Category: SL Tech

2021 CCUG meeting week #28 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Hermosa Tierra, April 2021 – blog post

The following notes were taken from my audio recording and chat log of the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting held on Thursday, July 15th, 2021. These meetings are chaired by Vir Linden, with dates available via the SL Public Calendar and the venue for the CCUG is the Hippotropolis camp fire.

SL Viewer

The Fernet Maintenance RC updated to version 6.4.21.561414 on Wednesday, July 14th. The rest of the available official viewers are as follows:

General Viewer Notes

The Fernet Maintenance RC should have been promoted, but an error in the merging process meant that it has only just been merged with the current release viewer, so a further RC version has been issued to soak for the next few days in preparation for promotion, possibly in week #29.

ARCTan

Summary: An attempt to re-evaluate both Avatar Rendering Costs and the cost of in-world scene rendering, with the current focus on avatar rendering cost / impact, and in-world scene rendering / LI to be tackled at some point in the future.

  • Work is continuing on the new performance floater, which has seen some further redesign work.
  • This work is currently separate to the work on revising that actual formulas used for calculating avatar complexity.
    • It has been suggested on a number of occasions that it might be preferable to hold-off issuing any viewer with the new floater until the new avatar ARC calculations are available and used, to prevent people just ignoring the information as being “wrong”, even when the new calculations do come into use.
    • There is a strong probability that without proper education, users will simply ignore the information anyway, but the objections to issuing the viewer ahead of the correct calculations being available has been acknowledged, so internal discussions are still in progress as to when the viewer might be released.
    • Beq Janus is working on her own variant of avatar ARC calculations, which she has dubbed “TrueARC”, which currently simply overlays avatars with colours (green, yellow, red) to indicate their rendering load from low to heavy. This work is in its early stages, and Beq plans to keep LL updated on her work / findings.

Graphics Work

  • The Graphics team are working to integrate the Tracy debugger / system analyser for cross-platform graphics development. This will be used to look for performance “hot spots” in the rendering code.
  • Callum Linden has now resumed work on the 360-degree snapshot viewer.

EEP Items

  • Mainland EEP settings: since the release of EEP, multiple Mainland regions suffer from their default EEP settings being too dark. The fix for this has been awaiting the implementation of new tools on the back-end, which are now available. As a result, a simulator using updated environment settings for Mainland is currently on test, and will be deployed Soon™.
  • BUG-230677 “llSetAgentEnvironment transition doesn’t work” – a fix for this should be in the next Love Me Render RC viewer (LMR-6).
  • Following the EEP discussion at the Simulator User group (notes here), Vincent Nacon has raised his concerns / ideas in a set of Jiras:
    • BUG-230973 “[EEP] Obscured option to reset Cloud Scroll to the default position” – bug awaiting review.
    • BUG-230974 “[EEP] Increasement [sic] to max limit on Cloud Scale” – bug awaiting review.
    • BUG-230975 “[EEP] Brightness Slider for the Sun” – this is currently awaiting the weekly Feature Request triage.
    • It is possible the two bugs might be picked up for inclusion in an LMR viewer.

Mesh and LODs

Investigations have started into ways to improve mesh LOD model generation using the open-source Mesh Optimiser (originally used within Sansar). No ETA on potential visible output from this work at present.

This sparked a discussion on whether, and if introduced, auto-LODding should be enforced on existing content.

