Day: April 12, 2022

The following summary notes were taken from the Tuesday, April 12th, 2022 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. It forms a summary of the items discussed, and a video of the entire meeting is embedded at the end of the article – my thanks to Pantera for recording it.

Server Deployments

• There was no deployment to the Main SLS channel on Tuesday 12th, April.
• Wednesday, April 13th should see the completion of the RC deployment of server release 570305, which was suspended last week. This comprises:
  •  Fixes issues with llRequestAgentData and llRequestSimulatorData sometimes failing after they’ve been called repeatedly.
  • A couple of crash fixes.
  • Additional logging around simulator start-up.

Upcoming Server Releases

There are a number simulator releases in the works, including:

• One contains some reworking of a few of the internal subsystems, which are now suitable for update now that the tool uplift is completed.
• One that contains some long requested additions to llGetObjectDetails and llGetEnv as well as a new LSL function.
  • llGetObjectDetails will gain a series of new constants: OBJECT_MATERIAL; OBJECT_MASS; OBJECT_TEXT; OBJECT_REZ_TIME (a timestamp); OBJECT_LINK_NUMBER and OBJECT_SCALE.
  • llGetEnv will gain:
    • “region_agent_limit”: Current maximum population for this region.
    • “region_agent_limit_max”: Maximum population setting possible.
    • “region_agent_unreserved”: Current limit on unreserved population.
    • “region_agent_reserved”: Current number of spaces reserved for premium.
    • Further options may be added prior to release.
• Two further updates that respectively repairing offline friendship and group offers.

Available Official Viewers

All official viewer pipelines remain as follows:

• Release viewer: version version 6.5.3.568554 – formerly the Maintenance J&K RC viewer, promoted Monday, February 28 – 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).
  • MFA RC viewer, update to version 6.5.4.569725, on March 24.
  • Performance Improvements RC viewer version 6.6.0.569349, dated March 14.
  • Lao-Lao Maintenance RC viewer, version 6.5.4.569191, issued on March 11.
• Project viewers:
  • Performance Floater project viewer, version 6.5.4.569531, March 18.
  • Mesh Optimizer project viewer, version 6.5.2.566858, dated January 5, issued after January 10.
  • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.4.11.550519, dated October 26, 2020.
  • Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, dated December 9, 2019.

In Brief

• Monday, April 11th saw the SL log-in servers updated. Those running scripted agents may need to check their bots to make sure they are accessing SL correctly.
• There were some requests for things like avatar height to be added to llGOD. After looking into it, Rider Linden feels it does not make sense put it there.
  • Instead, he is adding llGetVisualParams, which will give access to any of the visual parameters that are sent to simulator from the viewer. These will be accessible either by their ID number or the parameter name.
  • These are the parameters found within avatar_lad.xml.
  • It was noted that these parameters could be used to auto-size scripted clothing/attachments.
• There has been a request made to allow Experience owners who build games using a specific EEP environment to be able to check whether or not all players are using the environment and not “cheating” by using a more advantageous EEP.
  • Note the request was not to determine what EEP settings a player is using, just as simple “yes / no” on whether or not they are using the game’s EEP settings.
  • This drew an over-reaction from some that doing so would be a means to “spy” on other users; a statement that at best seems to be a stretch, given the functionality and the fact it would be opt-in.
  • However, it was also acknowledged by LL that given the viewer is open, there’s a risk things degenerate between attempts to present cheating and finding way to cheat.
• The above lead to a broader discussion on games and capabilities within SL, and some of the issues that can be encountered: latency over the Internet, general message handling, etc.