The letters and numbers in brackets after some entries tell you the latest git commit to which they apply.

This week in OpenSim ( b60f51d – 9d66792 ).

General news

• None this week

Features & bug fixes

• Melanie from Avination fixed a bug where updating an object position would send out updates for all its prims rather than just the root prim.  This should improve the network efficiency of such operations, whether they come from a user or from script commands such as llSetPos() (b60f51d).
• I fixed a bug where friends online/offline status was often not properly updated on the viewer (cd497ab).
• I fixed a bug where the osGetGridNick(), osGetGridName(), osGetGridLoginURI() and osGetGridCustom() OSSL functions would not work on standalone simulators because they were attempting to read from a [GridInfo] section rather than [GridInfoService] (a82dc26).
• I fixed a possible race condition where link ordering could be screwed up if linking/delinking and object duplication (by shift-copy on the region) were done in very quick succession over a low quality network link between the viewer and the simulator (abbd050).
• Talun contributed a patch to fix same region teleport of a sitting avatar.  The avatar now correctly stands up and can move once it reaches the target co-ordinates (c21c9e1).
• Talun contributed a patch to implement llGetAgentList() (61e99bcd).
• I improved escaping and unescaping of XML element names for communication between the simulator and services and between services.  This allows one to now use AvatarService over the network, which wasn’t possible before due to escaping issues (e813f41).
• Mic Bowman from ScienceSim improved the speed of saving estate data.  Since this is down every time a region starts up this may improve startup time for simulators with an extremely large number of regions (though it isn’t generally a good idea to do this in OpenSimulator due to performance and stability issues) (de44734).

Infrastructure

• No news this week.

The letters and numbers in brackets after some entries tell you the latest git commit to which they apply.

This week in OpenSim ( 522eff6 – c11b376 ).

General news

• None this week

Features & bug fixes

• TBG Renfold contributed a patch to implement llGenerateKey() (9c2a73b).
• Snoopy Pfeffer of Dreamland Metaverse fixed a bug where using PRIM_BUMP_SHINY in llSetLinkPrimitiveParams() generated a runtime error (100e4ca).
• On teleport, I reduced the delay before the user agent in the source region is closed after the teleport is approved by the destination region down to 2000ms from 5000ms.  This eliminates a bug where the client would be closed if the user teleported back to the source region within 5 seconds.  However, there still needs to be some delay since some viewers (e.g. Imprudence) take a couple of hundred milliseconds to register the client’s presence in the new region (fcd5b08).
• I extended ‘slow’ request logging to other simulator outbound network comms (to grid services and other simulators).  This is to help identify simulator issues which occur because of degraded network conditions (6096a1f).
• Gudule Lapointe of Speculoos and Olivier Van Helden contributed a patch so that viewers are sent Daylight Savings Time (true or false) for US Pacific Time by default.  Oddly, the viewer doesn’t accept any other time information such as the actual zone.  So as viewers DST to always related to US Pacific DST, this is the correct information to send for now.  If you want the old behaviour (where DST was set depending on the local timezone of the login server) then please set DSTZone = local in the [LoginService] section (cccef2e).
• Talun contributed a patch to fix problems with damage and llSetDamage().  This deletes any objects which hit an avatar where llSetDamage() has been set, stops gods receiving damage, stops volume detect causing damage, deletes NPCs when their health falls to zero, gradually heals damage to an avatar, resets health when an avatar goes to a non-damage area and allows damage on parcels set to safe if the region as a whole is set to damage enabled.  See Mantis 6004 for more details (92fde6e).
• I made a change so that OpenSimulator no longer tries to update the access time of a file that is still being cached by another thread.  This may reduce IOErrors on Windows when loading OpenSim Archives (OARs) or Inventory Archives (IARs) (dec6ad2).
• I fixed a bug so that the changed scripting event is now properly fired with CHANGED_OWNER when a an object that has changed owners is rezzed (01b00ad).

Infrastructure

• No news this week.

The letters and numbers in brackets after some entries tell you the latest git commit to which they apply.

This week in OpenSim ( 8205fe7 – 8380166 ).

