August 2018 – Page 8 – Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld

2018 SL UG updates #32/3: TPVD meeting and ARCTan

Posted on August 11, 2018September 27, 2024 by Inara Pey

The majority of the following notes are taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, August 10th 2018. A video of the meeting is embedded below, my thanks as always to North for recording and providing it. This was a short meeting – 24 minutes on the video, which includes some lengthy silences.

SL Viewer

[0:24-4:50]

Bugsplat RC Viewer

Functionally identical to the release viewer, but used to test the Bugsplat crash reporting service (rather than routing crash reports to the Lab’s internal Breakpad based crash reporting mechanism), this RC is likely coming to the end of its test run, sufficient data having been gathered for the evaluation.

Voice RC Viewer

At least one more update is anticipated while this is at RC status. This will contain fixes for crashes within the SLVoice.exe (the viewer should detect the exe’s absence and automatically restart it). This update should appear in week #33 (commencing Monday, August 13th).

EAM Project Viewer

The EAM project viewer, version 5.2.0.518362, dated August 7th, includes revised and improved capabilities for handling region access control. See SL Estate Access Management project viewer – overview for more.

Upcoming Viewer Promotion and New RCs

The new release of the Animesh viewer due in week #33 will most likely see that viewer promoted from project to RC status.
A new Rendering Project RC viewer should arrive in week #33.
A new Maintenance RC viewer is in waiting, but its release is dependent upon a server-side update for handling group invites and Friend requests whilst off-line (and part of the overall move to HTTP delivery for off-line IMs / notices). These changes should be going to the simulator RC channels in week #33. The Maintenance viewer will be deployed once these updates have reached the SLS (Main) simulator channel.
[12:56-13:23] Viewer TCO project: this contains the updates to how the viewer handles texture caching, and should be entering the project viewer pipeline “soon”, together with some OpenJPEG fixes (also see the end of this report for more on OpenJPEG / KDU).

Project ARCTan

[5:26-9:20] This is the code-name for the project to re-evaluate object and avatar rendering costs to make them more reflective of the actual impact of rendering both. The overall aim is to try to correct some inherent negative incentives for creating optimised content (e.g. with regards to generating LOD models with mesh), and to update the calculations to reflect current resource constraints, rather than basing them on outdated constraints.

As I’ve previously noted, the Lab is sensitive to the implications of doing this, if it results in significant changes – particularly in the area of Land Impact for in-world objects. Should this be the case, steps will be taken to ensure users have advanced notification of changes that affect content, so they can assess what needs to be done and to make any necessary changes to their land / regions.

Part of this work will involve the Lab deploying simulator versions running both the current and the “new” calculations, allowing them to see the overall potential impact of any given set of changes (number of parcels / regions affected), ahead of making any actual change. This would allow them to avoid the kind of mass auto-return situation that has accidentally occurred in the past, and enable them to find a means to inform people of the potential impact.

A further option the Lab has been considering is to raise the land capacity on regions / parcels to compensate for any impact of revised LI calculations. So, for example, if the new calculations result in parcels going over the capacity limit by and average of (say) 10%, region LI might be increased by 15% to offer some compensation. Then, for those who still exceed their limit, there will be a period of grace when then can consolidate and bring their LI use within the limit of the revised calculations before the latter are enforced.

The important aspect of the LI work is that while values may change, they overall why they are being calculated my result in their meaning being different – so numbers might actually coming out “smaller” than is currently the case, resulting in no need for physical changes to be made in terms of what people have rezzed in-world.

Overall, this is a long-term project, and no changes one way or the other will be occurring in the immediate future.

Environment Enhancement Project

[14:01-14:44] No significant news. The project is awaiting the current Inventory AIS updated to be completed on the main grid. There is also an inventory patch for EEP that needs to be deployed and tested on Aditi. Once this has been done, the way will hopefully be clear for EEP to appear on the main grid.

Other Items

OpenJPEG Images and KDU “Downgrade”

[10:33-12:54] : there is an issue with KDU which means that textures encoded using OpenJPEG may not display correctly. As a result, the Lab is rolling by KDU support from 7.10 to 7.9. This is a temporary measure to alleviate the problem whilst LL work with KDU to get a fix. In the meantime, Graham Linden has been working on potential means to avoid the issue is a fix is not forthcoming from KDU.