  • The “pro” argument for this approach is that it would “rectify” content with poor / missing LOD models.
  • The arguments against the idea include:
    • Many content creators do properly craft their LOD models correctly – and any enforced “re-optimisation” of in-world content could see these LODs replaced by poorer automated LODs, causing understandable upset.
    • Image matching (the suggested means of re-examining content) cannot contextualise content in terms of things like visibility (e.g. the interior of a vehicle might be intentionally entirely low-LOD, as it is designed to be seen from only a handful of metres away).
    • While LL have AWS under them, the process of re-examining thousands and thousands of in-world assets would be processing-intensive and come with a cost. – so who pays?
  • A counter suggestion would be to make any such re-optimisation opt-in: if a creator has content they’d like to pass through the system, they could opt to do so and then utilise the automatic LODs.
  • LL have also been in internal discussions on where the 16-bit limit on mesh faces originated, with the view that allowing a higher number of polys into a face would a) make rendering easier, and improve object decimation (it would likely be replaced with some form of global limit). However it has yet to be determined if changing this would require changing the mesh asset format. As such, there are no current plans to implement a new mesh format – but doing so in the future has not been ruled out.

In Brief

  • A question was asked how any “dominance” between two worn rigged items that use position overrides for the same joint. Vir noted that there is no assigned dominance per se, other than via mesh ID (UUID), so it is something that cannot be directly controlled by assigning a priority or anything like that.
  • The question was asked as to the difference, functionally, between a mesh and a sculpt. In short: a sculpt is a texture used as a cylindrical displacement map, whilst a mesh is a physical asset, which has had its ID “kludged” (Vir’s term) into the spot originally intended for sculpt IDs. If Vir recalls things correctly, whether the ID is for a Sculpt texture or a mesh is determined by the presence (or not) of an additional bit of information. Overall, information is to what an item is – prim, flexi, sculpt or mesh – is still held within the “prim” container.

In-Viewer Mesh Editing Tools

There is a view circulating that during his Meet the Lindens (MTL) session at SL18B, Patch Linden indicated that there are “plans to implement mesh editing capabilities inworld”. However, this is something of an incorrect extraction of what was actually said, based on Patch’s initial response to a question asked about content creation and scripting (“I think this is absolutely something we should tackle”). While he did start his reply using these words, Patch also added further context around them by:

  • Broadening his reply in terms of the existing 3D tools in the viewer – how people have started with them before going on to model in mesh via Blender, Maya, Unity, etc., – and the more important need for LL to understand what incoming users need today by way of an updated toolset in order to engage in content creation.
  • Noting that while Grumpity Linden might agree on this in principle, she would likely have very different idea on if / how / when any such work might be tackled, and so deferred to her on this aspect of any potential tool update.

As such, his comments shouldn’t really be seen as any form of statement that in-world mesh building tools is a project the Lab is about to embark on – and it certainly was not mentioned by Patch or Grumpity at their respective SL18B MTL sessions as being a part of the roadmap of work planned for the next 12-18 months.

The original question and Patch’s complete answer can be heard in the official video of his SL18B Meet the Lindens session, between 1:32:28 and 1:34:52.

Date of Next Meeting

In theory, Thursday, July 29th. However, Vir will apparently be out of the office then, so the meeting is dependent on someone deputising for him. If no-one does, then the next LL-attended CCUG should be on Thursday, August 5th.

2021 SUG meeting week #28 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Summer of ’42, April 2021 – blog post

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, July 13th, 2021 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. The meeting was recorded by Pantera Północy, and the video is embedded at the end of this summary.

Server Deployments

There are no planned deployments for the week.

SL Viewer

There have been no official viewer updates to mark the start of the week, leaving the official pipelines as:

  • Release viewer: Project UI RC viewer, version 6.4.20.560520, dated June 14, promoted June 23 – No change.
  • Release channel cohorts:
  • Project viewers:
    • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.4.11.550519, dated October 26.
    • Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, dated December 9, 2019.
    • Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.532999, dated November 22, 2019.
    • 360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, dated July 16, 2019.

Week #29 (commencing Monday, July 19th should see a new RC deployment that includes the following:

  • Opening custom chat ranges to estate managers through the simulator debug console (apparently requires a viewer update as well).
  • Ability for estate owners / managers to set a default EEP environment across an entire estate.

