Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation
Updates from the week through to Sunday, March 24th, 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 7.1.3.7878383867, the Emoji Viewer, issued February 15, promoted March 1st, 2024 – No Change.
The following notes were taken from my audio recording and chat log transcript of the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting held on Thursday, March 21st, 2024.
Again, apologies for the lateness of this appearing; a major RL home project is getting finished-up, but it is still taking a good deal of my time.
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.
glTF PBR Materials Maintenance-2 RC viewer, version 7.1.4.8149792635, March 11, 2024.
Maintenance X RC (usability improvements), version 7.1.4.8148263040 , March 11, 2024.
Maintenance-W RC (bug and crash fixes), version 7.1.4.8113624779, March 6, 2024.
Maintenance Y RC ( My Outfits folder improvements; ability to remove entries from landmark history + Maint Z RC integration) updated to version 7.1.4.8114240508, March 6, 2024.
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.
There have been refinements to the applying glTF materials to terrain, notably the UV density was halved in the interest of 2K textures, and further work put into making sure repeats are less noticeable.
It will now be possible to have alpha under PBR terrain “under limited circumstances” (e.g. single-sided and alpha masked)
Discussions have started at the Lab on the fees applicable for 2K texture uploads, but no decision on what this is likely to be.
Mirrors have also bee going through further refinements (e.g. a Hero reflection probe for a mirror can now have similar – but not the same – fall-off as other reflection probes, so it is no longer necessary to have a “really massive” probe to get a reflection; also, a mirror reflection probe now has the ability to go between a box probe or a sphere probe, influencing how it gets masked on a reflective surface).
It has been noticed that people trying the pre-release versions of the Featurettes viewer have been very confused as to the placement of things like mirror probes. Therefore, the viewer is going through a further UI/UX review in order to try to make things less confusing.
There are also some optimisation issues (again with mirrors) which may have to be revisited.
Brad Linden has been working on the server-side support for the Featurettes viewer through QA. If this is successful, it will allow the graphics team to work with the simulator team to get the code into an Agni (Main grid) channel (either as Preflight or as an RC channel).
Initially will be a numerical value which can be adjusted, and which will be “bundled” with transmission
LL will attempt to get volume and dispersion included at some future iteration.
In this, it was pointed out that within the glTF specification, IOR requires both transmission and volume: transmission gives the basics for refraction (e.g. glossy refraction); whilst volume allows for things like colours within the refraction.
It’s not clear if attenuation will be used with respect to IOR.
In Brief
“Flexi mesh” – a long-standing request to have mesh interact with physics to make it flexible in the same manner as flexiprims (i.e. movement but without collisions being calculated). The response to this was:
The flexiprim system doesn’t really work for mesh.
What would be required is dynamic bones (as seen on other platforms). However, providing this has a number of pre-requisites (e.g. custom skeletons on hair for hair movement). As such, it is not something that is liable to be implemented in the near-term (if doable).
In terms of using Havoc physics interacting with mesh, the short answer is: not possible. It would require Havoc physics libraries which cannot (due to licensing) be made available to the viewer, due to the latter’s open-source nature.
Bake Service updates:
LL have acknowledged that it has been some time since the Bake Service has been updates, and that there are multiple requests for improvements and additions to the service (e.g. PBR materials support).
A potential project to update the Bake Service and implement some of the requested updates is currently being considered. However, a decision on where this will fit in the roadmap and what it will include has yet to be taken.
There is a fear among some that if the Bake Service is not updated specifically to support 2K textures when that is deployed, it could see Bakes On Mesh deprecated by creators in favour of applier systems which can utilise 2K textures (even if the system downsamples them on the basis of size).
With regards to 2K textures:
It appears that LL are trying to make heir use system specific: if a user is on a computer with the capacity to handle 2K textures, then they get 2K; if a user is on an older system (e.g. one limited by VRAM), then the largest textures they get are 1K.
For PBR terrain using 2K textures, there are some glTF specification-defined fallbacks the Lab hare leveraging to ease the load on lower-end systems.
It appears the PBR release has broken the Render Resolution Debug setting (most often used by RLV(/a) for screen blurring). A fix for this might be in the glTF Maintenance-2 RC viewer.
† 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, March 19th, 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 embedded below, recorded by Pantera – 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.
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 SLS Main channel was restarted on Tuesday, March 19th without any deployment.
Wednesday, March 20th, should see the next RC update deployed to the Bluesteel RC channel. This mostly comprises internal (non-user visible) updates, together with these user-visible additions:
llSetLinkSitFlags/llGetLinkSitFlags – allow you to adjust the sit flags for a prim. It supports the existing two SIT_FLAG_ALLOW_UNSIT and SCRIPT_ONLY.
