Golyfeydd... and other views

George Equus: as far as Safari goes, pretty successful one today  ;}

Two destinations this week. HG Addresses at the end of the post as usual.
 First up a Welsh Paradise, devised by Susannah Avonside.

Susannah Avonside

            Views of welsh scenery, and views about the future of opensim were on the menu this week. Although it almost seemed like we were going nowhere, at first. Seemed like none of us were entirely present from the very beginning, some of us foggy, George's trousers had gone walkabout again, and a new friend Spax Orion was just hair and a sword, leading us to wonder if he had remembered to put his mesh avie in his My Suitcase folder.
Onwards and upwards, we headed over to North Wales, to learn some new phrases - who knows, maybe some Welsh magic can make hypergridding easier.

 Dabici Straulino: let me check if I still have my mind -  ok, stuff is coming slowly...
 Susannah Avonside: this region is running on my own computer here at home, so things might be a little slow
Thirza Ember: everyone do you know Susannah? She made this grid. She's going to teach us some welsh.
Susannah Avonside: Haha, not on your life! I did that for ten years in RL
Thirza Ember: Around the region you will find many signs and adverts in Welsh. See if you can figure out what they mean, then you click on them, you will see the English translation.
Billy.Bradshaw: oh, Welsh theme?
Thirza Ember: yes! it's like going on holiday Billy! but not so much rain, maybe. This is Susannah's blog, where you can keep track of the grid's development.

Primitive: This means 'RALEIGH - The All Steel Cycle' in English. At the bottom it reads, 'Available at Glyndwr Garage'.
Susannah Avonside: for those of you wanting a bus ride, please click on the seats.
Arielle Delamerlibre: should we see a vehicle Susannah?
Alya VonZ: think I sit on someone's lap:)

xSIBERIAx ILFREDDOPURIFICA: we have pay the ticket? XD
Susannah Avonside: if you turn on audio you will hear some Welsh music - give it a second or two.
Spax Orion: I hear music
Truelie Telling: ah, there we are! music indeed  is this music mostly Welsh? one of the best musicians here in Nashville is Welsh... David Llewelyn
Susannah Avonside: Truelie, have you heard of Cerys Matthews, (who, just by coincidence is singing this current track) she spent some time in Nashville I believe, and this is some of her early stuff when she was in a band called Catatonia - her later stuff is completely different.
Truelie Telling: name doesn't ring a bell, but she's awful good. Nashville is like grad school for songwriters... not a lot stay, but we all learn a lot
Arielle Delamerlibre: hm I dont see any bus, but will be patient
Spax Orion: who needs transportation when you can turn off camera constraints? LOL Wish I could do that in RL ha ha

James struggles to see people

James Atlloud: I see dots on mini-map, but no peeples there :)
Thirza Ember: that means we can tickle james and he will never know who did it
Susannah Avonside: sorry about the lag, lots being downloaded/uploaded and only a domestic connection

Ange's hair suddenly showed up!

Franziska Bossi: hehe - not easy on a pc,  but you have a wonderful city here
Truelie Telling: we cultivate patience ... and that's what the song's singing!
George Equus: Cyfarchion Susannah. Aros am y bws :)
Susannah Avonside: Da iawn George
Ange Menges: Susannah 17 people on a pc without crashing, you are better than most
xSIBERIAx ILFREDDOPURIFICA: oh no problem... in opensim the lag is a component
unmissable :)

George Equus: Susannah, eich rhanbarth yn cynnal i fyny yn dda iawn!  :)))
Franziska Bossi: that was welsh!
Truelie Telling: Geo, you have unexpected talents
George Equus: pfui....  Google more likely  :))) hehe
Susannah Avonside: oh, the 'blessings' of Google Translate George!
Thirza Ember: susannah's computer must be red hot by now!
Dabici Straulino: even smoking
Susannah Avonside: not too bad actually Thirza, it's a six core machine, one of two computers I'm using atm

Alya cools off in the bay

George Equus: Susannah, you are dealing with a crowd that brought down Metro the other week   :)))
Truelie Telling: it's doing great! I can sit, I can walk... we haven't crashed!

