Day: March 16, 2019

2019 SL User Groups 11/3: TPV Developer Meeting

Posted on by Inara Pey

Forest of Astray; Inara Pey, February 2019, on FlickrForest of Astray – blog post

The following notes are taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, March 15, 2019. A video of the meeting is embedded below, my thanks as always to North for recording and providing it. Time stamps are provided to the major topics of discussion, which will open the video in a new tab for ease of reference.

There was a lot of general text chat during the meeting, there these notes are purely a summary of the key discussion points likely to be of interest to most users.

SL Viewer

[3:47-5:35]

There have been no SL viewer updates this week, leaving the current pipeline as:

  • Current Release version 6.1.0.524670, formerly the BugSplat RC viewer February 13th, promoted February 28th No Change.
  • Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself):
    • EEP RC viewer version 6.1.1.525044, March 7th.
    • Love Me Render RC viewer, version 6.1.1.524929, March 6th.
    • Estate Access Management (EAM) RC viewer, version 6.2.0.524909, March 5th.
  • Project viewers:
  • Linux Spur viewer, version 5.0.9.329906, dated November 17th, 2017 and promoted to release status 29 November – offered pending a Linux version of the Alex Ivy viewer code.
  • Obsolete platform viewer, version 3.7.28.300847, May 8th, 2015 – provided for users on Windows XP and OS X versions below 10.7.

Updates to the RC viewer have been delayed due to “some small problems” being revealed when the viewers were updated with a security update to  Chrome and Chromium), which affects all versions except the very latest, 72.0.3626.121. This is being addressed by Linden Lab, but it will take time for the patch to filter out to all viewers. In the meantime, the current internal SL web browser is potentially vulnerable; do not use it to browse non-LL websites on it, and avoid using media on a prim from untrusted sources.

In addition, EEP, EAM and Bakes on Mesh are all awaiting server-side updates, with EEP apparently being deployed to the rest of the grid in week #12 (Magnum and SLS).

Attachments Detaching

[9:28-20:50 (including a lot of text chat)] : Linden Lab is getting some “large-scale” testing done on attachments detaching (e.g. after a teleport or following region crossings).

  • Some of the tests have involved region crossings carrying more than the permitted number of attachments, and data from these experiments is still being gathered.
  • It has apparently proven difficult to consistently reproduce issues, which has delayed data gathering and investigation.
  • Part of the issue seems to still be wearing to many items on a single attach point (mesh items are particularly susceptible to this due to many creators simply utilising the default right hand attach point for their clothing, etc., rather than rigging to alternates).
  • Some have pointed to stressed (i.e. those bring over-used by avatars and scripted objects – such as busy shopping event regions) can exacerbate the issue, which could be the result of messages to / from the viewer being lost.
  • Others have suggested the issue is related to the complexity of attachments (visual and scripting).
  • Some testing by users has suggested that it a result of kill messages being received during multiple region crossings (e.g. an avatar crosses from region A to region B and then to region C, and gets missing attachments after crossing into C as a result of a kill message being received from region A causing the viewer to think something has been detached).

In Brief

  • [20:53-28:07 (including text chat)] Inventory Requests During Log-In: the viewer has a series of tags related to inventory requests that are used during the log-in process. LL has asked TPVs to check on to see if they have made any changes to how the tags are used, as changes may be coming as an overall part of the project to improve inventory robustness.
  • [32:16-32:40] Group  tag change/group role change throttle: the is currently a means for users to change their group tag and role rapidly using RLV/a scripting. However, this can put enormous strain on server-side services. Because of this, LL are introducing a server-side throttle on requests to change group tag information, and it appears likely that this will be deployed in week #13 (commencing Monday, March 25th, 2019).
  • [33:08-37:15] Video playback issues:
    • Autoplay of You Tube videos within the viewer appears to be broken, and a check on recent server changes will be made to see if there is anything in particular that might be responsible.
    • There are no plans for further Chrome Embedded Framework (CEF – media playback) updates until after the work on updating the viewer build process to Visual Studio 2017 has been completed.
    • It is possible that after the VS2017 upgrade, the Lab may be able to re-enable codec support for playback of MP4 format videos – although there is no time frame for this happening at present.

WuWai’s Blue Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Club LA and Gallery: WuWai Chun

Club LA and Gallery, curated by Fuyuko ‘冬子’ Amano (Wintergeist) presents a new exhibition of art by WuWai Chun, someone I’ve long followed in the SL Profile Feeds, but I’ve rarely seen exhibited in-world, so it was a delight to receive an early invite to see her work at the gallery from Fuyuko.

Second Life Blue is located on the gallery’s mezzanine level, and is an eye-catching selection of art. Perhaps the first point to note about it is that WuWai is donating 100% of all sales during the exhibition to Feed A Smile / Live and Learn Kenya. Full details on this charity – which we support at Holly Kai – can be found at the entrance to the exhibit itself, as can instructions on how to purchase images to donate. There’s also a FAS donation kiosk available, if you prefer to make a direct donation or give a little extra.

Club LA and Gallery: WuWai Chun

Twelve images form the exhibition, and as the title suggests, they present scenes from around Second Life that have been post-processed to give each of them a blue finished tone. This allows WuWai to present a series of dramatic captures of Second Life that are deeply evocative and  equally soothing to view. Landscapes share the space with avatar studies and images of in-world art, which makes the breadth of images presented equally rich and diverse as their emotional expression.

As per the notes displayed at the entrance of the exhibit space, this is an exhibition best seen with Advanced Lighting Model (ALM) enabled in the viewer. This doesn’t change our perception of the images per se, but it does enable the local projected lights which add further depth to the night sky environment WuWai has created in which to frame her images. In addition, I suggest making sure local sounds are enabled, as WuWai has also presented a sound scape for the exhibition.

Club LA and Gallery: WuWai Chun

Another enticing exhibition from Club LA and Gallery, beautifully presented – and I further offer kudos to WuWai in her use of vendor boards as picture frames. This allows visitors to both purchase images and to touch them and use the Info button on the displayed menu to receive text information on the image: where it was taken, price, and permissions and a link to the original image on WuWai’s Flickr stream.  I may well be “borrowing” her approach for my own pictures!

The official opening for the exhibition is at 13:00 SLT on Saturday, March 16th, 2019.

SLurl Details