simon Linden:	Maybe llMoveToTarget( target, tau, <some other parameter> ) ... I'm not sure about the language design issues here with LSL
[17:20]	Sindy Tsure:	http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-1479 sounds like it might be that.. "New llFunction: like llMoveToTarget but with more damping control"
[17:21]	Sindy Tsure:	only 12 votes but i know a bunch of people would like it
[17:21]	Simon Linden:	Hmmm, that's interesting. Since there's some demand for that, I can see more of an argument for a new updated function
[17:21]	Sindy Tsure:	it would be very, very useful for things that move thru a set of waypoints
[17:22]	Sindy Tsure spies colton up high.. need to bug him for a bear if he gets closer..
[17:22]	Sindy Tsure:	sPIEs..
[17:22]	Simon Linden:	I remember talking with someone, I think perhaps Kitto, who wanted that - he could make his trains folllow the track easier with some of those options
[17:22]	Sindy Tsure gets pies dropped on her head
[17:23]	Sindy Tsure:	yepyep.. i'm sure the train crowd would love it
[17:23]	Sindy Tsure:	right now, you have to overshoot the target to get smooth movement
[17:23]	Sindy Tsure:	not horrible but it's a bit of a hassle.. that's how i discovered the gravity thing - by overshooting
[17:23]	Simon Linden:	exacty ... hmmm, that is more interesting and useful
[17:23]	Sindy Tsure:	...and having the object not hit the target
[17:23]	Sindy Tsure:	hi orion
[17:24]	Orion Shamroy:	Hi Sindy. :) Is this Andrew's Office hour?
[17:24]	Simon Linden:	I'm not sure now how hard it is changing functions with mono as well as LSL to deal with, but that looks like a nice little project
[17:24]	Sindy Tsure:	it is! simon staged a coup for tonight, tho
[17:24]	Simon Linden:	Hi Orion - yes, it is. Andrew may be coming late if he gets out of his current issue
[17:24]	Simon Linden:	I'm subbing
[17:24]	Orion Shamroy:	ooh. :) yay :)
[17:25]	Sindy Tsure:	i think the last time we talked about it, andrew had some intersting plans for all sorta of new scripted physical movment.. keyframes and such
[17:25]	Simon Linden:	That sounds like him :)
[17:25]	Sindy Tsure:	:)
[17:26]	Simon Linden:	We had lunch together today with a few other people and discussed some of the more far-reaching ideas --- larger simulator regions for activities like sailing, driving or flying, a 3D layout, other fun stuff
[17:27]	Simon Linden:	Don't know if or when we will do any of it, but a lot of us would like to work on those things
[17:27]	Sindy Tsure:	how might the larger regions work? 4x the space on a whole cpu core?
[17:27]	Sindy Tsure:	*cpu
[17:27]	Sindy Tsure:	er.. *server
[17:28]	Sindy Tsure sighs.. same cpu resources per m2 of land?
[17:28]	Simon Linden:	We were thinking larger space ... some arbitrary rectangle shape, maybe 2x2 regions now so it is 512 x 512 meters
[17:28]	Sindy Tsure:	or is that just a config option you guys can poke at easily?
[17:29]	Simon Linden:	The CPU issue is another dimension ... we're not well set up to take advantage of more CPUs for a single simulator/region
[17:29]	Sindy Tsure:	so doing a 512x512 on a single core would be like a ginormous openspace
[17:29]	Simon Linden:	It's not easy ... too much code has been written that assumes the current shape. For example, a region is hard-coded to have 4 neighbors, one North, South, East and West
[17:29]	Sindy Tsure:	or homestead
[17:30]	Sindy Tsure:	oh.. and the 512x512 might have 2 per side
[17:30]	Simon Linden:	Right ... we'd want to make sure it could plug into the current design and database. Also, there are things that look up a region based on a world location...
[17:30]	Gellan Glenelg:	so potentially 8 regions full of child agents... ouch
[17:31]	Simon Linden:	... which now maps easily to one entry in the database. If one region spanned more, it would have to be fixed
[17:31]	Sindy Tsure:	and splitting a single sim into having 4 names would probably be even harder to fix?