At some future point, SIT_FLAG_HIDE_AVATAR should also be added, so you don’t need to play an animation that squishes the avatar so they aren’t visible in something like a very small vehicle.
A feature for estate managers that will allow them to schedule automatic region restarts (see below).
A new constant in llSPP PRIM_SIT_FLAGS it will contain all the sit flag information, (including ALLOW_UNSIT and SCRIPTED_ONLY (the two older constants will still be available).
A new capability to load item inventory lists via HTTP (so items with large contents will load faster when accessed, although this will require a viewer update as well).
A fix for avatars going into an animation thrash between falling and flying when using llSetHoverHeight() from an attachment.
SL Viewer Updates
No viewer updates at the start of the week, leaving the current official viewers as:
Release viewer: version 7.1.3.7878383867, the Emoji Viewer, issued February 15, promoted March 1st, 2024 – NoChange.
glTF PBR Materials Maintenance-2 RC viewer, version 7.1.4.8149792635, March 11, 2024.
Maintenance X RC (usability improvements), version 7.1.4.8148263040 , March 11, 2024.
Maintenance-W RC (bug and crash fixes), version 7.1.4.8113624779, March 6, 2024.
Maintenance Y RC ( My Outfits folder improvements; ability to remove entries from landmark history + Maint Z RC integration) updated to version 7.1.4.8114240508, March 6, 2024.
Project viewers:
Puppetry project viewer, version 6.6.12.579958, May 11.
WebRTC Voice
Officially announced on Tuesday, March 18th, is WebRTC (RTC=”real-time communication”), intended to replace Vivox as the Voice component in Second Life.
From my TPVD meeting notes from Friday, March 15th (video here) + notes from this meeting:
WebRTC is something of a “defacto standard”, being built-in to most web browsers and supporting wide range of real-time communications tools in common use (e.g. Google Meet), supporting audio, video and data communications.
In terms of audio / voice (the primary focus here), WebRTC has a number of standard features expected of audio communications services (such as automatic echo cancellation, better noise cancellation and automatic gain control, etc.) and offers much improved audio sampling rates for improved audio quality.
Work has already progress so that WebRTC supports all of the current SL Voice capabilities (e.g. region Voice, parcel Voice, peer-to-peer, ad-hoc and group capabilities, muting, etc.).
The service is provided to the viewer as a library with a wrapper – no separate .EXE plug-in.
In addition, work has been put into securing the use of WebRTC Voice against attempts to eavesdrop, etc., and to route peer-to-peer communications via an internal server to avoid revealing user’s IP addresses to the risk of doxing, etc.
Voice Morphing is not part of the initial implementation.
Group voice will be capped at 50 people, but may be extended later.
Speech-to-text and text-to-speech are being looked at by LL, but are not currently part of this project.
There are test viewers with the necessary viewer-side WebRTC support (not yet at Project or RC status), and regions on Aditi, the Beta grid (webRTC1 and webRTC2) with the back-end support.
Wiki documentation is in progress, and includes links to the test viewers (currently Windows and Mac OS) + a public code repo and other information. Note, this is subject to further update.
There is a dedicated WebRTC board on the SL Feedback Portal where issues, etc., can be reported / raised for discussion.
There is no backwards compatibility. Regions using the WebRTC back-end will only support voice on viewers using the WebRTC library. Ergo, once fully deployed, older viewer still using Vivox will not be able to access Voice services.
LL is working with TPVs to enable the switch to using WebRTC (once deployed to the Main grid) will not be made util there is an assurance that the majority of users will be on viewer supporting WebRTC.
The switch to WebRTC also opens the door to adding new features and capabilities to SL Voice, some of which have been long-requested.
In Brief
The PBR team is going to be changing llSetColor/llSetAlpha so that they behave on PBR in a similar way to legacy materials – just no time frame on when at present.
A discussion on scripting + notecard reading through the latter part 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, March 17th, 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 7.1.3.7878383867, the Emoji Viewer, issued February 15, promoted March 1st, 2024 – No Change.
Burnt Toast Café and Tavern, February 2024 – blog post †
The following notes were taken from my audio recording and chat log transcript of the Third-Party Viewer Developer (TPVD) meeting held on Friday, March 15th, 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.
glTF PBR Materials Maintenance-2 RC viewer, version 7.1.4.8149792635, March 11, 2024.
Maintenance X RC (usability improvements), version 7.1.4.8148263040 , March 11, 2024.
Maintenance-W RC (bug and crash fixes), version 7.1.4.8113624779, March 6, 2024.
