2024 SL SUG meetings week #4 summary

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, January 23rd, 2024 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They form a summary of the items discussed, and are not intended to be a full transcript. A video of the meeting is embedded at the end of this summary, my thanks as always to Pantera for recording the meeting and providing 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.

Simulator Deployments

• No SLS Main channel deployment on Tuesday, January 23rd, 2024; the simhosts were all just restarted.
• Wednesday, January 24th should see a further attempt to deploy the Falls Colours simulator update (which includes a fix for collision sounds reverberating; llRezObjectWithParams, llListFindListNext and llGetNotecardLineSync.
  • The week #3 attempt to deploy the Fall Colours RC simulator had to be rolled back after it was discovered Debian had accidentally included a bug with the version of the OS used to package the simulator release. It is hoped this will be corrected in order for the simulator update to be deployed on January 24th.
• Assuming Fall Colours is successfully deployed, week #5 (commencing Monday, January 29th, 2024) should see it promoted to the Main SLS channel and the Gingerbread RC release reach at least some of the RC channels.
  • Gingerbread includes llComputeHash(), llGetCameraAspect(), llGetCameraFOV(), llGetNotecardLineSync() and llWorldPosToHUD().
  • Those wishing to test these functions can do so on Aditi (the Beta Grid) on regions including Mauve, Jigglypuff.

Viewer Updates

No changes at the start of the week, leaving the list of official viewers as:

• Release viewer: version 7.1.2.7215179142, formerly the glTF PBR Materials Maintenance RC, issued December 15, promoted January 8, 2024 – numerous bug fixes and improvements – 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).
  • Emoji RC viewer, version 7.1.3.7453691714, January 22, 2024.
  • glTF PBR Materials Maintenance-2 RC viewer, version 7.1.3.7467259489, issued January 12, 2024.
  • Maintenance-W RC viewer, version 7.1.3.7453541295, January 9, 2024 – bug and crash fixes.
  • Maintenance X RC, version 7.1.1.7088410646, December 7 – usability improvements.
  • Maintenance Y RC, version 6.6.17.6935642049, issued November 21 – My Outfits folder improvements; ability to remove entries from landmark history.
• Project viewers:
  • Puppetry project viewer, version 6.6.12.579958, May 11.

Jira End-of-Road – Reminder

• Linden Lab is ending its use of Atlassian Jira for the filing of bug reports and feature request, and is instead moving to Github / Canny. For specifics, please refer to the following:
  • Moving from Jira Pt 1 – official blog post.
  • Lab announces Second Life transitioning from Jira for bug reporting, etc. – this blog, with Canny Feedback screen shots.
• The new means of filing bug reports  / feature requests is via the Canny feedback portal.

Combat Committee User Group

• Rider Linden has received the green light to establish this meeting to discuss combat simulation in Second Life, and ways / means to improve what is currently available.
• The venue / time / frequency of meetings will be announced at the next SUG meeting.

Game Control Update

• A reminder that the game_control event for using game controllers has been removed from the Gingerbread maintenance RC to become its own branch / channel (currently on Aditi (the Beta grid), where it can be found on the regions LeviathanLove and LeviathanLost.

In Brief

• In is hoped that work on improving vehicle interactions with parcel ban lines (e.g. stopping them hitting ban lines and getting stuck by having them bounce back) will hopefully be implemented later in 2024. Several Lindens are interested in poking at this.
• The above led to an extended conversation on security systems in general – notably those which are intentionally aggressive / used to override ban line limitations (e.g. by preventing overflight of parcels on the Mainland well above the upper limit of ban lines). This conversation touched on:
  • The tension between people’s right to privacy vs. the natural expectations that when flying over a contiguous world, a freedom of passage should be allowed.
  • Requests that some form of minimum delay (e.g. 15 secs) be enforced on security systems to prevent unnecessary 0 sec ejection / teleporting those who are innocently passing by a protected parcel.
  • Providing some means for information on orbs / ban lines / private(/restricted) parcel being passed to the viewer (e.g. to be display on the Mini-Map for the former, and / or UI icon to be displayed when passing over restricted  / private parcels with an active security.
  • Please refer to the video below for more on this.

† 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.