Eye On The Blog: PBR Materials

 

In the Tools and Technology blog last week, Kyle Linden posted that PBR Materials will be coming to the Second Life Grid.

PBR stands for Physically Based Rendering. PBR is a richer way of specifying the surface of an object that better simulates how objects appear in real life. PBR allows for realistic lighting for metals, plastics, leather, fabric, and more, including realistic reflections and bounce lighting.  The Second Life Viewer will now be able to display these more realistic-appearing objects in world, as well as allow creators to include this more advanced information in the object texturing.

The goal of this particular update is more realism in items, among the additional qualities being able to have reflective surfaces, such as a mirror. The time period the materials will be rolled out onto the Grid is described as several weeks. It should be noted there is a risk to items in which PBR is used as they might break in sims where it is unsupported "Until PBR server support is released across the entire Second Life grid." For now, PBR can only be applied using the latest Linden Viewer, and not Firestorm and other viewers.

More information can be read on the Tools and Technology blog (here).

Bixyl Shuftan

Linden Lab Explains "February 1st Outage"

 

With the scale of the disruptions on Wednesday February 1st, it was likely Linden Lab would find themselves obligated to their customer base, the residents, to try and explain what happened. It turns out they made a statement about the "Recent February 1st Outage" the following day in the "Tools and Technology" section of the official blog. 

This Wednesday, February 1st, was a rocky one for Second Life, especially for regions on our Release Candidate (RC) channels. As with many large-scale services, we experience service interruptions from time to time, but yesterday's problems were unique and noteworthy enough that they deserve a sincere apology and more thorough explanation. 

 

The Lab stated the main cause was "a bug in object inventory behavior that was introduced by new code" saying the bug, "caused some objects' scripts to enter a non-running state."

RC rolls are regularly scheduled for 7AM Pacific (SLT) every Wednesday. While conducting one of these deployments, we received initial reports of issues relating to script behavior at 8:30AM. We immediately started investigating, and by 9AM it was clear that we needed to stop the roll, because the issue was pervasive and clearly related to the new changes. As we do in these situations, we declared an “Incident” and an Incident Commander took charge. 

By 9:30 we started a rollback, reverting the affected simulators to their previous version. We also evaluated what additional actions we would need to take, as it was unclear that a rollback alone would start the scripts which had stopped. This quickly proved to be the case, and we came up with a new plan - one that would ensure that scripts would perform as expected going forward, but possibly undo the changes our residents had been making since the time we had introduced the bug. Although this meant more downtime, it prevented further content loss, and proved to be the best way to put the grid back in order. The team came up with a quick, clean, and efficient way to achieve this and get everyone back on track. 

By 12PM the decision was made to take this direction. By 1:15PM the code was complete, by 1:40PM we confirmed that it worked. By 2:25PM all regions were brought back up.  

The report in full, signed by Grumpity Linden "and the Second Life team," can be found (here).

"I’m grateful to know that while we may make mistakes, we will not sweep them under the rug, nor look for someone to blame - we will come together and make it right."

Linden Lab Asks For Patience For The Next Few Weeks With Cloud Migration

 

It's no secret things have been more glitchy in Second Life than usual. Last Friday, Linden Lab through Oz Linden came out and apologized for the various glitches, crashes, and bugs recently, saying they were from it's moving things to cloud servers. Yesterday, Wednesday October 21, in the "Tools and Technology" blog, it was April Linden's turn. She gave an update on how much has been done so far.

We’re in a really exciting time in the history of Second Life. We’re in the home stretch on moving the grid to the cloud. We hit a fun milestone a few days ago, and now there’s over 1,000 regions running in the cloud!

Everyone in the Lab is working hard on this project, and we’re moving very quickly. I just got out of a leadership meeting where we went over what’s currently in flight, and there’s so many things moving that I lost track of them all. It’s amazing!

However, not everything was good news. She asked residents to be patient.

I’ve come to ask for a favor.  ... I’ve come to ask you for is your patience. 

We’re doing our very best to fix things that come up as we go. This means that we might need to restart regions more often than you’re used to, and things may break just a little more often than we’ve all been accustomed to.