Maintenance Y RC ( My Outfits folder improvements; ability to remove entries from landmark history + Maint Z RC integration) updated to version 7.1.4.8114240508, March 6, 2024.
Project viewers:
Puppetry project viewer, version 6.6.12.579958, May 11.
General Notes
The “most likely” RC viewer in line for promotion to release status is the glTF / PBR Maintenance 2 viewer, with the hope it will be promoted in week #12.
After this, the next glTF viewer will be the Featurette viewer (which may surface as an RC viewer by the end of March 2024), which will include:
Geenz Linden’s work on Mirrors, including his latest updates to the capability.
Cosmic Linden’s work on applying glTF materials to terrain.
Updates which will allow the glTF / PBR swatch boxes in the Build / Edit floater display previews of the materials being selected, rather than grey boxes.
A new project intended to move Second Life away from reliance on the Vivox voice service and plug-in, and to using the WebRTC communications protocol (RTC=”real-time communication”).
WebRTC is something of a “defacto standard”, being built-in to most web browsers and supporting wide range of real-time communications tools in common use (e.g. Google Meet), supporting audio, video and data communications.
In terms of audio / voice (the primary focus here), WebRTC has a number of standard features expected of audio communications services (such as automatic echo cancellation, better noise cancellation and automatic gain control, etc.) and offers much improved audio sampling rates for improved audio quality.
Work has already progress so that WebRTC supports all of the current SL Voice capabilities (e.g. region Voice, parcel Voice, peer-to-peer, ad-hoc and group capabilities, muting, etc.).
In addition, work has been put into securing the use of WebRTC Voice against attempts to eavesdrop, etc., and to route peer-to-peer communications via an internal server to avoid revealing user’s IP addresses to the risk of doxing, etc.
WebRTC will be supplied within the viewer using a library and wrapper. This will mean no requirement to run a third-party voice plugin (SLvoice.exe, as supplied by Vivox) going forward.
The switch to WebRTC also opens the door to adding new features and capabilities to SL Voice, some of which have been long-requested.
Current Status
WebRTC currently works alongside Vivox, with the Lab working to make the transition over as painless as possible, with the simulator end of support being switched to WebRTC on a limited basis to start, with the switch being thrown for all regions once there is a high enough confidence that the majority of users are on viewers with the new WebRTC code + wrapper.
However, once regions have been switched to use the WebRTC capabilities, viewers still running the Vivox plugin will not be able to access Voice services on them, as the WebRTC back-end does not recognise the Vivox plug-in.
Voice Morphing is also not part of the initial implementation.
There are test viewers with the necessary viewer-side WebRTC support (not yet at Project or RC status), and regions on Aditi, the Beta grid (webRTC1 and webRTC2) with the back-end support.
It is possible that, going forward and to allow broader testing, a region on Agni (the Main grid) could be set-up for WebRTC testing (as with the current Echo Canyon for SL Voice).
Wiki documentation is in progress, and includes links to the test viewers (currently Windows and Mac OS) + a public code repo and other information. Note, this is subject to further update.
There is a dedicated WebRTC board on the SL Feedback Portal where issues, etc., can be reported / raised for discussion.
It was noted that there are various complexities and problems being worked out (e.g. safeguarding peer-to-peer Voice as noted above, issues with maintaining Voice during / after region crossings, etc.).
As recently reported, how the download weight (“cost”) of mesh objects is calculated will be changing.
The net effect of this is around a 15% reduction on the download weight.
This should result in a reduction of the overall Land Impact for many (but not necessarily all) in-world mesh objects.
However, it should not be taken to mean the overall LI for an object will be reduced by 15%; while the dominant factor in calculating an object’s Land Impact, it is not the only factor, as such the amount of LI reduction will always be dependent on the impact of the other costs associated with a mesh (rendring cost, physics cost, etc.).
As I’ve noted in a recent project summary, Animesh objects are excluded from any Land Impact reduction, for example, as they have their own LI calculation).
In Brief
Some discussion on adding PBR support to Bakes on Mesh. While this is not ruled out, it was again stated that it would require a significant overhaul of the Bake Service, and has some major lead-in questions on how to best go about the work that would need to be addressed before an work could be initiated.
PBR Terrain:
At its basic, this is PBR layers, but for high-end computers, it can leverage triplanar mapping for improved repeats / quality.
There is also a change to how texture repeats are handled, in order to avoid issues at region boundaries.
A reminder that it is a viewer-side feature at presents (with a server-side control flag for enabling), piggybacking off the existing terrain tools. As such, there is no fallback from PBR terrain to texture terrain, its on or the other.
The PBR terrain support will initially be limited to Private regions and estates; it will not be available to Mainland.
