The following notes are taken from the Web User Group meeting held on Wednesday, April 3rd, 2019.
These meetings are generally held monthly on a Wednesday at 14:00 SLT, and are chaired by Alexa and Grumpity Linden at Alexa’s barn. The focus is the Lab’s web properties, which include the Second Life website (including the blogs, Destination Guide, Maps, Search, the Knowledge base, etc.), Place Pages, Landing Pages (and join flow for sign-ups), the Marketplace, and so on and the Lab’s own website at lindenlab.com.
General Updates
Resident-to-Resident Mainland Auctions: user-to-user auctions for Mainland parcels launched on March 26th – see the official blog post and my own report. The response has been exceptionally positive.
New Linden Homes: samples of the first types of new Linden Homes due to be released “soon” are currently available to preview through until Sunday, April 7th. The preview is open to Premium and non-Premium account holders (although the houses, once available, will only be available to Premium account holders. You can read more about them, and the preview in my article New Linden Homes Preview.
The Lab is currently working on the web site for the homes: the process flow for selecting and obtaining a new Linden Home, etc.
SL.com: work has been carried out to fix broken direct SLurls, and work is in progress to further improve the new user flow, including the new starter avatars.
Marketplace: it is believed the recent issues with Wish Lists and with gifting have been resolved.
The message received by a user blocked by a Merchant has been revised to make the situation clearer.
Issues with transaction histories not displaying correctly should be resolved.
Work is continuing in preparing the MP for the return of last names / name changes.
The most recent blog on Marketplace updates can be found in Second Life Winter Web Work, dated February 28th, 2019.
Animated Group Tags
I’ve covered the use of scripted tools that can make rapid and multiple changes to a user’s group tag display. These actually a) use a function in a way not intended; b) can put significant strain on back-end services (trying to propagate multiple group tag changes from multiple users across the grid).
As noted in my previous notes on this, Linden Lab indicated they would be making back-end changes to reduce this issue, and as per their March 8th blog post on the subject, these updates have been deployed. As a result, many of these scripted animators have now been removed voluntarily by Merchants. However, those that have not been removed are going to be blocked.
Marketplace Store Managers
A long-standing request that is now just started to be worked on is Marketplace Managers – the ability for Merchants to appoint “managers” to help them run their Marketplace store. Details are still being finalised, but broadly, speaking:
Merchants will be able to assign roles to their “managers” – what they can do, etc. So, for example, a Merchant can upload good to the MP, but assign a manager the ability to create and manage the actual listings for those goods.
Actions taken by managers will be logged and fed back to the Merchant, so they can keep track of what is going on with their store.
In Brief
Once the current tranche of work on the Marketplace is closed-off, the web team will likely look at Events.
This meeting marked the last for Alexa Linden as a Product Manager with direct involvement in the web services. She is going to be focused on the viewer and the server / simulator. Reed Linden will be stepping into her shoes with the Web services.
On Tuesday, April 2nd, the SLS (Main) channel was updated to server maintenance package 19#19.03.15.525315, comprising the simulator operating system update and EEP.
On Wednesday, April 3rd, the three RC channels should be updated with at least one server maintenance package (details TBA at the time of writing). Updates should include:
The removal of UDP Asset message handling across all RC channels – see below.
Some changes that might help with some disconnect issues older viewers have been experiencing, and which appears to be connected to some TCP message handling between the simulator and the viewer.
Removal of UDP Asset Message Handling
The removal of UDP message handing sees the removal of server-side support for asset (inventory) messaging via UDP. All maintained viewers should be using HTTP for all asset handling – and this has been the case for a good few years for several asset types, with the last few moving to HTTP in 2017; as such these viewers will not be impacted by this deployment.
However, it does mean that anyone using very old viewers still reliant on UDP messaging for assets will not be able to receive any updates for the following: animations, body parts, clothing, gestures, landmarks, meshes and sounds whilst connected to regions on any RC channels; this includes the two legacy viewers provided by Linden Lab, the Linux Spur viewer and the Obsolete platform viewer.
In particular, and since some specific body parts are required to render avatars, user of these older viewers will see their avatar either as a cloud or the “Ruth” avatar, and will be unable to change from it.
SL Viewer
The Love Me Render viewer, version 6.1.1.525446, was promoted to de facto release status on Tuesday, April 2nd.
The EEP RC viewer updated to version 6.2.0.525808 on Monday, April 1st.
The rest of the viewer pipelines remain as follows:
Linux Spur viewer, version 5.0.9.329906, dated November 17, 2017 and promoted to release status 29 November – offered pending a Linux version of the Alex Ivy viewer code.
