2023 SL SUG meetings week #15 summary

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, April 11th 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, April 11th, the SLS Main channel servers were re-started without any update.
• On Wednesday, April 12th the majority of the RC simhosts should be updated with simulator release 579248, matching the release previously deployed to the BlueSteel RC.

Upcoming Simulator Releases

• As soon as it clears QA, the simulator support for PBR Materials will be deployed to a limited RC channel – most likely Preflight. This will be ahead of the viewer moving to RC status, but will allow users on the PBR project viewer to test content without having to necessarily log onto the Beta grid.
• An upcoming pair of simulator releases currently going through QA focus on a range of bug fixes, including:
  • Spurious errors  from llSetKeyFrameMotion.
  • Collisions between vehicles and their riders on a region crossing.
  • The bad throttle on llReturnObjectsByOwner (as raised in the previous SUG meeting).
  • Avatar on-line/off-line notification issues (which comprise multiple issues, and LL have attempted to fix as many as possible).
• A further simulator update focused on region crossing improvements is in development, but as of this meeting, there was no ETA on when it will go to QA or be ready for deployment.

Viewer Updates

• Release viewer: Maintenance R viewer, version 6.6.10.579060, dated March 28, promoted March 30th.
• Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself).
  • Maintenance T RC viewer, version 6.6.11.579154, April 6th.
  • Performance Floater / Auto FPS RC viewer updated to version 6.6.11.579238, April 4th.
  • Maintenance S RC viewer, version 6.6.11.579153, March 31st.
• Project viewers:
  • PBR Materials project viewer, version 7.0.0.578921, April 6 – 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

• See the video for:
  • A general discussion on region crossing bugs related to region crossings.
  • A discussion on security orbs.
  • A discussion on No-Mod items, the permission system and the pains caused by No Mod, and the potential to tweak No Mod (or offer a “No Mod(ish)” permission, so that users can still make small changes to No Mod objects (e.g. tinting), whilst allowing the creator to still “protect” their product.
• For region restarts, Linden Lab is considering adding a capability that would automatically teleport avatars to a designated “alternate home” if their home location is unavailable at the time they try to TP out of a restarting region, and if the “alternate” is not available, then move them to a Safe area.