General news

• None this week

Features & bug fixes

• Talun contributed a patch to improve llRegionSayTo() so that text can’t be sent on the DEBUG_CHANNEL, text is properly sent to the target avatar and text can be sent to an object on channel 0 (679da63).
• I added osForceAttachToAvatar() and osForceDetachFromAvatar() OSSL script functions.  These behave identically to llAttachToAvatar() and llDetachFromAvatar() except that they do not require the user to have granted PERMISSION_ATTACH.  These functions are intended for use in completely controlled dedicated environments where the checks hinder more than help (40e37d8).
• Melanie of Avination corrected llCreateLink() to link alternate prims from each object rather than all the prims in object 1 followed by all the prims in object 2.  See Mantis 5990 for more details (8855eb).
• Talun contributed a patch to add an overload of osNpcSay() that allows a channel to be specified and implementations of osNpcShout() and osNpcWhisper() (b8114d2).
• Oren Hurvitz of Kitely contributed a patch so that if the contents of a created OpenSim Archive (OAR) are being restricted based on object permissions, objects created by the estate owner are exported no matter what their permissions (ee13d81).
• Diva improved the map service so that only regions registered for a given map co-ordinate can upload map images for that co-ordinate (9bc94c5).
• Stefan_Boom contributed a patch to fix LSL sensors in child prims so that they correctly rotate when the root prim rotates (b35a1d5).
• Oren Hurvitz of Kitely contributed a patch to improve compression of OARs and IARs when saved in Windows.  This will have no impact on saved sizes under Mono (db566fb).
• Oren Hurvitz of Kitely contributed a patch to get custom walking animations to properly stop when the avatar stops walking.  This was a regression in OpenSimulator 0.7.3 and 0.7.3.1 (fe8e835).

Infrastructure

• No news this week.

The letters and numbers in brackets after some entries tell you the latest git commit to which they apply.

This week in OpenSim ( f213f55 – ae2b8f7 ).

General news

• None this week

Features & bug fixes

• I fixed a bug in the WebStats client statistics module where a non-fatal exception would be thrown when the client tried to send updated statistics if the user has teleported to another region on that simulator (f213f55).
• Talun contributed a patch to stop an exception being thrown if llGetObjectMass() was called for a seated avatar (5655239).
• Mic Bowman added a region module that provides a structured JSON data store.  This can be used by region modules or scripts – in the latter case scripts on the same simulator can share data between themselves and outside sources as long as they have the UUID for that data store (8489193).
• Melanie fixed a bug so that an assembly resolver is no longer added for every script that’s loaded by the script engine into the same AppDomain.  This improves startup times on regions with lots of scripts and improves script startup where avatars with scripted attachments are moving in and out of regions (beb7b8d).
• I fixed a bug where a relatively short avatar offering a teleport to a relatively tall avatar (luring) would teleport the target avatar to a position where it could drop through a thin floor (2b98e2f).
• Garmin Kawaguichi contributed a patch to fix a bug where files opened to load terrain data were not explicitly closed when they were no longer needed.  On Windows this was leading to occasional IOExceptions due to locked files.  I later made other code changes to resolve this problem in other areas (c8e07cdf).
• I fixed a bug where moving a physical object once (e.g. sliding it along an axis) would see the object snap back to its original position when deselected.  This resolves Mantis 5966 (566327a).
• I fixed a bug where linking a non-physical prim with a physical prim as root would make the non-physical prim phantom rather than part of the physics object.  On a more general level, the expected behaviour in this cases is that the child prims in a new linkset take on the properties of the root prim.  Other bugs remain in operating on child prims in a physical linkset (e.g. resizing, moving) (9ac48b2).

Infrastructure

• No news this week.

The letters and numbers in brackets after some entries tell you the latest git commit to which they apply.

This week in OpenSim ( 0f277df – 2c74e1b ).

