No genuinely reportable news from the Tuesday, September 1st Simulator User Group meeting, outside of the server deployment notes, hence the brief summary.
On Tuesday, September 1st, the majority of servers were updated to server maintenance update 547626, comprising:
Internal fixes (to help with the Lab’s own simulator testing)
Logging improvements
Updates related to SL-13785 “Vehicle LSL scripts do not see any passengers shortly after a region crossing”. The Lab notes the patch deployed with this release may not fix all instances of this issue, but it should offer some relief for the issue.
On Wednesday, September 2nd, the Magum RC channel should also receive server maintenance update 54726, placing the entire grid on the same release (BlueSteel and LeTigre having been updates with it in week #35).
SL Viewer
The have been no official viewer updates to mark the start of the week, leaving the pipelines as follows:
Current release viewer version 6.4.7.546539, dated August 11, promoted August 17, formerly the Arrack Maintenance RC viewer – No Change.
Release channel cohorts:
Bormotukha Maintenance RC viewer, version 6.4.8.547468, issued August 28.
Love Me Render RC viewer, version 6.4.8.547427,August 21.
Mesh uploader RC viewer, version 6.4.5.544027, July 27.
Project viewers:
Project Jelly project viewer (Jellydoll updates), version 6.4.8.547487, issued August 26.
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.
Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation
Updates for the week ending Sunday, August 30th
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 – No Change.
Release channel cohorts:
Bormotukha Maintenance RC viewer, version 6.4.8.547468, issued August 28th.
Project viewers:
Project Jelly project viewer (Jellydoll updates), version 6.4.8.547487, issued August 26th.
On Tuesday, August 25th, the majority of servers were updated to server maintenance update 547110, previously deployed to the RC channels comprising updates to assist with the cloud uplift.
On Wednesday, August 26th, there will an RC deployment with version number still TBA at the time of writing, so please check the deployment thread for update. This should comprise, in the words of Rider Linden:
We hope will help with test pilots being cut in half by their helicopters and other such unpleasantness. There may still be a few issues with unexpected collisions on a region crossing. But we think we have most of the cases. That is going out to LeTigre at least, we may put it on other channels also.
SL Viewer
The have been no official viewer updates to mark the start of the week, leaving the pipelines 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:
Love Me Render RC viewer, version 6.4.8.547427,August 21.
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.
In Brief
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. As noted, the RC deployment in the planning for Wednesday, August 26th, should help with addressing this.
Further thought is being put into how to improve region crossings further, but there will always be limits to what can be achieved due to the nature of the beast (handling data between two region simulators and the viewer), as Mazidox Linden pointed out:
Ultimately moving data blobs around takes time. Moving a lot of data blobs around to a lot of different places at once takes a lot of time and a lot of complexity. It’s never going to be totally seamless without I-Don’t-Want-To-Think-About levels of rearchitecting. And I’m sure even that would come with trade-offs.
Maxidox Linden, SUG Meeting, August 25th
HTTP-out restrictions remain in place on the Aditi regions running on AWS infrastructure. Work is progressing on code that will allow these restrictions to be lifted, although the implementation (when ready) will come in stages. One of these stages will be to make the new HTTP-out code available on regions still in the Lab’s co-lo (Aditi first, then Agni) to allow for more widespread testing.
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.
