Category: SL Tech

2018 SL UG updates #2/1: Simulator User Group

Posted on by Inara Pey

D o X; Inara Pey, December 2017, on FlickrD o X – blog post

Update, January 10th: Subsequent to this post being published, the deployment plans for the RC channels were revised, and details have been add below to reflect this. My thanks to Kyouko for drawing my attention to the updated server deployment thread.

Server Deployments

As always, please refer to the server deployment thread for the latest news and updates.

There are no planned deployments for 2018 week #2. All channels remain on the same server release 17#17.12.01.511131. However, the Main (SLS) channel was restarted on Tuesday, January 9th, 2018.

There was no deployment to the SLS Main channel on Tuesday, January 9th, 2018, leaving it on  server release 17#17.12.01.511131. The channel was, however, restarted.

Following the original publication of this update, the server deployment thread was updated to indicate there would be a deployment to the major RC channels on Wenesday, January 10th: server maintenance package 18#18.01.08.511751, comprising internal logging improvements.

SL Viewer

The Alex Ivy RC viewer was updated to version 5.1.0.511732 on January 9th, 2018. All other viewers currently remain as per the end of week #1:

No Copy Exploits Update

An area of concern / upset for content creators has been the use of server exploits to generate copies of No Copy items. While a long-standing problem, the issue has gained a lot more coverage of late due to the frequency with people have been using various exploits to illegal copy and then sell gacha items. In November, the Lab closed one exploit used in generating No Copy items, and reported this, and the steps they put in place to help recognise when someone might be attempting to use it (see: Exciting Improvements to SL Fee Updates to Enable Even More).

Since then the Lab has continued to work on issues (see my SL project update from 2017 week #47). However, there have been mistaken claims that the Lab stated it had resolved “the” exploit, which is not the case – see the Lab’s blog post above), which Oz and Simon sought to correct in the meeting, with Oz Linden stating:

We never said we were sure we’d fixed all possible exploits, and we won’t say that because we might not know about them all.

Simon then added:

I know that statement and we deliberately and clearly said it wasn’t done. There was more work but we were making progress. I know a lot of people reading it probably wanted it to say (and mean) we fixed everything. We know we haven’t.

In terms of what more is being done, Oz said:

If I were to tell you now that we’re working on “method X” for object copying, I’d be letting people who might not know about it that it existed, and telling those who know how to use it to hurry up while the getting is good.

Other Items

  • New Linden: the Simulator User Group meeting on Tuesday, January 9th was joined by Bugsly Linden. A new member of LL’s QA team, he joined the Lab around a month ago – and is a former Second Life resident.
  • Group chat issues: there has been a noted uptick in group chat issues. Commenting on this, Simon Linden said, “We looked into group chat recently and did a few things that should have helped. [In the meantime] for group chat lag problems, please send in a support ticket – the group name is crucial as its most likely a specific server needs attention. Also [give the] time it happens, and the region you’re on. Sometimes it’s the region’s issue.”

2018 viewer release summaries: week #1

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

Updates for the week ending Sunday, January 7th

This summary is 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.

Official LL Viewers

  • Current Release version 5.0.9.329906, dated November 17, promoted November 29th – formerly the “Martini” Maintenance RC – No Change.
  • Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself):
    • Nalewka Maintenance viewer updated to version 5.0.10.330148 on January 4th, 2018.
    • Wolfpack RC viewer updated version 5.0.10.330131 on January 3rd, 2018.
  • Project viewers:
    • Project Render Viewer updated to version 5.1.0.511604 on January 3rd, 2018.

LL Viewer Resources

Third-party Viewers

V5-style

  • Black Dragon updated to version 2.9.7 on January 5th, 2018 and then 2.9.8 on January 7th, 2018  (change log).

V1-style

  • No updates.

Mobile / Other Clients

  • MetaChat updated to version 1.2.1 on January 6th 2018 (release notes).

Additional TPV Resources

Related Links

2018 SL UG updates #1/3: Web User Group and viewer

Posted on by Inara Pey
Grumpity and Alexa Linden host the Web User Group meetings on alternate Fridays at Alexa’s barn.

The majority of these notes are taken from the Web User Group meeting held on Friday, December 8th, 2017. These meetings are generally held on alternate Fridays, and 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.

