Category: Second Life

The session was livestreamed by Strawberry Linden, and her video is embedded at the end of this article. Timestamps are provided to the relevant points in the video for ease of reference.

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.
• Meeting dates and times are recorded in the SL Public Calendar, and they re conducted in a mix of Voice and text chat.
• The notes herein are a summary of topics discussed and are not intended to be a full transcript of the meeting.

Official Viewer Status

[Video: 1:49-4:03]

• 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 7.1.11.12150664210, December 5. This focuses on performance improvements for lower-specification / old viewer hardware and includes:
  • 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.
  • [Video 4:12-6:23]:
    • A new checkbox to disable HDR-  this will improve performance for lower-spec machines but will see some of the “banding” previously seen in things like skies – and PBR emissive. These may be split into two separate checkboxes to allow one or the other to be disabled / kept.
    • A pass on “legacy” skies (e.g. those in the Library and / or which have no been converted from PBR skies) will look much as they did on pre-PBR viewer. This is described as the “least bad” option to address issues.
  • 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.
• It is hoped that the December 5th RC version of ExtraFPS will be the version that will be promoted to de facto release status soon.

Near-Term Viewer Release Roadmap

• There is additional work going on around performance that isn’t seen as urgently enough to delay the release of ExtraFPS, so there may be a “hotfix” viewer release to handle some of these, if required. Some of this additional work could take the form of:
  • Improvements to avatar loading, work which it was noted at the SUG meeting that Monty Linden had recently been tasked with looking at.
  • [Video: 6:38-6:55] Further texture streaming improvements (if these do not make it into ExtraFPS prior to promotion), which prevent the viewer repeatedly loading redundant textures.
• The work in combining the “pre-performance work” Maintenance B and  Maintenance C RC viewer codes into a single RC update is continuing.  However, exactly what will be in it and when it is likely to appear as an RC viewer is still TBD.

General Discussion

• [Text only] It was noted that some are seeing the texture bias tends to get stuck at high values in ExtraFPS, and failing to unstick until the viewer is restarted. This has been acknowledged by LL, but so far  they have been unable to consistently repro it. SLurls of regions where it frequently occurs have been request (feedback portal).
• [Video: 12:08-14:45] a request to have settings in the viewer to allow users to set their own loading / rendering priorities depending on what they are doing, such as “near avatar”, or “near camera”, “avatars”, “rezzed items” , etc.
  • For example, while most use cases might be biased towards “near camera”, there might be situations where such as landing in very busy environments where “avatars” might be a preferable priority, so as to avoid shoving other avatars around when trying to move because they cannot be seen. Conversely, when cam-shopping, the priority is liable to be camera+ objects, with loading other avatars a much lower priority.
  • This was seen as having potential (allowing for the viewer and simulator carrying out different roles in scene loading: – the simulator sends the basic data of where things are and whatever meshes and textures are associated with them, but the viewer decides for itself what it is actually going to fetch (from the CDN) and when), but the current focus of work, per above, is on simply getting avatars + their attachments to simply load faster.
• [Video: 16:19-18:43] Texture repeats / offsets reset on an object if the PBR material is changed: a bug report was requested on this. It was also noted that editing an alpha to opaque not holding has also been reported.
• [Video: 17:38-18:31] Linux viewer status: the Linux work is defined as being in the “big bundle of stuff” which originally formed the Maint B and Maint C viewer code branches, which is in the process of being combined into a a single viewer under the Github Develop branch. As such, its progress and disposition is tied to this work, and while their are builds within the Github Actions, they are not in a condition for general release.
• [Video: 18:47-21:33] A request to be able to crate new folders in Inventory from the Recent tab (or have newly-created empty folders at least appear on the Recent tab).
  • This was seen as a reasonable feature request submission.
  • A request was also made to be able to purge Trash from the Recent tab – however, given the Trash only shows items added in the current log-in session; purging all of Trash from Recent could have unintended consequences (e.g. an item previously and unintentionally dropped in to Trash gets mistakenly purged on account of it not showing in Trash under Recent).
  • It was also pointed out that opening an additional Inventory floater (CTRL-SHIFT-I) can help with issues of moving items around, rather than solely relying on one floater and its tabs.
• [Video: 22:00-24:32] Add a checkbox to the Build / Edit floater – Select Only My Objects, rather than having to go through the Build → Options menu to set it:
  •  A problem here is the Edit / Build floater is already overcrowded, and the Build menu can be torn-off when editing / creating (although this can obviously impact screen real estate when open with the Edit / Build floater).
  • Simply enlarging the Edit / Build floater to accommodate additional options is also seen as a problem, again due to the added screen real estate taken up, particularly for those using lower-resolution screens.
• [Video: 24:38-31:03] Ability to designate folders on upload on-the-fly:
  • Rather than having a single set of folders defined for uploads of specific types (e.g. a set folder for images, a set folder for sounds, a set folder for objects, etc), allow users to define which folder they wish to use for a specific upload  / number of uploads via  a drop-down, which can then become the default until next changed.
  • This is seen as advantageous to content creators, etc., as it would allow them to upload different asset types by “project” (so all mesh items, animations, sounds , etc., for “Project X” go to the “Project X” folder, for example).
  • A feature request was requested for this, with the added not that the current work on the viewer is not focused on adding to the UI, so it may be a while before such requests are reviewed & potentially actioned.
  • [Whilst not precisely the same, a similar request has been made regarding the upcoming llGiveInventory function, so that rather than having receiving  folders simply defined by the object giving them, recipients can select the folder into which they can receive the incoming items].
• [Video 26:57-48:14] & intertwined with the above bullet point] Various discussions on hiding the current outfit folder, avatar customisation, etc., which were more general in nature and of a more historic / subjective nature than covering potential changes / improvements.  This also touched on avatar creation in Sansar, the use of devkits / applications (such as Marvelous Designer) etc.  This also bled into a re-hash of oft-raised issues around the new user experience, the use of Senra vs. the continuance of the Creator Avatar option in the viewer (which references the older starter avatars), which has no connection to Senra, etc. Please refer to the video.
• [Video 51:18-53:47] The above led to a question (from LL) about the provision of a “private changing room” for people to be able to change their appearance anywhere in SL without being seen.
  • A similar capability was provided in Sansar, where altering the avatar’s appearance happened in a editor “outside” of the current scene, with the avatar returned to the scene post-update.
  • The idea has been the subject of requests for Second Life as well, being tied to the Appearance Editor; as such it is on the Lab’s radar for possible future implementation.
  • [Video: 55:45-End] In terms of implementation, one option under consideration is the re-cloud the avatar to other viewers whilst the avatar is having its appearance edited. An alternative would be to impostor the avatar to others.
• [Video: 53:48-54:50] A reiteration that LL do plan on integrating RLV/a into the official viewer (code contributions from kitty Barnett for RLVa have been received, together (I believe) with input from Marine Kelley on RLV).
  • However, it was emphasised that this is a large project requiring significant code contributions / integration, so the work in regarded as in progress.
  • Because of the stigma associated with RLV/a (e.g. the “restrained” element of the title), it was suggested a rebranding might be in order.

Next Meeting

• CCUG: 13:00 SLT, Thursday, December 19th, 2024, at the Hippotropolis Campsite.

† 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.