2023 SL SUG meetings week #36 summary

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday,  September 5th 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.

Meeting Overview

• The Simulator User Group (also referred to by its older name of Server User Group) exists to provide an opportunity for discussion about simulator technology, bugs, and feature ideas.
• These meetings are conducted (as a rule):
  • Every Tuesday at 12:00 noon SLT.
  • In text (no Voice)
  • At this location.
• They are open to anyone with a concern / interest in the above topics, and form one of a series of regular / semi-regular User Group meetings conducted by Linden Lab.
• Dates and times of all current meetings can be found on the Second Life Public Calendar, and descriptions of meetings are defined on the SL wiki.

Server Deployments

• There was no deployment to the SLS Main channel on Tuesday September 5th, leaving all simhosts on that channel running on release 581251, although the hosts were all restarted.
• On Wednesday, September 6th:
  • The “Bugsmash” simulator update 581292 will be extended across the majority of RC channels.
  • The “Dog Days” update may go to a limited RC deployment – possibly Ferrari. This update includes:
    • The unbinding of the Experience KVP database read / write functions from land (users will still require an Experience to access the KVP database).
    • A scripted ability to set CLICK_ACTION_IGNORE, allowing an object to be clicked-through to reach an object behind it – a flag supporting this is included in the Maintenance U RC viewer promoted to Release status in week #34.
    • PRIM_CLICK_ACTION is added to llSet/GetPrimParams so you can set the click action on prims in a linkset.

Viewer Updates

No updates to the official SL viewers at the start of the week, leaving the current list as:

• Release viewer,  version 6.6.14.581101, promoted August 23.
• Release channel cohorts:
  • glTF / PBR Materials viewer, version 7.0.0.581368, August 22.
  • Maintenance V(ersatility) RC viewer, version 6.6.14.581315, August 15.
  • Inventory Extensions RC viewer, version 6.6.14.581357, August 14.
• Project viewers:
  • Emoji project viewer, version 6.6.13.580279, May 30.
  • Puppetry project viewer, version 6.6.12.579958, May 11.

Note: the alternate viewer page also lists “Win32+MacOS<10.13 – 6.6.12.579987” as an RC viewer. However, the Win 32 + pre-Mac OS 10.13 was promoted to release status on July 5th, and viewer version 6.6.12.579987 points to the Maintenance S viewer, promoted to release status on May 16th.

Potential for Improving Vehicle Control Options

Further to the last meeting, Leviathan Linden gave the following update.

 I acquired a SpaceNavigator to make sure I don’t break that functionality [but] the SpaceNavigator is not detected by the alternate game controller detection lib I was thinking about using (libstem_gamepad, available on github). So, I’m going to implement a different detection system and not try to modify or recycle the NdofDevice system currently used to detect the SpaceNavigator. However the NdofDevice system does detect a regular XBox controller… well most of the input axes, not all of them, so, I think I’ll first just expose the controller input to LSL and not change how it is currently used for controlling the avatar. Overhaul of that stuff would be a separate delivery later.

This work may also include feature request BUG-234354 “Virtual control device as intermediate layer between the scripts and the controller”, with Leviathan further noting:

I would like to support multiple controllers at once, and I don’t want to paint myself into a corner where I can’t; but will first make sure just one controller works. I believe we’ll need a way for the various buttons/axes of the controllers to be re-mapped via some viewer User Interface, as part of the initial delivery, but not sure how that will work out just yet. I’m going to try to get my hands on some other controllers to test: a flight stick and a few other odd hardware with extra buttons.

In Brief

Please refer to the video for:

• A general discussion on llVolumeDetect.
• A general discussion on Experiences.
• Monty Linden is continuing to look into issues of the simulator / viewer freezing during avatar arrival, although this work may be suspended whilst Monty is out-of-office for a while.
• A discussion on options to use scripted function to gain information on the inventory contents of rezzed objects, per feature requests BUG-7395, BUG-34184, and BUG-202886.

† The header images included in these summaries are not intended to represent anything discussed at the meetings; they are simply here to avoid a repeated image of a rooftop of people every week. They are taken from my list of region visits, with a link to the post for those interested.