Category: SL Tech

February 2025 SL Mobile UG meeting summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Campwich Forest grounds: location for the Monthly Mobile User Group (MMUG)
The following notes were taken from the Thursday, February 27th 2025 Monthly Mobile User Group (MMUG) meeting.

These notes should not be taken as a full transcript of the meeting, which was largely held in Voice, but rather a summary of the key topics discussed. The meeting was recorded by Pantera, and her video is embedded at the end of this summary – my thanks, as always to her in providing it.
Table of Contents

Meeting Purpose

  • The Mobile User Group provides a platform to share insights on recent mobile updates and upcoming features, and to receive feedback directly from users.
  • These meetings are conducted (as a rule):
    • The last Thursday of every month at 12:00 noon SLT.
    • In Voice and text.
    • At Campwich Forest.
  • Meetings are open to anyone with a concern / interest in the above topics, and form one of a series of regular / semi-regular User Group meetings conducted by Linden Lab.
  • Dates and times of all current meetings can be found on the Second Life Public Calendar, and descriptions of meetings are defined on the SL wiki.

Resources

Re-Cap on Recent Releases

[Video: 2:58-3:49]

  • Version: 2025.1.542 (Android) / 0.5.533 (iOS).
  •  Create / Delete accounts – see: SL Mobile gains account creation workflow (and more).
  • Improvements to the format of Group notifications.
  • Streaks rewards (see here for more) broader release among subscription accounts.
    • [Video: 8:59-9:25] There is no guarantee as to how long the Rewards scheme will run. However, it will not end at the start of March, and there is potential for “new cool things happening with log-ins in March”.

Bone Attachment Point Handling

The new Bone Attachment Developer Tools option (requires restart)

[Video: 3:56-5:31]

  • A new Developer Tool option (Menu → Settings → Developer Tools).
  • This is off by default – so no behaviour change from previous versions of the app.
  • When enabled and SL mobile is restarted, it can improve avatar mesh appearance handling.
    • However, it might also cause cause new problems!
  • More debug information relating to rigged meshes is sent for developers to use.
  • A request was made for users to enable the option an provide feedback either through the app (Help → Feedback) or via the Feedback Portal.

Campwich Forest Cloning

[Video: 24:26-26:54]

  • In line with the account creation capability mentioned above, Campwich Forest in Bellisseria is currently the initial Landing Point for users signing-up to Second Life via SL Mobile.
  • As this has seen a lot of traffic with new users within the Linden homes around the Campwich location, the decisions has been taken to clone Campwich Forest and use that as the Landing Point.
  • The clone will be located separately from Bellisseria.

Roadmap Updates

[Video: 5:59-7:01]

Still in progress:

  • Addition of an Address Bar to the app,  making it possible to:
    •  Search landmarks /create landmarks.
    • Share SLurls with people on other apps (Discord, Reddit, WhatsApp, etc.) via the native share cards found in Android and iOS.
    • Allow maps.secondlife.com work on the Mobile App.
  • Providing quicker access to chat when using the app – e.g. a button on the in-world view to go directly to Chat, rather than having to go via the menu.
  • Improving in-world interactions within the app – making it easier to identify objects with which an avatar can interact, and know that something is happening when long-pressing an interactive object.
  • [Video: 14:17-15:51] Pluto Linden indicated:
    • The work on improving in-world interactions may be surfacing in the Mobile app during March.
    • The work to provide quicker access to chat is also a step along the road to having chat as an overlay on the in-world view.

Lobby Alpha Testing

[Video: 11:41-14:16]

  • Lobby is a new feature, intended to enable communications, allow users to see who is on-line and provide general information whilst the app continues to load things like the 3D world view in the background.
Coming soon: the SL Mobile: Lobby
  • Announced in December 2024, Lobby was made available to users on the SL Mobile Alpha testing programme on Thursday, February 27th, 2025.
    • This is an initial release, and will be iterated upon and improved, potentially with more information being provided.
    • Note that currently, when using the Lobby, scene loading will continue in the background, and you will arrive in-world at the last location at which you were previously present, be it when using the viewer or SL Mobile; you are not held in a separate environment.
    • However: the plan is for Lobby to be accessible to users without any in-world loading taking place, thus making SL Mobile even more of a “lightweight client” for those on lower / mid-tier mobile devices to use it as a communications tool.
  • As I am not a part of the Alpha Testing, I will have an article on Lobby as it is made more generally available.

