Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation
Updates for the week ending Sunday, August 23rd
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
Current release viewer version 6.4.7.546539, dated August 11, promoted August 17, formerly the Arrack Maintenance RC viewer – NEW.
Release channel cohorts:
Love Me Render RC viewer, version 6.4.8.547427, August 21st.
The following notes are taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, August 21st, 2020. These meetings are generally held every other week, unless otherwise noted in any given summary. The embedded video is provided to Pantera – my thanks to her for recording and providing it. Time stamps are included with the notes will open the video at the point(s) where a specific topic is discussed.
The Love Me Render RC updated to version 6.4.8.547427 on Friday, August 21st. This update to the viewer includes a number of EEP improvements and fixes (among a list of rendering fixes / improvements):
SL-13539 [EEP] Large reflection on the water when facing certain angles.
BUG-228992 [EEP] Appearance lighting is broken when ALM is enabled.
BUG-228914 [EEP] Deferred Soften Shader fails to link when Atmospheric Shaders are disabled. This causes Debug viewer builds to crash.
BUG-228882 [EEP] Disabling glow rendering while ALM is off results in massive rendering flicker.
BUG-228781 [EEP] Specular color interpreted wrong (too bright) from point lights.
BUG-228581 [EEP] Specular map reflections are way too weak.
BUG-228840 [EEP] cloud texture is rendered backwards.
BUG-228431 [EEP] Water lighting is wrong at certain camera angles.
BUG-228752 [EEP] Sky turns black when render quality is lowered to Low-Mid.
BUG-225784 [EEP] BUG-225446 regression – HUDs are again affected by environment setting and BUG-225446 [FIXED] [EEP] HUDs are affected by Atmosphere & Lighting changes.
The rest of the official viewer pipelines remain as follows:
Current release viewer version 6.4.7.546539, dated August 11, promoted August 17, formerly the Arrack Maintenance RC viewer – NEW.
Release channel cohorts:
Mesh uploader RC viewer, version 6.4.5.544027, July 27.
Project viewers:
Custom Key Mappings project viewer, version 6.4.5.544079, June 30.
Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, December 9, 2019.
Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.532999, November 22, 2019.
Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.3.2.530836, September 17, 2019. Covers the re-integration of Viewer Profiles.
360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, July 16, 2019.
General Viewer Notes
As noted in my CCUG summary,the Legacy Profiles viewer has been further prevented from making progress due to additional web-side changes that need to be made to enable privacy settings (who can see your feed posts) to work correctly.
An updated version of the Mesh Uploader RC viewer should be available in week #35.
[6:35-7:45] LL are running a test viewer internally with updates to address the FPS drop seen within EEP viewers on Windows when compared to non-EEP viewers (and for which one of the less-than-ideal workarounds people have been using is to disable Linden Water rendering via CTRL-ALT-SHIFT-7). While it may not completely resolve all FPS issues in EEP, it does offer noticeable improvements, and if all goes well, the updates will be merged into the current Love Me Render RC viewer.
“Lots of progress going on” within Project Uplift (moving all SL services to AWS).
There will be “some posts to the LSL forum” in the near future specifically for scripters about things people should be testing. Details are scant at this point in time, but the changes are described as “not particularly scary”.
The following notes were taken from my audio recording and chat log of the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting held on Thursday, August 20th 2020 at 13:00 SLT. These meetings are chaired by Vir Linden, and agenda notes, meeting SLurl, etc, are are available on the Content Creation User Group wiki page.
SL Viewer
Currently, the official viewers remain unchanged from the start of the week:
Current release viewer version 6.4.7.546539, dated August 11, promoted August 17, formerly the Arrack Maintenance RC viewer – NEW.
Release channel cohorts:
Mesh uploader RC viewer, version 6.4.5.544027, July 27.
Love Me Render RC viewer, version 6.4.5.544028, June 30.
Project viewers:
Custom Key Mappings project viewer, version 6.4.5.544079, June 30.
Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, December 9, 2019.
Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.532999, November 22, 2019.
Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.3.2.530836, September 17, 2019. Covers the re-integration of Viewer Profiles.
360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, July 16, 2019.
General Viewer Notes
The Legacy Profiles viewer has been further prevented from making progress due to additional web-side changes that need to be made to enable privacy settings (who can see your feed posts) to work correctly.
The Mesh Uploader has been integrated with further changes, and is currently being merged up to the current viewer release code base, after which it will go to QA. Providing it passes, it could be appearing as updated RC viewer in week #35. This viewer provides:
Additional information on meshes at upload, a-la those added to Firestorm (see: Firestorm 6.0.2: Animesh release, February 2019)
UI improvements to give better information on avatar rigging & related error messaging.