Dabici's luck hat keeps her fully loaded at all times

Susannah Avonside: As you can all probably see, this place is very much a WIP, so I hope you'll visit again to see how things are progressing
 Dabici Straulino: what are you aiming to Susannah?
Susannah Avonside: well, get the bus working properly, sort out all the houses
Dabici Straulino: is this a place you know in RL?

Susannah Avonside: no, this place is completely imaginary but heavily influenced by places I know. It is very much a pastiche of North Wales villages
Truelie Telling: it's a lovely pastoral feeling
Dabici Straulino: I never been in North Wales, but it must be beautiful sea, cliffs and islands

And so much else to see. Not just the features of community life, the pub, post office, and community center, but also a water garden and castle - and even the industrial side of life, fishing, a hydroelectric plant, even a gasworks. Ceridwen is mostly open on the weekends, so drop by and enjoy the sights.
George Equus: This place is worth a re visit!

Onwards, to our second stop, a meet up with Freaky Tech on his grid DeReOs He had a few suggestions and explanations about the more challenging side to hypergrid travel.
ParcDesArts katia: hello everybody :)
Holli Would: Hello, whats going on??
Thirza Ember: heya holli - going to be talking about geeky stuff, how to improve hypergridding
George Equus: Hello everybody, finally I made it  :)
stiofain mactomais: hi all .... bumpy ride
Freaky Tech: this is HG2.0:   "22:38:40 - [XINVENTORY SERVICES CONNECTOR]: Exception in GetFolderContent: The given key was not present in the dictionary.: This kind of thing is giving headaches to all region owners that have HG visitors
Arielle.Delamerlibre: so breathe flat, sit still and pray to the HG god

Load at home and lower everyone's lag
Freaky.Tech: the load of teleports in a very short time hits the teleport logic pretty hard, in fact if you see that with a opensim.git version the UDP server will get killed by watchdog.
Thirza Ember: what can we do as individuals to fix that, then?
Phaandor Pertwee: kill the watchdog before it hits?
Freaky Tech: not much, besides trying to serialize the teleport amount.  In Arriba fork I removed it, so it does not kill the UDP server, still allowing i to act up but can settle again. Just without shutdown it would have taken probably longer
Arielle Delamerlibre: maybe a tp difference time can be set
Freaky Tech:  I use a classic avatar because of HG since the more assets the more often the teleport fails. HG2.0 is providing a lot of issues to HG locations, one good advice is let inventory load in home grid.
James Atlloud: I usually linger on home grid before safari.
Arielle Delamerlibre: maybe we have to have a HG Avatar beside? With no weight no heavy inventory. I mean in the same login, a second instance already loading with the original avatar

The simple low lag building on sim Tony, Dereos grid.

