Author: Inara Pey

Eclectic virtual world blogger with a focus on Second Life, VR, virtual environments and technology.

2023 week #24: SL CCUG meeting summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
The Last Aokigahara Souls, April 2023 – blog post †

The following notes were taken from my audio recording and chat log transcript of the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting held on Thursday, June 15th, 2023 at 13:00 SLT. 

These meetings are:

  • For discussion of work related to content creation in Second Life, including current work, upcoming work, and requests or comments from the community, together with viewer development work.
  • Usually chaired by Vir Linden, and dates and times can be obtained from the SL Public Calendar.
  • Conducted in mixed voice and text chat. Participants can use either when making comments  or ask or respond to comments, but note that you will need Voice to be enabled to hear responses and comments from the Linden reps and other using it. If you have issues with hearing or following the voice discussions, please inform the Lindens at the meeting.

The following is a summary of the key topics discussed in the meeting, and is not intended to be a full transcript of all points raised.

Viewer News

No official viewer updates up until the meeting, leaving the list as:

In addition:

  • Maintenance T is likely the next RC viewer in line for promotion to de facto release status; however, it currently has an elevated crashed rate compared to the current release viewer, so LL is looking to bring that down before any promotion in made.
  • The Emoji project viewer is liable to see further improvements to the Emoji picker in the UI.
  • All of the back-end work (simulator code and the inventory service) seen as necessary to support Inventory Thumbnails is now thought to be in place, opening the door for a Thumbnails project viewer “Soon™”, which is apparently awaiting QA clearance.
    • Apparently this now provides the option of displaying the contents of an inventory folder either as we’re currently familiar with them (icons and text) or in a “thumbnail view” – I’ll review this once the viewer is available.
    • It’s anticipated that as the feature goes mainstream, creators will include thumbnails with their product offerings, as well as users creating their own thumbnails of items already in their inventory.
  • A further Maintenance RC viewer (Maint U) is in development and could be surfacing “Soon™”.

glTF Materials and Reflection Probes

Project Summary

  • To provide support for PBR materials using the core glTF 2.0 specification Section 3.9 and using mikkTSpace tangents, including the ability to have PBR Materials assets which can be applied to surfaces and also traded / sold.
  • There is a general introduction / overview / guide to authoring PBR Materials available via the Second Life Wiki.
  • Substance Painter is also used as a guiding principal for how PBR materials should look in Second Life.
  • Up to four texture maps are supported for PBR Materials: the base colour (which includes the alpha); normal; metallic / roughness; and emissive, each with independent scaling.
  • Given the additional texture load, work has been put into improving texture handling within the PBR viewer.
  • In the near-term, glTF materials assets are materials scenes that don’t have any nodes / geometry, they only have the materials array, and there is only one material in that array.
  • The overall goal is to provide as much support for the glTF 2.0 specification as possible.
  • To provide support for reflection probes and cubemap reflections.
  • The viewer is available via the Alternate Viewers page.
  • Please also see previous CCUG meeting summaries for further background on this project.

