Category: SL Tech

2020 Simulator User Group week #15 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Aoshima, February 2020 – blog post

The following notes were taken at the Simulator User Group meeting held on Tuesday, April 7th.

Simulator Deployments

Please refer to the simulator deployment thread for updates.

  • There was no deployment to the grid on Tuesday, April 7th, 2020, leaving the majority of regions running simulator version 538914, containing support for the upcoming mobile companion applications (see: Second Life companion app: mini update, March 2020).
  • On Wednesday, April 8th, there should be two RC updates:
    • Simulator release 539362, containing infrastructure improvements related to the cloud uplift.
    • Simulator release 539684, containing the following:
      • BUG-228417 Emails created by llTargetedEmail() in deeded objects show owner as NULL_KEY in the received email metadata.
      • BUG-228412 Emails created by llTargetedEmail() are missing header info in the received email.
      • SL-12941 Disable TARGETED_EMAIL_ROOT_CREATOR in llTargetedEmail
      • SL-11502 New LSL function llTargetedEmail
      • BUG-226917 EEP Environment, New Sky should default to midday and not 6pm
      • BUG-226737 [EEP] The ‘get parcel_dayoffset’ request returns the value of the ‘parcel daylength’ parameter in the Region Debug Console.

SL Viewer

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

  • Current Release version  version 6.3.8.538264, dated March 12, promoted March 18th. Formerly the Premium RC viewer – No change.
  • Release channel cohorts:
    • Camera Presets RC viewer, version 6.3.9.538729 March 25.
    • Love Me Render RC viewer, version 6.3.9.538760, March 25.
    • EEP RC viewer updated to version 6.4.0.538823, March 20.
    • Zirbenz Maintenance RC viewer, version 6.3.9.538719, issued March 19.
  • 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.

In Brief

With work progressing on the cloud uplift, some concern has been raised by those using external services and HTTP calls to / from the simulators once the latter start to be transitioned and have their domains changed.

While in-world object URLs are dynamic, it’s been suggested that some use external services use URL validation with hard-coded domain names (e.g. “http://sim10446.agni.lindenlab.com….”) in response to issues, and will therefore need a formal warning of URL changes as a result of domain changes. Given this approach is not recommended, the fact that LL will start to transition simulators to AWS services later in 2020 should be taken as fair warning that such validation checks will break. However, for those with concerns:

  • Aditi (the beta grid) will be transitioned first, allowing scripts, external calls, etc., to be tested.
  • With respect to this issue,  llHTTP on the wiki will be updated to reflect domain changes and HTTP call requirements.

Singularity 1.8.9: the big catch-up

Posted on by Inara Pey

April 2nd, 2020 saw the first full release of the viewer 1.x style Singularity viewer in almost four years with the arrival of version 1.8.9.8338. The last formal release of the viewer had been in June 2016, with the release of version 1.8.7 – although there have been many, many, “nightly” builds of the viewer made available in the interim to help keep Singularity users up-to-date with viewer changes.

As I don’t tend to report on “beta” or “nightly” builds of viewers unless they contain something absolutely vital to users  – were I to try, it’s not unreasonable to say there would be times when I’d be writing nothing other than articles on viewers and clients – this release means there is potentially a lot for me to cover – the to possibly drown you in an ocean of text! To avoid this, please excuse me if I just touch on the core aspects of the update and point you towards the official release notes for a full list of updates.

In Brief

Linden Lab Derived Updates

Given the length of time that has elapsed between the last formal release and 1.8.9, the latter rolls-up a lot of significant releases from the Labs. As a summary, these comprise:

  • Animesh.
  • Bento.
  • Bakes on Mesh (system wearable on mesh bodies / heads – see my Bakes on Mesh Basic Primer).
  • Experiences (World → Experiences from the menu bar).
  • Viewer Managed Marketplace. Actually released prior to the previous full release of Singularity, the Viewer Managed Marketplace (VMM) functionality didn’t make it into the 1.8.6 or 1.8.7 releases, and so arrives for the first time now.
    • The Marketplace Listings Panel can be accessed via either World → Marketplace Listings in the menu bar, or by activating the Marketplace Listings toolbar button (View → Change Toolbar Buttons → check Marketplace Listings).
    • Singularity also allows the listing ID for any Marketplace listing (active or inactive) to be obtained by right clicking on the associated folder in the the Marketplace Listings panel and selecting Copy Listing ID.
    • In support of VMM, Singularity also provides a Marketplace button (View → Change Toolbar Buttons → check Marketplace). Note that this will open the Marketplace in the viewer’s internal browser, regardless of whether links are set to open in an external browser.
Singularity 1.8.9 also features the all-singing, all dancing LL viewer splash screen with tweaks

Singularity Updates

This is actually a huge list of new additions, improvements, updates and fixes. So big, in fact that trying to run through them here would give rise to a novel, rather than a review, as noted. So again, please refer to the official release notes for a complete breakdown.

