Day: May 10, 2022

2022 SUG meetings week #19 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Lost Unicorn, March 2022 – blog post

The following summary notes were taken from the Tuesday, May 10th, 2022 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. It forms a summary of the items discussed and is not intended to be a full transcript. A video of the entire meeting is embedded at the end of the article for those wishing to review the meeting in full – my thanks to Pantera for recording it.

Server Deployments

Apparently, there was an “issue” with the week #18 deployments which has lead to changes being deployed this week. .

  • In short, the list of avatar appearance details for a given agent that could be returned by llGetVisualPrameters (which went grid-wide with the deployment of server release 571166 to the Main SLS channel in Week #18) gave rise to a host of “Shape Stealing HUDs” that allowed people to obtain the full set of avatar body shape details for any shape (including those sold as “No Mod” by shape creators.
  • As a result, both the SLS Main deployment on Tuesday, May 10th, 2022 and the RC deployments of Wednesday, will see the list of returned values significantly reduced to:
33 – height 503 – platform_height 756 – neck_length
38 –  torso_length 616 – shoe_height 814 – waist_height
80 – male 692 – leg_length 842 – hip_length
198 – heel_height 693 – arm_length 11001 – hover

Available Official Viewers

There have been no official viewer updates at the start of the week, leaving the current crop as:

  • Release viewer: version version 6.5.5.571282, – formerly the MFA RC viewer, dated April 26, promoted Wednesday, May 4th.
  • Release channel cohorts:
    • Performance Improvements RC viewer version 6.6.0.571507, May 5.
    • Makgeolli Maintenance RC viewer (Maintenance M) viewer, version 6.5.5.570983, April 26.
  • 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

  • There was a general discussion on multi-region events, in part focused on a) the incorrect assumption that adjoining regions are running on the same simhost (this has never been guaranteed, pre- or post-AWS uplift) b) visibility issues for those in the “audience” region of a multi-region event (i.e. being unable to see everything in the “performance” area that sits in another region); and c) the new Event regions (see: LL launches Event region product + some thoughts).
  • On the subject of Event regions, Mazidox Linden has provided information on how LL evaluated the region performance on the forum thread about the product.
  • There was further discussion on the requested scripted object capabilities for EEP See the week #18 summary), which will be “coming Soon™” – at some point.

Under the Same Sky in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Artful Expressions Gallery, May 2022

Sorcha Goldshark (Sorcha Tyles) has re-opened her Artful Expressions Gallery once more, after almost a two-year break.

Since its inception in 2016, Artful Expressions has always been a mix of gallery space and hang-out; the kind of place you can go to specifically to set art, or use as a meeting place in which to spend time and take in the art that happens to be on display. With this latest iteration of the gallery, I’m pleased to say that this remains the case; as does Sorcha’s eye for photography – both her own and that of other SL photographer-artists.

Artful Expressions Gallery: Geoff Quinnell – Under the Same Sky

The re-opening of the gallery brings with it an exhibition of images by my fellow “Brit”, Geoff Quinnell. A big band leader, designers and SL landscape photographer, Geoff here presents nine images captured from around Second Life and which he has brought together under the title Under the Same Sky.

Taken at popular destinations around Second Life – doubtless seasoned SL travellers will recognise many of the locations presented – these are images that carry a bright and rich with a sense of summer, with bright skies and a natural sense of summertime vibrancy to the colours. All have been post-processed such that they have the look and feel of a painting or pen-and-ink art.

Artful Expressions Gallery: Geoff Quinnell – Under the Same Sky

All are richly evocative images, perfectly encapsulating their subject locations so as to entice people to pay them a visit. For those who perhaps haven’t witnessed these destinations first-hand, Geoff provides a list of SLurls in a note card that can be obtained from the advertising / info board just inside the gallery. However, do remember that places come and go / get remade in Second Life, so there is no guarantee the listed places will remain available indefinitely.

Expressive and offered within a welcoming waterfront environment, Under the Same Sky – a title that reflects the fact these are all images that have been captured within the same digital realm, rather that being imaged under the same lighting / environment – is a near-perfect exhibition of Geoff’s work and an excellent re-introduction to Artful Expressions.

Artful Expressions Gallery, May 2022

SLurl Details

Catznip R13 maintenance 1 release overview

Posted on by Inara Pey

In keeping with the statements made on the release of Catznip R13 (which is overviewed here), the Catznip team released a Maintenance update to the viewer on Sunday, May 8th, 2022, which is available for Windows (32-bit and 64-bit) and Mac OSX ((10.11 or later).

