Category: SL Tech

2025 week #7: SL SUG meeting

Posted on by Inara Pey
Luminara, January 2025 – blog post

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, February 11th, 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 11th, 2025, the simulators on the Main SLS channel were restarted with no update.
  • On Wednesday, February 5th, 2025 the Banana Bread update should be deployed to the remaining RC channels, having been deployed to BlueSteel RC last week) 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.

Upcoming Deployments

  • The simulator update to Banana Bread is called Carrot Cake.
  • Development on this update has been “accelerated” such that an initial deployment to the BlueSteel RC in week #7 (commencing 17th, February 2025).
  • This update should include llSetGroundTexture – this will allow a region owner/EM to set and adjust ground textures on a region, including some of the PBR features like rotation, offset and scale.
  • Monty Linden indicated his 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) is to be rolled into Carrot Cake. He further indicated that he plans to update the SL Wiki documents on EventQueueGet as time permits.

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.
    • Numerous crash and performance fixes.
  • SL Mobile (Beta) version 2025.1.542 / 0.5.533 – Create / Delete accounts, fixes – February 4,  2025.

In Brief

Please refer to the video below for the following:

  • llGetEnvironment (+ related functions) return inaccurate unit vectors for sun / moon position is still awaiting action.
  • Requests were made for LSL  capabilities for manipulating the upcoming llGroundTexture.
  • There was a report that the entire SLS Main Channel was restarted a second time during week #6. However, Rider Linden indicated that a number of regions were moved between servers, which prompted restarts, but there was no additional LL-lead restart of the entire channel.
  • There are reports that there is a bug with llRezObjectWithParams: in using REZ_POZ with the local flag set TRUE, the rezzed object is positioned against in-world coordinates instead of rezzer local coordinates. So, for example, if the rezzer is aligned with world coordinates, the object arrives where expected, but if the rezzer is rotated, the object continues to arrive at the unrotated position. A bug report has been requested on this.
  • Rider Linden noted that there is liable to be Lua server-side scripting engine news “soon”. This was followed by a general discussion on the project.
  • Leviathan Linden has confirmed the viewer is dropping packets when it gets spikes of UDP data. He is going to try to provide a patch for viewers to prevent this, but also needs to look into the server behaviour to try to determine why and how the data spikes are happening. This sparked a discussion on UDP, packet loss and bandwidth which ran the most of the meeting.
  • A request was made for the status of much-needed PBR-related LSL functions (plus easy PBR alpha-switching and PBR override permissions). The response was an agreement that they are needed, but not on an “immediate” queue for implementation.

† 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 #6

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 9th, 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.
    • Numerous crash and performance fixes.

LL Viewer Resources

Third-party Viewers

V7-style

  • No updates.

V1-style

  • Cool VL Viewer Stable: 1.32.2.35, February 8, 2025 – release notes.

Mobile / Other Clients

  • SL Mobile updated to version 2025.1.542 (Android) / 0.5.533 (iOS) – February 4.

Additional TPV Resources

Related Links

2025 week #6: SL CCUG meeting summary: Linden Water news

Posted on by Inara Pey
Hippotropolis Campsite: venue for CCUG meetings
The following notes were taken from my audio recording and chat log of the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting of Thursday, February 6th, 2025.

Please note that this is not a full transcript, but a summary of key topics. .
Table of Contents

Meeting Purpose

  • The CCUG meeting is for discussion of work related to content creation in Second Life, including current and upcoming LL projects, and encompasses requests or comments from the community, together with related viewer development work. This meeting is held on alternate Thursdays at Hippotropolis.
  • Dates and times of meetings are recorded in the SL Public Calendar, and they are conducted in a mix of Voice and text chat.

Official Viewer Status

  • Default viewer: version 7.1.11.12363455226, formerly the ExtraFPS RC (multiple performance fixes, aesthetic improvements and UI optimisations), dated December 17, 2024, promoted December 20, 2024 – No Change.
  • Release Candidate: Forever FPS, version 7.1.12.12999043440, February 4, 2025.
    • Numerous crash and performance fixes.