In Brief

  • A general discussion on EEP and possible fixes improvements, including:
    • A brightness slider for the Sun.
    • Possibly adjusting the relative sizes of the Sun and Moon to reflect their actual size ratio (see as possibly a content breaker).
    • Adjustments to cloud density, cloud detail (making it relative to the world) and bumping the maximum value on the cloud scale slider up to 5.
    • One (or more) feature requests have been suggested for these ideas, as well as raising them for discussion at the Content Creation meetings.
  • There was further discussion around the potential to use the Nimble capabilities originally found in Windlight to provide rain, snow etc., with the ability to avoid entering closed structures.
    • Weather systems have been a discussion topic within the Lab, with no commitment on implementing anything.
    • Generating the data server-side is seen as possible, but to use Simon Linden’s words, “the real magic is rendering it on the viewer”.
    • The main issues may come down to the robustness of viewer-side physics and the effort required to get the viewer so it can render weather and the potential impact on performance (although pseudo-weather systems using ray casting, mesh faces, etc., are already either indirectly (waiting on the simulator calcs) or directly (rendering) impactful on viewer performance.
  • There was also a discussion on dealing with AFK avatars at Linden Info / safe hubs, and the complaints that new users tend to make when arriving in one that no-one will speak to them:
    • One suggestion is to have an experience that sits inactive avatars after a period of time – that is, moves them away from the landing point and sits them on a seat, freeing space at the landing point.
    • A counter suggestion was to simply use a landing point mover, given the avatars that are seated are still effectively in the same space (although could in theory be moved to a separate “room”).
    • A further problem with the experience idea is that it assumes all those arriving will opt to join it at least once.

 

2021 viewer release summaries week #27

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

Updates from the week ending Sunday, July 11th

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: Project UI RC viewer, version 6.4.20.560520, dated June 14th, promoted June 23rd – No change.
  • Release channel cohorts:
    • No updates.
  • Project viewers:
    • No updates.

LL Viewer Resources

Third-party Viewers

V6-style

  • No updates.

V1-style

Mobile / Other Clients

  • No updates.

Additional TPV Resources

Related Links

July 2021 SL Web User Group summary: mobile and new user experience

Posted on by Inara Pey
The Web User Group meeting venue, Denby

The following notes cover the key points from the Web User Group (WUG) meeting, held on Wednesday, July 7th, 2021.

These meetings are generally held on the first Wednesday of the month, with dates and venue details available via the SL public calendar. A video of the meeting, courtesy of Pantera, can be found at the end of this article, and the following is a summary of key topics / discussions.

Web Properties Updates

  • Operating system updates are still on-going; the tools work has been continued through the last month as a well.
  • The Land Store has had some cosmetic updates.
  • World API and Map:
    • There has been some work on the World API to make it faster.
    • Searching for an empty string on the Map should no longer generate an error message.
  • New user sign-up: two small improvements:
    • E-mails are now validated when entered during the sign-up process.
    • The viewer download link no longer opens a separate tab to display the download button – on sign-up the browser is now directed to the download page / button.
  • Marketplace improvements:
    • Work has started on updating to the new Second Life blue logo.
    • Test deliveries have been fixed so they no longer generate an error message.
    • There have been updates to search / keywords to better match the maturity of words against the maturity rating on the item. This was largely due to some creators were adding punctuation marks into their adult item descriptions in an attempt to get around the maturity rating and have the item show up in results where the user has otherwise restricted what they want to see to General / Moderate.
  • Premium downgrading:
    • Until now, if a Premium user decided to downgrade their account from Premium to Basic and then changed their mind, they would have to contact support to cancel the downgrade.
    • It is now possible to cancel a downgrade request directly from the website without any need for Support intervention.

New User Experience

See also: Poking at the new Welcome Islands.