In order to get this project done as fast as possible and minimize the time (and resulting bugs) we have to spend with one foot in our datacenter and the other in the cloud, we don’t want to limit ourselves to restarting regions just once a week. We’re ready to get this project done! We’ve seen how much better Second Life runs in the cloud, and we’re ready to have everyone on the grid experience it.

I’m sorry that things might be a little rough over the next few weeks. It’s our goal to finish the cloud migration by the holidays, so that everyone, Resident and Linden alike, can have a nice quiet holiday with our friends and families.

 We can’t promise we’ll make it by then, but we’re sure giving it all we’ve got. The mood around the Lab is really positive right now, and we’re all working hard together to make it happen. I’m really proud to be a part of the team that’s transforming Second Life as we know it.

Thanks so much for hanging in there with us. We know it’s frustrating at times, but it won’t last for too long, and there’s a better future on the other side of this. We truly appreciate your understanding and patience as we finish up this project.

So it appears in addition to the glitches we've been seeing, we're very likely to have to deal with sim restarts as well. Perhaps the Lab may slow things down a bit next week interfere with Halloween less. If not, residents may have to contend with having to suddenly leave sims in a hurry in addition to the ghosts and goblins.

To read the Linden blog post in full, Click Here.

Bixyl Shuftan

Linden Lab: "We Apologize For Recent Service Disruptions"

Glitches are more or less a part of the Second Life experience. But if it seems they've been getting worse lately, it's not your imagination. And even Linden Lab is admitting things are buggier than usual. In the Tools and Technology blog on Friday October 16, Oz Linden stated in the "Uplift Update" that while there's been overall improvement in the Second Life infrastructure, "it’s the bumps in the road that are most noticeable to our residents. We apologize for recent service disruptions ..." He would point out several "rough spots."

Region Crossings
One of the first troubles we found was that region crossings were significantly worse between a cloud region and a datacenter region. We did a deep dive into the code for objects (boats, cars, planes, etc) and produced an improvement that made them significantly faster and more reliable even within the datacenter. This has been applied to all regions already and was a good step forward.

Group Chat stalls
Many users have reported that they are not able to get messages in some of their groups; we're very much aware of the problem. The start of those problems does coincide with when the chat service was uplifted; unfortunately the problems did not become clear until moving that service back to the datacenter was not an option. We haven’t been able to get that fixed as quickly as we would like, but the good news is that we have some changes nearly ready that we think may improve the service and will certainly provide us with better information to diagnose it if it isn't fixed. Those changes are live on the Beta grid now and should move to the main grid very soon.

Bake Failures
Wednesday and especially Thursday of this past week were bad days for avatar appearance, and we're very much aware of how important that is. The avatar bake service has actually been uplifted for some time - it wasn't moving it that caused the problem, but another change to a related service. The good news is that thanks to a great cross-team effort during those two days we were able to determine why an apparently unrelated simulator update triggered the problem and got a fix deployed Thursday night.

Increased Teleport Failures
We have seen a slight increase in the frequency of teleport failures. I know that if it's happened to you it probably doesn't feel like a "slight" problem, especially since it appears to be true that if it's happened to someone once, it tends to keep happening for a while. Measured over the entire grid, it's just under two percentage points, but even that is unacceptable. We're less sure of the specific causes for this (including whether or not it's Uplift related), but are improving our ability to collect data on it and are very much focused on finding and fixing the problem whatever it is.

Marketplace & Stipend Glitches
We've had some challenges related to uplift for both the Marketplace and the service that pays Premium Stipends. Marketplace had to be returned to the datacenter yesterday, but we'll correct the problems that required the rollback and get it done soon. The Stipends issues were both good and bad for users; there were some delays, but on the other hand we sent some users extra stipends (our fault, you win - we aren't taking them back); those problems are, we believe, solved now.

