Tuesday 7 August 2012

Pathfinding Server Rollout

Pathfinding  is rolling out on all regions today and may have an impact on the performance of your regions as well as introduce some new bugs.   INFO: What is pathfinding? Click here

Pathfinding  & Region Performance
Once your region has been updated today, it will have Pathfinding running on it. Until your region has been optimized, this may have a performance impact. Linden Lab has assured me the impact will be at worst 4ms on main regions and 1ms on homesteads and at best won't be noticed. In layman's terms, this is around 18% max of region performance. In order to optimize your region, you will need a viewer with pathfinding tools; currently these tools are only available in a LL Beta Viewer.

Your options will be to A) optimize your region; B) turn Pathfinding off on your region; or C) do nothing. Instructions for the first two options below...

Note: Only Region Owners and Estate Managers can work with Pathfinding. 
Only Region Owners and Estate Managers can enable/disable Pathfinding on a region. Parcel owners can optimize their parcels on a Pathfinding enabled region. 
Instructions to optimize your regions:
Download the LL Beta Viewer (Win, Mac, Linux) and go through the process of optimizing your region / parcel.

Turn Pathfinding off
1. Get sim console open.
Phoenix: Go to the top menu bar, Advanced > Consoles > Region Debug Console. (Press Ctrl-Alt-D to enable the Advanced menu if you do not already have it enabled.)
Firestorm: Go to the top menu bar, Develop > Consoles > Region Debug Console. (Press Ctrl-Alt-Q if you do not have Develop menu enabled.)

2. In the console window that opens, type (without the quotes), "set dynamic_pathfinding false", and press enter.

3. Restart your region.

Note: More information about Pathfinding can be found here: 
http://wiki.phoenixviewer.com/pathfinding

New bugs you should be aware of!
Along with Pathfinding come changes to the Havok Physics engine, which have introduced some new bugs we think you should be aware of, including issues with some vehicles, physics, phantom and sculpts. You can view the list of issues we are aware of at the following link. None of these issues can be fixed by our support team:
http://wiki.phoenixviewer.com/pathfinding_server_bugs

Note: Unfortunately there are quite a few Linden JIRAs on this list that have been set hidden from public view. There is nothing we can do about that beyond offering a description of the issue. 

Questions & Answers from Linden Lab 
Yesterday I sent a list of questions off to LL and received the answers back this morning. These questions and answers may be of interest to you, as well, so I've put them online here.
http://wiki.phoenixviewer.com/pf_questions

Sincerely,

Jessica Lyon
Project Manager
The Phoenix Firestorm Project, Inc.

P.S. Please pass this blog post along to all the region owners you know!

Permalink http://phoenixviewer.blogspot.ca/2012/08/pathfinding-server-rollout.html

38 comments:

  1. Looks like Linden Lab are going to dish out some stuff for almost everyone to chew on. Rejoice!

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  2. Personal opinion...

    LL to all users: Bend over and take it in the shorts. We don't care if we break everything in sight as long as the geeks get to play with new toys.

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  3. Hey, currently I'd settle for being agle to log on to even a broken sim.
    Where I was was going down, so I tried to TP out. Failed. Logged off 30 mins ago and now I cannot relog. WTG Linden Lab.

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  4. after crashing, I can not log back on either, says "can not find simulator"

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  5. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  6. What is the projected date for pathfinding tools (Build and Land) to be in the viewer?

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  7. oh well, I used to think horribly about the people who consider mesh as "bells and whistles" because I saw almost instantly the advantages of the mesh usage on the server side. (Of course LL rewarded us making it more costly than using prims, WTG LL).
    Now I'm pretty pissed about this changes and it's bugs and I consider pathfinding as bells and whistles but... I won't complain much, perhaps I just don't get the benefits of it yet.

    Meanwhile ill deactivate pathfinding in my sim.

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  8. Hey, if you don't like progress by all means deactivate Pathfinding and re-roll your region (gotta restart to turn it off). Pathfinding tools are available in the LL Development Viewer and NiranV TPV. I suspect Firestorm to have it soon.

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  9. I disabled it on my private sim, that is not connected to any other 1 and its group acess only.
    But on the the 1 we have at blake sea, we didnt, and all the landlords there will have it enabled i hope, cause we manage to fly over more then 100 sims, ride a bike on route 66 and route 11 and no problems!
    Didnt crash but once on landing on San Catalina airport.
    Wearable mesh does not suffer, so my hair and feet are as good as before and the worst it can hapen is to have sims that are connected, having diff setups.
    So or all disable it or all have it enabled!
    But for the cars and bike builders, not only mesh 1, they are scewed bad as the natural landscaped tracks are suless now!.
    And the worst of it!
    LL had a meeting with builders and assured they would not make the roll out before they figured and fixed that!
    So as usual, LL lied!
    Can we, Sl users, still trust those ones???