Second Life Scheduled Maintenance

[16:03-17:03] There will be a scheduled maintenance period on Monday, August 13th, commencing at 05:30 SLT (13:30 UK; 14:30 CET). This should be about an hour in length, but will see SL logins suspended. See: https://secondlife-status.statuspage.io/incidents/vrpczxqtk8ls for more.

JIRA Upgrade

[17:06-20:37] A new version of the Second Life JIRA is in testing. This will see several changes to the JIRA system, notably visually and when logging-in. The planned deployment of the new system is Thursday, August 16th. Part of this update will ensure JIRA refreshes a user’s e-mail to match the one provided for use with Second Life when logging-in.

2018 Sansar Product Meetings week #32: Edit mode

Posted on August 11, 2018August 13, 2018 by Inara Pey

*Channelling my inner Trekkie at the Roddenberry Nexus – blog post*

The following notes are taken from the Sansar Product Meeting held on Thursday, August 9th. These Product Meetings are open to anyone to attend, are a mix of voice (primarily) and text chat. Dates and times are currently floating, so check the Sansar Atlas events sections each week.

The primary topic of the meeting was Sansar’s Edit mode, with Regomatic, who is a part of the Edit Mode development team talking about what has recently been released for Edit Mode, future plans, and taking a Q&A.

Date of Next Release

The planned release date for the next Sansar update is Thursday, August 16th, 2018. However, it is entirely dependent upon Sansar’s schedule of public events for August – see below for more on this – which my cause the update deployment pushed back until later in the month.

Promoting Sansar

Not strictly a technical aspect of Sansar, however, the platform is spending time “on the road” and also raising its visibility among different global audiences.

On August 1st through 5th Sansar was at the Star Trek Las Vegas convention, where the Roddenberry Nexus was unveiled – see More Star Trek in Sansar: the Roddenberry Nexus for more.
On August 10th through 12th Sansar is at the Los Angeles edition of KCON, with the promise of “more exclusives” with regards to that.
A further e-sports “thing” is also in the offing for later in August. An earlier attempt at an e-sports link was pulled shortly after being announced. It’s not clear if this is a further attempt, or something else entirely.
A the same time, Sansar and Twitch are hosting “Twitch Streamer” days throughout August, with Twitch users being encouraged to drop into Sansar and explore.

Express Yourself Release Edit Mode Updates

The July Express Yourself update included a number of Edit mode updates:

Multiple Object Select / property application: The properties panel now works when multiple objects are selected, allowing the value of a property to be changed and applied across all selected objects.
Animated materials update: it is now possible to specify which textures in a material will be subject to the scrolling effect. This affects the following shaders:
- Standard + Emissive + UV animation.
- Standard + Alpha Mask – UV animation.
Standardise geometry option: by default, all objects uploaded into Sansar will go through an optimisation process that makes objects more efficient, foregoing the upload window optimisation process.
- This can be disabled via a drop-down panel option.
- The auto decimation will not apply to clothing or avatar attachments.
Object total triangle count: view the total triangle count of objects.
Real-time Gizmo updates: Position/rotation values update in real-time as the Gizmo is manipulated.
Fixes:
- Rotation values no longer flip 180 degrees as you enter values
- Scene settings no longer close the properties panel and vice versa; both can be displayed at the same time.

In addition to the above, the focus mode has been improved. Rather than just centring on an object when pressing F, it will now zoom the camera to the object. If two objects are selected and focus is used, the system will find a balance so that both are visible after zooming.

Upcoming Edit Mode Updates

August Update

Per-object settings: this should be a part of the August release, this will allow visibility to be toggled on individual objects within a specified type. So, rather than only being able to toggle visible for all audio materials, it will be possible to toggle it for an individual audio object. The state set for each object will persist between sessions. States will be indicated by “eyeball” icons.
Improved selectability of objects: it is currently different to select an object in Edit mode when it is “stacked” with others. The August release should improve this be adding a “selectability” icon / option. When set, it will make objects either selectable or cause them to be ignored when attempting to select others groups with them. Again, the individual states of objects will be indicated by a cursor icon, and will persist between sessions.
Container naming and renaming objects: the August release will include friendlier names for container, and the ability to rename anything in the scene objects list, rather than having to go through the Properties panel. Names can be up to 64 characters.
Analytics improvements:
- The diagnostics ribbon in Edit mode is to be enhanced to include number of textures and the estimated download size, as well as the number of triangles.
- There will be a new report option that will give a breakdown of all object in a scene and the amount of space they take up.
- In addition, it has been requested that the analytics include the number of draws it takes to render an object, as high draw counts can often be a performance issue.

