Day: December 17, 2024

2024 SL SUG meetings week #51 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Dominae Templum Doloris, October 2024 – blog post

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, December 17th, 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 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):
  • 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, December 17th, 2024, the simulators on the Main SLS channel were restarted with no update.
  • On Wednesday, December 18th, the servers on the RC channels should be restarted without any deployments being made.

With the holiday period starting in a week, the engineering team will be making a call in the next day or so on whether to run re-starts over the holiday period or not.

SL Viewer Updates

  • 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 7.1.11.12363455226, December 17.
    • 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:

  • A discussion on llGetObjectDetails, together with llGOD() or using a rezzer to check for an object’s presence, and potential confusion which can potentially arise, and the potential benefit in using llGetOwnerKey.
    • This sparked ideas for additional functions / parameter for check on objects with regions / parcels – e.g.: llDoesExist() with parameters IN_REGION, IN_PARCEL and IN_OWNERS_PARCEL.
  • A request was made for an update on the server-side lua implementation project, and information on challenges encountered. This prompted Rider Linden to respond:
The project is moving forward, but it is a pretty complex undertaking and we need to move forward cautiously. Remember, we’re trying to swap the VM out from under 20 years worth of scripts… in place and on the fly.

– Rider Linden

  • The above led to a further discussion on Lua some of which can be addressed via the Lua FAQ, although one of the the easiest to answer (“Why replace Mono”?) is perhaps best answered by the observation that the Mono version SL is running is old, and Mono itself is becoming seemingly frozen in time.  This discussion wound through the rest of the meeting.
  • The Lua / Mono exchange segued into a discussion on region performance slowing as avatars enter, together with anecdotal reports of an increase in region crossings timing-out and people being logged-out as a result.
    • Monty Linden again noted the issue of avatars entering regions is being looked at, and requested that reports be filed (including locations and times) when these issues are noted.
    • To help, he has opened a report to which people can append their information via comments.
    • In terms of avatars entering regions and slowing things, he added: “Note that the recent avatar work makes entering *worse* for the offending avatar, better for those already in-region.”
  • Testing llTransferOwnership has shown the function generates two confirmatory message: after opting to Accept whatever is being offered by the in-world object, recipients are hit with the messages similar to “an object owned by somebody gave you a thing”, followed by “you are now the owner of a thing. [ OK ] “.
    • The duplication of messages is in known issue, and due in part to the viewer automatically generating the first message as soon as the Accept button is pressed, whereas the second message comes from the server.
    • The implication appears to be that the viewer message will be addressed, as it can be misleading.
  • An issue has been reported (and reproduced) relating to llGetEnvironment (+ related functions) returning inaccurate unit vectors for Sun / Moon position. There is some potential disagreement as to what is being seen / where the issue might reside, but it is being looked into.

Date of Next Meeting

  • Tuesday, January 7th, 2025.

† 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.