Category: SL Tech

The following notes were taken from my audio recording and chat log transcript of the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting held on Thursday, February 15th, 2024, and the chat log transcript and video of the Third-Party Viewer Developer (TPVD) meeting held on Friday, February 16h, 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 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 viewer development work. This meeting is held on alternate Thursdays at Hippotropolis.
• 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.
• In regards to both meetings:
  • Dates and times are recorded in the SL Public Calendar.
  • Commence at 13:00 SLT on their respective dates.
  • Are conducted in a mix of Voice and text chat.
  • Are open to all with an interest in either content creation or viewer development.
• The notes herein are a summary of topics discussed and are not intended to be a full transcript of either meeting.

Official Viewers Status

[Video: 1:40-2:38]

• On Thursday, February 15th, the Emoji viewer updated to version 7.1.3.7878383867.
• On Wednesday February 14th, the Maintenance X RC (usability improvements) updated to version 7.1.3.7721015131.

The rest of the current crop of official viewers remains as:

• Release viewer: version 7.1.2.7215179142, formerly the glTF PBR Materials Maintenance RC, issued December 15, promoted January 8, 2024 – numerous bug fixes and improvements – No Change.
• Release channel cohorts:
  • Maintenance Y RC, version 6.6.17.6935642049, February 9 – My Outfits folder improvements; ability to remove entries from landmark history.
  • Maintenance-W RC viewer, version 7.1.3.7701974306, January 31, 2024 – bug and crash fixes.
  • glTF PBR Materials Maintenance-2 RC viewer, version 7.1.3.7467259489, issued January 12, 2024.
• Project viewers:
  • Puppetry project viewer, version 6.6.12.579958, May 11.

General Notes

• While there has been a push to get the Emoji viewer promoted, it is currently not clear which RC viewer will be the next to go to de facto release status.
• GlTF Materials bug fixes will likely be split between the current Main-2 glTF viewer and the Graphics Featurettes viewer (see below).

Lua (or Luau) Client-Side Scripting (Both Meetings)

TPVD – Video: 3:05-17:30]

On February 9th, 2024, Linden Lab slipped out a Tools & Technology blog post announcing they are experimenting with Lua (Portuguese for “Moon”  – hence the logo for the language),  a lightweight, high-level, multi-paradigm programming language designed primarily for embedded use in applications, for client-side scripting capabilities.

At the TPVD meeting [4:44-5:12], it was qualified that LL is actually looking at Luau, a Lua VM implementation developed by Roblox. It is hoped that this will enable the code to be sandboxed from the rest of the operating system.

General Points

• Among other potential uses, this is seen as a possible means of providing:
  • Better support for, and control of, scripted agents (including automated testing capabilities using such agents).
  • Providing a means of supporting custom UI extensions / plug-ins without having to resort to C++.
  • Adding custom displays to present exiting information in the viewer, etc.
  • At the TPVD meeting [9:28-10:06], Rider Linden noted the Luau code will not interact with LSL scripted HUDs, and should not be seen as a means of viewer-side scripting of LSL HUDs at this point.
• The capability is not being seen as “replacing” anything, the focus is on extending capabilities and providing creators and general users with more tools they might want to use.
• There is a  Github repository for the viewer – which is still experimental – which can be used on Aditi (the beta grid) by those interested in testing it.
• The project is described as “very early stages”, and creators / coders should not “read too much into” the current state of the project.
  • What is in it is a basic proof-of concept implementation designed to see how feasible it might be to pursue providing a client-side scripting option. Commands within the code may change as the capability is being developed.
  • How the API(s) will work and how it will look is still a work in progress, and how Lua can be used / where limits might be applied, etc., is still subject to internal discussion at the Lab.
  • It has also not been decided if the Lua/Luau support will extend to the mobile viewer.

