Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation
Updates from the week through to Sunday, August 18th, 2024
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 7.1.8.9375512768, formerly the Graphics Featurettes RC viewer dated June 5 and promoted June 10th.
Release channel cohorts:
Atlasaurus RC (WebRTC; object take options; improved MOAP URL handling), version 7.1.9.10326512121, August 14.
All other RC viewers have been pulled to allow a focus on PBR issues.
Grauland / Corsair Island, July 2024 – blog post †
The following notes were taken from my audio recording and chat log transcript of the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting held on Thursday, August 15th, 2024.
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.
Meeting 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.
Official Viewers Status
The Atlasaurus RC (object take options; improved MOAP URL handling) updated to version 7.1.9.10326512121, on August 14th.
The other viewers in the pipeline remain as:
Release viewer: version 7.1.8.9375512768, formerly the Graphics Featurettes RC viewer dated June 5 and promoted June 10th.
Maintenance B RC (usability updates / imposter changes) 7.1.9.9555137545, June 21.
Maintenance C RC (reset skeleton in all viewers), version 7.1.9.9469671545, June 14.
Upcoming Releases – Change In Priority
As a result of PBR-related issues (see the section Performance Issues, below), the priority of upcoming viewer releases has changed.
The next planned viewer promotion was to have been the dedicated WebRTC Voice viewer.
The plan now is to prioritise a “more ambitious” viewer which will include the WebRTC updates and a number of high-level bug fixes related to performance (e.g. a major vertex buffer fix, which although specifically targeted at Mac users, could help others on systems with integrated graphics).
Graphics / glTF
PBR Terrain Painting – Cosmic Linden
Summary
An in-development project. Current intent:
Provide a means to support the four PBR materials currently used in SL for “terrain painting”.
Will allow materials to be defined in their X,Y co-ordinates within a region by using a paint map, rather than having them defined by elevation defined in a height map. This will allow where grass or rock or stones or dirt, etc., appear within the region. providing much more flexibility in how terrain appears / changes.
Terrain painting will use the same permissions as terrain texturing (so if you have terraforming permissions, then tertian paining is possible; if you have the appropriate region permissions, you can define the PBR materials for the region.
Region owners / estate managers will have the ability to select whether the texture / heightmap is available in a region or whether the region uses terrain painting via a toggle switch in the Region floater. If Terrain painting is enabled at the region level, parcel holders (if I am understanding correctly) will be able to opt out / in.
Other points of note:
LL prefer to limit terrain painting to the four available slots at region revel, rather than allowing fully customisable swatches / slots at parcel level, as the latter presents “non-trivial issues” for terrain texture handling /loading.
Terrain painting will require a new entity to be introduced. Exactly what form this will take is still being discussed internally; it is unlikely to be a new asset type.
Much longer term options being considered for this capability might be to:
Allow prims to act as part of the terrain, inheriting the materials of the terrain, whilst still allowing the prim to be sized and shaped.
Perhaps allow the terrain within a region to be replaced by “something” else created externally to SL and then imported.
Neither of these ideas are currently being pursued beyond possible ideas / options.
Status
Cosmic believe she is getting close – perhaps another couple of weeks – to having an initial viewer build with the capability.
This initial build will allow terrain painting purely on the viewer-side; there will be no support for saving changes on the simulator; this will come as the work continues to be developed.
Transmission / IOR – Geenz Linden
Transmission and Index of Reflection (IOR) will provide:
Both refraction and “blurry” refraction suitable for things like frosted glass surfaces.
Dispersion, allowing chromatic aberration, allowing the RGB channels to “separate out” based on a certain factor.
Volume, allowing an object surface to be tinted at different surface thicknesses .
Geenz is currently wrapping this work to get it into the Develop branch of the viewer following an internal demonstration at the Lab.
General Discussion
Performance Issues
It’s been confirmed that the potential for performance drops was missed within the code Firestorm took to integrate into their PBR viewer offering, and given they have the largest share of users (particularly those on low-to-mid range systems – e.g. those with 16Gb of RAM or less, and mid-to-low spec GPUs or with integrated graphics), their users have been the hardest hit with performance issues.
