Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation
Updates from the week through to Sunday, April 21st, 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: version7.1.5.8443591509, formerly the Maintenance-W RC (bug and crash fixes), version and issued March 29th, promoted April 9th – No change.
Selen’s Gallery, April 2024: Gem Preiz – Do You Like Gold? 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, April 18th, 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.
Are open to all with an interest in content creation.
The notes herein are a summary of topics discussed and are not intended to be a full transcript of the meeting.
Official Viewers Status
On Friday, April 19th, the Maintenance YZ RC ( My Outfits folder improvements; ability to remove entries from landmark history updated to version 7.1.6.8745209917.
On Wednesday, April 17th, Maintenance X RC viewer (usability improvements) updated to version 7.1.6.8709279750.
The rest of the official viewers remain as:
Release viewer: version7.1.5.8443591509, formerly the Maintenance-W RC (bug and crash fixes), version and issued March 29th, promoted April 9th –
Release channel cohorts:
Materials Featurettes RC viewer, version 7.1.5.8472515256, April 3
Project viewers:
Puppetry project viewer, version 6.6.12.579958, May 11.
It is possible the glTF Maintenance-2 RC viewer might be promoted to de facto release status early in week ’13 (commencing Monday, March 25th, 2024).
Graphics / glTF
Work continues on the GLTF Featurettes viewer + support.
The viewer is in RC with on-going bug fixes.
The simulator support is now on a Preflight channel on Agni (the Main grid), which includes the regions Rumpus Room 2048; Rumpus Room 2049; Rumpus Room 2050 and Rumpus Room 2051.
2K Textures:
Are not currently supported for upload onto the Main grid.
The fees for 2K textures have been set as follows:
Basic / Plus account: L$50 per texture.
Premium account: L$40 per texture.
Premium Plus: L$10 per texture.
2K textures for Bakes on Mesh requires a substantial update to the Bake service (as is frequently mentioned at CCUG meetings), and currently this does not appear to be in the works.
Mirrors:
Now leverage the Dynamic flag. When set, this tells the mirror to reflect everything in the rendering pipeline including avatars and particles). if the flag is not set, avatars are particles are not rendered, just the environment (e.g. for a reflective floor which reflects the room, but rendering the avatars would cause a massive performance hit).
Mirror probes can now be set using LSL.
The updated UX for Mirrors is still not done, and it is acknowledged that setting up a mirror is far from intuitive. A good 10+ minutes of the meeting was devoted to “how to make a mirror” – rather proving the point!
Work has started on prototyping glTF scene handling (as part of the overall glTF scene import work). Initial work is to enable the showing of a scene locally within the viewer using a debug setting. More on this as the option becomes available in a viewer. But in short:
Once imported, glTF scenes will be an inventory asset type.
Each scene with by associated with an in-world object (e.g. a prim), which becomes its “handle”.
In Brief
Custom skeletons: this is an ongoing debate within LL. glTF allows for custom skeletons and animations. Second Life has a defined avatar skeleton and recognised animation formats for use against it.
As such, there is a disparity between SL and glTF, as in theory, adherence to the glTF specification means recognising the use of custom skeletons with their own animations – which would then be incompatible with the existing SL format(s), and lead to potential confusion / clashes between established avatar types using the SL skeleton and custom skeletons.
Thus, some navigation is required to determine if / how custom skeletons might be handled without confusing the existing consumer market in SL in terms of what accessories work with which type of avatar.
Emissive strength is seen as “feeble” by some, so a request was made for a numeric box in which a desired emissive strength might be entered. As the glTF specification allows for this, it is something that could be added to a future viewer iteration (but not necessarily would be – Feature Request?).
Much of the meeting was about what extensions LL might consider, how things like emissive maps and lighting might be handled in the future, IOR, transmission and the potential to add iridescence – some of which are being worked on (IOR and transmission) and will be reported on in summaries as they come along, others are seen as possibly / maybe.
† 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, April 16th, 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 and the video by Pantera – my thanks to her as always 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.
They 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 Main and the majority of RC channels will all be restarted this week (Tuesday / Wednesday) with no updates deployed.
The exception to this is the Preflight RC channel which will be updated on Wednesday, April 17th, with the back-end support for the the glTF updates available in the Graphics Featurettes viewer (e.g. PBR terrain textures and mirrors.