Discussion Points

• Lua/Luau has been selected because it is a small, lightweight language which is not dependent on the user having to install anything else on their computer in order for it to work.
• It was suggested at the TPVD meeting that the capability should include the ability to disable it, so that TPVs providing support for their users will not have to try to determine if an issue is part of the viewer code or the result of running a Luau script they are not familiar with.
• There has already been considerable discussion on Lua (and client-side scripting) via the Second Life Feedback Portal, and concerns raised on issues of permissions, authorship and trust within an environment where script code can make the viewer do arbitrary (and hidden from view) things is undesirable.
  • These have been acknowledged as concerns which will need to be addressed as the work progresses.
  • Plus, it was noted that any use of Lua/Luau with user-generated content will be much further down the road than any initial implementation.

JIRA Archive and Move to Canny / Github (CCUG)

• Thursday, February 15th, 2024 marked the official switch-over from Jira to Canny / Github.
• The URLs for the Second Life Jira now automatically redirects to the Canny Second Life Bug Reports page.
  • Click on the Second Life banner, top left, to go to the Canny Second Life Feedback Portal.
• Public bug reports (and feature requests) filed via Jira are mostly archived on Github.
  • Due to the different permissions environments within Jira and Github, there are some edge cases which have yet to be archived.
• Note that any ticket that previously had restricted access e.g. (Linden Only / Originator + Lindens) is not part of this archive.
• Please refer to the official blog post for more, if required.

Graphics / glTF (CCUG)

• 2K textures are being looked at. LL is aware that care needs to be taken in consideration of things like memory footprint and performance (particularly for lower-end systems), so there is going to be further analysis before anything is likely to surface within a public viewer.
• The “Graphics Featurettes” viewer is  approaching Project Viewer status, and includes:
  • 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.
  • The first series of additional glTF extensions – Index of Refraction.
  • Initial work on 2K textures support.
• Mirrors: the focus has been on optimisations and performance improvements to try to raise viewer frame rates. Whilst there have been improvements, the work has yet to reach the desired FPS range. Further:
  • There are a range of bugs which need to be resolved.
  • Additional work is also required on the reflection probe selection code for Mirrors, as at times the wrong probe is selected, giving less-than-desirable results.
  • Further visual improvements need to be added to the code, particularly with mirror blending against other reflection probes in the scene.
  • The UX for mirrors still needed to be finalised via the viewer UI team.
• glTF terrain texturing: the focus has been on bug fixing and improving usability.
• The nightly builds version of the Featurette viewer is available on Github, but is not suitable for use as a primary viewer, and the capabilities are not supported on the Main grid. As such, this viewer should only be used by those wishing to test the capabilities.
  • When testing, note that in keeping with the “featurette” approach, the capabilities may be hidden behind debug setting flags.
• The Rumpus Room 2048 region (and neighbours) on Aditi provides back-end support for the Featurettes viewer.

In Brief

• The CCUG meeting had a lot of WIBNI‡ discussions around inventory and other ideas, some of which are on LL’s “sometime” list, others of which are not under current consideration. As such, these are ignored for the purposes of this summary, but will obviously be covered should they become active projects.

TPVD Meeting

• It was requested that Emojis have an option to be completely disabled in a viewer, with it being pointed out that it could be potentially confusing for people with visual impairments, particularly in group chat rife with Emoji over-use. LL has no plans for this; some TPVs (Firestorm) are planning on providing such an option.
• A request was made to provide some form of enforced notification that groups utilising bots to relay group chat outside of SL (e.g. to a Discord server) must disclose they are doing so.
  • The main reason for this is that disclosure of IMs without consent – and group chat is a form of IM exchange – is a violation of the SL TOS, and those joining a group chat might have no idea the conversation is being relayed elsewhere.
  • There are complications with this (what if someone other than the group owner insinuates a bot relay into the group chat? How is that regulated?). But this does not necessarily negate the idea of some form of requirement for those group owners who directly utilise such relay tools.
  • A Canny feedback submission was requested, so the issue could be put before the relevant eyes at the Lab (management and legal) for further discussion.

Next Meetings

• CCUG: 13:00 SLT, Thursday, March 7th, 2024, at the Hippotropolis Campsite.
• TPVD: 13:00 SLT, Friday March 15th, 2024, at the Hippotropolis Theatre.

† 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.

‡ WIBNI – “wouldn’t it be nice if…”