2K Bakes on Mesh

Linden Water Updates – Geenz Linden

  • The “not so great news”: it is not possible to get Linden Water to look exactly as it did “pre-PBR”.
  • The “great news” is that LL can get very close in terms of overall look.
    • Most of the old Fresnel reflection/refraction, together with some of the underwater fogging has been restored.
    • Some of the fixes for water are currently in the very latest Firestorm Beta (and will presumably be going into the official ForeverFPS RC, if not there already).
    • Feedback on the changes  – with the caveat things cannot (per above) ever be 1:1 with “pre-PBR” water appearance – is regarded as very important in order for the Lab to judge how well the changes are working.
  •  This work is not the end of water tweaks; Geenz is looking at restoring real-time water reflections once the performance impacts of doing so can be assessed.
    • This will involve the use class of Hero reflection probe (like mirrors), which means the mirror capability as a whole will need additional optimisation work, as any frame rate drops it might incur are currently deemed as “not acceptable” by the team.
    • In addition, Geenz is looking at improving reflections more generally via the automatic reflection probes, such as reducing the moiré effect of Screen Space Reflections (SSR) on water.
    • The above will hopefully be released either in a dedicated viewer to follow ForeverFPS, or rolled into the viewer(s) directly following ForeverFPS.

“Hide Water” – Water Exclusion Surfaces

  • Geenz Linden has been working to provide a means of excluding Linden Water from internal volumes such as boat hulls, and has arrived at a solution with the technical name Water Exclusion Surfaces (WES).
  • The capability will hopefully be surfacing in an update to the ForeverFPS RC viewer. When it does:
    • It will likely be an option setting within the Texture tab of the Build / Edit floater, the name of which is still TBD, but is currently being referred to as “Hide Water”, and will work with most prim and mesh shapes to which it is applied (see the limitations notes, below).
  • When used with boats and similar:
    • It will cull Linden Water and the associated subsurface fogging when looking down on the hull / surface from above.
    • If looked at from directly below, it will only cull the underwater plane, the fogging will be intact.
  • Water exclusion surfaces should work as well as / better than invisiprims (e.g. they won’t clash with worn alphas or cause shader issues, occlusion culling will work correctly, etc.
  • Limitations:
    • The capability will not provide volumetric water exclusion (e.g. “hiding” water from the inside of underwater buildings) –  This is a “future looking thing”, which might be addressed in the future. It is intended for use in boats and similar.
    • It is not intended to replace all use cases associated with invisiprims, and should not be taken to be a “replacement” for the latter.
    • The capability will not work when incorporated in an attachment (the attachment will render, but the exclusion surface will be ignored and will not hide Water)  or rigged mesh (the rigged mesh will likely be rendered black). This is by intent, to limit performance impacts. Also do not work on the system avatars.
    • There are some additional limits to ease performance impact (e.g. fogging will not get really dense when looking up through the water plane).

In Brief

  • Placing Linden Water on prims or mesh: not a capability currently being developed, but one that is subject to internal discussions at times.
  • It was again noted that many creators are still awaiting scripted support for PBR (e.g. PBR specific texture offset / UV coordinate manipulation).
    • This support is described as “still on the roadmap”, but may have had other priorities push it down the list of priorities.
    • The fact that creators are waiting on them will be taken back from the meeting for internal discussion.
  • Cosmic Linden’s PBR terrain painting work remains on hold due to her being engaged in other work.  Work on glTF  mesh import is much the same.
  • Geenz noted that following ForeverFPS there is a lot of additional render maintenance and similar work required on the viewer as well as additional  / in progress feature sets, and all of this work needs to be prioritised.
  • Maxwell Graf recently posted a request to increase the polygon resolution for terrain  – and asked about the potential technical / performance issue this might cause (if any), and whether it is something that might be selectable (e.g. if you want the higher polygon resolution then enable it on your region(s), if you don’t – then don’t!).
    • The short answer to this, there is no technical reasons as to why not – beyond testing and assessment for unforeseen impacts; although a) the request itself has yet to be officially responded to; b) the above doesn’t necessarily mean it will be acted upon.
    • However, it did led to LL requesting people with ideas for SL terrain to file feature requests for future consideration.
  • A further request was made for scenic backdrops to be available for regions (e.g. rendered options that can be rendered in place of the water and taking the form of a range of in-viewer selectable options – cityscape, forest, hills, mountains, etc., – so that actual mesh / sculpty based region surrounds do not have to be used.
    • This is something Sansar did reasonably well – including custom surrounds.
    • Feature requests via the feedback portal were asked for on this.
  • It was noted that SL lighting still needs to be updated – again not on the immediate roadmap, but under consideration; however, the hoped-for punctual lighting has been pushed back.
    • An issue with updating lighting (and things related, like how shadows function), is that the lighting system was developed at a time (early 2000s) where it had to be constrained. While things have developed to a point where those constraints may no longer be applicable, they are nevertheless heavily baked-in to SL, and will require considerable effect to unpick and replace.
    • Feedback through the feedback portal on what people would like to see with lighting / shadows was requested, in order to help the Lab further understand expectations, determine options and factor feedback into a more holistic approach to lighting in SL at some point in the future.
  • Screen Space Reflections (SSR): this is again something Geenz would like to get back to, but (again) would like feedback via the feedback portal on issues people have why they do / do not use SSR  –  particularly issues they have with SSR that are not related to Linden Water (e.g. on glossy surfaces), what they feel is needed, etc.
    • The general feedback on this was that SRR on other surfaces works reasonably well (if with random noise in places – which Geenz believes he has a handle on fixing in the future), and possibly increasing the angle at which it can be seen to take effect).

