Category: SL Tech

2020 viewer release summaries week #26

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

Updates for the week ending Sunday, June 28th

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 6.4.3.543157, dated June 11th, promoted June 23rd, formerly the CEF RC viewer – No change.
  • Release channel cohorts:
    • Arrack Maintenance RC viewer, 6.4.5.544024, issued on June 24. This viewer uses Viewer Manager 2.0.538279 and contains logging to check for Vulkan graphics support in Windows systems.
    • Tools Update RC viewer updated to version 6.4.5.544097, June 25. This viewer is built using VS 2017 / a recent version of Xcode, and Boost.Fiber. It contains no user-facing changes.
  • Project viewers:
    • No updates.

LL Viewer Resources

Third-party Viewers

V6-style

  • No updates.

V1-style

  • Cool VL viewer stable branch updated to 1.28.0  on June 27th. Deprecates all previous stable / experimental versions – release notes.

Mobile / Other Clients

  • Speedlight updated to support name search (Friends/IMs). No version number available.

Additional TPV Resources

Related Links

2020 SL project updates week #26: TPVD summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
South Shore Bay, May 2020 – blog post

The following notes are taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, June 26th, 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.

SL Viewer News

[0:00-4:27]

  • On Tuesday, June 23rd, the release viewer updated to version 6.4.3.543157, dated June 11th, formerly the CEF RC viewer.
  • On Wednesday, June 24th, the Arrack Maintenance RC viewer, 6.4.5.544024, was issued. This viewer uses Viewer Manager 2.0.538279.
  • On Thursday, June 25th, the Tools Update RC viewer updated to version 6.4.5.544097. This viewer is built using VS 2017 / a recent version of Xcode, and Boost.Fiber. It contains no user-facing changes.

The rest of the current official viewer pipelines are as follows:

  • Release Candidate viewers:
  • Project viewers:
    • Mesh uploader project viewer, version 6.4.4.543141, June 11.
    • 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 CEF viewer supports live streaming into Second Life by You Tube and Facebook. Other services may also work, but further bug fixes may be required for them to work smoothly.
  • The Love Me Render (LMR) RC viewer should be the next viewer in-line for promotion, mostly likely in week #28, however, this is dependent on it getting some remaining priority fixes related to EEP.
    • These fixes include the reported specularity issues and now include the reported HUD issues (BUG-225784).
  • The Legacy Profiles Project Viewer had been awaiting a web update which may have gone through. If so, and it correctly addresses the issue, then it is likely the viewer will go to RC status.
  • The Copy / Paste Project Viewer also shouldn’t be “too far” from an RC update.

Simulator News

[4:42-5:35]

  • A new simulator version that includes a fix for the failure to deliver inventory offers to a user who is off-line is available for testing by TPVs.
  • Viewer developers wishing to test the updates can do so on regions Preflight3, Preflight4 and Preflight7.

Texture Caching, HTTP and General Viewer Caching

[6:05-9:51]

  • Work had been in progress to update texture caching and HTTP2 (the TCO viewer. That viewer has been split between the texture caching work and the HTTP2 work, so it has effectively become two viewers in development.
    • The HTTP2 viewer will likely remain on hold until after the Uplift project work is complete.
    • It is not currently clear when work on the texture caching (TCO) viewer will resume.
  • In terms of revising viewer caching as a whole, this is liable to be a fairly large project.
    • First item of business will be to completely replace VFS caching (the system used to cache information on in-world objects) with a new, more performant format.
    • Once this has been done, other aspects of caching with the viewer will be looked at.
  • Inventory caching is another area of work that may be looked at in the future.

