Day: January 17, 2025

2025 week #3: SL CCUG meeting summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Lights in White Satin, November 2024 – blog post †
The following notes were taken from:

  • The livestream and my chat log of the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting of Thursday, January 17th, 2025.

Please note that this is not a full transcript, but a summary of key topics. .
Table of Contents

Meeting Purpose

  • The CCUG meeting is for discussion of work related to content creation in Second Life, including current and upcoming LL projects, and encompasses requests or comments from the community, together with related viewer development work. This meeting is held on alternate Thursdays at Hippotropolis.
  • Dates and times of meetings are recorded in the SL Public Calendar, and they are conducted in a mix of Voice and text chat.

Official Viewer Status

  • Release viewer: version 7.1.11.12363455226, formerly the ExtraFPS RC (multiple performance fixes, aesthetic improvements and UI optimisations), dated December 17, promoted December 20, 2024.
  • Release Candidate: none at present.

General Update & Runitai Linden’s Departure

[Video: 2:11-7:20]

  • Numerous bugs and issues have been reported following the ExtraFPS viewer promotion, and as a result, these seem likely to be developed into a bug-fix viewer (“ForeverFPS”), with an initial cut at an RC version potentially coming in the next week or so.
  • There are “numerous discussions” occurring at the Lab regarding possible future projects, but nothing at present to announce.

Runitai Linden Departing LL

[Video: 3:52-7:20]

  • It was announced that Runitai Linden (often referred to as DaveP) is departing Linden Lab to enter public service.
  • Runitai commented directly on his reasons for departing the Lab and his feelings about doing so, however, rather than drop them here for those who prefer to read rather than listen, I’ve provided a transcript with some additional notes: Runitai Linden hears the call of Public Service.

2K Bakes on Mesh

[Video: 12:52-14:47 and 15:10-17:03]

  • It is believed the 2K bake updates for the Bake Service are “ready to go”, having cleared QA per my notes from the SUG meeting.
  • The viewer updates required to allow 2K textures to be used with wearable layers are apparently merged into the Develop branch, but yet to surface within an RC viewer built from that branch.
  • In theory, the back-end support could be enabled pending the viewer update, because it will not interfere with current rendering, as the viewer should continue to limit wearable textures to the current maximum of 1024×1024 until it is updated to apply 2K bakes. However, discussions on how to proceed pending the viewer update will be taken-up internally by LL.

In Brief

  • [Video: 10:05-10:39] A request was made for Darcy Linden to attend at least some CCUG meetings to discuss the Lab’s AI character generation project (see: Introducing the Character Designer (Alpha) and this follow-up forum thread). Vir Linden indicated he will check with Darcy on plans to join / hold meetings.
  • [Video: 14:48-15:00] here have been multiple requests / discussions over the years about the potential of an Inventory archive to allow people to reduce (some of) their Inventory bulk / bloat by archiving items through a supported system rather than just boxing them. Currently, such a service is not on the roadmap.
  • [Video: 17:32-22:55] A request to add the type of client (viewer, browser, SL Mobile) some is using to their avatar tag “to help people help others”. Surely the easiest way to find this out, as a mentor / someone giving assistance, etc., is to ask (“Are you using SL on a Mobile or through a browser, or have you installed the client on your computer?”).

Comments from Philip Rosedale

The core CCUG meeting was shortened to 30 minutes due to LL meeting conflicts. However, Philip Rosedale dropped in to provide assorted comments and feedback.