Not all of these topics will be discussed at every meeting, however, the intention within the group is to gain feedback on the web properties, pain points, etc., and as such is very much led by comments and input from those attending. Along with this are two points of note:

  • Specific bugs within any web property  – be it Marketplace, forums, Place Pages or anything else), or any specific feature request for a web property should be made via the Second Life JIRA.
  • Alex Linden provides routine updates on the Lab’s SL-facing web properties as and when appropriate, which can be found in the Second Life Web thread.
  • Note that the SL forums are not covered by the Web User Group, as the management of functionality of the forums falls under the remit of the Support Team.

Web Single Sign-On

Single sign-on (SSO) should have been implemented for most of the Lab’s web properties (e.g. sign on to your account dashboard and then visit the Marketplace using the same browser, and you should be automatically logged in there) – although there are some properties (such as the JIRA and the land auctions domain) which are not currently part of the SSO process. However, there seem to be inconsistencies in how it is working, with some reporting that:

  • If the log into their dashboard, they can access the Marketplace via the Shopping link OK, but if they attempt to use the Marketplace via a separate tab, they sometimes have to log-in again, or
  • They also have to sign-in to different properties when opening them in new tabs, even if already signed-in elsewhere.

Having very restrictive cookie settings could cause problems with SSO. There may be a specific order of log-in that is required for it to work, which the Lab will check. Otherwise those experiencing such problems are asked to write-up a details JIRA on the problems they are experiencing, and the domains where SSO appears to be failing.

Governance, Legal, Finance and Technical

Often at user-group meetings questions are asked around matters of governance or which may be related to legal / financial issues (e.g. fraud or alleged cases of fraud). All of these matters are overseen by teams outside of the technical personnel who attend the in-world meetings, and so  – while it may be frustrating for those raising the questions – cannot comment on or address such issues.

Marketplace

  • Blank folder names in listings: see BUG-9984 – this is still occurring, and the JIRA has been re-opened for comment, with a request that specific recent instances of the problem are reported (you may need to send an email to LetMeIn@lindenlab.com & request access to comment.
  • Variants in listings: this is a long-standing request – to allow things like colour variants of an item in a single Marketplace listing, rather than having to list the variants individually. This is something the Lab wants to address, although it is not on the short-term list of work they will be tackling, nor is it necessarily an easy thing to implement, but it is climbing slowing up the list.

  • Marketplace Demos: demos are a pain point for some users of the MP, in that they cannot be easily filtered out of searches, even when using boolean parameters. various ideas have been put forward over the years for better handling of searches / excluding demo items. However, most are difficult to implement successfully, simply because of the way the system can be gamed (e.g., boolean exclusion of “demo” can be currently gamed by people listing items as “d_emo” or similar). The Lab is aware of the pain points with demos and free item listings, but again, this are things which have yet to rise to the top of the list of improvements they would like to make to the Marketplace.

Feature Requests

Feature requests – raised via the Second Life JIRA – are the best way of bringing ideas to the Lab’s attention. These are reviewed an assessed (triaged) on a weekly basis. When raising a feature request, remember to state a clear user case: what the issue being addressed is, why it matters, how your idea improves things, an indication (the more detailed the batter) of how the idea can be implemented, and so on. If you’re proposing a UI improvement, then consider including mock-up images of whatever you are proposing; if it is possible to illustrate the idea clearly some other way, do that, and provide an explanation. Try to be as clear and direct as possible.

Place Pages

The Lab continues to tweak and improve Second Life Place Pages, the most recent addition being to the seach option, which now titles thumbnail images and descriptions of places matching the search criteria.

Place Pages search now titles results with thumbnails and descriptions

Other Items

  • The wiki search is currently broken: this is a known issue at the Lab and is being actively investigated.
  • Inventory & load times: The Lab hopes to do further work on inventory, looking to improve things like load times and overall inventory robustness. This work will initially focus on fixing some bugs and deprecating various old UDP messaging, mostly likely sooner in the year than later, before moving on to hopefully making it more performant.
  • Aditi inventory syncing: there is still an issue with synchronising Aditi (the beta grid) inventories with main grid inventories. The latest issues occurred just before Christmas and are still being investigated.
  • Re-activating old accounts: if yo have a Basic account you have not used in a number of years and wish to activate it, it is possible that its associated inventory has been place in what the Lab call “cold storage”, and could subsequently exhibit continued slow response times. If the account is to be regularly use, a request can be made to support to have the associated inventory for the account moved – although this must be done at a time when you are not using the account.
  • Keeping abreast of web property updates: Alexa Linden routinely posts updates on various SL web properties on the forums, where they can be seen and commented on.

