Odd Surprise

This isn't really an LSL issue, but this is where the brains hang out, so bear with me...

Ok, so I'm goofing around with openSim, have a region setup locally on my own machine, and I'm logged in. I Decided I wanted to port one of my clocks over to it, so I log onto the grid, and export one of my clocks and copy out the scripts to notepad text files.

I go into my local grid, import the clock, create scripts and paste in my scripts. For the most part, the clock is running fine, one minor error because llSetSoundQueueing() isn't supported, but not a huge deal... Clock is running fine.

Now, my clock chimes at the top of the hour and dongs the hours out. In the early days, i had the sound file in the object, but as time went by, and I learned about using keys instead of putting the sounds in the object, I converted the script to use just the keys. I know this, and so I think to myself, I'm going to have to upload the sounds, and get the new keys that are assigned to my local database, and replace the ones that are in there, otherwise, I'm going to get an error when it goes to trigger the sounds, or at the very least, it will silently fail and just not sound.

I'm not pressed to do this, so I don't bother to do it right away. A few minutes later, I'm doing something else, and all of a sudden, it's the top of the hour and my clock starts to chime!!!

I'm thinking, huh? Why did it chime? Is it pulling the sound file off of the LL asset servers? It must be I think, because the sound files are A) not in my inventory, and B) if they were, the keys would be different than what's hard coded into the scripts. So, I think to myself, I need to test this. I log off my grid, and onto LL's, and copy the asset ID of a sound I've uploaded, and a vendor image that I made for one of my products. I head back into my grid, and low and behold, it's both triggering the sound, and displaying the texture that is clearly coming from LL's asset server.

So this has me dumbfounded... and I think to myself, what's going on here. Is it checking my local asset database for the key, and, if not found, checking LLs? Also, why would this be this way? Why would LL allow external grids access to the LL assets?

I'm totally freaked and stumped. Any ideas?

The viewer looks in its own asset cache first

The viewer also has a set of built-in sounds. I don't know if you're using one of those, but that's one possible explanation.

Otherwise, clear your cache before you connect to your opensim again, and see if you can still hear it.

heh, that makes for a neat trick though... and it also means that if you were to do the opposite and you cached an item while on your open sim, then popped into SL, if the item normally fails silently on wrong type or missing, you might get local effects there too....

Well, unless you explicitly copied the UUID of an existing asset, rather than generating another one on your opensim, that shouldn't have much of a chance of happening. <.<

Duh... yeah, I cleared the cache and sure enough the effect disappeared... I had just cleared my cache the other day too because I was getting some odd textures and clearing it fixed the problem too, but oddly enough, I actually had opened and played the sound and viewed the texture (thus caching them) before copying the asset key.

@Talarus, actually most of the client sounds are stored on the asset server. After I cleared the cache, the typical menu pops and clicks, teleport sound, the create object 'rumble' sound and such were all absent in my openSim session. I even sell a hud in my shop that's alot of fun to fool your fiends with. You can trigger just about every client sound there is with it. Of particular fun is the IM Received sound and the Money Received coin-in-the-till sound and/or the cha-ching old school cash register sound. Those sounds are all cached from the asset server. The only sound I was getting was the wind sound that everyone hates. That one must be client side, but the rest are server side. Oh, btw, I wasn't using any client sounds. My clock chimes the Westminster chimes/dong sound I picked up on freesound.org and the test sound was a bubble sound I uploaded for my wet suit outfit and the texture I used was a vendor image I made in photoshop. I'm careful not to port anything over that isn't mine (thus, I'd be violating TOS), even though it's a local grid on my machine that no one but me ever sees.

Strange..

All of the assets listed under the old wiki article "ClientAssetKeys" are all installed via the installer (or used to be; I remember seeing some of those keys go whizzing past in the file copy phase of the client install).

I've never noticed any lag in them appearing on a fresh client install (on a clean computer; had to do that a few times in the last few months <.< ), which I would expect if they were cached from the asset server. I have a "viewer" object for all of those keys as well.

ETA: Looks like they do load from the asset server now. Bizarre. Seems to me to be a waste of resources, but then, this IS LL we're talking about here. <.<

It isn't strange, it is a very smart move. It is very important to keep the client filesize down as much as possible, anything non-critical like the UI sounds can be downloaded swiftly during login precaching anyways. The desired goal is to get user retention down as much as possible. Once you got them logging in, you got a fish on the hook, and you can download those client stuff once and keep them cached forever pretty much.