A discussion on reflection probes (such as having a probe within a probe – don’t do this) and observed problems, e.g. BUG-234815 (via Github archive)
A – slight – issue of losing your head when using the upcoming Mirrors capability from Mouselook (see: BUG-234342 via Github archive).
Don’t do this at home, kids! Viewing oneself using the upcoming Mirrors feature when in Mouselook…
A discussion on emojis / unicode / Display Names.
A discussion on avatar complexity, policing, limitations, impact of allowing avatars to effectively be given a “free pass” in terms of proper optimisation / LI accountability, and developing a terminology to help users (and creators?) properly understand the impact their avatars can have on general viewer performance.
† 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, March 12th, 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 a chat log (thank you, Yuzuru!) and the video embedded below, recorded by Pantera – 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.
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.
There will be a restart of the RC channels on Wednesday, March 13th, but no deployment.
Upcoming Simulator Release
The next RC update (scheduled for week #12) is Hearts & Flowers, which will go to the BlueSteel RC channel. This mostly comprises internal (non-user visible) updates, together with these user-visible additions:
llSetLinkSitFlags/llGetLinkSitFlags – allow you to adjust the sit flags for a prim. It supports the existing two SIT_FLAG_ALLOW_UNSIT and SCRIPT_ONLY.
At some future point, SIT_FLAG_HIDE_AVATAR should also be added, so you don’t need to play an animation that squishes the avatar so they aren’t visible in something like a very small vehicle.
A feature for estate managers that will allow them to schedule automatic region restarts (see below).
A new constant in llSPP PRIM_SIT_FLAGS it will contain all the sit flag information, (including ALLOW_UNSIT and SCRIPTED_ONLY (the two older constants will still be available).
A new capability to load item inventory lists via HTTP (so items with large contents will load faster when accessed, although this will require a viewer update as well).
A fix for avatars going into an animation thrash between falling and flying when using llSetHoverHeight() from an attachment.
The next update after that will likely be called Spring Break. This might include notecard searches.
Schedule Region Restarts
Once fully deployed as a part of the Heart & Flowers simulator update (see above) this:
Will allow region and estate owners / managers schedule region restarts via the region console in the viewer (when updated).
Allows schedules to be set on a Daily or Weekly basis (e.g. every day at 06:00 SLT; Monday & Thursday at 17:00, etc.)
Has “vaccination” period of +/- 5 minutes of the selected restart time, so that all regions in an estate don’t suddenly restart at exactly the same time.
Allows any scheduled restart to be cancelled in the same manner as existing manual restarts.
Viewer Updates
On Monday March 11th:
The glTF PBR Materials Maintenance-2 RC viewer updated to version 7.1.4.8149792635.
The Maintenance X RC (usability improvements) updated to version 7.1.4.8148263040.
The rest of the current official viewers in the pipe remain as:
Release viewer: version 7.1.3.7878383867, the Emoji Viewer, issued February 15, promoted March 1st, 2024 – No Change.
Release channel cohorts:
Maintenance-W RC (bug and crash fixes) updated to version 7.1.4.8113624779, on March 6th, 2024.
Maintenance Y RC ( My Outfits folder improvements; ability to remove entries from landmark history + Maint Z RC integration) updated to version 7.1.4.8114240508, March 6, 2024.
Project viewers:
No updates.
Game Controller Update
No news from Leviathan Linden – he’s been busy on other tasks.
Rider has included the simulator support Leviathan has written into his Combat regions on Aditi (regions Gallipoli and Thermopylae) so those engaged in the Rooty Tooty Shooty Society (RTSS) testing his updates to the SLCS (Second Life Combat System) can try things out.
Simulator Main Loop Breakdown
Monty Linden has published details of the simulator main loop (where time deltas occur and state changes and housekeeping tasks are organised), as a high-level breakdown of the loop and a description that relates simulation back to the viewer’s Statistics floater.
In Brief
In the previous SUG meeting, there was 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. As there have been wider requests for such a fix for dynamic non-vehicle objects, he sought feedback on other situations wherein objects are messed with by “pusher HUDs”.
A discussion on scripting hover height changes which also segued into a discussion on swimming within Linden Water and improving the user experience (particularly for new users, who mix expect to start swimming in water, rather than sinking to the sea floor and walking, before morphing into a discussion on Pathfinding and its limitation. This continued through the meeting from around 12:11 SLT through to about the end of the meeting.
As animations were mentioned, Brad Linden noted that there are features in the GLTF spec for rigged meshes and animations that LL wants to support, and will want to provide some “best effort” interoperability of those assets with existing skeletons and animations (e.g. animation retargeting, individual bone scaling). However, all of the details and schedule for this work are currently TBD.
† 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.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 