Day: April 2, 2024

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, April 2nd, 2024 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They form a summary of the items discussed, and are not intended to be a full transcript, and were taken from my chat log. No video this week.

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

• The SLS Main channel was restarted on Tuesday, April 2nd, with the Hearts & flowers deployment going grid-wide. This mostly comprises internal (non-user visible) updates, together with these user-visible additions:
  • llSetLinkSitFlags/llGetLinkSitFlags – allow you to adjust the sit flags for a prim. It supports the existing two SIT_FLAG_ALLOW_UNSIT and SCRIPT_ONLY.
    • At some future point, SIT_FLAG_HIDE_AVATAR should also be added, so you don’t need to play an animation that squishes the avatar so they aren’t visible in something like a very small vehicle.
  • A feature for estate managers that will allow them to schedule automatic region restarts (see below).
  • A new constant in llSPP PRIM_SIT_FLAGS it will contain all the sit flag information, (including ALLOW_UNSIT and SCRIPTED_ONLY (the two older constants will still be available).
  • A new capability to load item inventory lists via HTTP (so items with large contents will load faster when accessed, although this will require a viewer update as well).
  • A fix for avatars going into an animation thrash between falling and flying when using llSetHoverHeight() from an attachment.
  • An adjustment to the way download weight for mesh object (how much bandwidth is required to download and view the object) which should reduce this weighting by around 15% for most in-world mesh, potentially reducing the LI of said objects (but should not be taken to mean the LI for any given mesh object is now 15% lower).
  • There is a known bug in this release where you always show up hovering on login… until you provide any sort of movement input at which point you drop down to stand. A fix for this is in the next RC maintenance update, which will hopefully available for deployment in week #14.
• Wednesday, April 3rd, should see the RC channels restarted with no deployment.

Scheduled Region Restarts

A part of the Heart & Flowers simulator update is the ability for Private region / estate holders to schedule region restarts via the Region console in the viewer.

• Schedules can be set on a Daily or Weekly basis (e.g. every day at 06:00 SLT; Monday & Thursday at 17:00, etc.)
• Restarts have a “vaccination” period of +/- 5 minutes of the selected restart time, so that all regions in an estate don’t suddenly restart at exactly the same time.
• Any scheduled restart can be cancelled in the same manner as existing manual restarts.

SL Viewer Updates

• On Tuesday, April 2nd, the Maintenance X RC (usability improvements) updated to version 7.1.5.8443777128.
• Like the end-of-week #13 updates to the Maint. W and Y RC viewers, this update was to bring the viewer to parity with the glTF / PBR Maintenance-2 release viewer.

The rest of the current official viewer in the pipeline stand as:

• Release viewer: version 7.1.4.8149792635, formerly glTF PBR Materials Maintenance-2 RC viewer, issued March 11, promoted March 26.
• Release channel cohorts:
  • Maintenance-W RC (bug and crash fixes), version 7.1.5.8443591509, March 29.
  • Maintenance Y RC ( My Outfits folder improvements; ability to remove entries from landmark history + Maint Z RC integration), version 7.1.5.8448596295, March 29.
  • Materials Featurettes RC viewer, version 7.1.4.8270899680 – March 25.
• Project viewers:
  • Puppetry project viewer, version 6.6.12.579958, May 11.

In Brief

• Leviathan Linden hopes to get work done on providing a vehicle flag which will prevent HUD llSetVelocity() and lllApplyImpulse() from affecting the vehicle’s speed.
  • This is in response to a request to help solve the problem of cheaters sitting on competition vehicles. Someone sits on the object and uses a HUD with llSetVelocity() or other calls to push the vehicle faster than it would normally go.
• Leviathan Linden indicated that the Lab has encountered a couple of issues in moving the simulators to 64-bit architecture:
  • A script memory issue. In short, some scripts that currently work at the very edge of the memory footprint might be pushed over the limit in 64-bit, and would stop working. So the Lab needs to figure out how much more memory access by scripts is required to allow all current scripts will be able to continue working. This will require a period of extended testing to see where the issue typically occurs.
  • Figuring out how to pack the servers on server instances. The Lab currently runs multiple servers on one machine, and some of the machine instances are currently close to their physical memory limit already when the underpinning servers run for a long time. So the Lab needs to hunt for memory leaks and resource leaks, carry out optimisation work where necessary and possibly change the server density on deployment.
  • The hope (as expressed by Leviathan) is to get the transition to 64-bit server architecture completed some time in 2024.
• The above information was given in response to a request for an increase in the script memory allowance for Mono scripts (a frequent request from users / creators so as to reduce the overall number of scripts within an object & the number of events passing between them to achieve a given result – an important consideration, given scripts can impact the LI of objects). A general discussion on script limits, memory allowance, etc., then followed through much of the remaining time of the meeting.
• A general discussion on region crossings / teleports (such as having vehicle-initiated teleports capable of moving a vehicle + occupants across and entire region / estate (“eep!” given the complexities involved), simulator management of TPs, etc. But as Monty Linden was not present – as the Linden most intimately involved in wading through the teleport / region crossing code, most of these were unanswered in terms of certainty of response.

† 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.