As a result, Linden Lab is now working with Firestorm to resolve the current issues.
As noted above, Linden Lab is now working to prioritise the release of a viewer with a number of fixes and updates aimed at improving / restoring viewer performance.
In the interim, the recommendation is for anyone experiencing severe performance issues to roll back to a pre-PBR viewer release.
Further, given that fixes beyond those currently being prioritised by LL will take time to surface, and the fact that there will continue to be systems that struggle with PBR, Firestorm has stated that version 6.6.17 of their viewer (the last pre-PBR release) will not be blocked per standard policy, but will remain available on as “as is” basis (e.g. not subject to bug maintenance or update with new features).
Fixes LL are looking to get out after the “prioritised” viewer has been released include:
Addressing issues with the texture pipeline.
Fixing an issue whereby viewers on systems without dedicated video memory continually allocating available system memory to textures until all available system memory is consumed and the system suffers “performance death” until restarted.
A fix from the Alchemy team for an issue wherein if Mirrors are disabled in a viewer session, they continue using system resources until the viewer is restarted.
There will be “some form of communications coming out soon” to help inform people who are having a negative experience with PBR about what is going on to help alleviate issues.
In Brief
As far as enhancing rendering / shaders is concerned, the focus currently is on getting a working glTF scene implementation first, then working out what to backport to materials in inventory for applying to prims / non-glTF meshes. The will provide a good frame of reference when backporting materials to legacy objects and help maintain a consistency of appearance.
The meeting was overtaking by an extended discussion / diagnosis of a issue with hair which is becoming increasingly notices (hair appearing to “clump” or get blurred which does not appear to be directly related to colour alpha blending).
The problem is in part exacerbated by the fact the most SL hair is No Mod; so issues cannot be easily user-addressed.
No clear solution to this was presented, and the conversation is liable to continue, so will update if / when a way forward becomes clearer.
One idea floated, but will require a lot more internal investigation before LL move one way or the other, is to potentially add flags that will allow certain parameters within No Mod objects to be modified where it makes sense for them to be modifiable.
† 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.
The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, August 13th, 2024 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 my chat log. Pantera videoed the meeting, and the recording is embedded at the end of this piece – my thanks, as always, for her work.
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.
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
There will be no planned deployments for the week, but the channels will be restarted. LL have decided to hold-off deploying the Summer Fun / Combat 2 update to further channels for another week. Rider Linden described the reason thus:
As we rolled out further we encountered a product that had a scripting bug that caused it to misbehave on the new servers. We reached out to the creator and he’s fixed the issue and is issuing updates. We wanted to give him a chance to get those out all across the grid.
SL Viewer Updates
On Tuesday, August 13th, the WebRTC RC viewer updated to version 7.1.9.10325451220.
The rest of the current crop of viewers remains as:
Release viewer: version 7.1.8.9375512768, formerly the Graphics Featurettes RC viewer dated June 5 and promoted June 10th.
Release channel cohorts:
Atlasaurus RC (object take options; improved MOAP URL handling), version 7.1.9.10220184061, August 7.
Maintenance B RC (usability updates / imposter changes) 7.1.9.9555137545, June 21.
Maintenance C RC (reset skeleton in all viewers), version 7.1.9.9469671545, June 14.
In Brief
Combat Partnership Reminder
With Combat 2.0 becoming available, Linden Lab has announced the Combat 2.0 Promotion Partnership Programme has been launched.
The intention behind the Promotion Partnership Programme this is to give those actively involved in combat activities in Second Life the “opportunity to help us spread the word across the grid about Combat 2.0 in Second Life”.
In particular, this will see some of the LL combat regions (e.g. Concord and Lexington) a facelift and use them to showcase Combat 2.0, with participants in the Programme asked to donate free-to-use combat items for use in the regions.