[17:31]	Sindy Tsure:	*single supersim
[17:32]	Gellan Glenelg:	I doubt that would be too bad - guessing similar code already exists for 4 parcels on one region
[17:32]	Sindy Tsure:	child agents aren't always bad, gellan! i think the sims are pretty smart about who they care about
[17:33]	Simon Linden:	yeah, I think we'd implement it so it looks like 4 regions in our database, but is one simulator running all of them together
[17:33]	Gellan Glenelg:	well, I'm thinking that's communication with up to 8 other SIMs instead of current up-to-4... which has got to be worse
[17:33]	Simon Linden:	We'd just want to be able to eliminate costly duplication - like those connections to other sims
[17:33]	Gellan Glenelg:	especially when you're running the whole 512x512 on one core
[17:34]	Simon Linden:	So far it's just been a thought exercise, but I think it would be good for sailing or flying
[17:34]	Orion Shamroy:	Hmm... So mainly 4 homesteads with the same name crammed together? If they're all running on the same core then presumably they would all speak internally to one another?
[17:34]	Sindy Tsure:	but they could share cache and stuff.. it might be a net win
[17:35]	Simon Linden:	Right, it would appear to the outside as 4 homesteads, but if you moved from one to another you wouldn't actually have a region crossing or anything
[17:35]	Sindy Tsure:	heya andrew
[17:35]	Gellan Glenelg:	hi andrew
[17:35]	Andrew Linden:	Hello
[17:35]	Orion Shamroy:	Neat idea >:)
[17:35]	Rex Cronon:	hi andrew
[17:36]	Simon Linden:	Hi Andrew - we were just shooting around ideas about larger regions, earlier some llMoveToTarget() options
[17:36]	Simon Linden:	I haven't promised anything :)
[17:37]	Andrew Linden:	yeah, that would be nice if we could swing larger regions, or more arbitrarily shaped regions
[17:37]	Andrew Linden:	it would be a lot of work
[17:38]	Sindy Tsure:	it'd be cool but i'd vote for newer lsl stuff first, i think
[17:38]	Sindy Tsure:	if i had a vote, that is
[17:38]	Simon Linden:	We haven't really scoped out the work ... maybe we should pick a single day to work on it, and really figure out what must be done
[17:38]	Sindy Tsure:	:)
[17:39]	Andrew Linden:	ugh... honestly I've just got a huge list of things to do that would go before it
[17:39]	Andrew Linden:	(but I try not to complain about it too much, really!)
[17:39]	Simon Linden:	yeah, that's true. Too many projects
[17:39]	Sindy Tsure:	what?? whipping up some new lsl stuff isn't free??
[17:39]	Andrew Linden:	we'd have to hire people to work on it... I'll probably never get a chance
[17:39]	Sindy Tsure tries her 'shocked' face but can't pull it off
[17:40]	Andrew Linden:	looks like I'm going to pick up more official responsibilities regarding bug fixing and maintaining the simulator in the near future (next year or two)
[17:41]	Andrew Linden:	I'll probably only get "projects" that are emergencies or bug fixes for a while
[17:41]	Sindy Tsure:	:(
[17:42]	Andrew Linden:	it's not all bad... some of the features i want to do are pretty small/easy and I might be able to do them on the side
[17:42]	Andrew Linden:	but we need to get on top of the pile of known bugs first
[17:43]	Sindy Tsure:	it's coming up on 6 months since 1.24 hit the grid.. will sure be nice to get 1.25 into the wild
[17:43]	Sindy Tsure:	start the server release train moving...
[17:43]	Andrew Linden:	I suspect this office hour will eventually become an even better place to bring your bug complaints.
[17:43]	Simon Linden:	yes, definitely
[17:44]	Simon Linden:	... about getting 1.25 out
[17:44]	Sindy Tsure already mentioned svc-22 for your transcript, andrew
[17:44]	Andrew Linden:	I think the bug I've got on my plate is the remaining blocker for 1.25
[17:44]	Andrew Linden:	no wait... there was another blocker mentioned today
[17:44]	Andrew Linden:	I forget the details though
[17:44]	Simon Linden:	ah, there still are blockers?
[17:45]	Andrew Linden:	yeah, a problem with login and something about nightly scripts and the "assessor" whatever that is
[17:45]	Andrew Linden:	some offline web-services tool I think
[17:46]	Sindy Tsure:	do they call things that have been around for a while 'blocker' or just recent regressions?