Improved error messaging overall.
It will also include various fixes (such as BUG-229032 “[Mesh Uploader] Use Joint Positions Option causes ‘Collapsed Joints/Bones’ for some Files”) that are currently being worked on.
Project Muscadine (Animesh Follow-On)
Project Summary
Currently: offering the means to change an Animesh size parameters via LSL.
Current Status
Still officially on hold.
Will include shape sliders for Animesh – although it should be remembered body shapes and sliders are intended for humanoid avatars, not animals, etc.
Using the JIRA
Complaints were raised about the need to raise Jira bug reports for issues that are “raised in chat”. Simply put:
Describing an issue (often loosely) in chat – or Voice, which is often the medium for meetings – actually doesn’t mean the issue is captured and recorded. It also doesn’t necessarily mean the issue has been properly described, as those talking about it are not being encouraged to think about the issue in a structured manner or provide illustrations that can better help with understanding precisely where their problem lies.
The Jira system provides a means by which:
Information can be captured in a structured manner.
It can be illustrated.
It can be updated with further observations, feedback from others, etc.
It can be referenced, searched and cross-referenced, potentially helping other users understand a problem they are encountering and allowing the Lab to better understand the overall impact of an issue.
At the end of the day, issues reported by Jira stand a better chance of being fixed at some point that those just chatted about (which likely have a 0% chance).
An attempt to re-evaluate object and avatar rendering costs to make them more reflective of the actual impact of rendering either in the viewer. The overall aim is to try to correct some inherent negative incentives for creating optimised content (e.g. with regards to generating LOD models with mesh), and to update the calculations to reflect current resource constraints, rather than basing them on outdated constraints (e.g. graphics systems, network capabilities, etc).
As of January 2020 ARCTan has effectively been split:
Viewer-side changes, primarily focused on revising the Avatar Rendering Cost (ARC) calculations and providing additional viewer UI so that people can better visibility and control to seeing complexity.
Work on providing in-world object rendering costs (LOD models, etc.) which might affect Land Impact will be handled as a later tranche of project work, after the avatar work.
The belief is that “good” avatar ARC values can likely be used as a computational base for these rendering calculations.
Current Status
It now appears that Vir’s work in updating Jelly Dolls will now appear in the ARCTan viewer, when that eventually emerges, but may also (and possibly sooner) appear in a Maintenance RC viewer.
Overall, ARCTan has been held-up awaiting a fix for an Bake Service issue. Vir believes he now has that fix, and is waiting for it to be deployed to one of the Lab’s internal text grids so he can check to see if it works. Assuming it does work, the fix will be queued for deployment to the main grid and allow performance data gathering to resume.
Discussions are to resume regarding better UI elements to support information on complexity, etc., that users can understand and use.
In Brief
Animesh:
minimum default 15 Land Impact: it is apparently putting some creators off of trying to make Animesh items (notably breedables). It’s been suggested lowering this to 10 LI might help generate greater interest in Animesh creation. Right now, LL haven’t done enough analysis to determine how the figure might conceivably be changed, rather than just making an arbitrary adjustment.
Bakes on Mesh support: this has been discussed on a number of occasions. There are no plans to provide support for Animesh to use Bakes on Mesh in the foreseeable future, as it requires Animesh to be overhauled to have full inventory support, together with outfit support, and would also require a significant update to the Bake Service to recognise and support Animesh characters.
Date of next meeting: probably Thursday, September 3rd, 2020.
On Tuesday, August 18th, the majority of servers were updated to server maintenance update 546455, previously deployed to the RC channels comprising updates to assist with the cloud uplift.
On Wednesday, August 19th, there will an RC deployment comprising an updated version of server release 545166 with a new build ID which integrates all the changes made in the last month. Te release will have an updated build number, which was not available at the time of writing.
SL Viewer
The Arrack Maintenance RC viewer, version 6.4.7.546539 and dated August 11th, was promoted to de facto release status on Monday, August 17th.
The remainder of the current official viewers start the week unchanged:
Release channel cohorts:
Mesh uploader RC viewer, version 6.4.5.544027, July 27.
Love Me Render RC viewer, version 6.4.5.544028, June 30.
Project viewers:
Custom Key Mappings project viewer, version 6.4.5.544079, June 30.
Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, December 9, 2019.
Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.532999, November 22, 2019.
Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.3.2.530836, September 17, 2019. Covers the re-integration of Viewer Profiles.
360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, July 16, 2019.
In Brief
BUG-229219 “Group chat disabled after TP” (the actual issue behind people not seeing group chat correctly as reported in my previous SUG summary): there have been several bug reports on this, and the Lab is investigating.