Availability

At the time of writing, Singularity 1.8.9 had been released in 32-bit and 64-bit flavours for Windows; 64-bit Linux and promised an “emergency” version for OS X that is described as possibly “buggy” and “available soon”. As the download page on the Singu website still listed 1.8.6 as the last formal release for OS X, Mac users interested in Singularity are advised to watch the Singularity website for updates.

Feedback

The Post-Processed Effects (PPE) panel (View → Change Toolbar → Post-Processed Effects) has some interesting real-time graphics processing options.

I’ve not had much time using Singularity 1.8.9, my total hours possibly amount to little more than an afternoon of fiddling. As such this feedback is perhaps a little more subjective in approach than might otherwise be the case.

All of the Linden-derived updates appear to work as expected, and the Singu-developed updates are certainly extensive and I have no significant issues with those I got to play with.

When it comes to rendering, where you’re looking, how far you can see, what is occluding your view, what to have cached, etc., all has a part to play in what the viewer renders, how fast it can do so and what your overall fps is. In an attempt at rudimentary “like-for-like” testing (e.g. same region, same location, same directions of view, roughly the same number of avatars, same graphics settings, etc), I found Singularly perhaps a little faster in rendering content than either the SL viewer or Firestorm, with average fps reporting pretty much on a par with, or very slightly higher than, those two viewers once rnedering had settled down for any given direction.

What I did notice with respect to 1.8.9, both in comparison to Firestorm and singularity 1.8.7, and when again, using the dame Windlight presets is that 1.8.9 produces a much more natural rendering result on my system  – gamma, haze, tone, etc., – than I’ve noted with either Firestorm or the SL viewer when using the “default” settings.

For those who like a v1-style UI coupled with something of a more “power user” range of options, Singularity 1.8.9 is liable to be just the ticket. Hopefully the huge amount of effort put into this release will mean that in future, the viewer will be better able to keep pace with changes coming out of the Lab.  Kudos to all involved in getting it back up to speed.

Related Links

2020 viewer release summaries week #14

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

Updates for the week ending Sunday, April 5th

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 6.3.8.538264, dated March 12, promoted March 18th. Formerly the Premium RC viewer – No Change.
  • Release channel cohorts:
    • No updates.
  • Project viewers:
    • No updates.

LL Viewer Resources

Third-party Viewers

V6-style

  • Kokua updated to version 6.3.8.43751 (non RLV) and 6.3.8.46425 (RLV variants) on April 1st – release notes.

V1-style

Mobile / Other Clients

  • No updates.

Additional TPV Resources

Related Links

2020 SL project updates week #14: TPVD summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
The Muse – The Library, February 2020 – blog post

The following notes are taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, April 3rd, 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 short meeting – less than 20 minutes.

SL Viewer News

[0:13-2:43]

There were no viewer updates in week #14, leaving the official viewer pipelines as follows:

  • Current Release version  version 6.3.8.538264, dated March 12, promoted March 18th. Formerly the Premium RC viewer – No change.
  • Release channel cohorts:
    • Camera Presets RC viewer, version 6.3.9.538729 March 25.
    • Love Me Render RC viewer, version 6.3.9.538760, March 25.
    • EEP RC viewer updated to version 6.4.0.538823, March 20.
    • Zirbenz Maintenance RC viewer, version 6.3.9.538719, issued March 19.
  • 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.

General Viewer Notes

  • EEP is now extremely close to release. The hope is to have the final RC version available for users in week #15 (commencing Monday, April 6th).
    • Providing no major issues are encountered with that version, and allowing for it gaining sufficient user hours as an RC cohort, it will then be promoted to de facto release status.
    • This viewer still has one of the lowest crash rates for the official viewer, and which is described as being “dramatically lower” than the current viewer release.
  • The Love Me Render (LMR) and Camera Presets RC viewers are both getting close to a point where they could be released at some point after EEP.
  • Tools update (Visual Studio 2017 and a more recent version of Xcode): the first full viewer build is ready to be issued, so an RC could be appearing in week #15. If so, it may be fast-tracked to release status behind EEP and ahead of other RCs.
  • There is still work to be done on the Copy / Paste and Legacy Profiles viewers to get them up to RC status.
  • Work is also continuing on the mesh uploader viewer, a version of which had yet to be made available to users as a compiled viewer.