Status

  • There is another viewer RC in the works. This has been delayed whilst a number of bugs were resolved, but it is now with QA and pending their OK, it should be surfacing in the very near future.
  • The water fog density range has been updated in the PBR viewer. It was capable of being set from -10 through to 10, but is now  “almost zero” through to 100, with the higher numbers indicating higher fog density (and lower visibility).
  • Sky settings:
    • As per my notes from the last CCUG, all “legacy” skies which do not have a probe ambience set, will have one automatically applied by the viewer.
    • This has lead to a checkbox being including in the Graphic Preferences to disable the automatic application. However, it is possible / likely the check box will be removed.
    • This will mean the only way to have “legacy” skies render as they did pre-PBR will be to set the probe ambience setting to zero in the sky settings.
    • Setting probe ambience to 0 effectively deactivates HDR rendering and tone mapping etc.
  • The above requirement to set the probe ambience to zero has two further impacts:
    • It will be the only means by which “legacy” materials can be rendered as they did pre-PBR; the viewer “hack” to desaturate and “nudge” the luminance of “legacy” materials to have them render as they did pre-PBR has been removed due to combination of factors, including a noticeable performance hit.
    • The hack that allowed full bright objects to be exempt from dynamic exposure (so they would always stay the same brightness no matter what the exposure) has also had to be removed from the viewer, again as a result of a noticeable performance hit (an extra texture sample for each pixel). So, full bright object will, in future versions of the PBR viewer, be subject to the same exposure rules as everything else in the scene.
      • This means that full bright objects will still appear to be lit by 100% of the light and be unaffected by things like local lights, but the overall dynamic exposure of the scene will also brighten / darken them in keeping with the rest of the scene, and tone mapping will be applied.
      • SL photographers who display their images in-world with full bright are going to need to experiment with using sky settings with tone mapping disabled when taking their shots in order to avoid it being applied twice to images (e.g. once when the snapshot was taken and again when displayed in-world) and having this unduly affect the full bright rendering of the image.
  • Screen Space Reflections (SSR) – (non-SL overview):
    • Glossy support led to performance hits, particularly when there were a lot of alpha objects in the scene being rendered.
    • This has now been mitigated via a number of means; e.g. SSR is not even applied if it exceeds a certain roughness value, nor is it applied to alpha blended objects (the “old fade-out” method is used – that is: the higher the roughness, the weaker the SSR and the greater the reliance on reflection probes).
    • There have also been some general adjustments to SSR to again try to reduce the performance hits, whilst also allowing more distant objects to be reflected off of surfaces – said to be noticeable on water and flat surfaces.
  • The SSR work provoked a reminder that it is important not to abuse the use of alpha surfaces when SSR is used in rendering.
    • For example:
      • If the object is just a single layer users will be looking through to see what lays beyond, than alpha blending “may be the right choice”.
      • However, alphas should not be used to create layered effects (e.g. setting the faces of a surface to transparent for a “window” and then applying a further alpha to give the window a “frosted glass” look, and having the viewer composite them when rendering. Instead, both alphas should be baked down into one material in PhotoShop (or similar) & applied).
    • This sparked a discussion on how general users who dabble in content creation and who may be used to working in certain ways, can be properly educated to understand things like this – which may be known and understood by mainstream content creators, but could easily pass others by, as there is no means within the viewer UI of telling what is “good” or “bad” techniques when banging things together (at least until frame rates disappear through the floor and into the cellar).
    • It was therefore suggested again that documentation on the wiki – “best practices” / a “bible” for PBR Materials creation / use really should accompany the formal release of PBR Materials, and this should be clearly pointed at though blog posts, etc.

PBR Terrain

Materials applied to Second Life terrains. Credit: Linden Lab
  • Per past meeting notes, Cosmic Linden is prototyping the application of PBR materials on terrain (see this blog post for more).
  • The focus currently is on adding triplanar mapping to the for terrain repeats, particularly on steep elevation changes (so as to avoid the all-too familiar “stretching” seen with textures).
  • The above does potentially incur a performance hit, as it is noted as being for “sufficiently capable machines”, so Cosmic has also been working on trying to optimise performance elsewhere in the use of materials on terrain, as well as carrying out some bug fixing.
  • Important notes with this work:
    • It is not terrain painting. It is the application of PBR materials – terrain painting is described as “something that’s on the radar” at LL.
    • The work does not include support for displacement maps.
    • The work is currently only viewer-side, with no corresponding server-side support, the idea here being to prototype what might be achieved and testing approaches / results.

In Brief

  • It was re-iterated that long-term graphics support on the MacOS side will be MoltenVK (with Vulkan the likely route for Windows), with Zink also being looked at.
  • New user retention:
    • It has been suggested that as many in the various SL communities – those running Community Gateways, content creators, etc., – all have a interest in the new-user experience and brining people into SL, that a semi-regular “New User Experience” meeting might be established by LL at which ideas can be more readily discussed, feedback given and communities and creators more directly engaged with LL’s own efforts (e.g. developing an ecosystem of clothing, etc., to support the (still) upcoming new starter avatars. etc.).
    • It was pointed out that one of the best ways to encourage retention is for existing users to be welcoming, polite and supportive of new users (clubs that have scripts auto-ejecting people just because they are only a handful of days old or on the basis that an avatar is not PIOF, for example, aren’t exactly rolling out the welcome mat, for example).
    • The above spun into a general discussion on content, content moderation, and similar.
  • There was a general discussion on Land Impact (LI) and how it is “too high” – although this is highly subjectively, given the diversity of content and its uses in SL (static, animated, Animesh, etc. – how high is “too high”? Is “too high” down to more a lack of understanding of actual rendering + simulator load costs than an objective measurement? etc.). That said, it was acknowledged that more could be done t help “improve” LI in some areas.
  • The above spun into a discussion on physics costs, and how convex hull physics forms are not the most efficient for SL due to the complexity of the tools used to create them, and the ease with which mistakes can be made in creating them, with indications that as the glTF project moves towards support for mesh uploads how physics shapes are used / applied is likely to be be revised.