As work is progressing well on the next full release (R14), this maintenance update – called simply Catznip R13.1 – is not packed with news features and options, but does, in keeping with its function as a Maintenance release, offer some nice additions, some fixes, and one or two new items.

As always, full details of the changes and updates in this Catznip release are available through the official release notes; what follows is a general summary of the more interesting updates.

Linden Lab Derived Updates – MFA

Catznip R13.1 incorporates Linden Lab’s viewer-side Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) code, which recently reached the Lab’s official release viewer (see: Lab extends MFA to the official viewer for Second Life).

MFA provides additional security to your Second Life account. It is entirely optional – you do not need to use it if you don’t want to – but it currently provides additional account security when trying to access particularly sensitive information about your Second Life account (e.g. trying to view your billing info or transaction history, trying to cash out (“process credit”) money out of your account, trying to change the e-mail address associated with your account, etc.).

You can find out more on MFA in general by following the links below:

Inclusion of MFA in a viewer means that:

  • Anyone who has opted to use MFA will, every 30 days, will be required to provide an MFA token in addition to their user name and password when logging-in to SL via any viewer / client supporting MFA.
  • Anyone who has not opted to use MFA, or decides to disable it after initially opting-in, will not see any change to how they log-in to SL via a viewer /client.

For those who have enabled MFA on their account:

  • The first time you use Catznip R13.1 you will have to use your preferred authentication method to generate a new token (6-digit code) and enter it into the viewer when prompted (after entering your user name and password).
The MFA prompt for a token, which will be seen in Catznip R13.1 (and other viewer supporting the Lab’s MFA code) once every 30 days.
  •  Some authenticators generate their token as 2 groups of 3 digits (e.g. XXX  YYY). Where this is the case, you can enter the code with or without the space.
  • Note that the token will remain valid for 30 days, as noted above, so you do not have to provide a token every time you log-in to the viewer.

Catznip Improvements

Group Activation and Accessing Notices

Catznip’s new Group Activation button displayed in profiles of Groups you have joined

This release of Catznip offers two new options for activating a Group tag, and a new option for viewing group notices:

  • You can activate the tag for any Group of which you are a member directly from the Group’s Profile floater, by clicking the Activate button.
  • You can also active the Group’s tag (again, you must already be a member) but right-clicking on the Group’s SLurl when displayed in local chat and selecting Activate from the drop-down menu.
  • You can also use this latter method (right-click on the Group SLurl in chat) to select the Show Group Notices option from the drop-down and view notices.

Teleport History Pruning

Regions come and go in Second Life, and if you spend a fair amount of time hopping around the grid visiting places, it is possible to end up with the Teleport History panel that is full of landmarks that are no longer valid (e.g. because the shop has moved, or the region has changed owners / user, or has gone away completely, etc.). You may also want to ease searching for LMs in history by pruning out those “one off visits” you’ve made.

Deleting LMs from your Teleport History tab in Places

Catznip R13.1 now makes this possible:

  • Open you Teleport History (Me → Places → Teleport History).
  • Either:
    • Right click on the landmark in the history list.
    • Select Delete from the drop down menu.
  • Or:
    • Left-click on the landmark in the history list.
    • Click the dustbin at the bottom of the of the floater.

Conversations Navigation

Catznip R13.1 adds an additional set of keyboard shortcuts to assist in navigating between tags within the Conversations floater:

Action Horizontal Chat Tabs Vertical Chat Tabs
Page to the next tab ALT-Right Arrow ALT-Down Arrow
Page to the previous tab ALT-Left Arrow ALT-Up Arrow
Page to the next tab with unread messages ALT-SHIFT-Right Arrow ALT-SHIFT-Down Arrow
Page to the previous tab with unread messages ALT-SHIFT-Left Arrow ALT-SHIFT-Up Arrow

Mouselook Improvements

Catznip R13.1 adds the following three options to using Mouselook:

  • Allow script dialogues.
  • Do not immediately snap the mouse back to the centre of the screen after a (scripted touch) click.
  • Show the hand cursor while holding down the CTRL key in Mouselook to indicate touchable faces.

Feedback

A small but tidy group of updates well suited to a maintenance release and which ensures Catznip is MFA compliant (which will be required of all viewers / clients in the near future). I admit to particularly liking the Teleport History pruning capability; would that the other viewers I use adopt it – some of my history lists tend to get jammed full of LMs, and purging the lot from outside of the viewer just to start over has never really been ideal.

Again, for the complete list of updates and bug fixes, please refer to the Catznip R13.1 release notes.

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