Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation
Updates for the week ending Sunday, June 7th
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 – NEW.
Release channel cohorts:
Tools Update RC viewer, version 6.4.4.543148, issued on une 5th – 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 updated to version 6.4.4.543142 on June 3rd.
Project viewers:
Mesh uploader project viewer updated to version 6.4.3.542535 on June 3rd.
The Beguiled Art Gallery and Studio, 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 4th 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.
Unfortunately, Vir was on a replacement computer for this meeting, and the audio quality was exceptionally bad in the early part of the meeting, making comprehension both in the meeting and when playing back my audio recording very difficult.
Terrain
LL has long acknowledged that terrain texture quality in Second Life is not overly great by today’s graphics standards.
There is no defined project to update terrain textures as yet, but Vir took the opportunity to take feedback on ideas for what might be included. Some of this comprised:
Better texture density for crisper textures.
Texture layering to allow for roads / paths, etc.
Support for higher resolution textures.
Splat maps for textures and for normal and specular support.
Voxel support was requested, but this is seen as a much larger project than terrain texturing, we Linden Lab to go that route, and it is certainly not something on the cards for the foreseeable future.
Jelly Dolls / Avatar Rendering
Vir continues to work on this and has (I believe) a viewer with some of his ideas included available for internal testing or review at the Lab.
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.
Attach points support has been requested and could be a “next step”.
However, when work is resumed, the emphasis will be on fixing the identified bugs around the LSL parameter setting process
In brief
EEP: LL are still looking to correct:
Specularity (shininess) issues – see BUG-228781 and BUG-228581. One of these issues is now fixed internally to the Lab, the other is “in progress”. When deployed, should see behaviour return to pretty much how it was pre-EEP, how where the fixes will fit in viewer updates is still TBD.
Issues with the environment settings for Mainland. This has proven harder to fix. It appears that the wrong environment settings were baked into the Mainland regions, and the most direct means of correcting this is by manually correcting them.
The EEP issues – which arguably show things as they *should* appear, but which in doing so “break” content (hence trying to get the “fixes” in s that assets don’t have to be corrected & re-uploaded, etc.), sparked a discussion on how indicated changes to the rendering pipeline will be handled. Essentially these will be “opt in” for content created after any updates are deployed; old content will be “opt out”, to avoid breakage.
The following notes are taken from my recording of the Web User Group (WUG) meeting, held on Wednesday, June 3rd, 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).
Account Self-Reactivation
Previously, if a user left Second Life and asked for their account to be de-activated, it would require a support ticket to have the account re-activated at a future date, should the user wish to return to SL and to that account.
Users can now re-activate their account directly.
This is seen as a way to help people returning to Second Life as a result of the SARS-CoV-2 situation to be able to resume using their “old” accounts, rather than having to fully start over without having to soak up support personnel time in re-activating an account.
To work, a returning user must know both the account name / password and the e-mail address used to create the account.
This method doesn’t replace raising a support ticket for account re-activation, so people can still file a ticket if they do not have all the required information.
Details on account reactivation can be found here.
Mobile Client
The iOS version is now in a closed alpha featuring some residents.
In keeping with the Lab’s plans, this version offers the ability to communicate via IM, and has a basic Friends listing.
Further updates will follow – the next being the addition of Abuse Reporting support and improved management for the Friends list.
Once the Lab believe the client has an initial set of functions to make it useful as a communications tool, it will will move to a beta phase and made available to a wider cohort of users for further testing.
Work is progressing on an Android client, but it will take time for it to reach a point where it is ready for testing. When it is ready, it will likely follow a similar Alpha / Beta test process to the iOS version.
Additional work on SL web properties is also being carried out in relation to the Mobile client.
In Brief
The Adult Swim event held in May heavily involved the web team, and similar events are apparently being planned for the future.
Name Changes:
In response to requests, the list of last names provided on the Name Change page can now be seen by Basic members, so they can review the currently available names without have to upgrade first.
Basic users can now see the list of available last names on the Name Change page, so they can check to see if there is a name they’d like before they upgrade to Premium to use the capability.
No indication of how frequently the list of last names will updated, but plans remain to change out names once they reach a certain point of use and / or fail to gain traction and use.
There will be a blog post ahead of any update to allow people who what to take a name before it might vanish from the list can do so.
Work continues on deploying the updates Second Life logo / font (see Out with the green, in with the blue) across web properties as they are naturally updated for other reasons.
Since that first article, I’ve provided a number of updates on the development, including that the client will be for both Android as well as iOS, and speaking at the Web User Group meeting on Wednesday, June 3rd, 2020, Keira Linden – who is the Product lead for the client – provided and update on process, the core points of which are bullet-pointed below.
iOS Client:
The iOS version is now in a closed alpha featuring some residents.
In keeping with the Lab’s plans, this version offers the ability to communicate via IM, and has a basic Friends listing.
Further updates will follow – the next being the addition of Abuse Reporting support and improved management for the Friends list.
Once the Lab believe the client has an initial set of functions to make it useful as a communications tool, it will will move to a beta phase and made available to a wider cohort of users for further testing.
Android Client:
Work is progressing, but it will take time for it to reach a point where it is ready for testing.
When it is ready, it will likely follow a similar Alpha / Beta test process to the iOS version.
General Capabilities
Note: this is a reiteration of notes from earlier updates on the SL Mobile client.
It should initially be regarded as more of a communicator / companion app than a fully-rounded client.
The initial intention for the client is to provide users with a means of maintaining basic contact with other users whilst away from their main means of accessing Second Life.
As such, it will support logging-in to Second Life services to support IM and group chat support. However:
It will not initially present you with an in-world location, nor will your avatar rez in-world, it will not not support local chat nor any form of world rendering.