Next Meeting

  • Thursday, June 29th, 2023.

† 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.

2023 SL SUG meetings week #24 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Burrow Wood: Road to Nowhere, April 2023 – blog post †

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, June 13th Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They form a summary of the items discussed and is not intended to be a full transcript. A video of the entire meeting is embedded at the end of the article for those wishing to review the meeting in full – my thanks to Pantera for recording 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):
  • They 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.

Server Deployments

  • On Tuesday, June 13th:
    • The SLS Main channel servers were updated with a simulator release providing support for the new inventory thumbnails viewer capability soon to be forthcoming. See my recent TPVD meeting summaries for more on this capability. This project – or at least the simulator element – is apparently known as “Manicure” internally at the Lab!).
    • The Preflight RC channel was updated with simulator support for glTF PBR materials – see below for more on this deployment.
  • One Wednesday June14th, the BlueSteel RC channel will be updated with a maintenance release, which include:
    • The “bot detection” update (i.e. AGENT_AUTOMATED constant for llGetAgentInfo() – so only detects if that flag is set, not if an agent is a bot or not.
    • The second part of the LSD rezzing fix + lLinksetDataDeleteFound and llLinksetDataCountFound, among other things.

glTF PBR Simulator Deployment

  • The Preflight channel is a small channel compromising the following controlled access regions: Preflight 0] though Preflight 8, Rumpus Room 1  through Rumpus Room 5 and Testylvania Sandbox.
  • Access to these regions must be requested – but will remain limited; the purpose of this deployment is for small-scale testing of the PBR materials support on the Main grid.
  • A larger, more public deployment of the simulator PBR support code will be forthcoming, so those who do not have access to the Preflight regions should consider waiting for that deployment.

Viewer Updates

No changes to the crop of official viewers for the start of the week, leaving the available list as:

In Brief

PBR Terrain Work

To re-iterate:

  • This work is in development, but is a follow-on to the current PBR Materials project, not a part of it.
  • It is primarily viewer-side changes, allowing the application of PBR materials instead of the current terrain textures. It is *not* PBR terrain painting.
  • Extensions to the project are being discussed internally at the Lab, but the real focus will be on this initial work for the time being, and further information can be found in this official blog post.
  • Discussions on the work are held at the content Creation User Group meetings – see my  meeting summaries or attend the meetings in person.
The PBR terrain project will allow PBR materials to be used on Second Life terrain in place of textures. Credit: Linden Lab

Inventory Thumbnails

  • This is primarily a viewer-side project which keeps coming up for discussion at the SUG meetings.
  • It will allow persistent thumbnail images with a maximum resolution of 256×256 to be produced, which can be stored within inventory with the items they represent  such that they display an image of an item to be displayed on Mouseover.
  • Testing is currently underway to limit the impact the inclusion of thumbnails may have on inventory load time, texture memory use.
  • The viewer is not yet ready for a project viewer release, but the Lab is working on a blog post to outline more of the intended functionality of this capability.

In General

  • BUG-232037 “Avatar Online / Offline Status Not Correctly Updating” has further fixes in the works. No estimated time for deployment.
  • There is still upset circulating about the reduction in Linden Water reflections as a result of performance optimisations to help offset the impact of PBR rendering in the viewer. Currently, there are no plans to offer higher quality reflections in the future, but it is hoped that evolving work on screen space reflections will offset so of the loss of quality.  For discussions on this, please see my Content Creation User Group (CCUG) summaries or attend the meetings in person.
  • A general discussion on updating Linden trees / plants, re-introducing the “wind” to sway trees, how physics calculations and costs are made / arrived at (with the latter noted as potentially being for a future (e.g. not this year) internal discussion at the Lab, so outside of the scope of comment from the La at present).
  • It was noted that there is a further simulator update in development which is hoped will reduce the hit simulators take when handling avatars arriving in a region (and with a focus on better handling of attachments). No ETA on when this will see the light of day.
  • A further discussion on region crossings and vehicles, which also rolled into vehicles hitting ban walls and avatars being ejected / vehicle returned, and a means of preventing this by forewarning on an impending region / parcel with access control enabled. Please refer to the video for all of this.