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  10. It would have been much much better, if the viewers were up to speed before LL rolled that all out.. I mean hey.. not even their own.. Just their beta viewer. Did LL get the cart before the horse here or toss it under there feet?

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  11. More bugs on top of more bugs...layer upon layer of unwiped excrement...

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    Replies
    1. Your starting the act like those people who keeps complaining over how a game called "Skyrim" was full of bugs and game breaking.

      People these days are too impatience to even wait, they just freaken started.

      Delete
  12. Oh my, sounds like we get lot of work with this new feature.
    Why LL didn't switch it OFF by default? I mean it would be easier for all of us and only those people who want to use PF for their sims would have to switch it ON.

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  13. Cause they need to implement new Havock asap (Some big fish already got the paycheck!) and path find is only to prepare users for what will come ahead!
    Still, on our region with path finder disabled we didn't notice any problem but our ground level has only a golf course and surf waves!
    On our renting one, that will have path find, we optimized it renaming all the objects to diff names then that and nothing more!
    So far didn't notice any diff, a drop of fps on the inworld lag meter of 2/3 and latency from 0.999 to 0.998
    The real nightmare was racing on a ground level landscaped off road track!
    So i guess only a few will get serious screwed and when Havock wil be rolled and screw a lot more, they know that users will speak but in the end, accept all their losses!

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  14. @Cincia Pathfinding is only progress for those who have any need for it, want to learn how to use it, and are estate owners or can convince their estate owner to enable it and take the performance hit while every scripted object and walkable area is being designated.

    For the other 99% of us, we're just glad to be able to cross sims with mesh vehicles again without getting crashed.

    The worst part is it defaults to being on so a lot of people are going to have to install a viewer they don't want just to get to the off switch.

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  15. If you've ever spent half the day on the toilet feeling like your guts fell out through your butt, then you've probably been drinking the water where you shouldn't have. But when it's the only water around.... you do what you have to.

    Tommi and Karl, leaving it there but turned off and letting the few who may actually want it turn it on would make WAY too much sense, and look who we're dealing with here.

    I learned long ago in a customer service position that people will put up with almost anything so long as you just tell them why. But then LL has never been known for that either.

    For those who insist that those of us who want nothing to do with pathinding are living with our heads in the sand and scream over any forward steps, I never objected to voice (though I rarely use it)or sculpys, which I thought were great or mesh. I came from a 3D world where EVERYTHING was mesh, so imagine my surprise when I discovered that I could create things from scratch right here in-world. So for me the jury is still out on mesh, but it does seem to be getting better.

    But LL's heavy handed approach and, "It's our way or the high-way" is a bit annoying, like telling TPVs that they can't include any feature until and unless it's included in their own viewer first or not allowing the mesh deformer to see the light of day.

    Personal opinion... the folks at LL have missed their calling and should be working for the government.

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  16. The idea being that most people leave their setup at default, companies in any business almost never let their customers opt in what with new features and/or services. They just may let them opt out. Data mining monsters like Google or Facebook make even that as difficult for you as possible.

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  17. @ Karl ... I've heard the same thing about every new feature or improvement made to SL since 2007. As for Pathfinding defaulting "on", that's to be expected since the mainland is LL owned and the private island owners and managers have the ability to turn it off at will. If you're living on the mainland and don't like Pathfinding, move to a private island ... rent has never been cheaper than it is now. That said 99% of the residents in SL won't notice any impact from Pathfinding and the new Havok.

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  18. http://yordiesands.wordpress.com/2012/08/08/new-problems-in-my-second-life/
    Well seems some are!

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  19. Btw, i can testify that i didnt had any problems in 2 days after the roll out!
    Be on a disabled path finder sim or on mainland several continents where it si enabled!
    But I use Niran's viewer for over 2 months now in exclusive!

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  20. I havn't seen any of these issues on my 5 sims, and you can turn it off if you don't need it. What's the big fucking deal?

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  21. I'm experiencing TP problems and I've had none for months. I'm not sure if its related to Path Finder. Anyone else?

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  22. Yes, right now EVERYTHING is because of Pathfinding; failed TPs, inventory not loading, friends list not populating, viewer keeps crashing, no pay increase at RL job, my dog peed on the carpet for the 10,000th time ... all because of Pathfinding hahaha (sarcasm).

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  23. @Cincia
    Mesh actually is useful and can be used by every SL resident. Pathfinding can not. The breaking of sim crossings for vehicles and not the bug that LL caused by turning off a legitimately used LSL function is hardly worth the benefit to the few who'll actually use it. Meanwhile sim crossings are horrible where they were working pretty well before the rollout. The suggested fix LL has offered vehicle creators isn't workable as it pushes many over the limit to be used in physical mode. Finally, Pathfinding is still so beta that it's not even supported by LL's official viewer! Until that happens I don't expect many TPVs to attempt to merge the code. Unlike mesh (which still needs work), pathfinding deserves to fail big time. Maybe then LL will realize they maybe should listen to what the residents want instead of adding some feature that only the CEO and a small handful of creators give a crap about.