Obsolete platform viewer, version 3.7.28.300847, May 8, 2015 – provided for users on Windows XP and OS X versions below 10.7.
Teleport Disconnects
Teleport disconnects continue to be a problem. Some are pointing to the EEP deployment as the cause, and also citing the use of derendering the sky (Advanced menu > Rendering Types > unchecking Sky or CTRL-ALT-SHIFT-6). This seems to work for at least some of those experiencing the issue. However, Maxidox and Rider Linden have been looking into this, with Rider commenting:
The sky thing is much the same as putting a banana in your ear to keep the alligators away.
In other words, while derendering the sky my offer a workaround for the problem, it doesn’t actually resolve the issue.
Simon Linden added:
It’s definitely possible that any difference in network traffic might make the system behaviour change – but I don’t think changing the sky settings produces that much network usage.
The failures I’ve investigated seem to be falling into a middle-limbo where the first region thinks it’s handed you off successfully, but the 2nd doesn’t get all the data it expects and eventually times out.
One suggestion is to keep examinations of physical region crossing disconnects separate to TP disconnect, on account of the former tending to be more generally unpredictable due to the added data being transferred (vehicle as well as avatar(s)) and the manner in which the hand-offs are made. A further possible conflation of figures is the ongoing Singularity disconnect issue.
At the moment, the Lab believe that have one statistic that may show the issue, but as it is only recorded once a day, they are waiting to gather further data from it before determining if it is revealing a possible issue / cause.
Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation
Updates for the week ending Sunday, March 31st
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 6.1.0.524670, formerly the BugSplat RC viewer February 13th, promoted February 28th. No Change.
Release channel cohorts:
Bakes on Mesh RC viewer updated to version 6.1.1.525409 on March 26th.
Love Me Render RC viewer updated to version 6.1.1.525446 on March 26th.
Estate Access Management (EAM) RC viewer updated to version 6.2.0.525404 on March 25th.
The following notes are taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, March 29, 2019. A video of the meeting is embedded below, my thanks as always to North for recording and providing it. Time stamps are provided to the major topics of discussion, which will open the video in a new tab for ease of reference.
SL Viewer
There have been no updates to any viewers since my Simulator User Group summary. The viewer pipelines there remain as follows:
Current Release version 6.1.0.524670, formerly the BugSplat RC viewer February 13, promoted February 28 No Change.
Linux Spur viewer, version 5.0.9.329906, dated November 17, 2017 and promoted to release status 29 November – offered pending a Linux version of the Alex Ivy viewer code.
Obsolete platform viewer, version 3.7.28.300847, May 8, 2015 – provided for users on Windows XP and OS X versions below 10.7.
The hope is the EEP RC viewer will be eligible for promotion to de facto release status “pretty soon”. However, as per my CCUG summary, both the EEP viewer and the new-to-RC-status Bakes on Mesh viewer are awaiting some fixes.
The Estate Access Management viewer is good-to-go, but is awaiting some simulator update with a new capability, which is likely to be another couple of weeks, before it can be promoted.
All of this means that the next viewer liable to be promoted will be Love Me Render viewer.
EEP Limitations
[7:24-25:00] There are also a couple of user-identified issues with EEP that are being considered:
The first is that EEP doesn’t play well with RLV and RLVa capabilities that use Windlight settings. LL have offered to help see what LSL abilities within EEP might be used to overcome the issues.
The second is potentially more disruptive: the ability to locally change an environment for the purposes of photography is somewhat limited.
Currently, with Windlight, it is possible for a photographer to tweak the local environment in their own viewer (e.g. move the Sun to provide better lighting / shadows, alter the cloud and haze density / colour, etc.).
Within EPP, this ability is limited to only those settings a user has a right to alter, make such minor adjusts potentially impossible to achieve. This is related to the EEP permissions system that has been set to allow EEP assets to be sold by creators.
The only options are either a): completely replace the location environment with one attached to their avatar; or b) trying to build a personal “copy” of the location environment just to adjust the Sun position, etc., or c) trying to employ LSL to make the necessary changes, with b) and c) clearly being hard for most people to achieve.
Whirly Fizzle has raised a feature request (BUG-225921) to bring the matter to LL’s attention, and it is being examined. However, whether or not an alternative means to make such localised (/ personal) tweaks to an environment will make the initial EEP release or be held over to “EEP 2.0” has not been decided.
One suggestion put forward at the meeting allowing such minor tweaks might be to allow make changes without exposing the associated underlying values for the settings (thus avoiding people being able to copy / rip EEP assets that they would otherwise have to buy), and to have the Save options disabled when doing so. Rider Linden indicated this is one of the approaches he was considering looking at.