  • [Video: 24:40-25:35] On AI and Scripted Agents, etc.: thinks the Lab’s policy on AI and bots is going to be “a complex and evolving matter”, and that as AI becomes more powerful, people will need to come together to decide how best to handle it in SL, given the variety of views.
  • [Video: 27:39-40:14] The above indirectly led to a discussion on being able to identify bots in Group chat sessions and IMs similar, where it may not be obvious that messages are being bot / AI-generated.  There are flags which should be used with scripted agents and which should force a message to indicate a messenger is a scripted agent in IMs; however, the issue appears to be that chat and IM can get flooded so quickly with text, the notification can be missed. Suggestions were made to make this text a different colour and possibly pin it to the top of the chat / IM window.
    • This resulted in a list of categories of bot bad behaviour being drawn up, including begging,  phishing, undesired group chat, traffic gaming, data collection (e.g. Bonnie Bots) even overwhelming users with NPC text & failing to account for other interactions.
    • Overall, this became an extended conversation, and following the video is recommended for full context.
  • [Video 25:45-26:48] On promoting Second Life as a place to hold work meetings: does not believe the platform has reached that point, because of the lack of nuance within avatar communications – humans really heavily on non-verbal communication cues for further subtext, etc., in exchanges, and SL currently cannot provide these.
    • [Also, as a sidenote, LL put considerable effort into trying to develop SL as a behind-the-firewall “business application” between 2008-2011 with the Second Life Enterprise (SLE) package (licenses at around US $55,000, but I cannot remember how many avatars came with that license), and that didn’t go so well at the time – potentially because of the shortfalls Philip mentions being among the reasons it didn’t really gain a lot of traction at the time.]
  • [Video: 40:14-50:10] A discussion on resource allocation through Project Zero to allow fair and balanced access to SL at minimum / no cost through the browser for people without it being abused (e.g. by people creating and running dozens / hundreds of bots through the browser access, thus running up costs to a point where others have to start paying at a higher rate.
    • As this was a brainstorming session producing multiple ideas (e.g. limiting browser access to subscription accounts  – potentially missing the people the service is really geared towards helping, as they may not have subscription accounts; controlling via some form of 2FA; utilising Payment Information on File both as a means to limit access to those who are PIOF and a means to prevent them logging-on more than one account through the streaming service at one time, etc.), please refer to the video.
  • [Video: 50:11-54:08] When will voice services switch solely to WebRTC? – still waiting for more users to move from Firestorm 6.6.17 to a PBR-enabled version of Firestorm (which will hopefully happen once Firestorm release a version based on the ExtraFPS viewer code, allowing for the issues for poor Linden Water quality – reflections, etc.).
  • [Video 55:50-1:01:05] Discussion on exclusion volumes for boats under PBR (as re-enabling the forward renderer to allow invisiprims to hide water volumes is not going to happen). Runitai indicated there are potentially alternatives to allow such exclusion volumes to work.
  • [Video: 1:01:11-1:02:55] Comments on alternative rendering engines and content support segueing into thoughts on why other VW platforms have never achieved the level of adoption by users as witnessed with Second Life (including Sansar, OpenSim and Meta).

Next 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 gathering of people every week. They are taken from my list of region visits, with a link to the post for those interested.

Runitai Linden departs LL for public service

Posted on by Inara Pey
Runitai Linden in both his "Classic" (Primitar-esque) look and his more recent avatar look
Runitai Linden in both his “Classic” (Primitar-esque) look and his more recent avatar look

Update: subject to direct correction, I believe (from comments made) that Runitai is moving to work as a paramedic.

During the Content Creation User Group meeting on Thursday, January 16th, it was announced that Runitai Linden (often referred to as DaveP) is departing Linden Lab.

One of the now longest-serving employees at the Lab, Runitai joined the company in 2005, and has been a core member of the graphics / rendering team throughout most of that time, although he was moved over to work on Project Sansar, remaining with that project through to its launch as Sansar, before transferring back to Second Life when the Lab suspended work on Sansar in early 2020, prior to its eventual sale to Wookey (then Wookey Projects Inc).

Commenting on his departure, Runitai stated:

It’s been almost 20 years, and I’ll always be grateful for the time that I’ve had here, no doubt, and everything Second Life has done; and I’ll always be proud of what Linden Lab and the residents have accomplished here. But I’ve been convicted [sic] recently to pursue a career in public service, and at the same time I felt that calling things stopped coming together in my head for doing the work that needs to be done here; I really feel that I’ve done all that I can do  and it’s time for me to go on to something else.
I wouldn’t be able to do that if it wasn’t for all of you. The career I’ve chosen doesn’t exactly pay a living wage, so I’ll definitely be living off my savings! But I feel this is what I have to do. I also feel that the Second Life team has never been stronger, everybody at the Lab and the open-source community does such great work, such talented people; world-class engineers all round. I have no doubt that Second Life will thrive in my absence.
I will definitely miss all of you, I’ll miss this place – it’s been a rollercoaster, that’s for sure! 

If you wish to listen to Runitai’s comments you can do so via the CCUG meeting video [3:52-7:20].

One of the things very much marked by Runitai’s return to Second Life following his time working on Sansar, has been the drive to update the visual fidelity of the platform more it towards established graphical standards. While this initiative may not have originated entirely with him, his involvement in this work has been instrumental – particularly in looking at how best to enable key aspects of the glTF specification the Lab hopes to adopt (e.g. supporting current mesh data formats over the outdated Collada .DAE, prototyping scene upload capabilities, etc.), and in driving much of the work in getting the viewer’s performance back up to acceptable standards following the issues coming out of – but not necessarily entirely the result of – the implementation of PBR materials and rendering.

Runitai did not elaborate on the specific area of public service he is moving into (or which is perhaps now claiming his full-time attention). However, everyone in Second Life who has come to know him well or distantly (as in my case) over the years cannot fail to understand the incredible amount of work his has put into the platform, or the sheer wealth of technical knowledge he has acquired and put to use throughout his time at the Lab. This along with his openness, honesty and jovial nature, will be very much missed.

For my part, I’d like to thank Runitai for all of his work with Second Life and wish him well in his new career path. Also, for those who do know Runitai and who have not already obtained a copy, his Linden Bear is available at the Hipptropolis Campsite, home of the CCUG meetings – it is floating (at the time of writing) serenely next to the table and camp fire.