2023 SL SUG meetings week #3 summary

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, January 17th, 2023 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

• On Tuesday, January 17th 2023, the simhosts on the Main SLS channel were restarted with no deployment, leaving them on simulator version 576542.
• On Wednesday, January 18th, 2023: the RC simhosts should receive two new simulator updates:
  • 577628 – (Le Tigre RC Channel) an update for HTTP_CUSTOM_HEADER usage in llHTTPRequest(). Previously, a maximum of 8 custom headers were allowed, and each header had a hardcoded limit of 253 bytes. With this update, both of these limits have been removed; the only limitation is that the total custom HTTP header size must be under 4096 bytes.
    • The cryptographic signing utilities – potentially llHMAC (per BUG-233005) and llSignRSA and llVerifyRSA (per BUG-233009) had to be delayed due to “last minute snag” requiring a further look at the functions.
  • 577595 – (Bluesteel and Magnum RC channels) contains  stability improvements, fixes a few miscellaneous bug. It also fixes the bug preventing 30-second sound loops from being played back, and introduces new functions to the LSL API to allow for sound playback across any prim in a linkset. The new LSL functions include:
    • llAdjustSoundVolume().
    • llLinkSetSoundRadius().
    • llLinkStopSound().
    • llLinkSetSoundQueueing().
    • llLinkPlaySound().

Available Official Viewers

This list reflects the current status of available official viewers on January 17th, 2023:

• Release viewer: Maintenance P (Preferences, Position and Paste) RC viewer version 6.6.8.576863 Monday, December 12, 2022 – 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).
  • Maintenance (Q)uality RC viewer, version 6.6.9.577418, January 4, 2023.
  • Performance Floater / Auto-FPS RC viewer, version 6.6.9.577251, January 4, 2023.
• Project viewers:
  • PBR Materials project viewer, version 7.0.0.577486, January 11, 2023.
    • This viewer will only function on the following Aditi (beta grid) regions: Materials1; Materials Adult and Rumpus Room 1 through 4.
  • Puppetry project viewer, version 6.6.8.576972, December 8, 2022.

In Brief

• As well as the crypto signing noted above, there are a couple of new functions coming down the pipe dealing with cryptographic hashing which are described as being useful for things like JWT or other HTTP auth schemes:
  • String llSignRSA(string privateKey, string msg, string digest);
  • Integer llVerifyRSA(string publicKey, string msg, string signature, string digest).
• It has been suggested that the server-side of Pathfinding might be in line for a re-visit, although no time frame for when this might be or what it might comprise has been determined as yet.
• It is reported that llRequestAgentData(id,DATA_NAME); is failing with increased frequency (the issue was first reported in BUG-231884), with other request functions also reported as having issues (e.g. llRequestSimulatorData incorrectly reporting a region’s online status until the region is restarted). It’s not clear at this point in time what is causing these problems, but server-side caching errors might be the cause of some.
• A request has (again) been made for the servers to have valid SSL certificates. A Jira has been filed on this, and the engineering team are going to try to get it moved forward with TPTB.
• BUG-227303 “collisions makes a script stop running and revert its mono status”, is now described a “high on the list” of things to be addressed.
• BUG-10442 “llGetHTTPHeader does not accept custom headers” has been raised as something to be addressed given the upcoming release of Simulator RC 577628.
• BUG-233107 “Objects failing to render is happening more frequently of late” continues to be an issue, an might be occurring more frequently for some, and its priority has been raised.
• BUG-233140 “LSL Feature Request: PSYS_PART_TEXTURE_ANIM” a feature request relating to animated particles has been raised and accepted. Whilst seen as a 2nice to have”, and something that might spark renewed interest at poking at the particle system (viewer performance permitting) – it generated interest and discussion at the meeting.