[17:46]	Andrew Linden:	recent regessions
[17:46]	Sindy Tsure nods
[17:47]	Andrew Linden:	if it has been around since forever and people are working around it... not a blocker
[17:47]	Simon Linden:	'blocker' is really any problem preventing us from pushing out the new version
[17:47]	Sindy Tsure:	yepyep
[17:47]	Andrew Linden:	right, but a not so bad new bug might not be a blocker
[17:47]	Sindy Tsure:	similar to my rl job.. people alway try to squeeze something in that's been around for ages in there, tho
[17:47]	Simon Linden:	... but regression bugs are bad. We shouldn't be going down in quality
[17:48]	Andrew Linden:	but a bug that would accidentally zero everyone's balance... that might block it.
[17:48]	Simon Linden:	... or increase their balance :)
[17:48]	Sindy Tsure:	no.. i'd be ok with that, simon!
[17:48]	Andrew Linden:	not everyone would though...
[17:49]	Sindy Tsure is sure Zee would have kittens
[17:49]	Andrew Linden:	too much money and it becomes worthless
[17:49]	Andrew Linden has little humor today. Everything is taken literally.
[17:49]	Sindy Tsure:	not if i can cash it out and put it towards tier!
[17:49]	Andrew Linden:	(I don't think he'd have kittens)
[17:49]	Sindy Tsure:	puppies?
[17:50]	Andrew Linden:	Maybe puppies.
[17:50]	Sindy Tsure:	lol
[17:50]	Sindy Tsure:	hm.. i saw a weird physics thing the other day.. dunno if it's new, tho
[17:50]	Sindy Tsure:	with my ridable sheep..
[17:51]	Andrew Linden:	what was happening?
[17:51]	Sindy Tsure:	once they start moving, they're phantom/physical
[17:51]	Sindy Tsure:	if somebody sits on one, they're still that but they bump into stuff because there's an avatar on them
[17:51]	Rex Cronon:	i think we have a runaway shee:)
[17:52]	Sindy Tsure was seeing ones that had people sit then stand still bumping into things
[17:52]	Simon Linden:	Kinda nice how they walk on the air
[17:52]	Rex Cronon:	sheep*
[17:52]	Andrew Linden:	oh right... the avatar remains collidable when it its on phantom (at least that is how it is supposed to work)
[17:52]	Andrew Linden:	so it isn't the sheep bumping... but the avatar itself
[17:52]	Sindy Tsure:	yep.. but the collisions still happened after the person got up
[17:52]	Simon Linden:	I think I remember that issue from the combat regions ... AV becoming phantom was a problem in a shooting game
[17:52]	Sindy Tsure:	see?
[17:53]	Andrew Linden:	oh... that sounds like a bug
[17:53]	Gellan Glenelg:	simon: http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-1253
[17:53]	Andrew Linden:	it still shows up phantom in the UI
[17:53]	Sindy Tsure:	it's temp.. want a copy?
[17:53]	Sindy Tsure:	there ya go
[17:53]	Andrew Linden:	sure
[17:53]	Sindy Tsure:	wear that, say 'sheep'
[17:53]	Rex Cronon:	that is not exactly a problem. more like a very interestin thing:)
[17:53]	Sindy Tsure:	or pull it out of the object inventory
[17:54]	Simon Linden:	Ugh, that's still open
[17:54]	Andrew Linden:	I wonder if that is magically fixed in server-1.25
[17:54]	Simon Linden:	The bug comments say no
[17:54]	Andrew Linden:	oh ok
[17:56]	Simon Linden:	But it sounds like an ugly corner case, if I remeber correctly how we create the colliison shapes from linked objects. A combination of phantom/non phantom might be hard to do
[17:56]	Andrew Linden:	no, we already do that for sitting agents
[17:56]	Sindy Tsure:	the sheep thing doesn't break anything of mine.. just something i noticed and figured i'd mention
[17:57]	Andrew Linden:	we now pass in a list of primitives to the physics engine interface
[17:57]	Andrew Linden:	and the collision group of each prim is figured out
[17:57]	Andrew Linden:	and set uniqely
[17:57]	Andrew Linden:	so it isn't hard t have distinct collision groups per prim
[17:57]	Simon Linden:	oh, ok, then we should be able to do it
[17:58]	Andrew Linden:	it looks like we're properly doing per-prim collision groups when the avatar sits
[17:58]	Andrew Linden:	however on standup something goes wrong for the seat
[17:59]	Andrew Linden:	I'm pretty sure I fixed something in there in 1.25 but it has been so long ago I can't remember the exact details
[17:59]	Sindy Tsure will try to get to the beta grid and test it there..
[17:59]	Andrew Linden:	I thought it was something to do with the avatar sometimes staying phantom on standup
[17:59]	Sindy Tsure:	oh! that one tortures me, too
[18:00]	Andrew Linden:	Sindy, are your sheep also using "VolumeDetect" feature?