Does MySuitcase make life better, or worse?
Max Hill: sorry, we have a big crash
Freaky Tech: not a crash as such, it was an inventory fetch for an HG user that went havok. The only option to clear that fast is to shutdown the simulator. That why it is good to let your avatar Inventory load completely on your home grid.
Dabici Straulino: you mean emptying the suitcase?
Billy Bradshaw: I have seen specific avis having trouble transferring assets from their home grid, some loop. I change the code so I could see which ones.
Freaky Tech: because the viewer still will request those folders on HG locations.  That is why HG 2.0 is not a real solution
Mal Burns: maybe better if HG locations restricted access to suitcase folder?
Freaky Tech: Actually, the issue comes from the viewer it will always request the inaccessible folders
Thirza Ember: yes, I remember Seth Nygard explaining that to us, it is insane... the poor server desperately, and pointlessly, trying to access folders it'll never be able to get into. Causing lag for everyone.
Dabici Straulino: but suitcase folder is needed to go shopping
Freaky Tech: the viewer has no knowledge about HG 2.0.  HG 2.0 is just an access filter. Inventory management via HG is poor, in part due to OSGrid not utilising the suitcase. The grids having no suitcase provide far less issues, because the viewer retries more often on missing folders it once has seen
Billy Bradshaw: Well if they had the suitcase, then we could just work with that instead of the whole inventory?
Freaky Tech: sadly that will hardly work, because that would mean to add protocol logic to the viewers that does not exist in SL
Billy Bradshaw: that boat sailed during the early HG days
Dabici Straulino: suitcase - having one or not having one is an issue - I reading both views
Thirza Ember: who do we have to talk to in order to fix that? the people who make firestorm, singularity etc, they can fix this?
Freaky Tech: hardly, because they want to stay compatible with SL, it would mean to have to independent branches of viewers
Dabici Straulino: i think the opensim version is compatible with SL and not only designed for OS
Freaky Tech: it is just some features thrown out, but it is not a completely separate viewer
Mal Burns: we really really need a viewer with LL stuff fully removed
Freaky Tech: and loads of OpenSim bugs put in? I have seen far too many protocol implementation errors in OpenSim code. Mesh is pretty good for short time lag, that is why I do not use mesh on HG teleports as attachments
Billy Bradshaw: I have seen evidence that the UDP message tracker gets lost
Thirza Ember: Truelie Telling  mentioned to me that last week's Safari crash on Metropolis was due to home-made Mesh avatars. Licu Rau says that Ubode physics engine is not good at handling 'heavy' mesh, while Bullet does a much better job of copying with it. So we need to maybe avoid mesh avatars and clothes when we hg?
Freaky Tech: Exactly. Keep a low profile. The whole set of assets is transferred during teleport that is why people with high mesh load have more teleport problems on HG - ask Aine Caoimhe about that.

Freaky Tech

How can grid owners improve HG?
Freaky.Tech: check that the inventory access is not too slow. Those grids needing HG 2.0 should educate people about that so that they do not try to use attachments on that outside of My Suitcase. Most people start to do the simple solution, to put their whole inventory in suitcase. One thing that cannot be done with opensim right now but the viewer would actually be able to handle would be to redirect the viewer away from the simulator regarding inventory and other accesses not necessarily needing the simulator in between. SL did exactly that with AISv3, they removed all inventory logic from sim side, and placed it to their grid logic. Protocol analysis is what helps a lot to understand why things were changed on their side as well

Freaky, Phaandor, Chip, Katia, and Harthelie ponder the HG riddle

Arriba and other codes
Freaky Tech: I started working on the Arriba fork when 0.8.0 was pretty much on the lowest point of the bathtub curve, finding tons of thread locking preventing the simulator running efficiently, but still there is lots more since the code is more like chaos theory than effectively being developed professional-wise
Arielle Delamerlibre: what means that for future?
Freaky Tech: the problem with the opensim code is that it holds for work for a few decades, and since it is such a spaghetti type of code. It's hard to get capable developers involved in such projects in their free time.
Arielle Delamerlibre: oh we will die before its changed !
stiofain mactomais: have u had a sniff round latest 0.9 Freaky? .....any better?
Freaky Tech: I had and found some backsteps, some fixes being actually lost
Mal Burns: have you looked at Halycon code used by Inworldz and Moses at all - no hypergrid but are they a good direction?
Freaky Tech: I did, but their direction is entirely different, they decided on throwing away all they did not need, that included whatever HG parts that version had 2010.
Mal Burns: and with Arriba, you try to keep everything but optimise it?
Freaky Tech: It goes further by replacing the code entirely with a new code base, to have a more predictable development path. I have a little nice visual comparison about opensim code. Opensim is like a 20 layered tapestry home, just that beneath 10 layers, they started to put cables in between and what happens if you try to fix such workarounds? Things keep breaking.
Mal.Burns: and if a grid currently using opensim corer code wanted to switch to Arriba - would it be easy for them to do so?
Freaky Tech: a few ini changes are required, but most stuff is identical in ini
Selby Evans: Is Arriba keeping up with the changes in the Dev version?
Freaky Tech: I had deliberately decided to only follow dev loosely, which means checking for important changes that are necessary, but not taking in all changes, more focusing on keeping the code stable as much as possible.
Selby Evans: Understandable. Are you taking anything now from the 0.9 dev version?
Freaky Tech: only if it is related to protocol changes the differences are pretty high already 