Capabilities such as having an in-world rezzing location, the ability to chat locally, support for scene rendering will be added over time.
However, in terms of any in-world rendering, this will not be part of any initial released (in the meeting it was described as “not even Soon™”), as LL are focused in just trying to get the basic app available to users as soon as reasonably possible.
All information I’m able to provide through this blog, including future updates can be found under the SL Mobile tag, and can be accessed directly from the top menu options:
SL → User Group & Viewer → Viewers → Android & iOS and then selecting either:
On Tuesday, June 2nd, the RC channels were updated with a server update, version 543116, intended to fix an expired cert that was causing problems with HTTP calls..
On Wednesday, June 3rd, and providing there are no issues arising from the above deployment, the same server update will be deployed across the rest of the grid.
SL Viewer
On Tuesday, June 2nd:
The FMOD Studio RC viewer, version 6.4.3.542964, and dated May 29th, was promoted to de facto release status.
The Mesh Uploader project viewer updated to version 6.4.3.542535.
CEF Update RC viewer, version 6.4.3.542757, May 27th.
Love Me Render RC viewer, version 6.4.3.542484, May 19th.
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.
In Brief
Parcel EEP settings are still drawing complaints from some who travel over Mainland (particularly by air) who are not particularly enamoured with seeing “their” daytime settings suddenly change. However, there is a simple answer: all they need to do is apply their preferred EEP settings to their avatar before flying, and *presto* they have a constant environment in their viewer for both parcel and region crossings. Simples.
Apparently, a rumour has been circulating somewhere that LL are “rethinking” the cloud uplift. In response to being asked if there is any truth to it, Oz Linden replied:
[There’s] no truth to the rumour at all. The only re-thinking we’re doing is how to do it better/faster.
Group chat lag still continues to be a problem for some groups – notably those with a large membership. This appears to be related to the volume of message traffic a back-end group chat server is handling, rather than a specific issue within the chat service.
Those wishing to test the upcoming changes to nearby chat ranges (channel 0), can do so on Aditi in the following regions: Animesh1, Animesh2 and Snark
On Wednesday, May 27th, the Kokua team released Kokua 6.4.2, bringing the viewer up to parity with the Linden Lab official viewer, 6.4.2 code base (Camera Presets), promoted on May 19th, 2020.
This means that with this release, Kokua now includes:
the Environment Enhancement Project (EEP) release.
The most recent viewer Maintenance updates.
The aforementioned Camera Presets.
In addition, the Restrained Love Viewer (RLV) variants of this Kokua release include both include the latest updates to Marine Kelley’s RLV API updates – version 2.9.27.0 -, which include support specific to EEP, and which the Kokua team have also used with regards the new Camera Presets, as part of their own updates to the viewer.
Lab-Derived Updates
Environment Enhancement Project
In including support for EEP, Chorazin Allen makes an important point that all SL users should keep in mind when moving to EEP-capable viewers:
Before getting into the additional features and fixes we need to point out that EEP represents a major overhaul of the viewer’s weather, lighting, shine and reflection areas – it’s more than just a new weather system with configuration files as inventory assets instead of separate xml files. As a result you WILL find that scenes, structures and avatars can all look different. If you find a particularly noticeable instance you are encouraged to log details of it in LL’s Jira issue tracking system so that these differences can be fixed at their origin.
– Chorazin Allen [my emphasis]
The Kokua 6.4.2 release appears to be a direct implementation of EEP and its various floaters without any alterations to their layout. As such, I do not propose to cover them here; rather I’ll leave you with a series of links to resources:
The Camera Presets controls, developed and contributed by Jonathan Yap, is a capability that allow users to create one more more custom camera presets within the viewer to suit particular needs and then save them. This means, for example, that a user can now have a camera position for general exploring, another suitable for combat games, another for building, etc., all of which can easily be accessed and used at any time.
Again, the Kokua implementation of the UI elements is the same as the official viewer. However, the Kokua implementation of Camera Presets adds addition default presets as follows:
Left, Right and top: provide viewers of your avatr from the left and right side, and from directly above.
FPS (First Person Shooter) – positions the camera directly in front of your avatar and looking forward.
Nearer – a view looking from close behind your avatar designed to be more suitable for corridors and other narrow spaces.
Again, rather than go into specifics on creating and using Camera Presets, I refer readers to my Camera Presets tutorial.
Kokua Updates
Edit Floater – Bulk Rename
Kokua 6.4.2 includes a new button in the Content tab of the Edit floater that allows the contents of an object to be easily renamed. A typical case for this might be when updating the version number of the individual contents on an object for a new release: after the specific elements that have been updated / replaced in the object, the rest can easily be renamed with the new version number.
Kokua object contents bulk rename
As this is liable to be a special usage option, I’ll refer interested parties to the Kokua documentation on how it works.
Animation Override
Client AO updates
Kokua 6.4.2 offers two new options to the client-side Animation Override system:
Chat check box: when enabled, each new animation to run will be reported in local chat in the user’s viewer.
The intent is to allow a user to keep track of the currently running animation when using a new set of poses/animations to decide decide which should be kept or discarded.
It is not recommended this option is kept on at all times, as the animation reports can be intrusive.
Any button: located between the next / previous animation paging buttons a the bottom of the floater, it will randomly select a pose from the current listed set (Walking, Standing, etc), and play it.
Clicking the Next or Previous buttons will resume stepping forward / back through the list of animations from the randomly selected animation.
Hover Height
This release of Kokua includes the hover height slider from Marine’s RLV viewer, with the release notes stating:
Rather than include the small button to reset it to 0.0 we have made the numerical value next to the slider writable allowing any value to be directly entered.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 