The improvements to region crossings have resulted in a race condition that mean the receiving region can start acting on a vehicle (running scripts, etc), before avatars are correctly re-seated. Simon Linden is currently addressing this.
BUG-229207 “Stuck “Loading contents…” if object has more than 1 item in its content” is a bug that had been fixed 545166, but resurfaced following the deployment 456455 on August 18th. According to Rider Linden during the SUG meeting, it has now been “re-fixed” (or as he put it, referencing comments that the issue had been unfixed, it has be “un-unfixed”).
Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation
Updates for the week ending Sunday, August 16th
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
Current release viewer version 6.4.6.545962, dated August 10, promoted August 10, formerly the Tools Update 2 RC viewer – NEW.
Release channel cohorts:
Arrack Maintenance RC viewer updated to version 6.4.7.546539 on August 11th..
Updated region crossing code on the main grid should improve travelling by vehicle across the main grid
As I’ve noted in recent Simulator User Group updates, the Blake Sea regions were cloned to Aditi (the beta gird) in late July, to give users the opportunity to test regions running on AWS services (“the cloud”). Among the more significant tests carried out (for many users) was for physical region crossings via vehicle.
Initially, things did not go well; it was almost impossible to complete more than two or three region crossings without encountering insurmountable problems – and some users (myself among them) couldn’t even get through a single crossing whilst driving a vehicle. Thanks to the data gathered, the Lab made some updates to the Aditi / Blake Sea region crossing code, and Simon Linden set-up the Blake Sea Challenge so that further data on region crossings could be obtained (see: 2020 Simulator User Group week #31 summary & the Blake Sea Cloud challenge).
Preparing for a high-speed run with my Foilstream with foils lowered…
All of this work resulted in a set of updates to the region crossing code for the Aditi regions, and on Tuesday, August 11th and Wednesday August 12th, these updates were included in the simulator deployments made to Agni (the main grid)¹.
So how are things now working?
Well, first and foremost, it is early days and less than 24 hours since the RC deployment. However, people are already reporting appreciable region crossing improvements with the updated code. While far from a comprehensive test, I took a number of my boats and aircraft out for a a series of runs across a total of 55 region crossings (east to west from Second Norway to Nautilus and around part of Blake Sea, then back again) to see how things faired. The vehicles I tested were:
Bandit 50/3 sailing cruiser.
Piaggio KV23H Foilstream (version 3.2c).
Spijkers MD900 Explorer
TBM Kronos (version 6).
…. And multiple regions later, still going at speed without loss of control, and able to orbit camera for photos 🙂
I selected these four as a mix of both medium and high performance craft. Both the Bandit 50/3 and the MD900 made the round trip without real incident. Crossings for both resulted in zero vehicle slewing, with the Bandit (always good on region crossings with 2 avatars on-board) being pretty much perfect throughout, and the MD900 making each crossing with control recovery in about a second, and only very slight camera issues.
The Foilstream was going to be a tougher proposition because of its sheer speed: when running with hydrofoils deployed and full throttle, it can cross a region in 7 seconds, so multiple back-to-back crossings inevitably lead to issues at some point, while even at lower speeds the boat was subject to loss of control on crossings lasting seconds and frequently subject to the camera slewing and becoming locked in the side of the boat. The Kronos is not particularly fast compared to other aircraft, but it is exceptionally manoeuvrable and aerobatic, so complex manoeuvres that cross regions have in the past led to issues of control loss and camera slewing.
Things still can go uncomfortably wrong – if you push too hard, as I did with repeated loops through a region crossing at speed
With both of these vehicles, region crossings were considerably improved, other than when carrying things to extremes.
The Foilstream managed so 25 region crossings at full speed with no real loss of control before I found myself on the sea floor sans boat (compared to about a dozen previously before running into problems – loss of vehicle, camera slewing), while the only issue with he Kronos came with intentional aerobatics back and forth over a region crossing. In this latter case, I will say that when it did go wrong, it did so quite spectacularly, with total loss of control and the ‘plane tumbling with no recovery at all, with the map showing it trying to continue forward.
Beyond my basic tests, others have been carrying out tests. One of these is colleague Luca lucagrabacr, who recorded her own tests using a range of craft and vehicles. Wo can catch her results in the video below.
Again, while it is early days, fresh after a restart of the entire grid, etc., so gremlins may still climb out of the woodwork, but on the whole, region crossings by vehicle should generally be a lot smoother and easier. Of course, the code doesn’t mean all region crossings are solved – if you push things really hard, things can still go wrong (as with me and repeated Kronos loops back and forth between regions at high speed.
For clarity: this is a code update to the simulators within the Lab’s co-lo data centre, it does not mean Agni regions are now running in the cloud.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 