September Update

Folder support for scene objects: allowing objects to be placed together in folder, and allow entire folders to be selected and pulled into a scene, the ability to see the combined properties, etc.
- Once scene object folders have been deployed, inventory folders will be coming as a future update.
- Folder names will have a maximum length of 64 characters.

Still to be Prioritised for Future Release

Arrays for scripts: ability to use arrays rather than hard-coded parameters (e.g. an array to allow a user to pick a sound, rather than having to hard-code “sound 1”, “sound 2”, “sound 3”, etc.).
Locking improvements: currently, locking a container does not necessarily lock all of its children. In a future release this will be revised such that it does.
Inventory folders: these are being worked on, and discussion are being had on the use of folders and the possible use of saving search categories / grouping by category to go with folders.

General Q&A

Scene / Experience Management Requests

Disabling capabilities in run-time: there are so types of experience that would benefit from having some run-time capabilities such as free camera movement or teleporting disabled in the Runtime mode (e.g. blocking the ability for someone to avoid traps in a game by teleporting past them, or using the free cam to cheat their way around a maze). These could be done via the scene settings, and Regomatic is going to look into it.
- It was noted that if abilities to disable user-facing options are added to Sansar. then the ability to inform users as to what has been disabled (voice, teleport, freecamming, etc.), either before or when they enter the experience.
Search capabilities for scene objects: name, object type, etc. Possibly inclusion of thumbnail images of objects within the scene list to allow for visual recognition of objects, particular where multiple objects might have similar names (“Rock A”, “Rock B”, etc.).
Image size standardisation: currently, multiple image sizes and formats are required for items – one size saved within inventory, a different image size for the store, etc., requiring multiple image uploads. Automatic re-use of a single uploaded image would be preferable, and the Lab is looking into this.

Continue reading “2018 Sansar Product Meetings week #32: Edit mode” →

SL Estate Access Management project viewer – overview

Posted on August 10, 2018April 24, 2021 by Inara Pey

The Estate Access Management (EAM) project viewer (dated August 7th) is a new project viewer to enhance – as the name implies – the estate access management tools available to region holders and their estate managers within the viewer.

In brief:

New viewer UI for displaying Estate Managers, allowed groups and allowed / banned individuals within a region.
New capabilities for sorting / searching lists.
Additional information recorded and displayed for banned accounts.
Number of Estate Managers increased from 10 to 15.

Under the current viewer, the lists for managing Estate Managers, allowed groups and allowed or banned avatars in a region / estate have been crammed into the first tab of the Region / Estate floater (World > Region / Estate).

This has made management of the lists difficult, given only around 5 names can be displayed by each – which can be problematic when the Banned list allows up to 500 names. In addition, lists cannot be searched and, again in the case of the Banned list, no other information is provided against a banned name, making it hard to determine whether or not a ban might actually be rescinded, thus helping with general list management.

As such, there have been long-standing requests for the estate access controls to be improved.

The Estate Access Management project attempts to address these issues by introducing both back-end changes in support of managing ban lists and by revising how the various lists themselves are displayed within the viewer and how they can be used.

In particular, the EAM project viewer introduces a new Access tab in the Region / Estate floater (World > Region / Estate). This tab in turn has individual tabs for managing the lists for Estate Managers, Allowed avatars, Allowed Groups and Banned avatars.

The Estate Access Management lists as they appear in the current SL viewer (l), and the new Access tab with individual tabs for Estate Managers list and each of the Allowed / Banned lists. Note as well the increase in allowed Estate Managers (ringed in each image). Click for full size, if required

In terms of adding or removing names and groups, the new sub-tabs work exactly as the lists in the current viewer work.

However, with the new design, additional functionality is added to some of the lists:

The Banned list additionally records:
- The last date on which a banned individual logged-in to Second Life (to assist with housekeeping the list – if an account hasn’t been used in X months or years, why keep it on the list?).
- The date on which an individual was banned.
- The name of the EM / region holder banning them.
- Note this information will be displayed by the EAM viewer for all accounts going forward – even those banned using other viewers, reflecting a change to the back-end database for managing bans. Banned accounts existing at the time the EAM updates were introduced will simply have “n/a” recorded for each of these fields.
The Banned tab can be sorted into ascending / descending order by banned name, date last logged in, date banned, or by person banning them. Click on the column title to sort.