General news

• None this week

Features & bug fixes

• Talun contributed a patch to implement OBJECT_RUNNING_SCRIPT_COUNT, OBJECT_TOTAL_SCRIPT_COUNT and OBJECT_SCRIPT_TIME in llGetObjectDetails().  He also implemented suitable dummy values for OBJECT_SCRIPT_MEMORY, OBJECT_SERVER_COST, OBJECT_STREAMING_COST and OBJECT_PHYSICS_COST (08e5099).
• Talun contributed a patch to implement llGetMemoryLimit(), llSetMemoryLimit(), llGetSPMaxMemory(), llGetUsedMemory() and llScriptProfiler().  These return values and behave in a similar manner to LSO scripts on the Linden Lab grid (4d652c7).
• Snoopy added osSetTerrainTexture() and osSetTerrainHeight() OSSL script functions (78fd487).
• I removed the hard-coded god requirement from osSetRegionWaterHeight(), osSetRegionSunSettings() and osSetEstateSunSettings() as these can now be controlled through OSSL script permissions config.  If you were relying on the hard-coded setting (very unlikely) then you must adjust your OSSL script permissions.  Thanks to Oren Hurvitz for pointing out this issue (ab7c0e7).
• Kevin Cozens contributed a patch to allow specific inventory items or folders to be excluded when saving an inventory archive (IAR).  This feature needs further refinement and wiki documentation (a366c05).

Infrastructure

• No news this week.

The letters and numbers in brackets after some entries tell you the latest git commit to which they apply.

This week in OpenSim ( cb44808 – d4a370a ).

General news

• OpenSimulator 0.7.3.1 was released.  This is a minor point release so the focus is on a few bug fixes, in particular a fix to an NPC attachments regression when using osNpcLoadAppearance().  However, there are also a few small new features, such as a config option to prevent Hypergrid foreigners (users coming from other grids) from entering certain regions.  This release is taken from the 0.7.3-post-fixes line and so doesn’t contain the development changes listed here unless otherwise stated.

Features & bug fixes

• Robert Adams updated the BulletSim physics library builds to the latest Bullet + some OpenSimulator patches.  This also means that the libraries should work again on Linux (4138880).
• Robert Adams fixed avatar animations when using the BulletSim physics plugin (872d513).
• Snoopy implemented the ability to restrict Hypergrid teleports, asset uploads, group creation and IM from other grids depending on user level (7223b63).
• Snoopy implemented group-based access restrictions for land parcels.  Due to caching there can be a delay of up to 30 seconds for scripted objects if the owner is not present (67537f3).
• Snoopy implemented osInviteToGroup and osEjectFromGroup OSSL group scripting functions.  These allow a script to invite/eject users to/from the group that the prim belongs to (19837ff).
• I enabled voice by default on new parcels.  This avoids a viewer bug where the viewer will continually request a voice channel on voice-disabled parcels.  Enabling voice only has an effect if the simulator in general is set up to use a voice service, otherwise the setting is correctly ignored.  This change was also in OpenSimulator 0.7.3.1 (874bf1f).
• Melanie contributed support from calling cards from Avination (c52ff5c).
• Pixel contributed a patch to properly inform the viewer if their attempt to build fails because they are in a no-rez zone (69fc8c4).
• I fixed llRegionSayTo() to work properly on the public chat channel (387d7fd).
• I fixed llGetMass() so the total mass of the linkset is returned if executed by a script in the root prim (627efc1).
• I fixed llGetMass() to return the avatar’s mass if the linkset is acting as an attachment (f2903db).
• Talun contributed a patch to return dummy values for some missing constants (e.g. OBJECT_TOTAL_SCRIPT_COUNT, OBJECT_STREAMING_COST) in llGetObjectDetails().  Implementations of some of these (e.g. OBJECT_TOTAL_SCRIPT_COUNT) to follow (c3a8c00).
• I fixed llGetLinkPrimParams() to work for PRIM_POS_LOCAL.  This also fixes llGetLocalPos() (3af1cd6).
• I implemented PRIM_POS_LOCAL in llSetPrimitiveParams() and other similar prim param LSL functions.  This acts identically to PRIM_POSITION (33e91f1).

Infrastructure

• Diva started working on version 2.0 of the Hypergrid.  This includes better security for a user’s inventory when visiting foreign grids and asset export control.  This is not currently active and probably won’t be until the summer.