Note that this deployment is for testing only.
Support for 2K texture will not be enabled simulator-side as a part of the initial deployment, as these are awaiting a couple of fixes to clear QA. Ergo, support for 2K textures within the preflight channel will be enabled later.
Upcoming Deployments
Back-end support for WebRTC Voice will be next to be deployed, and this will likely go to a Snack RC channel. See my Week #12 summary for an outline of WebRTC voice.
The upcoming Spring Break RC release (yet to go to RC) will have a fix for the hovering-at-login issue.
SL Viewer Updates
No updates to the official viewers currently in the pipeline, leaving them as:
Release viewer: version7.1.5.8443591509, formerly the Maintenance-W RC (bug and crash fixes), version and issued March 29th, promoted April 9th.
Maintenance Y/Z RC ( My Outfits folder improvements; ability to remove entries from landmark history), version 7.1.6.8632452945, April 12.
Materials Featurettes RC viewer, version 7.1.5.8472515256, April 3
Maintenance X RC (usability improvements), version 7.1.5.8443777128, April 2.
Project viewers:
Puppetry project viewer, version 6.6.12.579958, May 11.
In Brief
Teleports / region crossings: the question was asked as to which would have the greater performance impact: a avatar with 10 attachments, each of a single linked part in each, or an avatar with 1 attachments of 10 linked parts.
The reply from Monty Linden was that – outside of script considerations – the difference is liable to be negligible (scripts being the major performance hit in terms of region crossings / teleports).
A discussion on attachment point in general, including:
An increase to the maximum allowed attachments (38), primarily to help deal with issues as specified in this Feature Request, if providing a function as outlined in the Feature Request was not on the cards. However, it was felt by some that attachment counts should not be increased until the maximums for allowed worn prims / scripts are brought down to realistic figures and enforced.
A suggestion that a couple of attachment points by reserved specifically for Experiences.
A request for updates to the particle system to work with rigged attachments (removing the need unrigged particle prims). However, as the simulator does not track attachment points (which would be required for this to work), it was seen as not doable.
A request was made for LL to offer an LSL function so creators could clamp raycasts to the region edge in order to stop the end-points going off-region (/simulator) and causing errors.
Whilst seen as doable, it was felt that as raycasting should not have end points beyond a region’s boundaries, a better solution might be to identify and fix the underpinning bug that is allowing it.
Fixing the issue might also allow LL to implement the idea outlined in llVisualizeRay – A way to see Raycasts, but using llCastRay rather than adding a new LSL function.
Please refer to the video for:
A discussion on HTTP request throttling.
A discussion om script modules / libraries.
General thoughts on region crossings.
† 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, April 14th, 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: version7.1.5.8443591509, formerly the Maintenance-W RC (bug and crash fixes), version and issued March 29th, promoted April 9th – NEW.
The following notes were taken from my audio recording and chat log transcript of the Third-Party Viewer Developer (TPVD) meeting held on Friday, April 12th, 2024. My thanks as always to Pantera for recording the TPVD meeting and providing the video, which is embedded at the end of this article.
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 the third or fourth Friday, at 13:00 SLT at the Hippotropolis Theatre.
A new glTF mesh importer has been made available via the content Creation Discord channel (which LL have requested I do not link to here – contact Vir Linden if you have a need to be on that channel) purely for the purposes of testing by content creators.
This allows for the importing and viewing of static glTF-compliant mesh models and seeing how the look in Second Life.
This is the first element within the “glTF Phase II” project.
Cosmic Linden is working on bug fixes for the PBR terrain support, and Geenz Linden is putting the finishing touches to mirrors, both in the expectation of a public-facing viewer being made available.
2K textures is still subject to discussions on pricing, and may or may not surface in the Featurettes viewer’s initial release.
Simulator support for the upcoming Graphics featurettes is due to go the the Preflight channel in week #16. This will include 2K texture support, which will most likely be disabled pending a final decision on pricing, etc.
A Project viewer is being put together, and this should be available viewer soon, and the code should be fairly stable.
Some testing has been carried out with WebRTC on Linux with good results.
Feature requests for WebRTC made via the WebRTC board on the SL Feedback Portal are being evaluated and some are being actioned, together with issues being investigated.