Texture Loading

[Video: 19:41-22:35]

  • Texture resolution, as currently handled, is not very well optimised in terms of resolution.
  • In short, two channels are used for loading textures, one for in-world objects and one for avatars. however, as neither are currently optimising, they can load larger objects requiring higher resolution textures using the same resolution as small objects that can get away with lower resolution textures.
  • One of the reasons for this has been trying to get everything rendering under the memory constraints imposed by mobile devices (e.g. 500-800Mb), with the intent of then going back and adjusting things for better rendering / performance.
  • An outcome of this is particularly noticeable on avatar rendering (see also the discussion from the January meeting), is where avatars may not load, or only load as far as a transparent outline.
  • Adam Sinewave is currently working to optimised texture resolution when loading, and this is now at a point where it allows avatars to be automatically refreshed on loading, which should help make the problems of avatar load failures / transparency be greatly reduced / go away.
  • This work will also help towards the proper prioritisation / re-prioritisation of texture loading within Mobile, making more efficient use of memory.
  • The plan here is that as memory use is improved, then it will be possible to start looking towards PBR materials support within Mobile (PBR requiring 2x or 4x the memory compared to textures).
  • Adam also noted that there have been a “couple of tweaks to the defaults” on texture handling, but these have yet to surface in any version of SL Mobile.

Beanie Linden’s Tips’n’Tricks

[Video: 27:14-34:03]

  • View account  / L$ balance: Menu → tap the down arrow alongside account name to open the Account draw. Can be used to verify payments made via SL Mobile have gone through.
  • Reporting a bug: Menu → Help → Feedback. Can also be used to give general feedback / suggestions.
    • If you encounter issues while logging-in via Mobile, tap the gear icon at the top right of the screen, and this will open the Feedback form.
  • Abuse Reports: can be accessed several ways:
    • Log-press on the avatar responsible for the abuse display the context menu → Report Abuse.
    • In Chat (nearby / IM) locate the three dots alongside the avatar’s name to access the context menu
    •  → Report Abuse.
    • People list: tap on the avatar name to open Profile → tap the … More option → Report Abuse.
  • Togging audio stream on/ off: tap the menu → tap the location displayed at the foot of the screen to open the Location Tray → tap the audio icon to toggle audio stream. Use the volume slider to increase / reduce audio stream volume.

In Brief

Please refer to the video for details on the following.

  • [Video: 23:23-24:20] Culling distances: currently the app has a set of “fairly pessimistic” set of default culling distances.
    • This will be changing in future updates to respond according to hardware (e.g. those with new mobile devices with better capabilities / more memory will show more content before culling commences; with culling on devices with lower specifications also better optimised for memory use).
    • These changes will also allow for the loading / unloading of avatars as they move out of / into range.
  • [Video 34:45-49:48] A run through of some of the top bugs / features, including:
    • HUDS:
      • HUDs are difficult to render in a meaningful way because of the form factor involved with size of the screen on mobile devices, coupled with the fact that HUDs can function in multiple ways(expanding / collapsing, paging etc), all of which requires careful consideration in order to be implemented/
      • As such, the work is liable to b split, with an initial focus on addressing HUDs, etc. that call for llDialog menus / responses, as these seem to be the easier option to implement, and then build towards more complex HUD support over time.
    • Inventory:
      • Regarded as a very large project that needs to be broken down into areas of functionality that can be implemented and built upon.
      • Current thinking is to enable the ability to buy items from the Marketplace and receive them in inventory using SL Mobile, and then interact with them.
      • This would require an initial view of inventory and a number of functions to allow the required interactions with items visible in that view (e.g. potentially the ability to add / remove items to / from your avatar; view sub-folders, etc.).
      • Use this as a bassline to build-out inventory functionality.
  • A further note, following from those at the January meeting, that work is continuing to improve avatar rendering and to try to chase down those issues where avatars do not render correctly.

Date of Next Meeting

2025 week #9: SL SUG meeting

Posted on by Inara Pey
Malice in Wonderland, January 2025 blog post

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, February 25th, 2025 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They form a summary of the items discussed, and are not intended to be a full transcript, and were taken from Pantera’s video of the meeting, which is embedded at the end – my thanks to her for providing it.

Meeting Overview

  • The Simulator User Group (also referred to by its older name of Server User Group) exists to provide an opportunity for discussion about simulator technology, bugs, and feature ideas.
  • These meetings are conducted (as a rule):
  • Meetings are open to anyone with a concern / interest in the above topics, and form one of a series of regular / semi-regular User Group meetings conducted by Linden Lab.
  • Dates and times of all current meetings can be found on the Second Life Public Calendar, and descriptions of meetings are defined on the SL wiki.