Please see the release notes for more details.

As always, many thanks to everyone who contributed to this release and to OpenSimulator in general, whether with code, testing, documenting, different distributions (e.g. osgrid, Diva, Sim-On-A-Stick) or helping people with all the questions involved in using this complex piece of software!

The letters and numbers in brackets after some entries tell you the latest git commit to which they apply.

This week in OpenSim ( ab54ce1 – a14437a ).

General news

• None this week.

Features & bug fixes

• I made a correction to development code where the experimental de-duplicating asset service could be picked up accidentally without explicit configuration.  This has been an issue in master development code only for the part two weeks.  Thanks to Diva for the initial fix (ab54ce1).
• I fixed a rare race condition where the simulator could crash if a simulator was running more than one region and both tried to update the internal mesh dictionary at the same time (1c0f3a1).
• Nebadon adjusted avatar jumping from 5 meters to 3 meters in order to better match what people are used to seeing elsewhere (bd1f848).
• Diva added the ability to establish friendships over the Hypergrid without requiring both users to be in the same simulator.  You can do this by searching for names in the form “first.last@grid.com:<port-number>” (e.g. justin.clark-casey@example.com:9000).  Friendship requests are stored if the target user is offline.  This has only been tested on standalone configuration so far (df624c1).
• Robert Adams updated the Bulletsim OpenSimulator physics module.  However, there are still issues running it on 64-bit mono (6c50442).
• Robert Adams tweaked default avatar friction and restitution on Bulletsim and added them as runtime settable parameters (ff54b3c).
• Diva and Melanie added a new simple_build_permissions config parameter to the OpenSim.ini.example file.  This allows you to restrict building rights in parcels to only the avatars on the access list.  See OpenSim.ini.example for more information.  Default is false (25e5b6a).
• I fixed llAllowInventoryDrop() (760010d).
• I added an experimental SendPeriodicAppearanceUpdates setting to the [Startup] section of OpenSimDefaults.ini.  If this is set to true, then avatar appearance updates are sent out at regular intervals rather than just when the user enters a region or rebakes.  This is to tackle the remaining grey avatar issues.  However, it won’t help with cloudy avatars which are due to different appearance rebake or upload problems, either originating on the server or in the viewer itself.  Default is currently false whilst this is being tested (d4beb2f).
• Nebadon fixed an issue where OpenSimulator would not compile with the mono 2.11.0 alpha release.  However, it still won’t run – OpenSimulator crashes shortly after startup with this mono alpha release (6b87a29).
• I changed the help system so that help on topics (which are seen which a single invocation of “help”) now work in both upper and lowercase, which is much less annoying.  Thanks to Whitestar for this suggestion (4f17537).
• Mic added support for key, vector, rotation and list times to the feature that allows you to define new script functions in region modules without having to patch OpenSimulator code code.  See the wiki for more details (a14437a).

Infrastructure

• I added a separate scene maintenance thread from the main scene loop thread.  The idea here is to simplify the main scene loop by moving out activities that are not time critical and don’t depend on the order of scene updates.  At the moment, the only operation that has been moved is the one that updates avatar positions on the mini-map.  Move operations will be moved over time.

The letters and numbers in brackets after some entries tell you the latest git commit to which they apply.

This week in OpenSim ( 13fb582 – d125653 ).

General news

• None this week.