SL  Viewer

On Thursday, January 4th, the Nalewka Maintenance RC viewer updated to version 5.0.10.330148. On Wednesday, January 3rd, the follow two viewers were updated:

The rest of the viewer pipeline remains as:

2018 SL UG updates #1/2: Content Creation User Group

Posted on by Inara Pey
A rally of (Animesh) raptors on Aditi

The following notes are primarily taken from the Content Creation User Group meeting, held on  Thursday, January 4th, 2018 at 13:00 SLT. For the purposes of Animesh testing, the meetings have relocated to the Animesh4 region on Aditi, the beta grid – look for the seating area towards the middle of the region. The meeting is chaired by Vir Linden, and agenda notes, etc, are usually available on the Content Creation User Group wiki page.

Medhue Simoni live streamed the meeting, and his video is embedded at the end of this article – thanks to Medhue, as always, for the recording. Where the video is referenced, time stamps to the specific point of the video are provided in the text – click on them to open the video in a separate browser tab at that point.

Animesh (Animated Mesh)

“I like the name ‘animated objects’ because I think it’s unambiguous, but it takes a long time to type!” – Vir Linden joking about the name “Animesh”.

Project Summary

The goal of this project is to provide a means of animating rigged mesh objects using the avatar skeleton, in whole or in part, to provide things like independently moveable pets / creatures, and animated scenery features via scripted animation. It involves both viewer and server-side changes.

In short, an Animesh object:

  • Can be any object (generally rigged / skinned mesh) which and contains the necessary animations and controlling scripts in its own inventory  (Contents tab of the Build floater) required for it to animate itself.
  • Can be a single mesh object or a linkset of objects (link them first, then set them to Animated Mesh via the Build floater > Features).
  • Has been flagged as and Animesh object in the project viewer, and so has an avatar skeleton associated with it.
  • Can use many existing animations.

However Animated objects will not (initially):

  • Have an avatar shape associated with them
  • Make use of an avatar-like inventory (although individual parts can contain their own inventory such as animations and scripts)
  • Make use of the server-side locomotion graph for walking, etc., and so will not use an AO
  • Use the avatar baking service
  • Will not support its own attachments in the initial release.

These are considered options for follow-on work, possibly starting with the notion of a body shape (to help with more fully-formed NPCs).

Resources

General Project Status and “Must Dos” List

[33:24-34:10] There are around 14 “must do” items remaining on the list of work to be completed for Animesh before it can really move towards release. Some of these are fairly major – such as performance profiling (tri, count, LI, etc., limits evaluation, and so forth). There are also a number of bugs to be fixed or determined to be trivial enough so as not to prevent Animesh from moving to release / require work outside of Animesh.

Bug Stomping

[1:12-1:54] Animation Playback issues: as highlighted at the December 14th meeting, animations already running on an Animesh object don’t necessarily play for those entering the region where they are running, or update correctly when camming to them for the first time. It now appears this is a race condition issue, with the viewer receiving information on the animation before it has rendered the object being animated, resulting in the animation being ignored. Vir is confident that now the cause has been found, the issue can be fixed.

Shadow Rendering Issue

Animesh could exacerbate an issue with rendering shadows for faces of rigged / static mesh using transparencies

[3:33-13:52] There has been a long-standing issue with rigged / static meshes using transparencies (blended or masked), which causes shadows cast by the latter to render incorrectly (shadow rendering conforms only to the geometry silhouette). Animesh can exacerbate this issue on some objects (note the image of the tree on the right, and how the shadows of the leaves (faces using transparencies) are render.

As this appears to be a rendering pipe issue, rather than a specific problem with Animesh, it may require investigation and resolution by those handling viewer rendering pipe issues, If so, this could take time to complete, and so is currently being viewed as outside of the current Animesh project, and not a blocker to any initial deployment of this phase of the Animesh work.

