Category: SL Tech

2020 viewer release summaries week #20

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

Updates for the week ending Sunday, May 17th

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 version  version 6.4.1.540593, dated April 27th, promoted May 4th. Formerly the Zirbenz Maintenance RC viewer – No Change.
  • Release channel cohorts:
    • FMOD Studio RC viewer, version 6.4.2.541570, issued May 11th.
    • Camera Presets RC viewer updated to version 6.4.2.541639 on May 11th.
    • Love Me Render RC viewer updated to version 6.4.2.541651 on May 11th.
  • Project viewers:
    • Mesh uploader project viewer, version 6.4.2.541645, issued May 15th..

LL Viewer Resources

Third-party Viewers

V6-style

V1-style

Mobile / Other Clients

  • No updates.

Additional TPV Resources

Related Links

2020 SL project updates week #20: TPVD summary; mesh uploader

Posted on by Inara Pey
Silent Melody, March 2020 – blog post

The following notes are taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, May 15, 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.

This was a very short meeting!

SL Viewer News

[0:47-4:27]

  • The Mesh Uploader project viewer, version 6.4.2.541645, was issued on May 15th. This both offers a number of fixes to uploader issues, as per the release notes, and incorporates improvements to the uploader layout, etc., as first seen in Firestorm and contributed to Linden Lab.
Mesh Uploader project: the revised LOD tab with the additional information outlined

The remainder of the official views currently in progress remain as follows:

  • Current Release version  version 6.4.1.540593, dated April 27th, promoted May 4th. Formerly the Zirbenz Maintenance RC viewer.
  • Release channel cohorts:
  • Project viewers:
    • Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, December 9th, 2019.
    • Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.532999, November 22nd, 2019.
    • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.3.2.530836, September 17th, 2019. Covers the re-integration of Viewer Profiles.
    • 360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, July 16th, 2019.
The Mesh Uploader project viewer: the new Avatar tab with information taken from the upload options tab (blue) and new joint information panels (red)

General Viewer Notes

  • The Camera Presets viewer is in relatively good shape for promotion to de facto release status in week #21 (commencing Monday, May 18th).
  • The Love Me Render RC viewer is currently experiencing issues in merging with the EEP viewer code base, so is unlikely to be in a position to be promoted.
  • The FMOD RC viewer should offer a fix to one of the most common viewer crashes related to audio.
  • The Build Tools viewer still has some issues awaiting fixing before it sees the light of day..
  • Additional CEF updates are also in the works that will expand on the current CEF Special RC viewer.

New Simulator Chat Range Capability

[5:09-6:30]

A new ability is being developed to allow region / estate owners / managers to set chat ranges.

  • This will require viewer-side UI support, which has yet to be completed.
  • The range set for a region will be reported to the viewer by the simulator as a part of the region information.
  • The server-side support will be appearing real soon now™.

In Brief

  • [4:43-5:09] The RC deployment for Wednesday, May 20th should see a fix for Group notices all showing the same time stamp deployed across two of the RC channels.
  • [7:45-7:57] The fix for the issue off-line inventory losses from objects (see: BUG-227179 “All offline inventory offers from scripted objects are STILL lost”) should be deployed (hopefully!) in the RC deployments of Wednesday, May 27th.
  • [9:12-11:00] The question was asked if LL would skip using Visual Studio 2017 in he viewer build process and go directly to VS 2019.
    • The answer was no, not this close to deploying working viewers using the updated build process, but a project to update to VS 2019 will be started “at some point”.
    • This work should in theory be a lot easier, thanks to the effort up into updating the additional viewer build libraries as a part of this update.
    • This build process is currently using XCode 11.3.1 for OS X, but this may change depending on the frequency of updates from Apple.

2020 Simulator User Group week #20 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Ostoja, March 2020 – blog post

The following notes were taken at the Simulator User Group meeting held on Tuesday, May 12th. Not a lot was discussed (again), so just a short update on server deployments / official viewer updates.

Simulator Deployments

Please refer to the simulator deployment thread for updates.