Probably a much faster download overall anyhow, since it then goes through Linden Labs' own network LLnet, instead of relying on a third-party for the client downloads.

I'm afraid I don't agree there.

One-time download (per client update, anyway) would save a LOT of bandwidth over the long term, than re-downloading the same stuff over and over again. Those assets, compressed, probably don't add that much to the client install file size. Most of the textures are very small.

Another point is that, with the new "UI skinning" capability, I think they moved the UI assets to local in a different directory, so I don't think they are even using those any more. That would make sense to move those server-side, for legacy support, since very few people use them. However, sounds, animations, non-UI textures, etc would make more sense to be in the client download.



Umm.. LL's backbone (let alone asset system) doesn't remotely perform as well as Amazon's EC2, which is one reason why they went to it instead of their own bandwidth for client installer downloads past a certain point. They simply couldn't handle the volume whenever they did client updates.

I'll agree that it does increase traffic on the network, but there is a possible upside to it for LL... shared UI resources for alternate viewers, mediated by LL, rather than being in third party packages... a step towards tighter control of alternate viewers (a small one mind you)

The average user is just not going to keep clearing their cache on every single login. Otherwise, if that is happening, then you have bigger problems to worry about than a few sounds.

And you ignored my point of user retention for client filesize.

some average users seem to need to... something about corrupted assets, and I'm not sure those cached assets aren't being being overwritten at some points for smaller caches (though they might be flagged differently, though I'm not digging through the source to look)

I'm not sure how disinclusion of at most, a few seconds worth of initial download is supposed to aid retention though. presumably, if the customer is downloading a client, they are already on the hook as it were.

I definitely get lag on client sounds when I clear the cache. Especially noticeable with the teleport sound, less so with IM start or IM received though noticeable none the less. The IM sounds, and right click sound, pie menu selection sounds, etc are quite small though, probably a few kilobytes at most. I agree though that most typically don't clear the cache that often. I also agree that there are some out there who have to though for whatever reason their system doesn't like the cache. I also agree with Tal that it would cut down on traffic a bit, and overall I'm sure the complete set of client sounds is fairly light, but as Void pointed it out, it does give a bit of control over keeping the client sounds the same across different viewers. After clearing my cache and going straight into openSim, I had no client sounds at all sans the wind sound. That's definitely client side.

My guess is some kind of licensing issue. The artwork assets for the viewer were put under a CC license when the viewer went open source, and the sounds have been absent since at least then. Perhaps LL didn't have the rights to use that license on those sounds?

Llicensing? Are you kidding? The client sounds have always been delivered across the network, even long before open sourcing was even thought of or considered. Also, certain sounds are most likely royalty free sounds (like the cash register sound), as I hear it all the time in television and radio commercials). My guess is that overall the sounds are a mix of freely available royalty free sounds and custom sounds created by LL. In either case, what would it have to do with licensing? Weather delivered across the net or embedded into the client, if LL holds the rights to them, they still would even if they included them in the client. (The SL logo for example is embedded into the client, and they certainly hold the rights to that).



http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Client_sounds

That has nothing to do with anything. LL also distributes libraries with its viewers (Kadaku, Vivox) that aren't allowed to be distributed by others because of licensing restrictions, even though LL itself is allowed to give copies away.

Even if SL has royalty free licenses on content, that does not give them the right to sublicense or otherwise change the terms beyond what they were granted. This is pretty basic stuff.

It really doesn't matter how you think the licenses should work, all that matters is what LL actually has, and you have no more insight into that is actually in place than does anyone else in this forum.

Right, but if they don't have the right to distribute it, then they'd be breaking licensing by transferring it to the client via an asset request. That's my point. If they can transmit it over the network legally, then they can embed it into the viewer, and transmit it when it's downloaded. I'm not claiming any special knowledge, just simple logic. Also, more common sense, they would most likely not use content that they didn't have 100 percent rights to on any level. As I said in my previous post, some of the sounds I've heard elsewhere in television and radio (in particular, the cash register sound), and are most likely in the public domain, and others are most likely created by or at the very least, fully purchased by, LL. I've even started hearing the teleport sound on Fox News, which tends to make me think that's a public domain sound as well. Most companies go the cheap route and use as much as possible public domain stuff to keep overhead down. As far as licensing goes, short effect sounds like that are fairly cheap, and as far as re-distribution is concerned, that would mean that they cannot freely zip them up and offer them freely as a separate entity, but have full rights to include it in any package that they sell (or give away as is the case of the viewer).