2024 SL SUG meetings week #40 summary

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, October 1st, 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 Pantera’s video of the meeting, which is embedded at the end – my thanks to her 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.
• Meetings 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, October 1st, the SLS Main channel saw the deployment of the Picnic /Doubtfire update, making it grid-wide.
  • There were apparently some issues with the deployment, resulting in it taking longer than anticipated, due to a need to fix them on the fly.
• Wednesday, October 2nd should see all RC channels restarted without any deployment.

WebRTC Simulator Deployment Status

• • As a result of an Engineering team summit in week #41 (commencing Monday, October 8th), it now appears the deployment of the WebRTC updates to some of the main RC channels will now not take place until Wednesday October 16th.
  • In the meantime, WebRTC can still be tested on the four WebRTC regions (WebRTC1 through 4) on the Pop Rock channel, and on the Preflight test RC channel.

SL Viewer Updates

No changes at the start of the week:

• Release viewer: version 7.1.10.10800445603, (formerly the DeltaFPS RC), dated September 11th, was promoted to de facto release status on September 19th. This includes:
  • Performance boosts. Memory management has been optimized and users will experience a higher FPS across various systems. A comprehensive range of bug fixes are also provided. This includes better PBR material handling and resolving frequent crashes. See the release notes for more.
  • UI for scheduling region restarts now available via a new button located in the Region/Estate floater. (Note: there is currently an issue with scheduled region restarts working correctly and a fix is due to come in the next server release).
• Release Candidate: ExtraFPS RC, version 7.1.11.11074622243, issued September 30th.
  • Performance improvements: enhanced texture memory tracking, broader hardware compatibility and higher FPS gain.
  • Aesthetics improvements: new Antialiasing setting – SMAA; Contrast Adaptive Sharpening; Khronos Neutral Tone Mapping (can be changed to ACES via the RenderTonemapType Debug setting).

In Brief

Please refer to the video below for the following:

• Game Control:
  • This work has apparently not been merged into the initial release of ExtraFPS. A bug fix failed to pass QA, causing issues on the Mac flavour of the viewer.
  • It is hoped that this issue can be resolved and the code merges in the near future.
• Combat 2.1:
  • Rider Linden has published a new proposal specification for “Combat 2.1”,  the next update to the Second Life Combat System (SLCS), this one expanding on teams and respawning.
  • Feedback is being sought on this, with the note that it should be offered sooner rather than later by anyone who may not have seen it, as Rider is hoping to start converting it into actionable items, after which he can then start to implement.
• A fix for at least some of the attachment dropping / loss / ghosting issues (see: Attachment loss on RC channel 2024-08-29.10619830788) which can be experienced during region crossing (TP or physical) is being deployed and tested.
  • The plan is to deploy it with either the WebRTC simulator updates or the Barbecue maintenance update that will follow, depending on which is the the next to go out (currently WebRTC, as noted above).
  • However, the fix is currently available on Aditi (the Beta grid) for those wishing to test it.
• Rider Linden is working on llSetAgentRot (turns the avatar to face the direction indicated by rot., with a +/- 3 degree variance), which should be going into the Barbecue simulator update.
  • However, there is a corresponding viewer change it requires in order for the avatar turning to be seen viewer-side, and this update is going into the viewer Develop branch for a future viewer update.
  • This sparked a further discussion which ran into the topic of Child Agents (instances of an avatar which are registered in regions adjacent to the region the avatar is in, allowing the avatar to be “tracked” in case it is actually going to move from the region it is in to the region in which the Child Agent is registered, for example) and the subject of ghosted objects.
• LDPW have requested a new LSL function – llTransferOwnership – which would allow a scripted change of ownership for an item with Transfer permissions.
  • This sparked an end-of-meeting discussion on how it might work and suitable safeguards.
  • As the function is still in the discussion phase at this point in time, please refer to the video below for further information.

Date of Next Meeting

• Tuesday, October 15th, 2024, due to the Engineering Team summit meeting.

† 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.