  • The new Welcome Islands that form a part of the new user experience are now undergoing A/B testing alongside the existing Learning / Social Islands and monitored against Firestorm’s Community Gateway for the next month or so.
  • These islands are used in conjunction with the Guidebook that is now part of the official viewer (and starting to be included in TPVs).
  • There is a “Welcome Back Island” that is physically identical to the Welcome Islands, but which is open to general visits for those who are curious.
  • During the A/B Testing, the Lab will be particularly looking at the numbers of retained users who come through the various points of entry (Welcome Island, the Learning / Social Islands / Firestorm Gateway) and how each performs.
  • If the Welcome Islands / Guidebook prove to be successful, then the Guidebook will likely undergo language localisation to make it more useful. In the meantime, and during testing, there could be smaller changes to both the Guidebook and the Welcome Islands (e.g. the station for new avatars may undergo further updates and offer a “newer” selection of avatars).
  • Both the Welcome Island regions and the Guidebook have been developed as modular units, allowing both to be revised / updated.

Mobile Update

  • The iOS version has now been accepted by Apple.
  • HOWEVER, it is not currently publicly available through the Apple Store, as the Lab is working on the first set of updates, which they want to incorporate before the app is made generally available.
  • At the moment, the iOS version is in testing with some 40 or so users.
  • The Android version remains somewhat behind the iOS version and won’t be appearing in the short-term.
  • As has been repeatedly indicated, the client will initially be a communications companion and will not include any 3D world rendering – this is on the roadmap (assuming the interest / use of the mobile app warrants the additional development work), but is “way down the line.”
  • Those using the app will be logged-into dedicated “SL Mobile” regions for the purposes of communication. Obviously, if the app reaches the point where it is rendering the world, this will all change. However, until then:
    • These regions will not be accessible to anyone not using the SL Mobile client.
    • Those using the App will not have a physical presence within the regions.
    • It will not be possible to engage in local chat within the regions – although obviously, IMs will be possible, and the ability to use Group chat will be added.
  • Again, the initial purpose of the App is not to offer a fully-function alternative to the viewer for people on mobile devices; rather, it is intended to provide a means by which people can stay in contact with those they already know / need to contact (via search) when they are unable to make use of the viewer. Although again, functionality will be added as time goes by to move it beyond this initial use-case.

In Brief

  • Marketplace Requests:
    • Bulk image uploads for listings: this has been requested numerous times, and a feature request Jira has been asked for, so it can be logged.
    • Store block list (feature request BUG-230941): the ability for users to compile a list of MP stores where (for whatever reason) they do not wish to shop, and have them excluded from Search results. This is actually something the Marketplace team have been discussing as a general idea.
    • “Discount linking” for listings: the ability for creators to offer links between listings in their own store to give shoppers a discounts.
      • Example: a creator brings out a completely new version of s product (rather than an updated version) – they could use the “discount linking” to allow those who purchased the “old” version at a discounted price).
      • Example: a creator could offer a discount on a new skin or make-up kit for a specific mesh head within a their range of head products, rather than for all of the heads they sell.
      • This is something that, if submitted as a feature request, would receive consideration by the Lab.
    • Variant listing: Keira re-iterated (as per my June meeting summary) that the Lab is considering variant listings (e.g. a single listing for multiple colour versions of the same item). However, this is unlikely to be something that is implemented before 2022.
  • Search: an upcoming project is that of Search, encompassing how it currently functions, how the Lab would like it to function and how users expect it to function. This will then hopefully lead to improvements being make to Search, although this may not happen until much later in the year or until 2022.
  • Broken Support links: some of the pages on the dashboard at secondlife.com (e.g. Billing Information, Account History/Statements) have a broken Help / Support links due to a missing “secondlife.com” in the URLs. This is a known issue.
  • Last Names:
    • The Premium account SL Birthday themed Last Names will be shortly be withdrawn from use and replaced with a new selection of Last Names, possibly within the next week or so. After this, next update to Last Names will likely be timed for Halloween.
    • Feature request BUG-230299 asks for the current Custom last Name programme (US $500 annually for a dedicated last name) to be made more broadly available, if on a more limited basis (and presumably a lower price-point) for those who wish to have a dedicated Last Name for their “family” / community / group. This is something that the Lab is considering, but it is unlikely that there will be anything to announce on it, should it move forward, until some time in 2022.
  • Grid-wide user experiences: there has been some further internal discussion on these at the Lab, but right now, they are a long way down the list of priorities.