  • On Tuesday, May 12th, the majority of the grid was updated to server maintenance release 541440, comprising:
    • Updates to fix issues with the Name Change feature still calling avatars by their “old” names for up to a week (see BUG-228565).
    • Internal logging changes and improvements to how the simulator accesses internal servers.
    • A a fix to llBase64ToInteger, the colour space LSL functions.
    • This update could exacerbate issues with group notice time stamps failing to accurately report, which has been an issue on at least one RC channel (see: BUG-228562 Group Notice Timestamps don’t report accurately Server Channel 540369/ now 541440).
  • Updates are planned for the three RC channels, but at the time of writing, had yet to be announced. Commenting on the updates at the meeting, Rider Linden stated:

LeTigre and Magnum are getting competing fixes for the experience purchase problem [see Bug-228676]. BlueSteel, Snack and Preflight [two small-scale RC channels] are all getting an update that just internal fixes and extra logging.

Please refer to the deployment thread for further information / updates.

SL Viewer

On Monday, May 11th:

  • The Camera Presets RC viewer updated to version 6.4.2.541639.
  • The Love Me Render RC viewer updated to version 6.4.2.541651.
  • A new FMOD Studio update RC viewer, version 6.4.2.541570, was issued.

The remaining official viewer pipelines are currently unchanged from the end of week #18:

  • Release channel cohorts:
    • CEF Special RC viewer, version 6.4.1.541204, dated April 30th.
  • Project viewers:
    • 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 #19

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

Updates for the week ending Sunday, May 10th

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 version  version 6.4.1.540593, dated April 27th, promoted May 4th. Formerly the Zirbenz Maintenance RC viewer – NEW.
  • Release channel cohorts:
    • No updates.
  • Project viewers:
    • No updates.

LL Viewer Resources

Third-party Viewers

V6-style

V1-style

Mobile / Other Clients

Additional TPV Resources

Related Links

2020 Content Creation User Group week #19 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Grauland, March 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, May 7th 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

No further updates this week, leaving the current crop of in-flight viewers as:

  • Current Release version  version 6.4.1.540593, dated April 27th, promoted May 4th. Formerly the Zirbenz Maintenance RC viewer – NEW.
  • 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:
    • 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.

CEF Viewer

The “special release” CEF RC viewer, version 6.4.1.541204, does contain the anticipated codec, etc., updates. However, it is classified as a “special” release at this point in time, as it includes some “short cuts” taken in the build process in order to get it out as a proof-of-concept for the Adult Swim event.

The recommendation is that TPVs should not adopt the code from this particular build, but to wait until a more formalised RC release of the CEF updates is made.

See: Exclusive Adult Swim Second Life Event: Introducing Live Video Streaming in SL (Linden Lab) and Adult Swim special streaming event in Second Life (this blog).

OpenGL Replacement

As has been noted in this blog and elsewhere, Apple is deprecating OpenGL. This has raised questions over the last several months about the future of graphic support in SL for OS X.

Currently, one of the routes under consideration is to undertake a complete switch-over (Windows and OS X) from OpenGL to using Vulkan.

  • This is not a final decision, it is just one option under consideration, albeit one that is getting a good degree of thought.
  • Numerous pros and cons have been identified with such a switch. However, more analysis is required before a decision is made – e.g. overall impact on shaders, etc.
  • Even with any shift there are crucial questions to be asked, including how might it impact users on older, lower-spec systems. To help determine this, an upcoming RC viewer from the Lab will have some additional data collection code that will check to see if systems have / can support Vulkan.
  • Vulkan could potentially streamline some of the alpha sorting issues seen with OpenGL, and might also provide some general performance improvements.
  • There is a temptation when running a major graphics overhaul to try to include additional work as well, leading to drawn-out projects (a-la EEP). To avoid this, were a move to Vulkan to be made, LL will likely go for a focused implementation of Vulkan support, with broader graphics / shader work positioned as future follow-on work.

Advanced Lighting Model

With regards to any graphics system update, it is possible that the requirement to run with the viewer’s Advanced Lighting Model (ALM) always enabled might become universal. LL are aware that many people run the viewer with ALM disabled, and so are curious as to how much impact any decision to make it universal might have.

