2024 SL SUG meetings week #43 summary

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, October 22nd, 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 22nd, the Main SLS channel received an updated version of the simulator Doubtfire release, which incorporates a fix for the attachment issues that people have been seeing, together with a fix for the last of the problems for things like region traffic.
• On Wednesday, October 23rd, this version of Doubtfire should be deployed to all RC channels.

Simulator Deployment Plans

• The next simulator maintenance update will be Barbecue, which should include:
  • Support for “alpha-gamma” which will allow an object owner to adjust some of the PBR alpha values that were impacting legacy things like hair.
  • llSetAgentRot.
  • A new warning on receiving direct IMs from Scripted Agents (“registered” bots): if a Scripted Agent “right clicks” you and sends you a message, it will trigger a warning about sharing personal information with bots within the chat window.
• Following Barbecue will be Apple Cobbler, which should include:
  • llTransferOwnership which enables a prim give itself to a new user (subject to owner permissions already set).
  • An extended llGiveInventory to allow for a destination folder (spystem folers + RLV/a) to be specified as well (+ the use of a parameter list, so further options can be added in the future).

SL Viewer Updates

No changes at the start of the week:

• Release viewer: version 7.1.10.10800445603, formerly the DeltaFPS RC (multiple performance fixes, etc), dated September 11, promoted September 17 – No change.
• Release Candidate: ExtraFPS RC, version 7.1.11.11296522354, October 18.
  • 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:

• llTransferOwnership: concerns were raised over ensuring proper safeguards to ensure the function cannot be abused. For example:
  • If person A has edit rights to person B’s objects, and one of those objects has something like a money() event (or similar), and A drops a llTransferOwnership into the object, so it is automatically transferred, potentially exposing the recipient to an unexpected outcome (such as L$ transfer).
  • Safeguards against these potentials is to be investigated before making the function available.
• The proposed new message for Scripted Agents raised a discussion on bots which have not been explicitly “registered” as a bot at creation still presenting a range of issues: spamming people, gaming the system, etc, and how better to manage them.
  • One suggestion is provided via this Canny report. The discussion covered other options / ideas.
• The idea of llGiveInventory being able to target folders resulted in discussions of how far this should go, with strong opposition to the idea of the option allowing it to establish multiple sub-folders in a tree, or placing items in a system folder with out requesting permission first; and suggestions that maybe the extension should offer a means for the recipient to browse their folder tree and determine where the object’s contents should go (if at all possible).
• Both of the above conversations became intertwined throughout most of the rest of the meeting.
• Some have reported issues with Voice chat working on the official DeltaFPS viewer, even when Enable Voice Chat is checked. It’s not clear if this is an issue within the viewer or not. If the problem occurs, the suggestion is to toggle Enable Voice Chat off/on. If the problem persists – file a report.
• Assorted end-of-meeting discussions on Lua (no actual news on status to give) and on issued such as scripted functions for easy PBR alpha switching – which unfortunately weren’t addressed due to the continuing discussions on the likes of llGiveInventory, and so missed.

† 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.