Day: September 13, 2022

2022 SUG meetings week #37 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Luane’s Underwater World, July 2022 – blog post

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, September 13th, 2022 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They form 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

For the most up-to-date information, please refer to the deployment forum thread.

  • On Tuesday, September 13th, the simhosts on the Main SLS channel were re-started without any deployment, leaving them on simulator version 574550.
  • On Wednesday, September 14th, all simhosts on the RC channels will receive a fix for BUG-232593 “Mesh physics shapes changing unexpectedly when rezzed on a 574611 sim”. This fix should not involve any other changes to the simulator version.
    • In short, there was a change that attempted to correct some bounding box calculations and in a couple cases it would wildly change the mass and centre of gravity.

Available Official Viewers

On Tuesday, September 13th, the Izarra Maintenance RC, version 6.6.4.574885 (dated September 9th) was promoted to de facto release status.

The rest of the current official viewers remain as:

  • Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself).
    • Maintenance P (Preferences, Position and Paste) RC viewer version 6.6.4.574750, issued September 6.
    • Maintenance 3 RC viewer, version 6.6.4.574727, September 1.
  • Project viewers:
    • Puppetry project viewer, version 6.6.3.574545, issued on August 30.
    • Love Me Render (LMR) 6 graphics improvements project viewer 6.6.2.573263, July 21.
    • Performance Floater project viewer, version 6.5.4.571296, May 10.

In Brief

  • Display names not updating correctly (see this grid status update): this may be related to a back-end server issue, rather than a table update issue, but is apparently still under investigation.
  • A general discussion on scripted access to block lists – although the use case wasn’t clearly explained (e.g. scripted access to one’s own block list – or others of others (and if so why & what about the potential for breach of privacy?)). This is now pending a feature request to clarify.
  • BUG-231802 “Prevent vehicles from entering parcels their riders cannot access”, together with providing a means for a viewer to request all active ban lines within a region – work still pending, and Leviathan Linden (the Linden Formerly Known As Andrew) offer some insights into the complexities of managing parcel ban collisions, which leads to further discussion wound into other topics.
  • BUG-232468 “[Feature Request] llGetObjectLinkKey() – A remote equivalent of llGetLinkKey()” –  may well by in the next-but one (or two) simulator maintenance update.
  • For specifics, please refer to the video below.

A Spoonful of Sugar 2022 in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
via Spoonful of Sugar

Currently underway in Second Life through until Sunday, September 18th, 2022 is the annual Spoonful of Sugar festival in support of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)).

Also known as Doctors Without Borders, MSF was founded in Paris, France in 1971 as a non-profit, self-governed medical humanitarian organisation delivering emergency aid to people affected by armed conflict, epidemics, natural disasters and who might otherwise be excluded from healthcare around the globe. Support and treatment is given on the basis of need, irrespective of race, religion, gender or political affiliation.

Since its founding, MSF has grown to a movement of 24 associations, bound together as Switzerland- based MSF International. Thousands of health professionals, logistical and administrative staff – most of whom are hired locally – work on programmes in some 70 countries worldwide to provide medical and social care and support for a staggering 10+ million people annually.

Spoonful of Sugar 2022
How donations to SOS Help Every 3 seconds, someone in the world dies of malaria, many of them children. A donation to SOS of just L$100 gives one child a potentially live-saving treatment against the disease. 

In addition, MSF is often one of the first organisations to have feet on the ground following a disaster, and is also to be found carrying out vital work in work-torn countries such as Yemen, where over 91,000 people have been killed and many more wounded, injured and / or displaced in a 6-year-old war than gains little world-wide attention.

The 2022 Spoonful of Sugar event opened on September 3rd, 2022 with this year marking the 8th time the event has been held in Second Life. In that time the event has raised a total of US $100,000 for MSF – once again demonstrating the generosity of Second Life users. In all, ten regions are available for exploration, entertainment and – of course – shopping. The theme for this year’s event is Tahiti, and if that conjures images of tropical beaches, island paradises, palm trees, tiki huts and outrigger boats – you’d be right; the regions offer all this and more.

Spoonful of Sugar 2022

However, the theme and setting isn’t about getting away from it all. MSF’s brief is a broad one, and many regions in the tropics and along coasts are facing greatly increased environmental risk and exposure to increasingly severe natural disasters,  with MSF often on the front line dealing with the aftermath. As such, the SOS theme for 2022 is intended to encourage us to think about the challenges MSF helps those most at risk to face – and recover from, as the event  website notes:

We don’t “earmark” our fundraising for a specific aspect of what they do. We think they know best where the money is most needed. We do, however, want to change our focus for the event a bit. We’re going to explore more about MSF/Doctors Without Borders work with environmental issues, natural disasters and the pressing impact of climate change, focusing on their work within these specific areas and the people they help while doing this work. So join us at places on our planet that are both astoundingly beautiful and wealthy and yet devastatingly vulnerable and poor. Let’s understand this connection between environmental imbalance and the illness, safety and resource insecurity, facing so many on our planet,

– From the Spoonful of Sugar website

As well as the usual full range of music and entertainment available daily at the event, 2022 brings visitors the Get Crabby Hunt. Prizes can be found on the Hunt webpage, and participation requires joining the must join the Get Crabby Hunt group  (L$500 – all proceeds to SOS / MSF)  Here I feel I must offer a suggestion to the organisers: it would be handy if the in-world banners / poster advertising the Hunt a) specified which group needs to be joined rather than a vague “group membership required”, and b) when clicked are scripted to present interested parties with the option of joining the hunt group.

The landing point for the event follows the familiar SOS format of providing extensive information on MSF’s work, with the focus this year being on the organisation’s response to environmental issues and natural disasters. Getting around from here is best achieved via the teleport boards – these are easy to find within each of the regions -, although boardwalks are available within the shopping regions and the entertainment / activities region so people can avoid getting wet feet when exploring these!

Spoonful of Sugar 2022

As always, Spoonful of Sugar is an event well worth the time taken to visit. Event if you don’t find anything to buy in the shopping regions, the donation kiosks will welcome your Linden dollars, and you can be absolutely sure that your money is going to a very worth cause.

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