† 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.

2023 SL viewer release summaries week #23

Posted on by Inara Pey
Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation

Updates from the week through to Sunday, June 11th, 2023

This summary is generally published every Monday, and is a list of SL viewer / client releases (official and TPV) made during the previous week. When reading it, please note:

  • It is based on my Current Viewer Releases Page, a list of all Second Life viewers and clients that are in popular use (and of which I am aware), and which are recognised as adhering to the TPV Policy. This page includes comprehensive links to download pages, blog notes, release notes, etc., as well as links to any / all reviews of specific viewers / clients made within this blog.
  • By its nature, this summary presented here will always be in arrears, please refer to the Current Viewer Release Page for more up-to-date information.
  • Note that for purposes of length, TPV test viewers, preview / beta viewers / nightly builds are generally not recorded in these summaries.

Official LL Viewers

  • Release viewer: Maintenance S RC viewer, version 6.6.12.579987, dated May 11, promoted May 16.
  • Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself).
  • Project viewers:
    • No updates.

LL Viewer Resources

Third-party Viewers

V6-style

  • No updates.

V1-style

Mobile / Other Clients

  • No update.

Additional TPV Resources

Related Links

Orcinus Isle in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Orcinus Isle, June 2023 – click any image for full size

Shawn Shakespeare pointed me towards Orcinus Isle, a homestead region designed by Lana (Svetlana Pexie), and which offers an engaging and intriguing setting that will be attractive to explorers and photographers alike.

The regions draws on several influences, which in turn can lead to additional influences playing on thoughts about it, leading to some interesting musings – or at least, that was the case for me.

The first of those influences is that of Perissa Beach, Santorini (or Thira) – which is also the first of the attractions for me with Lana’s build. There is a mysticism and beauty with Santorini which has long attracted me. Famed for being a part of the Minoan Civilisation, the island was the site of one of the largest volcanic eruptions in recorded history, which took place in approximately circa 1600 BCE, destroying much of the island and perhaps helping contribute to the legend of Atlantis.

Orcinus Isle, June 2023

Today, Santorini is both a site of archaeological import and also a major tourist attraction. With towering cliffs, its famous buildings perch along the cliff tops and hills – such as Oia – the natural bay formed by the flooded caldera crater and its beaches, it is easy to understand why. With their distinctive red and black “sands” of volcanic dust the beaches of Santorini – Red Beach, Black Beach, Vlychada – are eye-catching, if not always easily accessible. As such, Perissa, with its rich black shores, has become the most famous, attracting tourists from all over Europe and the world at large.

From there, as Lana notes, the build draws on her love of coastal cliffs, waterfalls and oceans and – in another twist of attraction for me – mythology, to present a setting of the imagination, two island rising out of the sea on shoulder of cliffs, linked by a single arch of rock spanning the gorge which separates them, lending weight to the idea that there were perhaps once a single landmass which at some point became mostly split.

Orcinus Isle, June 2023

What caused the division is down to the imagination; perhaps it was the work of the sea, relentlessly pounding a weakness on the cliffs, eating away at the rock over the ages, deepening an opened crack, drawing down the mass from above and washing it away down through the years. Perhaps this island is influenced by volcanic or tectonic activity, the forces of nature breaking it enough for the sea to take over and create the gorge and bringing down the rock above until only  the mast span remains.

Whatever the cause, the two island masses now sit apart, the northernmost offering the most varied topography, with lowlands curving around a deeply cut bay, quickly giving rise to the sing to a curtain wall of high cliffs across the bay’s width, down which falls plummet in force, most likely adding to the bay’s expansion down the centuries and generating clouds of water vapour that hover cloud-like over the heads of the cliffs. Stratified and uneven, the back of this island suggests it may have been laid down by some form of process, again perhaps one volcanic in nature, successive eruptions adding another linear deposit of hardened volcanic rock.

