2024 SL SUG meetings week #46 summary

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, November 12th, 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 the 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, November 12th, 2024, the simulators on the Main SLS channel were restarted without no updates.
• On Wednesday, November 13th::
  • The Barbecue simulator update will hopefully be deployed to all simulators on the BlueSteel RC channel; however, a late-breaking bug in the code may prevent this. Among other things, this update includes:
    • 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). Rider describes this as “Bot confessions”: with IM sessions with bots there will be a warning sent to the receiver that they are having a conversation with a bot. Also, for viewer developers, there will be a bit of metadata attached to the IM_NOTHING_SPECIAL that indicates the sender is a bot.
  • The remaining RC channel will be restarted.

Apple Cobbler Update

• This will follow the Barbecue deployment in the coming week, and 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 (system folders + RLV/a) to be specified as well (+ the use of a parameter list, so further options can be added in the future).
  • llMapBeacon – like llMapDestination, but a) does not necessarily open the map window; b) can optionally open the map, with or without focus. This will also require a viewer update.
  • A new function for detecting attachments. If it is running with an experience it will be able to detect HUDs that also have scripts with the same experience (e.g. to ensure the correct HUDs are being used – this will not allow anyone to script to find out all the HUDs someone is using).
• A preview of Apple Cobbler is available on the Aditi (Beta Grid) regions of Mauve and Jigglypuff for those wishing to test.

SL Viewer Updates

The ExtraFPS RC updates to version 7.1.11.11750364439 on Tuesday, November 12th.

• 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 7.1.11.11565212741, October 30.
  • Performance improvements: enhanced texture memory tracking, broader hardware compatibility and higher FPS gain;  additional code to improve texture streaming on rigged attachments (e.g. if an earring is made with 2K textures, the viewer will correctly calculate the required resolution for the textures and download them, rather than downloading the full 2K textures), etc.
  • Aesthetics improvements: new Antialiasing setting – SMAA; Contrast Adaptive Sharpening; Khronos Neutral Tone Mapping (can be changed to ACES via the RenderTonemapType Debug setting).
  • UI Optimisations.

In Brief

Please refer to the video below for the following:

• Further discussion on llGiveAgentInventory, including but not limited to:
  • A reminder that the  function will not require a viewer-side update.
  • Requests that it should include the option for the receiving user to select the destination folder.
  • Whether or not all items given using llGiveAgentInventory should be forced to default to creating folders only with a defined system folder within inventory (e.g. “Given Items”).
  • Discussion and disagreements over which folders should be available for nomination by a script / which should not.
  • A general discussion on system folder naming (e.g. the misnomer of “Received Items”, suggesting everything goes there, when it is in fact for items received from the MP) which in turn wandered into areas of tagging and hierarchies.
• Comments on attachment issues (failing to show on others after TP, etc.), Monty Linden reminded people that the recent fix targeted a specific issue (relating to attachments ghosting and similar on region crossings), not “all” attachment related  bugs. He also notes that there is some asset re-prioritization work going on in the viewer which is improving avatar render after arrival.

† 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.