Simulator Deployments

  • On Tuesday, February 25th, 2025, the SLS Main channel was restarted without anu deployment.
  • On Wednesday, February 26th, 2025, the Carrot Cake update should be deployed to the rest of the RC channels (having already been deployed to BlueSteel). This includes:
    • Monty Linden’s work on EventQueueGet (a simulator Capability that delivers messages from a simulator to viewers over HTTP using a long-poll scheme. It is core functionality without which viewer/simulator coordination is impossible).
    • Simulator support for the  increase to viewer Profile Picks (from 10 to 20) announced as a part of the Membership Mania promotions.

Future Deployments

  • The next simulator update is to be called Durian Scones. The size and content of this update is still TBA. However, Monty Linden indicated it will carry updated SSL certificates – he will be publishing details here.
    • These will be Digicert-signed, not Linden-signed.
    • Protocols should mostly be compatible. But looking to a future with old stuff being deprecated.
    • The new certificates should fix the longstanding issue of llRequestSecureURL being untrusted.

SL Viewer Updates

  • Default viewer: version 7.1.11.12363455226, formerly the ExtraFPS RC (multiple performance fixes, aesthetic improvements and UI optimisations), dated December 17, promoted December 20 – No Change.
  • Release Candidate: Forever FPS, version 7.1.12.12999043440, February 4, 2025 – No Change.

In Brief

Please refer to the video below for the following:

  • Leviathan Linden is working on the issue of objects not rendering on logging-in. He describes his work as not yet having found a cause, but working on a new theory. This led to a discussion on whether the issue is within the viewer (e.g. caching errors, issues with objection occlusion calculations) or a simulator-side issue (e.g. Interest List transmission problems). This discussion is woven through most of the meeting.
  • A discussion on improving the calculations used to determine the LI of Animesh objects, which also touched on the LI calculation formula being revisited as a whole “at some point”.
  • Combined with the above was a discussion on optimising LOD / incentivising better LOD generation on the part of creators.
  • A general discussion on gravity and changing it, revolving around this suggestion.  As Rider Linden noted, fiddling with SL’s gravity is both difficult and can have unforeseen outcomes.
  • A general discussion on when Lua(u) will be surfacing (Rider Linden: “VERY VERY VERY VERY soon!”), with a reiteration that LSO is not going to be deprecated; however Mono will eventually be removed, with LSL compiling to Lua. This included a discussion on preserving data stored in script memory in transitioning away from Mono to Lua when it comes to in-world scripts that are running.

† The header images included in these summaries are not intended to represent anything discussed at the meetings; they are simply here to avoid a repeated image of a rooftop of people every week. They are taken from my list of region visits, with a link to the post for those interested.

2025 SL viewer release summaries week #8

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

Updates from the week through to Sunday, February 23rd, 2025

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

  • Release viewer: version 7.1.11.12363455226. formerly the ExtraFPS RC, dated December 17, promoted December 19 – No change.
  • Release Candidate: Forever FPS, version 7.1.12.12999043440, February 4, 2025 – No change.

LL Viewer Resources

Third-party Viewers

V7-style

  • Kirstens Viewer S24 – Build 2010 – Beta 1 – February 22 – release notes.
  • Megaphit RC version 7.1.12.53172 (ForeverFPS) – February 16 – changelog.

V1-style

  • Cool VL Viewer Stable: 1.32.2.37, February 22, 2025 – release notes.

Mobile / Other Clients

  • No updates.

Additional TPV Resources

Related Links

2025 week #8: SL SUG meeting

Posted on by Inara Pey
After the Rain, January 2025 – blog post

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, February 18th, 2025 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They form a summary of the items discussed, and are not intended to be a full transcript, and were taken from Pantera’s video of the meeting, which is embedded at the end – my thanks to her for providing it.

Meeting Overview

  • The Simulator User Group (also referred to by its older name of Server User Group) exists to provide an opportunity for discussion about simulator technology, bugs, and feature ideas.
  • These meetings are conducted (as a rule):
  • Meetings are open to anyone with a concern / interest in the above topics, and form one of a series of regular / semi-regular User Group meetings conducted by Linden Lab.
  • Dates and times of all current meetings can be found on the Second Life Public Calendar, and descriptions of meetings are defined on the SL wiki.

Simulator Deployments

  • On Tuesday, February 18th, 2025, the Banana Bread update was deployed to the SLS Main channel This update includes expansions to llGetObjectPermMask that let you get an object’s permission mask taking into account the permissions on its inventory, and that ability has been added to llGOD.
  • On Wednesday, February 19th, 2025:
    • Carrot Cake should be deployed to the Bluesteel RC. This includes Monty Linden’s work on EventQueueGet (a simulator Capability that delivers messages from a simulator to viewers over HTTP using a long-poll scheme. It is core functionality without which viewer/simulator coordination is impossible).
    • The remaining RC channel will be restarted without any deployment.