Orcinus Isle, June 2023

To the south, the second island is more even, its near flat top covered in a head of grass and home to the remnants of a church at its southern end, whilst both island present a ribbon of volcanic shingles of a beach further suggesting they were once a unified mass of rock. Although split by the eastern exit of the gorge splitting the land the beach and landscape at the foot of the cliffs on either side of the water are sufficiently enough alike in terms of elevation and shingle / grassland mix to suggest both once run uninterrupted down the east side of the island.

But what of the mythological links? These can be found in the region’s name: Orcinus. Rather than a direct reference to the genus of Delphinidae we tend to refer to as “killer whales” (although a number of these majestic creatures can be seen swimming off the islands, Lana uses the term in its original meaning: “kingdom of the dead”, and / or “belonging to Orcus”, the god of the underworld in Etruscan and Roman mythology (the name Orca also being applied by the Romans to the genus of Orcinus).

Orcinus Isle, June 2023

The use of the name within the setting might be taken as a reference to is somewhat foreboding look, the evidence of ancient fortifications having once stood proudly here, perhaps long before the arrival Christianity and the church-builders, providing evidence that this was once a fortress or outpost, and thus may have had its name aligned with the god of the dead thanks to its remote location.

“Orcus” also has another connection to mythology, in that it is at times seen as being the origins for Tolkien’s “orcs”; from this use, countless other fantasy games and works of fiction have borrowed the concept of the orc. However, whether Tolkien directly derived his creatures from the name (by way of Anglo-Saxon) is debatable – not the least by Tolkien in his lifetime. However, there is something decidedly “Tolkienish” to the ruins and landscape here (or at least, faintly Nordic), which adds to the allure.

Orcinus Isle, June 2023

Wild and open and with numerous places to sit (not all of which may be easy to reach!), Orcinus Isle is an engaging and photogenic visit.

SLurl Details

Second Pride 2023: a pocket guide to the celebrations

Posted on by Inara Pey
Second Pride, 2023: main stage

SL Pride, the event celebrating diversity organised by and on behalf of Second Life’s LGBTQ+ community officially opened on Friday, June 9th, 2023 and runs through until Sunday, June 18th, 2023.

Given the uncalled for backlash and targeting of the LGBTQ+ community and against gender rights within western nations, coupled with the overall suppression of the community around the world, the theme for this year’s event is, appropriately a message of strength.

NOT GOING BACK – NOT BACKING DOWN

– Second Pride 2023 Theme

As with recent years, the 2023 Second Pride event is hosted across two regions – Second Pride East, with its traditional urban theme, and Second Pride West, with its similarly familiar beachfront and pier design. Straddling the two is the central park and events area, with the landing points for both regions sitting-side-by-side and facing one another across the region boundary.

Second Pride 2023: Dim Sum Gardens

Also as with previous years, the regions utilise a Second Life Experience to assist with teleports, etc., and if you have not previously visited the event or joined the Experience, doing so is recommended. Posters at the landing points will also provide visitors with information on the festivities and entertainment, which will be focused on the main stage in the park, the Beach Stage, located alongside the beachfront with its Second Pride Boardwalk and associated amusements, rides and stalls, with smaller, more intimate events also being held at the Bandshell / City Venue.

And if that weren’t enough, the Bijou Theatre will be hosting a series of special performances and light shows. When you arrive there, just walk the red carpet to the doors and you’ll be TP’d directly to the theatre proper. Details of the shows – and on the more than 70 live performances and events taking place through the event, please refer to the Event Schedule on the Second Pride website.

If you’re new to the LGBTQ+ communities is second Life and wish to learn more, you can drop into the Second Pride Community Resource Centre, while those who wish to sit in quiet contemplation, the Second Pride Memorial Chapel with its message of Solidarity, is available. Or you can just relax at the Dim Sum Gardens or simply tour the two regions!

Second Pride: boardwalk and pier

Funds raised at this year’s even will benefit:

LGBTQ Freedom Fund: is a US-centric organisation which is focused on securing the safety and liberty of people in US jails and immigration detention centres, with a focus on LGBTQ individuals. Because of whom they love / hoe they identify, a tangle of discrimination and poverty disproportionately traps LGBTQ people in cycles of crime and incarceration, with the impact particularly felt by transgender, brown, and black individuals.