Server / Simulator News

[3:44-6:42]

  • The server team believe they have fixes for the issue off-line inventory losses from objects (see: BUG-227179 “All offline inventory offers from scripted objects are STILL lost”).
  • These fixes should be going to a simulator RC release in week #15, and no viewer-side updates are required for either of the fixes (UDP and HTTP).
  • TPVs have been asked to confirm the HTTP fix works, and if so, to switch to that mechanism (if they have not already done so), rather than continuing to rely on UDP messaging for off-line inventory offers, so that path can be deprecated.
  • Details on where the fixes can be tested will be made available to TPVs through the Open-Source Dev mailing list.
  • Apologies have been offered for the time it took LL to fix and fix the underlying causes.

2020 Content Creation User Group week #14 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Garrigua, February 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, April 2nd 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.

A large part of the meeting concerned options for what might be done when handling complex avatars that fall outside of what is currently being done through ARCTan, including esoteric discussions on when things like impostering should occur in the download / rendering cycle, etc. Discussions also touched on the sale of Sansar (see elsewhere in this blog) and SL’s uptick in user numbers as a result of the current SARS-Cov-2 pandemic.

Environment Enhancement Project

Project Summary

A set of environmental enhancements (e.g. the sky, sun, moon, clouds, and water settings) to be set region or parcel level, with support for up to 7 days per cycle and sky environments set by altitude. It uses a new set of inventory assets (Sky, Water, Day), and includes the ability to use custom Sun, Moon and cloud textures. The assets can be stored in inventory and traded through the Marketplace / exchanged with others, and can additionally be used in experiences.

Resources

Current Status

  • Is caught on a couple rendering bugs related to Linden Water and how the water / things under water are rendered by EEP.
  • The plan is still to have EEP promoted before any other viewer project is promoted to release status.

ARCTan

Project Summary

An attempt to re-evaluate object and avatar rendering costs to make them more reflective of the actual impact of rendering both. 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:

  • Immediate 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. This work can essentially be broken down as:
    • Collect data.
    • Update ARC function.
    • Design and provide tool within the viewer UI (i.e. not a pop-up) that presents ARC information in a usable manner and lets users make decisions about rendering / performance.
  • 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

  • Internal testing is awaiting a Bake Service update related to the issue Vir identified that was causing issues in gathering data.
  • In the interim, Vir has been looking at the tools available for manipulating viewer performance (e.g. imposters, the Jelly Dolls tools, blocking, etc.). He’s specifically been looking at “peculiarities” in how the various options work and raising internal questions on possibly re-examining aspects of how they work.
  • One point with imposters / Jelly Dolls is that while the settings may be used – and as was raised as a concern prior to that project being deployed – is that rendering data for all attachments on an impostered or jelly dolled avatar is still downloaded to the viewer, which is not optimal.
    • Removing attachment data could improve performance, but would also make jelly dolled avatars in particular look even more rudimentary.
  • A bug with the  Jelly Doll code means setting an avatar to never render causes it to load more slowly than just lowering the complexity threshold so it doesn’t render. This is viewed as a known bug.
  • There have been suggestions for trying to limit access to regions (particularly events) based on avatar complexity.
    • Right now, this would be difficult, as the simulator does not have authoritative information on avatar complexity – it’s calculated in the viewer, which in turn is based on data the simulator doesn’t even load.
    • This means there would have to be a significant refactoring of code before the simulator could be more proactive around avatar complexity. Given the cloud uplift work, this is not something the Lab wishes to tackle at this point in time.

General Discussion

  • Arbitrary skeletons: The question was raised on SL allowing entirely custom / arbitrary skeletons.
    • This again would be a complex project, one that was rejected during the Bento project due to the risk of considerable scope creep.
    • There is already a volume of available humanoid mesh avatars, each operating with their own (mutually incompatible) ecosystems of clothing and accessories that can already cause confusion for users. Adding completely arbitrary skeleton rigs to this could make things even more complicated and confusing.
  • The major reason there is little work being put into developing new LSL capabilities is because the majority of the LSL development resources are deeply involved in – wait for it – cloud uplift work.