SL Viewer Updates

  • Default viewer: version 7.1.11.12363455226, formerly the ExtraFPS RC (multiple performance fixes, aesthetic improvements and UI optimisations), dated December 17, promoted December 20 – No Change.
  • Release Candidate: Forever FPS, version 7.1.12.12999043440, February 4, 2025 – No Change.

In Brief

Please refer to the video below for the following:

  • Leviathan Linden has been been working with another Lab developer to improve avatar loading. He believes they have been able to make a few improvements, particularly in improving near-to-far sorting for avatar loading, with those nearby loading the fastest.
    • He hopes that the work will surface in a viewer update in March.
    • This is seen as offering “small” improvements, as further work will be required on the simulator end so the server sorts avatar data at its end rather than just sending it, but this has yet to be done.
  • Leviathan also noted that the packet loss / UDP data loss noted in the last SUG meeting appears to be a result of the viewer allowing the network socket buffer (the one managed by the OS) to overflow, which can happen when the viewer experiences a long frame. It can also affect avatar loading, so his fix for the issue is going into that work.
  • Region crossings / Disconnects: More reports of issues, particularly around teleports and disconnects user Quinn Elara has been logging her experiences, which the Lab has been looking at (note: be aware if posting viewer log information to the Feedback Portal, as it can contain personal information).  This issue became a topic of conversation through a portion of the meeting.
    • The above slid into a conversation of using the BugSplat tool in the viewer for reporting data.

 

† The header images included in these summaries are not intended to represent anything discussed at the meetings; they are simply here to avoid a repeated image of a rooftop of people every week. They are taken from my list of region visits, with a link to the post for those interested.

2025 SL viewer release summaries week #7

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

Updates from the week through to Sunday, February 16th, 2025

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

  • Release viewer: version 7.1.11.12363455226. formerly the ExtraFPS RC, dated December 17, promoted December 19 – No change.
  • Release Candidate: Forever FPS, version 7.1.12.12999043440, February 4, 2025 – No change.

LL Viewer Resources

Third-party Viewers

V7-style

  • No updates.

V1-style

  • Cool VL Viewer Stable: 1.32.2.36, February 15, 2025 – release notes.

Mobile / Other Clients

  • No updates.

Additional TPV Resources

Related Links

2025 week #7: SL TPVD meeting summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Poetic Moon, January 2025 – blog post †

The following notes were taken from my audio recording + the video recording by Pantera (embedded at the end of this summary) of the Third-Party Developer meeting (TPVD) held on Friday, February 14th, 2025. My thanks to Pantera as always for providing it.

Meeting Purpose

  • The TPV Developer meeting provides an opportunity for discussion about the development of, and features for, the Second Life viewer, and for Linden Lab viewer developers and third-party viewer (TPV) / open-source code contributors to discuss general viewer development. This meeting is held once a month on a Friday, at 13:00 SLT at the Hippotropolis Theatre.
  • Dates and times are recorded in the SL Public Calendar, and they re conducted in a mix of Voice and text chat.
  • The notes herein are a summary of topics discussed and are not intended to be a full transcript of the meeting.

Vir Linden Departure

Vir Linden is one of the latest departures from Linden Lab. A long-time members of the Viewer Team and well-liked and respected for his work their and on a range of projects such as Bento (which he morphed into the Content Creators User Group), and will as running the open Source Developer meetings. No information on Vir’s departure was given, but his place for this meeting (at least) was taken by the Lab’s Director of Engineering, Signal Linden.

My personal best wishes to Vir, and thanks for all his work at the Lab, and time spent working with users.

Official Viewers

  • Default viewer: version 7.1.11.12363455226, formerly the ExtraFPS RC (multiple performance fixes, aesthetic improvements and UI optimisations), dated December 17, promoted December 20 – No Change.
  • Release Candidate: Forever FPS, version 7.1.12.12999043440, February 4, 2025.
    • Numerous crash and performance fixes.

Status

  • ForeverFPS is defined as “being in a home stretch” in getting the viewer to release status.
  • The focus now is on showstopper bugs and getting as much feedback as possible on the viewer.
  • And upcoming version of ForeverFPS will include all the updates to Linden Water (some of which are also in the latest Firestorm Beta versions undergoing testing).
  • Geenz Linden re-iterated the overall status on the work with Linden Water as stated at the last CCUG meeting, including outlining the new water exclusion surfaces (e.g. for keeping water out of boat hulls) and their limitations (e.g. they are not intended for use as exclusion volumes in underwater structures, that’s “for the future”).