The test region webRTC1 (Aditi) now has an echo capability for testing WebRTC once the Project viewer is available (or for those on a test viewer).
There may well be a pile-on test at the WebRTC test regions as things progress to test the new voice capability – although this might be better suited to having a test region available on Agni.
In Brief
There have been requests to have meeting times across several of the User Group meetings altered to be more accessible to Europeans or for those elsewhere in the US, etc. These requests are under consideration within the various user groups where they have been raised.
It was also noted that it would be useful if the Agenda sections of the wiki pages for User Groups were actually maintained, so that people can at least see what is up for discussion from LL’s side ahead of meetings, to help in making informed opinions on whether or not to attend.
It was noted that the plan for viewer projects going forward is to utilise the idea of featurette flags (as with the Graphics Featurette viewer) and have capabilities / functions new to the viewer placed behind flags (debug settings) managed via the simulator.
This is a reversal of the “old” mechanism for viewer features, which was led by the view making specific UDP message requests to the simulator for specific feature capabilities / function, and the simulator then respond on a request-by-request basis.
The advantage of this is that it potentially allows for faster viewer development iteration: features can be added to project / RC viewers and placed behind flags potentially allowing for testing on Aditi, rather than having to wait for months (/years) for a project-related viewer to surface with everything in pace and then only get actual user testing.
The disadvantage is communicating what in the viewer code might be tested and what is awaiting the setting of a flag from the simulator.
As such, LL are aware of the need for clear communications with TPVs on projects, code, and flags.
† 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, April 9th, 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 and the video by Pantera – my thanks to her as always 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.
They 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 Main and RC channel will all be restarted this week (Tuesday / Wednesday) with no updated deployed.
Upcoming Deployments
Week #16 should see the back-end support for the glTF / PBR Maiantenance-2 release viewer deployed to the Preflight RC simulator channel, bringing Mirrors and PBR terrain to regions on that channel.
If all goes well, the deployment will expand to BlueSteel in week #17 (commencing Monday, April 22nd, 2024).
The deployment of the PBR-2 support is liable to be followed by a simulator update with the promised WebRTC Voice (see my Week #12 summary for an outline of WebRTC voice). This may initially only goa a small Snack RC channel of simulators.
SL Viewer Updates
On Tuesday, April 9th, the Maintenance W RC ((bug and crash fixes), version 7.1.5.8443591509 and dated March 29, was promoted to defacto release status.
The rest of the current official viewer in the pipeline stand as:
Release channel cohorts:
Materials Featurettes RC viewer, version 7.1.5.8472515256, April 3.
Maintenance X RC (usability improvements), version 7.1.5.8443777128, April 2.
Maintenance Y RC ( My Outfits folder improvements; ability to remove entries from landmark history + Maint Z RC integration), version 7.1.5.8448596295, March 29.
Project viewers:
Puppetry project viewer, version 6.6.12.579958, May 11.
In Brief
Monty Linden is trying the get back up to speed with region crossing / teleport fixes after working on other aspects of SL recently. Currently the work he has completed in looking “good” and he is planning a possible pile-on test at some point ahead of shipping the updated code.
Leviathan Linden has been working on implementing the “prevent passenger attachments from influencing vehicle” optional vehicle flag, but hasn’t quite finish testing it due to some modes of pushing a vehicle (without the flag) not working as anticipated. It is possible this work might make it into the Spring Break simulator update, which is still in development at the time of writing.
This is in response to a request to help solve the problem of cheaters sitting on competition vehicles. Someone sits on the object and uses a HUD with llSetVelocity() or other calls to push the vehicle faster than it would normally go.
Leviathan also hasn’t got back to working on the game controller event due to providing assistance to the glTF project.
A repeat of a request for slide on Y axis for llSetTextureAnim was made – as requested in BUG-6443 (now Jira archive 14302). This is seen as “doable” on the simulator side, but would require additional work within the viewer.
Some general discussion on Combat issues, which will likely be part of the upcoming Combat Group meeting on Thursday, April 11th.
A general discussion on avatar walk speed and making it scriptable / adjustable.
A discussion on increasing the server notecard cache (per this request).
† 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.
Work continues on the GLTF Featurettes viewer + support.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 