So why all of the glitches and bugs? Oz called the Uplift to move Second Life's data to cloud servers "a massive, complicated project that I've previously compared to converting a steam-driven railroad to a maglev monorail -- without ever stopping the train." He would later try to reasure the residents, "While this week in particular has seen some bumps in the road, it's actually going well overall. Lots of the infrastructure you don't interact with directly, and some you do, has been uplifted and has worked smoothly." He would go on to say almost all of the Beta Grid's sims were in the Cloud, and "we've uplifted around a hundred regions on the main grid. Performance of those regions has been very very good, and stability has been excellent." He would go on to say more sims would be uplifted over the weekend and that "Uplift of the Release Candidate regions, which will bring the count into the thousands, will begin soon."

Oz would say the Uplift to the Cloud should be completed, or at least be close to it, by the end of the year.

To read the blog entry in full, Click Here.

Bixyl Shuftan

April Linden Explains Last Sunday's Outage

If you tried to get on Second Life on Sunday October 27th, then you may have been blocked by issues that persisted all afternoon. On Wednesday, April Linden, the Operations Manager of the Grid, posted in the Tools and Technology blog just what happened in "The Sunday That Was Not a Fun Day."

The trouble started back on Thursday. We had some pretty bad problems talking to key services (packet loss) on one of our Internet links. It didn’t impact everything, but the stuff it hit was pretty important. It started for a few hours on Thursday, but just magically went away on its own. It’s never good when a problem just magically fixes itself because it’s pretty likely it’s gonna happen again. 

The same thing happened again on Friday, but once again it went away on its own before we were able to debug what actually happened. 

We were nervous going into the weekend, and sure enough, it bit us again on Sunday. We started having more Internet communication problems, but this time, it didn’t just go away. 

Now that we had it in a bad state we started to troubleshoot and figured out really fast that it wasn’t our equipment. Our stuff was (and still is) working just fine, but we were getting intermittent errors and delays on traffic that was routed through one of our providers. We quickly opened a ticket with the network provider and started engaging with them. That’s never a fun thing to do because these are times when we’re waiting on hold on the phone with a vendor while Second Life isn’t running as well as it usually does. 

After several hours trying to troubleshoot with the vendor, we decided to swing a bigger hammer and adjust our Internet routing. It took a few attempts, but we finally got it, and we were able to route around the problematic network. We’re still trying to troubleshoot with the vendor, but Second Life is back to normal again.

April went on to say that the power outages affecting much of California had nothing to do with the outage, although one of the people working on the issue was, "One of our engineers was working in the dark in a house without power, with his laptop being powered by a long string of extension cords that ran to a generator outside."

We’re really sorry that this past Sunday wasn’t very fun. The weekend before Halloween is a really fun time to be Inworld, and it was a frustrating day all the way around. (I personally love the way our Residents really get into Halloween in a way that’s only possible in Second Life!) Knowing that it wasn't as awesome as it could have been makes me sad, and we’re working to make it better in the future. 

April requested that if anyone suspects an issue that may have been caused by the outage, please let the Support team know.

Source: BBC, Tools and Technology

Bixyl Shuftan

Eye On The Blog: "Information About Privacy and Security in Tilia"

Last Friday, Soft Linden, Linden Lab's Information Security Manager, posted in the Tools and Technology blog, "Information About Privacy and Security in Tilia."

A large number of you attended the Tilia Town Hall  last week. Aside from the many questions you had about how Tilia affects Second Life L$ and monetary activity, privacy was a common concern. Grumpity asked if I would answer a few of the questions about Tilia privacy and security which surfaced in the town hall and in our forums.

There were four sample questions and four lengthy answers.

Where did the Tilia team come from? And why should I trust Tilia with my personal information?
 

Soft answered, "The Tilia team is made up of people you previously knew as Linden Lab employees." He called the team "passionate about privacy and security," and that many had alts in Second Life and knew many of the residents there. They also promised, "the information you store with Tilia is never provided to third parties for purposes such as marketing, " and We won’t even provide that information to the US government unless we are compelled to do so through a legal process such as a subpoena or a search warrant."

 

Does Tilia change how my information is secured?
 