Next Meeting

February 2025 SL Web User Group summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
The Web User Group meeting venue, Denby
The following notes cover the key points from the Web User Group (WUG) meeting, held on Wednesday February 5th, 2025. They form a summary of the items discussed and is not intended to be a full transcript. A video of the meeting, recorded by Pantera Północy, is embedded at the end of this summary – my thanks as always to Pantera for recording it and making it available. Table of Contents

Meeting Overview

  • The Web User Group exists to provide an opportunity for discussion on Second Life web properties and their related functionalities / features. This includes, but is not limited to: the Marketplace, pages surfaced through the secondlife.com dashboard; the available portals (land, support, etc), the forums.
  • As a rule, these meetings are conducted:
    • On the first Wednesday of the month and 14:00 SLT.
    • In both Voice and text.
    • At this location.
  • 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.

General Updates

[Video: 1:27-10:21]

  • As reported following the January meeting, the dashboard page (secondlife.com) received something of a refresh, utilising the new colour scheme, banner, etc., but not offering a choice of themes.
  • Featured News Blog feed:  the Feature News blog widget on the default viewer log-in screen (“Linden News” on Firestorm) has been fixed to display correctly, the the Event screen on that splash screen has been enlarged.
The blog feed on the viewer splash screen has been fixed, and the Events listing increased in size
  • Second life web maps –  fixes to several issues, and a basic refresh (change of colour to the teleport button); however, web maps still do not provide meaningful information on places highlighted, which has previously been noted as something the Web Team would like to address; nor does it search by region name.
  • A new “secret thing” which, at the time of the meeting, “could not be talked about”.

Marketplace

  • [Video: 13:37-18:51] A suggestion to allow people to “subscribe” to their favourite stores, allowing them to see a page for those stores listing all of the recent new items added to the stores.
    • However, this functionality already exists (albeit it with a limited display) using the Marketplace Favourites > Newest First; so rather than adding new functionality which effectively repeats what is there already, why not:
      • Refresh the existing page so it can display more than just 4 items per store  – such as by using a left / right scrolling display a-la the Related Items section of the listing pages (and add an RSS feed based on the listing order selected via the drop-down options).
      • Surface this page better, so users are aware it exists and can access it quicker. , and perhaps make that page more accessible/visible and (if required) add an RSS feed to it which pushes information based on the selected drop-down?
  • [Video: 19:56-20:14] Marketplace: a request for an update on Marketplace Styles (aka “variants”) –  e.g. allowing multiple colours of an item in a single listing – was made. This was functionality Reed Linden indicated would likely be deployed at that start of 2023, but which is (for whatever reason) still “not prioritised” for finishing / deployment.
  • [Video: 20:29-21:00] It is know that the keyword blocking on Ad Blocker (and similar tools) can actually block Marketplace listings.
  • [Video: 36:56 -38:17 ] Marketplace Shopping Events: having shopping event pages on the MP creators could register to join and on which have their nominated products listed. The pages could be set-up by creators on the MP for creators on the MP (like in-world shopping events), rather than jus LL-created events.