In tandem with provide financial support to secure the release of LGBTQ+ people unfairly incarcerated, the fund works with the public and policymakers to curb the mass detention of LGBTQ individuals, given the fact that sexual minorities are three times more likely to be incarcerated than heterosexual individuals. The sweep of criminalisation is extraordinary, with some estimates suggesting that, at some point in their lives, 70 percent of low-income LGBTQ people are homeless – and as a result can be considered vagrants and subject to arrest and indefinite incarceration in many US states.

The It Gets Better Project: founded as a non-profit organisation in the United States in 2010, the Project now involves international affiliate organisations across 19 countries. Together they are able to reach millions of young people around the world, promoting the vision of a world where all LGBTQ+ youth are free to live equally and know their worthiness and power as individuals. A huge part of this work is in outreach through storytelling – those within the community telling their stories and inspiring / encouraging others. The Project additional fosters community-building and promoting open discussions on the challenges young LGBTQ+ people have to face as a result of their sexual orientation and gender identity journey, and to positively influence the outlook of both those who identify as LGBTQ+ and those who do not.

Second Pride 2023

With entertainment, shopping, camaraderie, friendship, fun, support and more, do be sure to make time to visit SL Pride, share in the entertainment, tour the regions, have fun – and donate to the supported charities.

SLurl and Link Details

The Second Pride regions are rated Moderate

2023 week #23: SL TPVD meeting summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Nederlanse Bergee, April 2023 – blog post†

The following notes were taken from my audio recording and chat log transcript of the TPV Developer (TPVD) meeting held on Friday, June 9th 2023 at 13:00 SLT. These notes are via a combination of my own chat log transcript of each meeting, and / or the video recording made of each meeting by Pantera Północy and embedded at the end of this article. My thanks, as always, to her for recording these meetings.  Note that the following is a summary of the meeting as a whole, and not a transcript of everything discussed.

Meeting Overview

  • The TPV Developer meeting provides an opportunity for discussion about the development of, and features for, the Second Life viewer, and for Linden Lab viewer developers and third-party viewer (TPV) / open-source code contributors to discuss general viewer development.
  • As a rule, these meetings are:
    • Generally held once a month  the third or fourth Friday, at 13:00 SLT at the Hippotropolis Theatre. See the SL Public Calendar for specific meeting dates.
    • Open to all with an interest in viewer development.
    • Conducted in a mix of text and voice.
  • The notes herein are drawn from a mix of my own chat log and audio recording of the meeting, and are not intended to be a full transcript.

Official Viewers Status

  • The Maintenance T RC viewer updated to version 6.6.13.580419 on June 7th.

The remaining official viewers currently in the pipeline remain unchanged through the week:

General Viewer Notes

  • The glTF / PBR material viewer (and project) are in bug fixing mode, specifically with some QA questions / concerns on the server side of things.
  • Inventory thumbnails viewer: work is progressing, and the simulator support code has been deployed to the simulator RC channels and is expected to go to the SLS Main channel in week #24.This will potentially allow the first release of an Inventory Thumbnails project viewer.
  • LL has completed the move of viewer builds to Github Actions, and has now successfully completed the first viewer builds along this new process. Th next step is to move all viewer-related work away from Team City completely.
  • This work also means that the Chromium Embedded Framework (CEF) for media handling is being updated.

In Brief

  • Prototyping is underway for the support of planar mirrors in SL and for the application of PBR materials on terrain (note, again, this is not PBR terrain painting, it is using PBR materials in place of the default terrain textures – see this blog post for more).
    • A test build of a viewer supporting the application of PBR materials for terrain has been made available through the Content Creation Discord server for limited testing, and feedback is being taken on this.
    • Work is underway to allow triplanar mapping for terrain repeats.
  • BUG-232037 “Avatar Online Offline Status Not Correctly Updating” was raised again, although more strictly a simulator issue. The precise cause(s) of the problem are still being investigated. Anecdotal evidence from some quarters claims the issue is getting worse, but whether this is objectively the case is questionable.

 Next Meeting

  • Friday, July 7th, 2023.

† 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.