In Brief

  • [9:36-12:02] Reports of low frame rates in EEP-enabled viewers continue, with the act of disabling Linden Water rendering (CTRL-SHIFT-ALT-7) continuing to be used as a temporary means of improving things.  LL are continuing to investigate this, but at this point in time, the thinking is there may not be a single fix, so these investigations may not hold up the release of the LMR viewer.
    • Currently, there remains a lot of dissatisfaction about EEP in terms of perceived benefits compared to things such as rendering changes, ease-of-use, performance hits (per above),  etc.
    • The current Firestorm preview EEP viewer has already generated a lot of negative feedback from the preview users, and there are concerns that any Firestorm release will generate a large-scale backlash against EEP.
  • [21:15-22:15] In response to a question it was reiterated that Vulkan is being given serious consideration as the rendering API to replace OpenGL, given Apple’s intent to deprecate the latter.
    • One potential issue is that a lot of older PCs used with SL do not have support for Vulkan.
    • To assist in determining how big an issue this might be, the Arrack Maintenance RC viewer includes logging code to detect Vulkan support within client systems.
  • [22:45-26:07] the announcement by Apple that they plan to switch away from using Intel CPUs to their own ARM-based CPUs starting in 2020 was discussed. LL will be looking into this more once they get some dev kits from Apple.

2020 Simulator User Group week #26 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Kintsugi: Spirited Beyond – blog post

The following notes were taken at the Simulator User Group meeting held on Tuesday, June 23rd. Not much to report as it as another live music event.

Simulator Deployments

Please refer to the server deployment thread for news and updates:

  • On Tuesday, June 23rd, the min channel was updated to server release 543526, comprising further infrastructure updates to support Group chat improvements / support of the cloud uplift work.
  • There is no planned RC deployment or restart planned for Wednesday, June 24th, also leaving regions running on release 543526.

SL Viewer

There have been no updates to the official viewers to mark the start of the week, leaving the current viewers as follows:

  • Current Release viewer version 6.4.3.542964, dated May 29th, promoted June 2nd, formerly the FMOD Studio RC viewer – No Change.
  • Release channel cohorts:
    • CEF RC viewer, version 6.4.3.543157, June 11.
    • Tools Update RC viewer, version 6.4.4.543148, June 5 – this viewer is built using VS 2017 / a recent version of Xcode, and Boost.Fiber. It contains no user-facing changes.
    • Love Me Render RC viewer, version 6.4.4.543142, June 3.
  • Project viewers:
    • Mesh uploader project viewer, version 6.4.4.543141, June 11.
    • 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.

2020 viewer release summaries week #25

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

Updates for the week ending Sunday, June 21st

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 6.4.3.542964,, dated May 29th, promoted June 2nd, formerly the FMOD Studio RC viewer – No Change.
  • Release channel cohorts:
    • No updates.
  • Project viewers:
    • No updates.

LL Viewer Resources

Third-party Viewers

V6-style

  • No updates.

V1-style

  • Cool VL viewer stable branch updated to 1.26.24.23 and Experimental branch to 1.27.0.3, both  on June 20th – release notes.

Mobile / Other Clients

  • No updates.

Additional TPV Resources

Related Links

2020 Content Creation User Group week #25 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Thermae, May 2020 – 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, June 18th 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

  • It had been planned that the next viewer to be promoted to de facto release status would be the Love Me Render (LMR) RC viewer. However:
    • LMR is being held over pending the inclusion of various EEP bug fixes, including a fix for the HUD issues (see BUG-225784) and a fix for the specularity problems (see BUG-228781 and BUG-228581).
    • This means the next viewer that will likely be promoted will be the CEF RC viewer, and this could be promoted in week #26 (commencing Monday, June 22nd).

Viewer Caching

  • Work is continuing to try to improve viewer caching.
  • First outcome of this work is liable to be a viewer that has improved VFS caching (the system used to cache information on in-world objects). This will be a complete replacement of the VFS cache with a new format that retains data better and is more performant.
  • The next element of work after the VFS update is liable to be an overhaul of the viewer’s texture caching.

ARCTan

Project Summary

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

  • Vir now trying to roll the jelly doll updates into the rendering cost calculations and performance measurements.
  • One thing the core work on ARCTan has been awaiting is a fix to the Bake Service for errors arising when calculating height offsets with complex mesh items, which can result in the avatar bake failing. The fix for this is in place, and the updated Bake Service should be exposed to a simulator RC for testing “fairly soon”. The change itself should have no visible impact other than to correct the rare instances where the issue occurred.

