2024 SL SUG meetings week #19 summary

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, May 7th, 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 and the video by Pantera – my thanks to her as always for 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

• On Tuesday, May 7th,  the Main SLS channel was updated with the back-end support for the the glTF updates available in the Graphics Featurettes viewer (e.g. PBR terrain textures 2K textures and mirrors).
  • Note that these updates require the use of the Graphics Featurettes RC viewer (available from the Alternate Viewers page), or a TPV that has merged with this code.
• On Wednesday, May 8th, all RC channels will be re-started with no deployment or update.

SL Viewer Updates

• The Maintenance C RC viewer, version 7.1.7.8820704257, was issued on Monday, May 6th.
  • The most notably update in this release is that resetting your avatar skeleton will now send the update to all viewers in your location, rather than people also having to reset your skeleton in their view as well.

The rest of the official viewers in a pipeline remain as:

• Release viewer: 7.1.6.8745209917, formerly the Maintenance Y/Z RC ( My Outfits folder improvements; ability to remove entries from landmark history), dated April 19 and promoted April 23 – No Change
• Release channel cohorts:
  • Materials Featurettes RC viewer, version 7.1.7.8883017948, May 2.
  • Maintenance B RC (usability updates / imposter changes), version 7.1.7.8820696922, April 29.
  • Maintenance X RC (usability improvements), version 7.1.6.8758996787, April 23.
• Project viewers:
  • Puppetry project viewer, version 6.6.12.579958, May 11.

SL World Map Generator

Pepper Linden reported that a new version of the system responsible for world map tile generation has been deployed. This includes:

• Fixes for issues where map tiles can become significantly out-of-date compared to the regions they represent.
• A significant reduction in the time required for the daily regeneration of a complete map of the Main grid (down to 2 hours, from 11 hours).
• Anyone noting any issues with the new map tile generation is asked to file a bug through the feedback portal.
• This lead to a further general discussion on map and region crossings during the meeting.

In Brief

• Leviathan Linden plans to have his Game Control event updates to be included in the Summer Fun simulator update (not Spring Break – which should be the next deployment – as originally hoped).
• The meeting included further discussion on the SL Combat System updates + requests for additional work / options / capabilities. I’ll have an update on the SLCS work after the associated meeting (to be held on Thursday, May 9th).
• Much of the the meeting formed a general discussion on a range of topics – PBR, region crossings, etc. Please refer to the video below.

† 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.