In Brief

  • It has been repeatedly noted across multiple meetings that the What’s Next pages (accessed via the menu bar at secondlife.com) are in need of update. This message has been repeatedly heard by LL, and noted as heard, such that updates to these pages should hopefully be deployed some time in the next month.
  • [26:35-36:30] A request from the web team for suggestions on what people would like to see added  / improved. Suggestions included:
    • Making secondlife.com more dynamic (something I’ve directly discussed with Brett Linden and Philip Rosedale).
    • Making the websites feel more an extension to users’ in-world lives.
    • Web-based inventory management capability for carrying out basic inventory sorting tasks (moving items between folders, etc.).
    • Ability to respond to / send IMs from the web, rather than having to log-in via the viewer / SL Mobile.
    • Ability to carry out basic Group task: see notices, etc.
    • This discussion tipped into 3rd party tools such as browser extensions (such as Marketplace Enhancer – note: link does not indicate endorsement – for Firefox / Chrome / Edge) people use alongside of any SL web properties.
  • A request for some Last Name updates to include more “regular/international” names, rather than only rolling out updates based on a specific theme and / or holiday/event (e.g. as with the current crop of “Valentine’s Day” themed last names).
  • A suggestion for LL to promote resident-organised events celebrating notable days / holidays outside of those marked by the Lab as well (Christmas, St. Patrick’s Day, etc.), such as by a category in the Destination Guide.
  • Request for more genuinely international themes of Linden Homes (e.g. “Alpine”, “Victorian” and “Mediterranean” are all US-centric versions of such buildings, and not necessarily representation of their European equivalents).
  •  Also with Linden Homes, the promise to make the Premium Plus ability to request specific locations for a home more streamlined, rather than relying on Support tickets, has also slipped down the priority list.
  • An informal discussion on the Web team – all are remotely based, rather than office-based, they do have occasional get-togethers in person (although the formal annual full-staff meet-ups the Lab used to have – as noted on more than one occasion during Ebbe Altberg’s time with the Lab – have not been held “in a while”), as well as regular in-world team meetings/meetings via Zoom (or similar).

Next Meeting

  • Wednesday, March 5th, 2025.

2025 week #6: SL SUG meeting – 2K Bakes on Mesh is live

Posted on by Inara Pey
The Outer Garden, December 2024 – blog post

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, February 4th, 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 4th, 2025, the simulators on the Main SLS channel were restarted with no update.
  • On Wednesday, February 5th, 2025:
    • The Banana Bread update will be deployed to the BlueSteel channel. This include 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.
    • The remaining RC channels will be restarted, most likely 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.
    • Numerous crash and performance fixes.
  • SL Mobile (Beta) version 2025.1.542 / 0.5.533 – Create / Delete accounts, fixes – February 4,  2025.

2K Bakes on Mesh is Live

2k BoM is now live! As of yesterday, we’ve switched over to the new bake service, and we’ll be posting a blog post soon!

– Pepper Linden

This deployment does not require a viewer update, and is grid-wide – more in the Lab’s official blog post (published February 6th). The update should also see faster bake times.

In Brief

Please refer to the video below for the following:

  • There are reports of an uptick in packet loss in simulator – viewer exchanges (reportedly 20% on average), and some are reporting associated lag with local chat.
  • Rider Linden is working on updates to llSetGroundTexture:
    • This will allow a region owner/EM to set and adjust ground textures on a region, including some of the PBR features like rotation, offset and scale.
    • This work should be surfacing in the next simulator update after Banana Bed – called Carrot Cake.
  • Those who have tested ForeverFPS are reporting it offers an improve Linden Water appearance (fresnel reflection/refraction).
  • A request for increased terrain resolution led to a discussion on overhauling the terrain system in various ways, during which Leviathan Linden offered some history about Second Life and Linden World:
The terrain layer currently uses lossy DCT compression … The reason it uses DCT is ancient history: in the beginning SL (or Linden World as we called it back then) was expected to be sending dynamic layer data (terrain, water, wind, clouds, moisture, and ???). For dynamic layers we thought we should be using more compact compression. So terrain was a “layer” and grouped with the others. Eventually all the other layers were dropped and we ended up with a single mostly static layer that is using the wrong compression scheme.
  • The above was interwoven with a discussion on KVP data.
  • Various discussion on Luau and scripting.
  • A general discussion on region crossings.
  • Questions were asked on the Havoc physics engine. Currently, the viewer-side sub-library is being updated to Havok 2022, the simulator is running 2012.1, with Leviathan Linden noting that Havok has tried to “encourage” LL to update on the server-side; however, no physics update is likely to occur in the next year.

† 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 #5

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 2nd, 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.
    • Numerous crash and performance fixes.

LL Viewer Resources

Third-party Viewers

V7-style

  • No updates.

V1-style

  • Cool VL Viewer Stable: 1.32.2.34, February 1, 2025 – release notes.

Mobile / Other Clients

  • SL Mobile updated to version 2025.1.542 (Android) / 0.5.533 (iOS) – February 4.

Additional TPV Resources

Related Links