In brief

  • There have been reports of avatar bakes taking longer to complete recently.However, it is not clear if this is an actual issue; LL have not noted any Bake Service processing issues, and also note that users may be noting a perceived “slowing” due to changes made a while ago to try to prevent avatars de-clouding fully nude (e.g. due to latency between the viewer and the CDN, or local caching issues, etc.).
  • In terms of avatar rezzing, there is also work being put into reducing the instances of rigged mesh elements rezzing offset / incorrectly sized related to an avatar (e.g. clothing appearing off to one side and rotated to be on its side; gigantic heads rezzing, etc.).
  • Next meeting: Thursday, July 2nd, 13:00 SLT.

2020 Simulator User Group week #25 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Mediterraneo Coffee and Lounge Bar – May 2020 – blog post

The following notes were taken at the Simulator User Group meeting held on Tuesday, June 16th.

Simulator Deployments

Please refer to the server deployment thread for news and updates:

  • On Tuesday, June 16th, the majority of the grid was updated to server release 543337, comprising simulator-side updates that will eventually allow per-region values for Shout, Say, and Whisper distances.
    • Note: Currently these values are read only, and can be accessed via the Sim Console.
  • On Wednesday, June 17th, the RC channels will be updated to server release 543526, comprising further infrastructure updates to support Group chat improvements / support of the cloud uplift work.

Voice Carry Project – Update and Re-Cap

Voices Carry is the name given to the extended chat range project. Once fully deployed, it will allow region / estate owners / managers to set the open chat range on a region (see BUG-228333).

As of the June 16th simulator update, the current values can be viewed via the Sim Console, as noted above.  the command for doing so are: “get chat_range”, “get whisper_range” and “get shout_range”.

General notes on the capability, once fully deployed:

  • It only applies to local chat channel 0, and so it should not impact scripted objects using other chat channels.
  • The distance set within a region will determine which, if any, of any adjoining regions can her local chat with that region.
    • For example, if you are in a region with chat distance set to 50m and you’re more than 50m from any boundary with an adjoining region, then your chat will not be relayed beyond the region.
  • The distance chat is set to within a region will determine how far any chat from an adjoining region will be relayed within it.
    • For example: if a region has a chat range of 20m, and chat is relayed from a neighbouring region with a range of 100m, that chat will only be relayed 20m within the current region.
  • No matter how great the chat range is set within an region, it will never be relayed further than those immediately adjoining it.
    • For example: if a Mainland region has a chat range set to 1000m, chat from it will only be relayed to the (maximum of) 8 regions adjoining it.

SL Viewer

There have been no updates to the official viewers to mark the start of the week, leaving the current viewers as follows:

  • Current Release viewer version 6.4.3.542964, dated May 29th, promoted June 2nd, formerly the FMOD Studio RC viewer – No Change.
  • Release channel cohorts:
    • CEF RC viewer, version 6.4.3.543157, June 11.
    • Tools Update RC viewer, version 6.4.4.543148, June 5 – this viewer is built using VS 2017 / a recent version of Xcode, and Boost.Fiber. It contains no user-facing changes.
    • Love Me Render RC viewer, version 6.4.4.543142, June 3.
  • Project viewers:
    • Mesh uploader project viewer, version 6.4.4.543141, June 11.
    • 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

  • Extended update deployment roll-times: region owners have noted that the time taken for deployments to roll across  estates has become extended – some regions taking up to an hour to update and restart. LL believe they know what the issue is, but any fix will not be implemented until after the cloud uplift work has been completed.
  • Cloud uplift: work is progressing well, although LL are not revealing which services have been migrated and which have yet to move.
    • Following completion of the uplift, all SL services will initially be in a single AWS regional zone.
    • However, LL expect to eventually have things more distributed across zones (e.g.allowing some simulators to be located closer to where their core audience is located, where there is a clear geographical distribution of users.