Next Meeting

  • Wednesday, August 5th, 14:00 SLT.

2021 SUG meeting week #27 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Cravone City, April 2021 – blog post

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, July 6th, 2021 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. The meeting was recorded by Pantera Północy, and the video is embedded at the end of this summary.

Server Deployments

See the server deployment thread for any most recent updates / changes.

  • Tuesday, July 6th saw the SL Main channel servers updated with simulator release 560819. This includes internal fixes, a fix for BUG-202864 – “Change Mesh Uploader to preserve Scene File object names when a full linkset is uploaded”. and a fix for BUG230881 – “llHttpRequest(): HTTP_CUSTOM_HEADER flag is ignored”.
  • Wednesday, July 7th will not see any planned deployment to the RC channels.

SL Viewer

There have been no official viewer updates to mark the start of the week, leaving the official pipelines as:

  • Release viewer: Project UI RC viewer, version 6.4.20.560520, dated June 14, promoted June 23 – No change.
  • Release channel cohorts:
  • Project viewers:
    • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.4.11.550519, dated October 26.
    • Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, dated December 9, 2019.
    • Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.532999, dated November 22, 2019.
    • 360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, dated July 16, 2019.

Region Crossings

During region crossings, vehicles and avatars are packaged and transferred separately to one another, before being unpacked and put back together by the receiving region. Due to the fact that vehicles are generally less complex than avatars, then tend to arrive first, and this can cause issues as the scripts on the vehicle resume and make calls (animations, etc.), on avatars that have yet to “arrive”, which can result in vehicle errors.

While there is an event flag – CHANGED_REGION – triggered when the vehicle has correctly arrived in the new region, allowing its scripts to resume, there is no equivalent flag for arriving avatars.  So user Animats has suggested the creation of such an additional event flag: CHANGED_REGION_COMPLETE.

This would be sent once the receiving simulator has unpacked and seated the avatars using the vehicle. Should this additional event flag not be received, then it is indicative that something has gone wrong, allowing vehicle scripters to use it to determine how they’d like to handle the situation.

See BUG-230934 “Add event bit flag CHANGED_REGION_COMPLETE to “changed” script event” for more.

It has also been suggested that LL give thought to a way in which vehicles can detect upcoming parcel settings. A major issue of vehicular travel is encountering parcels where object entry is disabled – resulting in the vehicle being auto-returned to the owner and all those aboard violently unseated.

A means for the viewer to be forewarned of the access settings for a parcel would potentially allow vehicles to be scripted so they can respond to “unfriendly” parcel such as stopping at the parcel border (presumably with a test notification to the driver) in a similar manner to when they encounter ban lines, thus potentially preventing vehicle return and avatar dumping.

There are again complexities to this idea (e.g. what happens when the parcel(s) being checked are in the next region, and thus on a different simulator to the one the checking script is currently running on?). However, LL have requested the idea be filed via Jira to allow proper assessment and discussion.

2021 viewer release summaries week #26

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

Updates from the week ending Sunday, July 4th

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: Project UI RC viewer, version 6.4.20.560520, dated June 14th, promoted June 23rd – No change.
  • Release channel cohorts:
    • No updates.
  • Project viewers:
    • No updates.

LL Viewer Resources

Third-party Viewers

V6-style

  • Kokua: updated to versions 6.4.20.47617 (no RLV) 6.4.20.50805 (RLV variants) on June 29th – release notes.

V1-style

Mobile / Other Clients

Additional TPV Resources

Related Links