In short, yes. Soft stated, "Figuratively speaking, we locked the old vault inside a bigger, stronger vault." Of the 'new vault,' it "uses modern algorithms to encrypt sensitive information in a way that would require both enormous computing power and an enormous amount of memory for an attacker to crack… if they could even get a copy of the encrypted data. These algorithms are specifically tuned to defeat expensive decryption acceleration hardware." Their existing encryption technology was called "industry standard at the time."

It sounds like a lot has changed at once. Aren’t large changes risky?

Soft answered, "Tilia was designed with security and privacy as its primary considerations." They had people, "some of our key privacy and security practices and procedures," and that they pay a security company to attempt to hack into their servers to test the m.

What does Tilia mean for Second Life privacy and security in the future?

"We have many plans for Tilia," Soft stated. They are in the process of moving "additional forms of information ... Now that we have a new privacy and security foundation, we can extend the amount of information that enjoys this level of protection. If it pertains to your real life identity, we believe in leveraging Tilia protection wherever possible." It also mentioned their goals were ensuring, "compliance with upcoming privacy and security regulations."

To check the blogpost in it's entirely, Click Here.

Bixyl Shuftan

New Second Life Viewer Release Notes Website

There was some noteworthy news in the Second Life Tools and Technology blog on May 16 , Release Notes.

Over seven years ago, I posted my first set of Viewer release notes to the Second Life Wiki, where we have kept all of our release notes to this day. Over the years, we’ve made some minor tweaks to the appearance and how we generate them, but for they most part they have remained the same.
 

While the wiki has served us well for release notes, it’s time to improve their readability and browsability. We’ve been putting together the finishing touches to a new website dedicated solely to release notes, with a new look and feel that makes the individual pages easier to find, and easier to read - take a look!

Previous release notes will still be archived on the wiki, however, new releases will be shared and published on the new website.

 

Our goal is to improve overall accessibility and ease in browsing and reviewing release notes. I, personally, am excited to see the dedicated new website and hope you are too!

The website has more than just it's main page, but also separate pages for Repositories, Version Numbering, their Viewer Support Policy (to support their two most recent viewers), and pages for recent viewer releases, such as 6.2.2.527338 .

As mentioned, the Second Like Wikia also keeps records of release notes.

Hat Tip: Daniel Voyager

Bixyl Shuftan

"Darn Teleport Disconnects," Lab Admits Grid Trouble

If you're been having trouble teleporting across Second Life lately, you're not alone. Lately, a number of people in group chats I've listened in on, as well as friends and associates in private messages, have been complaining about various glitches on the grid. Besides the lag, probably the most frequent complaint I've heard has been crashing while trying to teleport from one spot to another.

Well, it seems things have gotten to the point that the Lab has to acknowledge there's a problem. In the "Tools and Technology" part of the official Second Life blog on Monday April 9, they posted that they're aware of the problem.

Many Residents have noted that in the last few weeks we have had an increase in disconnects during a teleport. These occur when an avatar attempts to teleport to a new Region (or cross a Region boundary, which is handled similarly internally) and the teleport or Region crossing takes longer than usual.  Instead of arriving at the expected destination, the viewer disconnects ...

The Lab believes that the cause is "a timing-sensitive failure in the hand-off" between sims when a teleport takes place, and there doesn't seem to be a way to eliminate the chance of a crash. They have people trying to get to the root of the problem and get rid of it. "Quite unfortunately, this problem dodged our usual monitors of the behavior of simulators in the Release Channels, and as a result we're also enhancing those monitors to prevent similar problems getting past us in the future. We're sorry about this - we empathize with how disruptive it has been."

A few residents I've talked to wonder if Linden Lab's moving information of it's data centers to cloud servers has something to do with recent bugs. When Patch and Grumpity Linden spoke at the VWBPE last Thursday, Grumpity stated the Lab was "very carefully moving things and not disturbing the way things are set up." So if one takes the Lab's word for it, the problem isn't The Cloud.

In the meantime, it looks like residents will be dealing with the possibility of their teleports ending up as viewer crashes, and having to restart the viewers and slowly log back in.

Bixyl Shuftan