Day: September 12, 2023

2023 SL SUG meetings week #37 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
The Shambles, July 2023 – blog post

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday,  September 12th 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):
  • 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

  • On Tuesday, September 12th, SLS Main channel was updated to simulator update 581292, previously on the majority of the RC channels.
  • On Wednesday, September 13th, the “Dog Days” update should be deployed across all RC channels. 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.
    • It was noted that as LL has “changed some of the tools that we use for simulator builds … the version number is now longer”.

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:
    • Maintenance W RC viewer, version 6.6.15.581670, September 11.
    • glTF / PBR Materials viewer, version 7.0.0.581684, September 8.
    • Inventory Extensions RC viewer, version 6.6.15.581692, September 8.
    • Emoji RC viewer, version 6.6.15.581551, August 31.
    • Maintenance V(ersatility) RC viewer, version 6.6.15.581557, August 30.
  • Project viewers:

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 recent meetings, Leviathan Linden gave the following update.

Last week it was suggested (although I missed it, Signal later pointed it out to me) that instead of using a new specific library for detecting devices we should use SDL (Simple DirectMedia Layer) since it is already used by various 3rd party viewers for Linux support. So, I’ve gone ahead and starting walking that road, FYI. This will bring the official SL viewer closer in compliance to some 3rd party viewers and won’t add a new dependency.

This led to an interim agreement that the API could be analog_control, and a discussion on the control events it should recognise / support, how the data should be transmitted, etc. This conversation commenced during the last 20 minutes of the meeting and continued through until then end.

In Brief

Please refer to the video for:

  • A potential issue with llRezAtRoot generating unexpected results.
  • Rider Linden indicated he’d like to implement an extended rez function similar to BUG-233084 “Rez function with prim properties, primarily for projectiles”, “soon”.
  • a discussion on llkeyframedmotion. and whether or not an object using can reliably differentiate between “I stopped moving because I ran out of keyframes” and “I stopped moving because someone with edit perms selected me”, which broadened into a discussion on kfm objects.

† 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.

An everglades autumn at Tilheyra in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Tilheyra, September 2023 – click any image for full size

In May 2022, I visited Tilheyra, a Full region leveraging the private region land capacity bonus and designed by Teagan Lefevre as a means to showcase her TL Designs brand. It’s a place blogged about here – but that was spring 16 months ago; time has marched on, and those of us in the northern hemisphere are watching autumn stride towards us, and Second Life being what it is, Tilheyra has also marched forward.

I was recently made aware of this by Teagan herself, who invited me to re-visit the region and view its latest redressing. In particular, the estate has been extended with the additional of a Homestead region, which Teagan and her team have called Kuulua. It has been combined with Tilheyra to form a continuous landscape modelled after US swamplands.

Tilheyra, September 2023
Fall unfurls its colours in such splendour, we are but forced to take notice of it. Tilheyra, welcomes you to wade through the everglades, tour the swamps by foot or by boat, and taste the delicious flavours that autumn in the bayou brings.

– Tilheyra About Land

Given this description, and as one would expect, both of the regions present a low-lying landscape rich in trees and cut through with water as it forms natural channels and pools. Some of the latter are open, others increasingly choked by reeds and wetlands grasses, the greenery providing – if any were needed – perfect cover for local alligators as they prowl the shallows.

Tilheyra, September 2023

Sitting solidly towards the centre of this setting is a town. It is a place of indeterminate age; some of the buildings within it have the appearance of belonging to a grander setting whilst others – well, perhaps not so much; however all are showing signs of being past their prime. Roads, tracks and trails spread outward from the town, some of them crossing the water by means of bridges, all of variable designs and solidity – including one which started life as railway carriage! It a network of trails and paths which might be seen as a web spreading out through the swamplands, the town being the spider so often at the heart of a web; only rather than waiting for prey, the town awaits visitors to get caught in the unusual beauty of the landscape and itself.

During my May 2022 visit to Tilheyra I noted that while most of the region was open to the public, it also presented a number of rental properties. This is still the case with this latest iteration, with houseboats and cabins available for rent. All are clearly signed as private, so the risk of trespass should be minimised.

Tilheyra, September 2023

Those wanting to explore will find a lot to see, from places to eat to hangouts for passing the time – there’s even a corner memorial to pets that have passed on, tucked away in a corner. For the more adventurous, there’s a small dock on the shoreline of Kuulua, offering rowing boats and little Culprit speed boats for those who wish to explore the waterways.

Caught under the reds, greens and golds of autumn and framed by a sky in which both the Sun and the Moon might be found, the Tilheyra wetlands avoids the clichés often found within swamp-themed regions (such as an over-abundance of alligators or a “haunted” cabin or two), and instead presents an engaging and very natural setting, available for those seeking a home, and a destination for explorers and photographers.

Tilheyra, September 2023

My thanks to Teagan for the invite!

SLurl Details