Part of the problem here is that people disable ALM for a variety of reasons. For example:

  • Those on metered / slow connections may disable it, to avoid having the additional load of downloading materials information (normal and specular maps).
  • Some disable ALM in the (not always accurate) belief that it carries a heavy performance hit, which is not necessarily true (e.g. enabling ALM on its own generally doesn’t place too much overhead on a system, but enabling ALM and shadows rendering does – so the trick is to turn of shadows via their own drop-down, rather than disabling ALM entirely).

In brief

  • The viewer’s bandwidth usage was raised  – notably the 3000 Kbps upper limit, and whether this was still valid in the era of fast connections people can access. Whether the limit is still valid or not is unclear (particularly how higher limits might stress the servers in terms of requests for information), however, it is seen as something the Lab could potentially look at.
  • Caching viewer: the upcoming viewer with updates to the cache is primarily focused on the VFS cache. If this is successful, it is possible the texture cache may be folded into the same structure.
  • Official Linux viewer: not news. The idea of the Lab providing (with third-party contribution support) a core Debian package & leaving the libraries to TPVs / self-compilers to determine based on the flavour of Linux they want to use is essentially at a standstill due to lack of resources.
  • Next meeting: Thursday, May 21, 13:00 SLT.

Kirsten’s Viewer gains the client-side AO

Posted on by Inara Pey

On May 2nd, I wrote about the return of Kirsten’s Viewer and its return to active duty. In that review I noted that while what goes into a viewer is down to those who maintain it, it would be nice to see Kirsten’s adopt the client-side AO mechanism, as first seen in the Firestorm viewer.

Following that review, KirstenLee’s partner, Dawny Daviau let me know the AO system was being considered and then, just a couple of days later, she Tweeted that the viewer had been updated with the AO code.

Even as an inside joke, I was flattered that KirstenLee had responded so rapidly to both Dawny’s prompting and my comment.

Dawny’s Tweet

I understand from KirstenLee’s own comments that getting the AO code into the viewer wasn’t easy, what with the UI changes created by EEP – so kudos and thanks got to KirstenLee and Dawny for going ahead and integrating it. Given it did take a little crowbarring, it’s not surprising that the AO floater has a couple of minor of rough edges to it – but these do not prevent it from being used or cannot be easily fixed.

For those unfamiliar with the idea of a client-side AO, it allows the animations from an animation overrider system to run directly from the viewer without the need to wear a resource-gabbing scripted HUD. It takes a little setting-up, but once done, it’s easy to use – and has the further benefit of allowing you to use multiple AOs together without having to worry about swapping HUDS or including different outfit links to different HUDs.

Quick guide to the essentials of the client-side AO as included in Kirstens Viewer

The best place to get information on setting-up and using the client-side AO is via the Firestorm wiki. A couple of points should be noted here:

  • When first loaded, the AO floater may not display all of the AOs in its floater (e.g. all your stands might be listed, but none of your walks). If this happens, click the Reload button at the bottom of the AO floater to get them to list and run.
  • The UI scaling in the floater is a little off in this S23-1387 KV iteration, so it my need to be broadened to correctly display.

Neither of the above points impact the AO’s usability, and in my own tests, I had no issues with setting it up and using it.

Also note that the AO will create a folder called #Kirstens in your invention, which will contain a copy of the AO(s) you have selected for client-side use – do not delete this folder when using the capability!

As a long-time user of client-side AO capabilities (including loading it with more than one AO set), I’m clearly a fan of the capability. I like the freedom it gives, and the fact there’s no need to have screen real estate (however small) taken up by a HUD and, more particularly, the fact that texture RAM and script resources needn’t be taken up by the use of a HUD. So while this might be a “small” update, I think it to be worthwhile and – if you’re trying out Kirsten’s Viewer and haven’t used a viewer-side AO system, this is a good opportunity to try it out.

For those who do use the client-side AO, and might be looking to an alternative to (say) Firestorm for photography, the addition of the AO button and floater offers another reason for giving Kirsten’s Viewer a try out.

My thanks again to KirstenLee for responding to the request from Dawny and I!

Related Links