[18:00]	Sindy Tsure:	usually when you tp in soemwhere.. drop thru the floor and it stay phantom until you sit on something
[18:00]	Sindy Tsure:	nope.. just physical/phantom
[18:00]	Sindy Tsure:	llSetSTatus stuff
[18:00]	Simon Linden:	Do you do the TP from a sitting position?
[18:00]	Wolfhaven Teleportation HUD v3.0 is Ready
[18:00]	Sindy Tsure:	almost never, simon
[18:01]	Sindy Tsure:	hi kitto
[18:01]	Kitto Flora:	Hello
[18:01]	Kitto Flora got divrted and missed
[18:01]	Andrew Linden:	Alas, I arrived late, and I also have to leave on time.
[18:01]	Andrew Linden:	Simon, can you send me the transcript to the whole hour?
[18:01]	Sindy Tsure:	so.. you've got -1 minutes left.. plenty of time!
[18:02]	Simon Linden:	sure, will do
[18:02]	Kitto Flora:	I have one Q that probably the crowd can answer:
[18:02]	Sindy Tsure:	cya, andrew
[18:02]	Andrew Linden:	goodbye
[18:02]	Kitto Flora:	Is there a known error in the World/About land/Objects count?
[18:02]	Orion Shamroy:	Live long and prosper! :)
[18:02]	Gellan Glenelg:	thanks simon, andrew
[18:02]	Kitto Flora:	Byebye Andrew
[18:03]	Simon Linden:	Kitto - that sound vaguely familiar, but I'm not aware of a specific bug there
[18:03]	Rex Cronon:	bye andre
[18:03]	Sindy Tsure:	what's the symptom?
[18:03]	Kitto Flora:	Object Owners count...
[18:04]	Kitto Flora:	In Wish sim we have a resident with 82 objects (prims) in that World counter, but when they count thir prims its less than 70
[18:04]	Simon Linden:	Hmm, that's odd
[18:05]	Sindy Tsure:	sure it's not something with group land?
[18:05]	Kitto Flora:	Also when one selects that Owner, so the prims hilite, then some prims *not* owne by them lite op
[18:05]	Sindy Tsure:	i think i've seen that with temp prims.. they highlight more often than they should
[18:05]	Kitto Flora:	All the land is group owned. One Region, one parcel, all objects are set to group
[18:06]	Kitto Flora:	The items lit up in error are surfing waves!
[18:06]	Kitto Flora:	They lite up for all peoplr I tried
[18:06]	Kitto Flora:	Oh
[18:06]	Kitto Flora:	They may be temp prims
[18:07]	Simon Linden:	That's a good one to report .. .sounds like a viewer bug, or perhaps a combination of sim/viewer problems
[18:07]	Sindy Tsure:	sounds like what i saw.. temps were getting highlighted for every user
[18:07]	Simon Linden:	If you have a good reproducable case, please make a jira for it
[18:07]	Kitto Flora:	In itself its no taproblem: Its an obvious hilite error
[18:07]	Kitto Flora:	The big problem is prim count per Resident
[18:08]	Simon Linden:	Hmmm, well, both of those seem worth filing bug reports for. It sounds like two different things
[18:09]	Kitto Flora:	Maybe to you. The bottom line on Jira now is its the *last* thing that will get done. Jira is such a disappointing mess that it will be the last thing to get any time spent on it.
[18:09]	Kitto Flora:	My question today is 'is this a known problem'
[18:09]	Sindy Tsure:	it can be frustrating
[18:10]	Kitto Flora:	Seems not to be around here
[18:10]	Simon Linden:	I didn't know about it
[18:11]	Simon Linden:	I have to run as well ... thanks everyone for coming
[18:11]	Sindy Tsure wonders if there might be ghost prims messing up the count
[18:11]	Gellan Glenelg:	for the "then some prims *not* owne by them lite op", kitto - I believe ALL temp prims light up, whichever bnname you select
[18:11]	Rex Cronon:	bye everybody
[18:11]	Kitto Flora:	Indeed Sindy
[18:11]	Sindy Tsure too.. cya, simon! ty!
[18:11]	Rex Cronon:	i g2g
[18:11]	Kitto Flora:	I'll have to get a count some other way
[18:11]	Kitto Flora:	Byebye all
[18:11]	Simon Linden:	take care everyone, see you next time