Reminder: the EEP simulator code is now grid-wide. This means certain render feature – such as the stars – appear to be “broken” on non-EEP viewers (e.g. black “stars” can appear in daytime skies as square blotches, and at night white stars appear decidedly square. This is because the sky (including the stars) is rendered differently with EEP, but an attempt is made to convert things like stars back to a windlight setting for rendering by non-EEP viewers, which doesn’t entirely work.
This issue will obviously be fixed when the EEP viewer code is available in all viewers.
Simulator Update
[6:56-7:20] Simulator releases have been fairly quiet of late, with some weeks seeing no roles on either the SLS (Main) channel or one or more of the RCs. However, there are a number of simulator projects in flight which mean things are liable to be busy with simulator releasing over the coming weeks.
It’s been widely noted that there has been a sharp up-tick in teleport failures & viewer disconnections (with physical region crossings also causing similar issues).
This problem appeared to start with a server deployment, but the root cause(s) is / are proving hard to identify.
It took the Lab a while to realise there was a problem, as the tool they use to monitor the success / failure rate of teleports was not showing any significant issues, and Lindens in-world assumed that when they encountered the problem, it was an issue with their own connection.
Investigations are now in progress, but identifying a root cause is difficult, as it is proving hard to get a consistent set of circumstances by which the disconnects can be reproduced.
If anyone can determine a means to repro the issue, or determine the conditions under which the problem is more / less likely to happen, they are asked to put it in a Jira for the Lab.
Some changes have been made to the simulator code in the hope that they might either a) help alleviate the problem, or b) at least provide more data when teleport disconnects do occur, and some of these changes are likely to be deployed in week #14.
This is another issue that has been of increasing notice for a while now (e.g. inventory being actually detached; attachments being ghosted in your local view whilst others still see them attached; experience-controlled temporary attachments becoming ghosted, etc.).
The Lab does not have a solution for the problem as yet. However, via testing, they have found a number of issues that contribute to worn inventory being detached as a result of the teleport (/ region crossing).
Fixes for these issues are being developed, and more news on these should be available once the Lab has some definitive testing results.
The hope is that the Lab will able to resolve most of the issues – or at least make things behave more correctly – just through changes on the server-side, rather than the fixes being heavily biased towards the viewer.
Any viewer-side changes that might be required will be highlighted at future TPVD meetings do that other viewers can take and merge them as required.
Despite certain pundits claiming otherwise, the Adult rating is not all about “extreme sex and violence” (there are numerous residential, art, photographic, and role-play regions for example, that err on the side of caution and opt for an adult rating). However, a problem that does exist is that the web search in the viewer currently opens on the Events tab, and with the Adult search parameter enabled, this can result in sexually explicit adverts being displayed, which some who might otherwise be using Adult to rating simply to find the type of location noted above to be uncomfortable.
Unchecking the Adult search option isn’t a solution, as disables Adult searching in other categories thus preventing the art galleries, etc., mentioned above being listed in results.
One way to lessen this impact might be to make the Destinations tab the default tab on opening the web search panel. While this still has Adult destinations in the banner ads, these are more mixed with ads for destinations with other ratings, and potentially less noticeable.
Another suggestion offered is to possibly sub-categorise Adult search results between sexual / non-sexual (although this could be hard to achieve in avoiding issues of gaming).
The suggestion made for this issue to also be raised at the next Web User Group meeting.
The majority of the following notes are taken from the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting, held on Thursday, March 28th 2019 at 13:00 SLT. These meetings are chaired by Vir Linden, and agenda notes, meeting SLurl, etc, are usually available on the Content Creation User Group wiki page.
Bakes On Mesh
Project Summary
Extending the current avatar baking service to allow wearable textures (skins, tattoos, clothing) to be applied directly to mesh bodies as well as system avatars. This involves viewer and server-side changes, including updating the baking service to support 1024×1024 textures, but does not include normal or specular map support, as these are not part of the existing Bake Service, nor are they recognised as system wearables. Adding materials support may be considered in the future.
As noted in my Simulator User Group update, the Bakes on Mesh viewer has reached release candidate status with version 6.1.1.525409.
Depending on feedback from QA, this could mean Bakes on Mesh is fairly close to promotion to release status.
However, alongside of this work, the Bakes on Mesh reference textures have had to be re-uploaded, and thus have new UUIDs.
This means any test content (such as the test Omega system) using these textures will have to be updated in order to work with the RC viewer.
The new UUIDs have – at the time of writing – yet to be updated on the Bakes on Mesh wiki pages.