The Banned List includes columns for date of last log-in, date banned, and region holder / EM who banned them. These columns can also be sorted into ascending or descending order by clicking on the field title, as can the account name column.

The Estate Managers, Allowed and Allowed Groups tabs can be sorted into ascending / descending order by name. Click on the column title to sort.
The Allowed Groups, Allowed and Banned tabs all include a search option.
The number of allowed Estate Managers is increased from 10 EMs to 15 EMs – again in response to many requests from region holders.

Feedback Sought

The Lab is keen to have feedback on these new tabs and the improvements made to handling estate access control. If you are a region holder with EM rights, or an Estate Manager, please consider downloading this project viewer and giving it a try. Any issues should be reported via the Second Life JIRA, using the [EAM] project reference in the title.

Cica’s Daydream in Second Life

Posted on August 10, 2018October 15, 2024 by Inara Pey

A misted isle where the ground is carpeted in flowers, the rolling hills covered in grass, the beaches arced with sand and the tress provide shade from the sun during the day, once the mist has been burned away, or places to rest and sleep as evening heralds the onset of night.

Such might be the place we slip away to when daydreams come to let us escape the drudgery of everyday life; a mystic realm where turtles can be ridden, fae folk might be found, and mushrooms stand as captive groups should we be tempted to dance before them. A land watched over by a kindly, horned giant, and where snails the size of houses court one another or butterfly people flutter.

This is the world Cica Ghost presents to us in Daydream, which opened to the public on Friday, August 10th, 2018. Another wonderful whimsical build, it is a place to which we can all escape and explore, with something to discover at every turn. From the arrival point, this is a world wreathed in morning haze under a cloudy, almost alien sky, the hills are undulating shadows all around, breaking up the skyline.

Where you might wander is entirely, up to you – but be sure that whichever way you go, you’ll find something to captivate the eye, including many echoes of past works by Cica. Cats, mindful of those from 50 Cats (here), for example, are to be found ready to invite people to come inside hollow tree trunks and sit or lie with them for a time. Meanwhile a great horned dragon lies with his body covered in stand, just his head and tail visible, reminding us of the dragons from Fairy Tales (here), while the giant on the hill carries with him a look of her Beginners (here) – there’s even a hint of Strawberryland (here) waiting to be found, although the berries are rapidly being noshed by another pair of Cica’s characters!

All of which should not be taken to mean that Daydream is derivative; far from it. This is as much an original as all of Cica’s prior works; the echoes are simply that – echoes. And give this is a place for daydreaming, they’re not at all out-of-place; why shouldn’t Cica have little dreams of her art and creations? And why shouldn’t we enjoy her daydreams as well?

As always with Cica’s creations there are things to do while exploring here – quite a lot, in actual fact. I’ve already mentioned a couple – sitting with cats or dancing before mushrooms, but there are many more, next to and on top of things – so be sure to mouse around yourself as you are exploring and taking pictures.

I never cease to enjoy Cica’s work; it is always expressive, something whimsically, sometimes with a deeper interpretation. Howsoever you find it, there is always a sense of fun in life to be found. With Daydream. we’re presented with just that: a chance to jump into Cica’s daydreams and share in them with her, or to go exploring and find our own.

SLurl Details

Daydream (Never, rated: Moderate)

SL UG updates #32/2: CCUG summary with audio

Posted on August 10, 2018September 27, 2024 by Inara Pey

The following notes are taken from the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting, held on Thursday, August 9th, 2018 at 13:00 SLT. These meetings are chaired by Vir Linden, and agenda notes, meeting SLurl, etc, are usually available on the Content Creation User Group wiki page.

The choppiness in some of the audio segments where Vir’s voice drops out is due to issues with SL Voice.

Animesh

Project Summary

The goal of this project is to provide a means of animating rigged mesh objects using the avatar skeleton, in whole or in part, to provide things like independently moveable pets / creatures, and animated scenery features via scripted animation. It involves both viewer and server-side changes.

Resources

Animesh User Guide
Animesh test content
Animesh LSL methods:
Animesh – Updated Limits and Cost Formulas
Animesh feedback thread
JIRA filter for Animesh

Server-Side

As of the SLS (Main channel) grid deployment on Tuesday, August 5th, the server-side support for Animesh is now grid-wide.