In addition, participants will have their regions / communities included in a Combat section of the Destination Guide. There may be other benefits for participants as well.
Various reports of a rare and intermittent vehicle region crossing oddity, in which the crossing goes wrong, unseating the rider- but rezzing a grey prim in the rider’s place as a par to of the vehicle’s linkset “created” by the rider. When unlinked, the prim slides around on the ground but has a rotation lock property on it that keeps it upright.
Some think this might be a very old bug that can replace the vehicle rider with an agent-sized cube, per [#BUG-3547] Sim Crossing Rezzes Objects Surrounding Individuals.
It is unclear if any report has been filed recently against the problem, so if anyone encounters it, they are asked to raise a bug report with as much details as possible.
Leviathan Linden noted:
Avatars ARE prims, but with some meta data and a session that makes them special. The prim should have been deleted when the session was cleaned up or failed…. which suggests the session itself failed to be created on the far side of the region crossing.
There was a discussion on regex functions, based off of llRegex* functions, of which Rider Liden said:
I’ve just not had time to get to it yet. I think I have the code organized to a point right now where they wouldn’t be too much work to implement.
Please refer to the video below for further details of the 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 rooftop of people every week. They are taken from my list of region visits, with a link to the post for those interested.
Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation
Updates from the week through to Sunday, August 11th, 2024
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 7.1.8.9375512768, formerly the Graphics Featurettes RC viewer dated June 5 and promoted June 10th.
Release channel cohorts:
Atlasaurus RC (object take options; improved MOAP URL handling), updated to version 7.1.9.10220184061, August 7.
The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, August 6th, 2024 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 my chat log. Pantera videoed the meeting, and the recording is embedded at the end of this piece – my thanks, as always, for her work.
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.
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
The SLS Main channel was restarted on Tuesday, August 6th 2024.
On Wednesday, August 7th:
The BlueSteel RC is to be restarted.
The remaining RC channels should receive the Summer Fun simulator update, which includes the initial Combat 2 updates from Rider Linden.
Upcoming Releases
The is an internal discussion going on at the Lab as to the next simulator update. This may either be Picnic or the back-end WebRTC updates – with the most likely order being Picnic first, then WebRTC.
SL Viewer Updates
Release viewer: version 7.1.8.9375512768, formerly the Graphics Featurettes RC viewer dated June 5 and promoted June 10th.
Atlasaurus RC (object take options; improved MOAP URL handling), version 7.1.9.9981869229, July 22.
Maintenance B RC (usability updates / imposter changes) 7.1.9.9555137545, June 21.
Maintenance C RC (reset skeleton in all viewers), version 7.1.9.9469671545, June 14.
Game Controller
As a reminder – Summer Fun includes the Game Controller updates from Leviathan Linden, but these have yet to reach a former viewer release.
Also, and just as a FYI for those trying the pre-release game control viewer:
If the viewer is used on a simulator without the back-end support (e.g. any simulator on the SLS Main channel after toWednesday, August 7th, and Tuesday, August, 13th), the viewer will be logged out in what might look like a crash.
This generally only happens the the GameControl option is enabled, but has also been reported on occasion even with the option disabled.
In Brief
A general and (theoretical) means of cleaning-up the viewer codebase, and the potential risks in doing so (e.g. apparently “unused” code removed or capabilities thought as no longer relevant resulting in content breakage.
The above extended into the use of APIs in the viewer as well, with encouragement for those with ideas for APIs to file them as feature requests (such as this feature request).
Rider confirmed that the promised facelift for the LL combat regions will focus on Concord, Lexington and No Man’s Land.
It’s been noted that outdated map tiles are still appearing on the World Map despite recent updates – apparently, the final updates to the map server have yet to be deployed, hence the delays in updates some might witness.
Please refer to the video below for further details.
† 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.
Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation
Updates from the week through to Sunday, August 4th, 2024
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 7.1.8.9375512768, formerly the Graphics Featurettes RC viewer dated June 5 and promoted June 10th.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 