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  24. @ Karl. Nice rant. Pathfinding, when set up on a parcel, can be seen by every SL resident not just a chosen few or those with special viewers ... just like Mesh except mesh requires an up to date viewer not an old 1.23 which would actually see Pathfinding working. All land owners can access the controls to modify Pathfinding with the proper viewer which right now is the LL Dev Viewer and NiranV TPV. And Firestorm soon according to the Devs. The Havok update will have them all on board soon I'm sure. That said, no landowner has to use Pathfinding at all even on regions with it enabled. Sim crossings have never been really good and you know it. Are they worse now because of the Havok update? I cross sim borders all the time and haven't had any issues unless one of the regions was laggy. Lag has always happened not just now with Pathfinding. Thank God LL doesn't listen to short-sighted Luddites or we'd all still be running around with texture hair and prim shoes knee deep in the grid with our hair stuffed up our rears every time we TP'd lol. Next up is project Shine which will be the next reason to rant about the sky falling.

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  25. Disabled on the sim i manage.

    If your part of a cluster of sims just remember it wont be long until people making tools to grief with, that will shoot you all around the cluster of sims.
    but generally for roleplaying/combat sims its best turned off to claw back the 18% of resources anyway

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  26. @Cincia
    Nice strawman tactics. Of course pathfinding can be seen with any viewer, but it can't be created with any viewer other than LL's beta viewer currently. Even when it is part of more viewers, only people with sims or parcels on sims with pathfinding enabled will be able to create pathfinding objects.

    Oh and there are quite a few V1 viewers that can render mesh at this point. Phoenix being one of them. At this point there is almost no reason to consider that somebody couldn't see mesh when creating content. Now that the latest LL toy has been rolled out, maybe they can go back and add parametric mesh so mesh clothing will fit without jumping through hoops.

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  27. This pathfinding brings me mixed feelings because in one hand i can see how usefull it will be in the creation of better content but then in the other hand is the dark nast side and this is the many many bugs that this is creating and the number of things this will and has broken and the inevitable unhappy people that will be sending an angry IM to the creator demanding it be fixed when for the most part it canot because Linden broke that feature / script function.

    Dont get me wrong i am all for advancing SL to the next level and improving the experiance however this advancment should not come at the cost of breaking existing features and introducing bugs only to then turn round and say "hey we may have made it and knowingly broke stuff but its not our problem when your stuff stops working as a result of changes we make so please do not email us as we will ignore it"

    It just stinks of stupidity to launch something that is clearly not ready yet / To lauch it without properly educating sim owners and SL users / To launch something knowing full well it is full of bugs and will have the effect of breaking many existing features and scripts

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  28. LL is screwing to bad that any can wonder if it is on purpose!
    See how many regions are being lost in a matter of weeks and how many are growing at same time on other grids!
    Way to go to retain customers!

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  29. Just a quick word here on sim crossings. Using a Mesh or Prim boat on Blake Sea, crossings are just about as bad as they have EVER been.
    They were a lot better for a while but since the start of the new Havok introduction on Magnum sims, crossings are variably either brick walls or involve a spell of kiting or diving for anything up to 20 seconds.
    THAT is not performance as expected.

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  30. @Ayesha

    Part of that is that bandwidth bug https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-8124?focusedCommentId=339490#comment-339490

    You get within draw distance of certain sims and suddenly are pulling in 600k extra of spurious server error messages. Apparently a fix has been figured out. No idea when it's actually going to be rolled out.

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  31. Karl
    Interesting comment. In some areas of some sims I saw a great deal more than 600 kbps (unless you meant KB). I had not tied in the rough sim handoffs to this.
    Today (Thursday) crossings are a great deal better again, but the data streaming of spam messages OTHER than those specifically mentioned in Henri's submission are still VERY present. So it may well be that in curing the specific part of the bandwidth issue on the RCs, LL have at least in part solved the sim-crossing issues as well.

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  32. Things are definitely better. Was able to fly several routes in Blake with really good crossings. With luck, the fix will roll out to the full grid next week and we can go back to flying and boating as usual.

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  33. Yes, being sailing and or flying all over blake sea, things are improving for sure, i didn't had any more of those crazy sim crossings, if i keep my plane speed to less then 50pct!
    Sailing is as good as ever, i never found any problems being using my boats or the mesh ones (The mesh fabrica demo is a amazing one btw!)
    Still i can't be a good judge, as i usually cross more then 100 sims per day, be on bike, plane or boat and i use a diff viewer and strongly believe that makes also all the difference!

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