Animesh Viewer

Vir has completed work on the next update to the viewer, which includes a number of fixes and tweaks. This is currently with the Lab’s QA team. If all goes according to plan, this could see the light of day as a Release Candidate viewer. In particular, this update should include a fix for the bounding box / LOD issues previously reported in these summaries.

General Discussion Points

The LI accounting aspect of Animesh is considered “complete” for the initial release, and no further changes beyond the accounting values Vir has published via the Animesh forum thread are expected.
- However, there may still be future revisions to the overall Animesh costs (complexity) as a result of the Project ARCTan work to overhaul all of the complexity calculations in order to make them more reflective of the actual costs involved in rendering, etc., different objects. This work has apparently been on hold recently.
Land Impact: streaming costs / LODs: there was further discussion on the 50% bounding on LODs.
- Concerns have been raised at the disparity between the 50% cut-off between the high and medium models compared to the GLOD (Global LOD) cut-off of around 30% (so 70% discarded). Other concerns relate to the 50% between the medium and low models disincentivising creators from trying with a low model. An overall concern is that people will continue to look purely at land impact, rather than considering complexity and optimisation as matters of improved performance.
- Vir admits the approach taken with Animesh is something of a trade-off between trying to encourage considered use of LODs and implementing a system that “scares people off” because of its demands. As such, it is something that may be revisited as a part of ARCTan, after more data has been gathered as a result of Animesh being released in the meantime.
- A major difference with the “new” system is that it no longer considers scale. This means that creators who animate their creatures using a combination of multiple models and using alpha masks to hide the “unseen” versions and who reduce the “unseen” models to avoid them raising a creature’s LI, will no longer be able to do so.

Per-bone scale animations: having the ability to use per-bone scale animation, which could be particularly useful for non-human bodies (and now Animesh) has been a request since Bento.
- Currently, the SL animation format doesn’t allow scales to be specified, so an overhaul of the animation system would be required to make this possible.
- A further problem is scale animation can conflict with any use of the shape sliders, when used to modify an avatar shape (one of the items under consideration for a future update to Animesh is support for a body shape and the use of sliders).
- The benefits with scale support include:
  - The ability to create a single creature body and use it in different species of that creature without the need to develop new animations and new rigged attachments (so a “dog” body could be used for a Labrador or a Chihuahua or Dashhound).
  - The ability to have “young” creations (babies, puppies kittens, hatchlings….) “grow” over time.
  - The ability for creators to develop a broader range of different NPCs and different creature types without having to rely on the avatar shape / slider system, which is inherently biased towards human forms.
- An alternative to animation scaling (and subject of a feature request) that was initially made during Bento, was to have an overall body size slider that could proportionally adjust the entire size of the shape associated with an avatar (and Animesh, if shape and slider support is added to Animesh in the future).
  - One issue with implementing this at present is that the message format use to communicate slider parameters may not support the level of messaging required to communicate an overall rescaling that affects every joint and bone position at once (which would require updates to the Appearance and Bake services as well, so this would require an overhaul.
  - A further issue is that of locomotion: the same overall locomotion graph is used regardless of size, so in a single stride, a very tiny avatar made using a “size slider” could appear to move the same distance as a “normal” sized avatar, which can result in it appearing to move really quickly;similarly a really tall avatar created using a “size slider” could appear to hardly move at all each time it takes a step. So, the locomotion graph would need to be overhauled.
- Use of per-bone animation scaling hasn’t been ruled-out, with Vir pointing out that even adding body shape and slider support to Animesh is complex, requiring further updates to the Appearance and Bake services in order to work. So it might be something to consider alongside of considering shape / slider support once the initial Animesh project is released.

Bakes On Mesh

Project Summary

Extending the current avatar baking service to allow wearable textures (skins, tattoos, clothing) to be applied directly to mesh bodies as well as system avatars. This involves server-side changes, including updating the baking service to support 1024×1024 textures, and may in time lead to a reduction in the complexity of mesh avatar bodies and heads.

This work does not include normal or specular map support, as these are not part of the existing Bake Service.

Resources

Bakes on Mesh forum thread.
Bakes on Mesh JIRA filter (courtesy of Whirly Fizzle).

Current Status

There do not appear to be any blockers within the project preventing it from moving forward. However, as indicated at the July 27th TPV developer meeting, there are some changes being made to the AIS system, and the updates to inventory required in support of Bakes on Mesh (which also requires updates to the Appearance and Bake services as), are currently awaiting that work to be completed.