There are also LSL constants for the new UUIDs, but LL don’t currently have a simulator update for these yet, so if you try to set LSL to try to set textures to the appropriate channels they won’t currently work as expected.
Environment Enhancement Project
Project Summary
A set of environmental enhancements allowing the environment (sky, sun, moon, clouds, 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.
Due to performance issues, the initial implementation of EEP will not include certain atmospherics such as crepuscular rays (“God rays”).
Work is continuing to resolve some shader issues that see “certain things shading differently”.
It has been noticed that EEP can also impact frame rates, and the Lab is trying to quantify these better.
A further RC build of the viewer is in the wings, but has some issues with it (e.g. issues with handling projected lights) which need to be addressed. However, it is hoped this will surface in week #14 (commencing Monday, April 1st, 2019).
Reminder: the EEP simulator code is now grid-wide. This means certain render feature – such as the stars – appear to be “broken” on non-EEP viewers (e.g. black “stars” can appear in daytime skies as square blotches, and at night white stars appear decidedly square. This is because the sky (including the stars) is rendered differently with EEP, but an attempt is made to convert things like stars back to a windlight setting for rendering by non-EEP viewers, which doesn’t entirely work.
This issue will obviously be fixed when the EEP viewer code is available in all viewers.
Animesh Follow-On
Vir has commenced work on LSL support for Animesh objects. Right now this involves providing a means to get the number of animated attachment slots, the number of open slots.
Other Items
Animation Optimisations
It’s been noted that .bvh animations go through an optimisation process, but .anim animations do not (a past subject of discussion in CCUG meetings). It would make sense for the optimisations to be applied to both, if they are of benefit, or ignored by both if they are not proving beneficial. It’s been suggested that the optimisations result in .bvh animations being a little less fluid than .anims.
Thus far the Lab hasn’t acted on this, as the general feeling has been that most animators favour one of the formats over the other. Those noticing specific differences in performance between the two are asked to file a Jira and attach test versions of both formats so the Lab can do side-by-side comparisons.
Custom Pivot Points
This was another point of past discussion. Initial work has been done to allow custom pivot points within the viewer, but the current blocker is that it requires simulator support, specifically with the physics shapes that have to be generated. With everything else going on at the moment, there is no time frame as to if / when this work might be carried out.
There was no deployment to the SLS (Main) channel on Tuesday, March 26th, leaving it on server maintenance package 19#19.03.07.525089. Previously deployed to BlueSteel and LeTigre, this update contains:
Internal fixes.
The Environment Enhancement Project code.
On Wednesday, March 27th, the BlueSteel and LeTigre RC channels should be updated with server maintenance package 19#19.03.22.525531, comprising:
Internal Fixes
Removal of UDP Asset message handling – see below
There is no planned deployment to the Magnum RC channel, which should remain on server maintenance package 19#19.03.15.525315, comprising:
The new operating system update.
The Environment Enhancement Project code and all bug fixes for it.
Removal of UDP Asset Message Handling
The BlueSteel and LeTigre RC deployment sees the removal of server-side support for asset (inventory) messaging via UDP. All maintained viewers should be using HTTP for all asset handling – and this has been the case for a good few years for several asset types, with the last few moving to HTTP in 2017; as such these viewers will not be impacted by this deployment.
However, it does mean that anyone using very old viewers still reliant on UDP messaging for assets will not be able to receive any updates on regions on either BlueSteel or LeTigre – this includes the two legacy viewers provided by Linden Lab, the Linux Spur viewer and the Obsolete platform viewer, neither of which contain all of the HTTP asset fetching code.
If you hear someone on a BlueSteel or LeTigre region complaining they are constantly a cloud on those region, suggest to them they check their viewer, and perhaps move to a more recent version.
SL Viewer
Bakes on Mesh reached RC status with the release of version 6.1.1.525409 on Tuesday, March 26th.
For those not familiar with this project, Bakes on Mesh is a new feature to allow system avatar baked textures to be shown on mesh attachments. Currently you need this viewer to use it.
The Love Me Render RC viewer updated to version 6.1.1.525446 on Tuesday, March 26th.
The Estate Access Management RC viewer updated to version 6.2.0.525404 on Monday, March 25th.
The rest of the viewer pipelines remain as follows:
Current Release version 6.1.0.524670, formerly the BugSplat RC viewer February 13, promoted February 28 No Change.
Linux Spur viewer, version 5.0.9.329906, dated November 17, 2017 and promoted to release status 29 November – offered pending a Linux version of the Alex Ivy viewer code.
Obsolete platform viewer, version 3.7.28.300847, May 8, 2015 – provided for users on Windows XP and OS X versions below 10.7.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 