“Dropping” Animesh / Mesh

[43:12-47:25] As previously noted in these updates, worn mesh cannot be simply “dropped” in-world. It has to be detached to inventory and then rezzed in-world from there. This makes the ability for people to pick up Animesh pets, carry them, then put them down in-world awkward.

The Lab’s view is that as dropping mesh directly in-world was never considered, the code-path for achieving this is not clear, touching as it would on a variety of elements: land impact calculations, physics updates, etc; there’s also a risk of forcing users to re-log should a No Copy pet be dropped and fail to rez in-world, in order for it to correctly register in their inventory again.

However, pets are seen a major use for Animesh, so not having a means by which they can easily be put back down in-world after being carried is seen as a potential limitation in the adoption of Animesh by pet creators; as it is, many have kept to using (render-intensive) sculpties with their pets, simply so they can retain the ability to pick them up and then put them back down in-world, rather than having to force users to detach and re-rez the pet after holding it.

The issue is again being that back to the Lab for further discussion.

In Brief

  • [14:49-17:12] Global scaling and resizing: not something that is going to be implemented for Animesh with this initial work, but may be added later. It is possible to get the effect of global scaling on a rigged object by scaling in joint in the hierarchy individually, but this may not give consistent, expected behaviour.
  • [17:32-20:29] Setting position and rotation of rigged meshes: slight confused discussion on whether rigged mesh attachments can be re-positioned / rotated. Generally, rigged meshes cannot be re-positioned / rotated as their the vertices are recorded to set distances from the avatar bone. However, Animesh attachments (which have their own skeleton) should be capable of position / rotation changes releative to their attachment points.
  • [20:44-24:40] Slider support for Animesh: avatar shape sliders are not supported in the initial Animesh work, as these require a shape to be associated with an object which, as per the summary notes for the project (above), is considered a possible Animesh follow-on project. For this phase of the work, shape changes can only be defined by setting joint positions / using animations. The reason why shapes, sliders, etc., are seen as a potential follow-on project is that they will require an extensive overhaul of the baking service (which manages appearance information), so that it recognises Animesh objects and can handle them.

Continue reading “2018 SL UG updates #1/2: Content Creation User Group” →

2018 SL UG updates #1/1: Simulator User Group

Posted on by Inara Pey

Sol Existence; Inara Pey, October 2017, on FlickrSol Existence – blog post

Server Deployments

There are no planned deployments for the opening week of 2018. There are currently no DRTSIM projects on Aditi (the beta grid) awaiting promotion to the Main grid, however, there may be new RC deployments for week #2 (commencing Monday, January 8th).

SL Viewer Updates

There have been no SL viewer updates over the holiday period. This leaves the viewer pipeline as per the end of 2017:

  • Current Release version 5.0.9.329906, dated November 17th, promoted November 29th – formerly the “Martini” Maintenance RC
  • Release channel cohorts:
  • Project viewers:
  • Obsolete platform viewer version 3.7.28.300847, May 8, 2015 – provided for users on Windows XP and OS X versions below 10.7. This viewer will remain available for as long as reasonable, but will not be updated with new features or bug fixes.

TPV Updates

The following  third-party viewers updated over the holiday period:

  • Black Dragon updates to version 2.9.6.
  • Cool VL viewer updated to version 1.26.20.40 (stable), and 1.26.21.6 (experimental).
  • Catznip updated to version R12 on January 2nd, 2018 – see my overview for more.

My weekly viewer release summaries will resume from week #2, 2018.

SL Feature Summit

The next Second Life “feature summit” when potential projects and major updates for SL are considered / reviewed, is due to take place in February 2018. These meetings are generally held around every 6 months.

Catznip R12: inventory, shopping and more

Posted on by Inara Pey

Monday, January 1st, 2018 saw the long-await release of Catnzip R12 – the release coming a little over a years since the last update – and slightly earlier than planned, thanks to the auto-update!

As one might expect, this update brings a large number of user-facing updates, which are quite comprehensively documented in the accompanying release notes, and rings Catznip up to parity with the current LL released viewer code base 5.0.9. It is currently only available for Windows, in 32-bit and 64-bit versions, the latter conforming to the Lab’s Alex Ivy 64-bit build.