Selby Evans: But that version of Arrriba is what you now run?
Freaky Tech: yes I do 
Mal Burns: what about the merge with Avination's code - good or a disaster pending?
Freaky Tech: saw a lot of weirdness in that Avination merge, my personal estimate for that was right away some years of buggy time. Every big merge comes with a good pile of bugs, due to merging issues. That is why most rl software devs try to not do a merge.

Spike Sol, Max Hill and Stiofain Mactomais

Why stick with OpenSim?
Mal Burns: potential - hopefully not unrealisable potential
Freaky Tech: another question is - why are creators still sticking to doing something with OpenSim? What keeps them doing what they do?
Mal Burns: freedom i guess - but also somewhere away from fixed worlds - can create here ad deploy elsewhere later if want
Quoting Licu Rau: I've been reading about Sansar, and it's clear they are going in a different direction to us. So the future has to be to keep developing OpenSim and High Fidelity, or in something that has yet to be born, perhaps... This is not just a collection of hobbyists making things at home, it's a platform for activities we all consider 'real' - art, education, entertainment and communication. The most successful projects in Craft, like Edu3D and Museum of the Metaverse have always been closely connected with the real world, although there are also lots of possibilities in Opensim for game development too.
Mal Burns: sansar is closed money-making grab as far as i see - wanna be virtual farcebook
Selby Evans: And LL has unacceptable TOS -- not on my try list
Mal Burns: too true selby
Freaky Tech: that is why a developer has to get into contact with the users understanding what drives them. Most developers are far more at ease with nerds demanding features than the understanding of the user base

Is grid owner cooperation the way forward?
Thirza Ember: Grid owners. like those present here today - Max, Dabici, George, Billy, Phaandor, Spike and more, these people get much more complete information about what is happening on their grids than the individual user does. Is there a way for them to communicate more fully with a) the devs and b) each other? To share knowledge?
Freaky Tech: actually the communication between devs and grid owners should exist. But check opensim mantis - it shows a different view
Thirza Ember: Sharing information would help identify problems more quickly. Is there good communication between grid owners?
Arielle Delamerlibre: hm Thirza some are coming together but much Egos also
Thirza Ember: but, if you think about all the changes we have seen to the community in opensim in the past 2 or 3 years... it IS possible to change
Freaky Tech: with the current ones? I am not sure due to the way how they act on reports. Just read recently one issue on G+ which was clearly a programming error, and that guy was told it would not be an OpenSim bug
Thirza Ember: that is frustrating - like diagnosing the wrong disease..
Freaky Tech: even more because something like that is denying
Mal Burns: grid owners often rely on their own tech people and those ppl are reluctant to deal with core devs - rely on own tweaking of new release code
Freaky Tech: a lot of these own tech people tried to connect with the core devs but mostly ended up being accused of being themselves the issue givers at least some control has to be established on every source code basis. I have never seen a democratic software development team that worked effectively. All working ones have some person who is able to over-rule others.
Thirza Ember: yeah I believe this is where a bit more friendship across grids could make life easier Mal Burns: devs can be slow, insular and dis-organised - plus are volunteers, so can be that way George Equus: And some oppose HG altogether, think it fragment their own grid...
Mal Burns: HG is OpenSim in many ways - if grid owners want to be isolationist they should look to other code not the open-sourced OS Open source is really about contributing back too
Thirza Ember: hopefully we can all do something to improve hypergridding, even if it's only dressing low impact !
HG Addresses
Susannah Avonside's Welsh grid  ceridwen.no-ip.biz:9300
Freaky Tech's home sim                dereos.org:80:tony