Open-Source Contributions, Viewer Release Cadence and Roadmap

[Video: 3:43-5:18 and Video: 7:35-11:55]

  • Signal Linden has put forward a document for improving how open-source contributions are managed, including general communications between the Lab and contributors and offering more transparency on how contributions are managed.
  • Alongside of this, LL are hoping to introduce a more predictable release cadence with viewer updates, something delayed since the move to gitflow in 2024 due to the sheer volume of viewer changes and updates spread across multiple viewer RC branches which had to be directed into the core Develop branch.
  • The hope is that implementing the latter will:
    • Enable TPVs to have a more predictable calendar of viewer updates they need to pull and merge.
    • Open-source contributors can have a more reasonable expectation as to when they might see contributions reach the viewer.
  • The aim is to move to a monthly viewer update cadence, and to implement a viewer version numbering system which reflects this cadence (e.g. viewer version numbers with 2025.03 to indicate a March 2025 release, 2025.04 for April, etc.).
  • To achieve this, the plan is to make releases smaller and more digestible for TPVs to absorb (again, making the flow of contributions and key code updates faster) rather than having them face huge merge requirements and testing.
  • One possible caveat to this is might be with “significant” projects which do incorporate large numbers of changes to the viewer, leading to them being handled differently. However, exactly how they might differ will be dependent on what comes along in this regard (e.g. glTF mesh uploads (and scene imports?)) .
  • To further assist in viewer development visibility, LL hope to update and be more forward in maintaining a visible viewer roadmap, together with “public planning meetings”.
  • [Vide0: 28:50-37:45] A discussion on ways of highlighting issues among the 700+ LL have in github for which they really need help from TPV / open-source developers, including some form of rewards system (in addition to the SEC bounty payments) as used to be done with LL merchandise, credits in the viewer Help →  About, etc.

In Brief

  • [Video:  43:25-End]  Account Takeovers:
    • LL recently blogged on matter of account and L$ balances security, the post came in the wake of LL noting a rise in reports of what they call “account takeovers”.
    • One specific vector used for phishing for account credentials is the use of links sent via Group (or even direct) IMs and within Profiles which carry the user to a fake SL website (e.g. a false Marketplace page), encouraging the user to enter their credentials, or which hide a potentially malicious webpage with in link.
    • Given this, Philip Rosedale asked for ideas on how such false flag links might be better countered / reduced in their threat level.
    • Displaying external link found in Group IMs, Profiles, etc., could be via dialogues which display the URL, to help prevent phishing, etc.

      Numerous suggestions were made, including: new accounts shouldn’t be able to start a large group chats; only Group owners and moderators can share links; posting links in Groups should be made a specific Group ability to be granted by the owners / moderators; making users more aware that hovering the mouse over links in chat, Profiles, etc will reveal the link URL; having a dialogue interdict clicks on links which displays the URL and requests the users to confirm whether or not they wish to go to the website (as with licking in-world items with embedded links (see right); force the URL to be the link (rather than hidden behind text).

    • This discussion also encompassed logging-in and alerts based on geo-location (e.g. in cases where user X traditionally logs-in from one country, but suddenly logs-in from the other wise of the world, so they get an alert to confirm they are actually logging in).
    • Please refer to the video for the specifics of the discussion.
  • Still no firm date on when Voice services will become WebRTC only (and the Vivox service turned off), outside of “hopefully, early this year”. Several factors are delaying this, including the number of users who are not utilising WebRTC-enabled viewers (predominantly those who have not moved to a PBR-capable viewer).
  • Havok physics in the viewer: over a decade ago, Havok sub-libraries were added to the viewer specific to assist with Pathfinding mesh uploads.
    • These libraries are starting to prove problematic in various areas (e.g. getting the viewer to run with native Apple Silicon support).
    • As a result, there have been discussion internally at LL about removing Havok support from the viewer.
    • One suggestion for doing so is to switch over to the open-source Recast Navigation for Pathfinding, and to use a convex hull decomposition library for mesh uploads.
  • A general discussion on text rendering in-world on prims, etc., such as by using Signed Distance Field (SDF).

Next Meeting

† The header images included in these summaries are not intended to represent anything discussed at the meetings; they are simply here to avoid a repeated image of a gathering of people every week. They are taken from my list of region visits, with a link to the post for those interested.