Features & bug fixes

• Robert Adams fixed a very recent development code bug with running OpenSimulator on .NET 4.0 (e0dd38f).
• Diva added the ability to obfuscate the data provider URLs (used to gather data for search) (4eb2605).
• Diva stopped repeated teleport requests from starting and causing problems before the first one had succeeded (479dd65).
• I alleviated an issue where multiple scripts in a linkset where llDie() had been called could occasionally freeze the simulator (2f81e53).
• Diva worked around a viewer bug concerning SLURLs and version 3 Linden Lab viewers and derivatives.  It appears that SLURLs of the form secondlife://ucigrid00.nacs.uci.edu|8002/128/128 work in viewer chat but not as SLURLs in the built-in web-browser.  A hacked SLURL of the form secondlife://http|!!grid.sciencesim.com!grid!hypergrid.php+Yellowstone01+74/128/128, where all slashes after the initial two in the gatekeeper address have been replaced by ! and all slashes in the region section have been replaced by + will work in both chat and the built-in web-browser (18d1d6d).
• I changed the “Top Scripts” report to use script execution time scaled by an idealised frame time rather than a lines per second count.  We have to do it this way because the OpenSimulator XEngine scripting engine doesn’t execute scripts within the frame loop.  So this is not a completely accurate number but it’s a good enough approximation to better determine which scripts are taking up a lot of processing time, at least relative to one another (8550a4a).
• I fixed the owner display in the “Top Colliders” and “Top Scripts” reports (7df4a54).
• I allowed startup, shutdown and other ad-hoc region console command scripts to contain comments starting with ; # or // (aa881e8).
• Diva added the beginnings of an ability to set a different default terrain for newly created regions.  At the moment, only a flat land at 21 meters and the traditional “pinhead island” are available.  Eventually it would be good to load this terrain from a file.  The “pinhead island” is still the current default on an OpenSimulator installation (a2009ff).
• MarcelEdward and GuduleLapointe contributed an osGetInventoryDesc() scripting command to return a prim inventory item’s description (4a57112).
• Diva added the ability to disallow Hypergrid foreigners from entering a region and/or disallowing residents from entering a region (admins and managers only).  This is implemented at the simulator level of both standalone and grid configurations.  It can only be set at simulator start and is controlled in the [AuthorizationService] section of StandaloneCommon.ini or StandaloneHypergrid.ini.  See the corresponding example files for more information (33c14cb).

Infrastructure

• Mic Bowman started work on making it possible to add completely new script functions in region modules without having to patch the core OpenSimulator code.

The letters and numbers in brackets after some entries tell you the latest git commit to which they apply.

This week in OpenSim ( 94b323d – 824eb7e ).

General news

• None this week.

Features & bug fixes

• Chris Hart of Reactiongrid contributed a patch to update the MSSQL OpenSimulator database plugin to match MySQL.  This includes telehub support, friends lookup bug fixes and creator field updates (413bc1e7).
• I fixed a bug where the line number reporting in script errors was always off by one (81598a4).
• I added counts of sensor, dataserver requests, timer and listener counts to the “xengine status” region console command for script engine information (98251cd).
• I altered the console help system so that typing “help” shows the command categories (Regions, Scripts, Users, etc.) rather than all the commands at once.  Subsequently typing “help <category>” (e.g. help Regions) shows all the commands in that category (dfd0e14).
• Diva made a few changes to try and improve inventory transfers over the HyperGrid (a58152bd).
• satguru srivastava contributed a patch to allow NPCs to play the animations that come with the viewer (35f2479).
• Mic added a patch to serialize web requests to a particular host in a subset of calls.  This is to see if such a change improves network performance (7b8e9d8).
• Fernando Oliveira contributed a patch to allow a default estate to be used when creating new regions, rather than always asking the user for these details.  This is set in OpenSim.ini (see the new [Estates] section in OpenSim.ini.example for more details (d6ebf2d).
• I made a change to fetch assets required by OpenSim Archive (OAR) saving serially rather than concurrently and asynchronously.  This may improve reliability of OAR saving (6e26f17).
• Diva added an osGetGridGatekeeperURI() OSSL function to return the Hypergrid gatekeeper of the current grid (if there is one).  This is the first component of any Hypergrid address, for example the hg.osgrid.org:80 part of hg.osgrid.org:80:<region-name> (824eb7e).

Infrastructure

• BlueWall continued with work to make it possible to use the newer web profiles with OpenSimulator.
• I merged in work on a ROBUST asset service that will automatically do asset de-duplication.  This means that identical textures, scripts, etc. will only have one copy stored in the database – at the moment multiple copies can be stored in some circumstances.  This works but I still regard it as experimental.  Eventually it will become the default asset service.  More details are in the wiki proposal.
• I continued work on basic performance oriented tests, concentrating on making sure objects can be quickly cleaned up between different test invocations.