Next Meeting

Due to the Lab’s monthly Al Hands meeting, the next CCUG meeting will take place on Thursday, April 16th, 2020

April 2020 Web User Group: Name Changes et al

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

The following notes are taken from my recording of the Web User Group (WUG) meeting, held on Wednesday, April 1st, 2020. These meetings are held monthly, generally on the first Wednesdays of the month, with dates and details of the meetings available via the Web User Group wiki page.

When reading these notes, please keep in mind:

  • This is not intended as a chronological transcript of the meeting. Items are drawn together by topic, although they may have been discussed at different points in the meeting.
  • Similarly, and if included, any audio extracts appearing in these summaries are presented by topic heading, rather than any chronological order in which they may have been raised during the meeting (e.g. if “topic X” is mentioned early in a meeting and then again half-way through a meeting, any audio comments related to that topic that might be included in these reports will be concatenated into a single audio extract).

Name Changes

  • Deployment of the Name Changes capability is now “really, really close”.
  • As of the meeting, all of the major elements for Name Changes are with the Lab’s QA team for testing.
  • IF no significant issues / showstoppers or the like are uncovered by QA, it is probable that Name Changes will launch before the end of April.

Premium Plus

  • All of the required / update workflows for managing Premium Plus are in place, and the various web pages that will need to be refreshed with updated information have been prepared ready for the eventual Premium Plus launch.
  • All of the back-end work is in place.
  • LL are still “sitting on” all of the various values (fee, benefits, etc.), that are associated with Premium Plus.
  • No release date but said to be be “closer” – however, as I’ve previously noted, it will not come until some time after Name Changes have been made available.

Marketplace

  • Keywords and unlisting: if an item is unlisted from the MP for keyword use issues, the merchant will now get an automated e-mail notification.
  • Further improvements to the keyword system will be made over time.
  • There have been multiple fixes to the Marketplace, including:
    • Corrections for translations for non-English languages and alternate language descriptions on listings being incorrect or not displaying correctly.
    • Fixes for issues with the transaction e-mail settings.
    • Correcting the issue of some listings failing to appear in search results on Merchant’s Manage Listings pages.
    • Cleaned up the behaviour of received items.
    • Single sign-on session handling between the viewer and the Marketplace has been improved to prevent the system getting confused between which account a user was using to make a MP purchase if they were logged-in and using the MP from two accounts.

SL Marketing

  • Work has been put into refreshing a lot of the Second Life landing pages as a part of promoting Second Life.
  • This work includes the development of the enterprise / business micro-site, including the new explore page for the (at present) seven turnkey solutions.
    • I’m currently discussing with LL a possible article on this aspect of Second Life that will present a walk-through of the micro site and how interested parties can use it to engage with LL and progress through to using one of the region types.
    • The global MuseWeb 2020 conference is in progress at the time of writing, and has moved to an entirely on-line status as a result of the current pandemic. Portions of this event are being presented in or relayed through Second Life, using one of the enterprise turnkey solutions – see: MuseWeb: utilising Second Life in support of a global conference).
  • Internally to the Lab, one of the new consumer campaigns (yet to launch at the time of writing) is called the Comfort Campaign, promoting Second Life as a virtual social environment where people can meet, share times, enjoy the company of others (pretty much in keeping with the ideal of “stay safe, stay virtual”) during the current crisis, whilst at the same time avoiding the appearance of being in any way exploitative.

Two-Factor Authentication

  • Still being worked on.
  • First step will likely be sending out an e-mail notification when an attempt to log-in to a Second Life service is made from an unrecognised device.
  • More robust 2FA controls will be added, and will initially be opt-in before eventually becoming required.

It’s a very serious topic that we are working on in parallel to AWS work. Which means it made the cut of “what can we stop working on to make AWS go faster.

– Ekim Linden

In Brief

  • Website polls. People visiting Second Life web properties such as secondlife.com and the Marketplace may have noticed a pop-up poll appearing when they do so, asking if they would recommend SL to others.
    • Apparently, those responding at largely indicating they would (although obviously saying and doing aren’t the same).
    • At the same time, the poll also received a lot of negative feedback due to the annoyance factor (it would keep popping up on a user logging into any Second Life web property until responded to), and so has been turned off.
    • However, there are more such polls being planned, although how they are being presented might be reconsidered.
  • Web profiles and legacy profiles viewer: there are further fixes awaiting before this profile can roll forward, and these are queued behind other work at present.
  • Forum spamming. There has been an upturn in new accounts spamming the forums. It is possible that if this continues and gets worse, LL may consider some form of throttling / limits on the volume of posts that can be made by an individual account at a given time.