Given the depth of the release notes, I’m providing an overviews of just some of the updates here:

  • Quick Preferences updates.
  • Inventory Management improvements.
  • Chat / group chat updates.

For the rest of the changes, please refer to the release notes.

Quick Preferences Updates

Main Quick Preferences Panel

The main Quick Preference panel sees a number of small updates and improvements:

  • The short cut CTRL-SHIFT-P no longer conflicts with Print Selected Object Info (the latter now ALT-SHIFT-P).
  • The panel can now be minimised via a button (item 1 in the image below)
  • The Other Section of avatar rendering now includes a button to open the Exceptions panel for listing exceptions to your avatar rendering settings (item 2 in the image below)
  • The worn items tab button (item 3 in the image below) now displays a tab with button to display sort options for the items listed in it (item 4 in the image).
The revised Catznip Quick Preferences

Quick Inventory

We all use HUDS – HUDS for AOs, HUDs for mesh bodies, HUDs for mesh heads, HUDs for appliers, etc.). However, wearing the all, all the time not only clutters the viewer’s window, it actually eats texture memory. We also have certain things we like to wear all the time. However, even if you dump all of your HUDs into a single folder in inventory, finding the one you want can be a pain.

Catznip R12 helps ease some of this pain through the provision of a Quick Inventory function. Used via Quick Preferences, this can afford faster, cleaner access to your HUDs, etc. To use it:

  • Create a folder anywhere in your inventory (if you don’t already have one ready to go).
  • Drag and drop your HUDs an bits (or links to them ) into it.
  • Open Quick Prefs and click on the inventory button (item 1 in the image below).
  • Click on the Folder <click to select> button (item 2 in the image below) to open a folder picker.
  • Click on the folder with your HUDs and bits to select it.
  • The contents of the folder will be displayed in the inventory tab of Quick Preferences each time it is opened, allowing you to easily Wear / Add items from it (right-hand picture in the image below).
  • The folder can be changed at any time by clicking on the folder button in the inventory tab.
Quick Preferences: Quick Inventory

Inventory Management

Inventory management updates make up the core of the R12 changes, and these come in a number of improvements, from how you chose to receive goods purchased in-world in your inventory or passed to you by others, through searching inventory to where boxed items are unpacked and stored in your inventory.

Accepting In-World Purchases and Inventory Offers

With Catznip R12 you can now designate where the items you purchase in-world or are given by others, are stored within your inventory. So, for example, you could opt to receive all your in-world purchases in a folder you call “Shopping Bag”, any demos you grab in a folder called “Demos”, anything your offered by friends in “From Friends”, and so on. How you organise things is entirely up to you. This means both the Pay and Buy floaters in Catznip R12, together with the Accept Inventory floater now offer you the ability to select where incoming items are going to be stored in your inventory.

Catznio R12’s options to select where items you buy / receive go in your inventory

The options should be fairly self-explanatory. Check Accept in and the remaining options are activated. The drop-down will display a list of folders you have opted to allow incoming items to be delivered (show in the image on the right), the browse button allows an alternative to you list of folders in the drop-down to be selected, and the spanner button allows you to establish your list of destination folders. The roadmap of these various options is shown below.

What the options do. Note they are available in both the expanded floater view (centre) and the collapsed view (left)

Not only can you select the folders into which you want incoming purchases to go, you can also set Catznip R12 to dynamically create new folders in which to place incoming items. This means, for example, that if you got to a big shopping event at one location, you can set the viewer to deliver all the demo you obtain / items you purchase into folders define by – say – the month in which you got them, and the location where they were obtained.

So, for example, if in April you go to shopping event X on region YYYY, and grab a load of demos, and then later in the month go to event A on region BBBB and grab more demos, you can have them delivered to sub-folders in your “Demos” folder, respectively labelled “April 2017 YYYY” and “April 2017 BBBB” – both of which are dynamically created by Catznip as they are needed. So even if you don’t get around to trying them for days after your visit, you can quickly and easily locate the demo items without have for fiddle around searching for folders and objects.

The panel for setting folders into which incoming purchases can be received, and the option for setting dynamically created sub-folders within that folder

Continue reading “Catznip R12: inventory, shopping and more” →