Category: SL Tech

2024 SL SUG meetings week #16 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Grauland – Last Trees, April 2024 – blog post †

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.
  • These meetings are conducted (as a rule):
  • 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.
  • Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself).
    • 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:

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.

2024 SL viewer release summaries week #15

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, 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.
  • Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself).
    • Maintenance Y/Z RC ( My Outfits folder improvements; ability to remove entries from landmark history), version 7.1.6.8632452945, April 12.
  • Project viewers:
    • No updates.

LL Viewer Resources

Third-party Viewers

V6-style

  • Alchemy updated to version 7.1.4.2442 (Beta PBR build) April 12 – release notes

V1-style

  • No updates.

Mobile / Other Clients

  • No updates.

Additional TPV Resources

Related Links

2024 week #15: SL TPVD summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Morrigan’s Roadhouse, April 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, 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.
  • In regards to 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: 00:29-1:19]

  • 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 (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself).
    • Maintenance YZ 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:

General Viewer Notes

  • Maintenance X looks to be the next viewer in line for promotion.
  • The Graphics Featurettes viewer (PBR terrain and mirrors) is expected “soon”.
  • LUAU integration (client-side scripting API): still in the early stages, and not a lot available for testing via a test viewer or similar.

Graphics Update

[Video: 4:25-6:17]

  • 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.

WebRTC Voice Update

[Video: 29:17-33:19]

  • See here for background.
  • 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.
  • [Video: 18:48-23:22] Featurettes flags:
    • 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.
  • A general discussion on UDP message formats.

Next 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 gathering of people every week. They are taken from my list of region visits, with a link to the post for those interested.

2024 SL SUG meetings week #15 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Elvion, April 2024 – blog post †

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.
  • These meetings are conducted (as a rule):
  • 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:

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.
  • A fix for llSetAlpha() and llSetColor to work with PBR is in the works.
  • Please refer to the video for:
    • 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.

2024 SL viewer release summaries week #14

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, April 7th, 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 7.1.4.8149792635, formerly glTF PBR Materials Maintenance-2 RC viewer, issued March 11, promoted March 26, 2024 – No Change.
  • Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself).
  • Project viewers:
    • No updates.

LL Viewer Resources

Third-party Viewers

V6-style

  • Kokua updated to 7.1.4.53979 (no RLV) and 7.1.4.57483 (RLV variants)  (PBR) on April 1 – release notes.

V1-style

  • Cool VL Viewer Stable branch updated to version 1.32.0.17 (PBR) on April 6- release notes.

Mobile / Other Clients

  • No updates.

Additional TPV Resources

Related Links

2024 week #14: SL CCUG summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Memories of Dreams, April 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, April 4th, 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.
  • In regards to 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 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 Wednesday, April 3rd, the Materials Featurettes RC viewer updated to version 7.1.5.8472515256.
  • On Tuesday, April 2nd, the Maintenance X RC viewer (usability improvements) updated to version 7.1.5.8443777128.

Both of these updates were to bring the above viewers to code parity with the current release viewer (with bug fixes to to the Featurettes viewer as well). The rest of the official viewers remain as:

  • Release viewer: version 7.1.4.8149792635, formerly glTF PBR Materials Maintenance-2 RC viewer, promoted March 26, 2024.
  • Release channel cohorts:
    • Maintenance-W RC (bug and crash fixes), version 7.1.5.8443591509, March 29.
    • 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:

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 view is in RC, but the simulator-side support is still working its way through the system for full deployment on Agni (the Main grid).
    • The RC viewer has been undergoing numerous bug fixes related to both PBR Terrain textures and Mirrors, some of which are in the most recent update, others of which will be included at the viewer continues to be updated.
    • The UI/UX changes required for Mirrors to overcome confusion relating to the placement of things like Mirror reflection probes (with the creation of Mirrors described a “not intuitive”) is still under discussion at the Lab and so yet to be implemented within the Featurettes viewer.
    • The pricing structure for uploading 2K textures is currently being finalised, although it is not ready to be formally announced.
      • As with other services / uploads, the pricing looks like it will be based upon subscription level (e.g. cheaper for the likes of Premium Plus / Premium than for Plus / Basic) and the overall resolution of the texture.
      • Further work will also be required on the back-end services to fully support the upload of 2K textures.
      • An upshot of this is that at the time of writing, there is a communications mismatch between the viewer and the Aditi test regions supporting 2K texture uploads, resulting in such attempts falling over.
  • The HDRI support (replacing the sky with an HDRI file when rendered locally within a viewer to assist creators in checking to confirm their objects render in SL as they are seen within the tools they use to create their content – e.g. Substance Painter – and any variations are not related to the shader / import pipe) is still being tweaked.
    • In particular, now it has been tested internally and seen as offering some potentially interesting uses over and above pure EEP settings, consideration is being given to making HDRI an actual sky setting with simulator-side support.
    • One aspect of this would be the ability to use the lighting effects of HDRI within EEP sky settings, thus providing more true-to-life lighting without losing the use of existing EEP settings. Another might be using HDRI maps inside buildings and structure and not having the sky setting lighting leak into the structure.
    • Again, it’s important to not adding back-end support for HDRI is a future implementation, rather than anything being worked on right now, and would require work on both the simulator and back-end services (e.g. a new asset type to support HDRI would be required).
  • Light sources: there have been requests for the likes of point light shadows (e.g. so a map on a table casts is own shadows); the ability to explicitly state whether or not a light source casts a shadow or not; ability to support shadows from multiple light sources (depending on rendering settings).
    • Some of this might be addressed through glTF scene import, and / or through further adoption of the glTF specification for lighting (e.g. punctual lights / physical lights  – such as spotlight cones, etc.).
  • The work of glTF scene imports officially commenced in week #14. This work will be tackled in a similar manner to the Featurettes viewer – elements added to the viewer but placed behind debug flags until such time as they can be properly tested as the simulator support can be added (initially via Aditi, the Beta grid).
    • The will allow the viewer to be worked on and tested (with user testing) iteratively, rather than the work disappearing into a viewer fork that doesn’t see the light of day for months.
  • It was asked whether or not EXR might be a better option for SL skies rather than EEP + HDRI.
    • Runitai Linden noted he has experimented with EXR alongside of EEP and found that while EXR comes “close” to matching EEP skies, its doesn’t quite have the same range, whereas the HDRI lighting overlap with EEP offers easier flexibility of use.
    • He also noted again that the primary reason for providing HDRI support was to allow creators that means of reference checking their content between SL and their modelling tool to ensure it is appearing as expected after going through the SL upload pipe, etc., when compared to its appearance into their development tool.
  • Does the emissive map “knock out” the normal map if it is bright? No, but it can overpower the normal may and cause bumpiness, etc., to be less distinct.

In Brief

  • There was a general discussion on reflection probes and why they are limited in terms of shape (sphere or cube) and supporting other shapes+ illumination issues where probes overlap.
    • The shapes are necessarily limited largely as a result of performance stability.
    • It was acknowledged that blending lighting between probes is more a matter of improving / altering SL’s default ambient lighting model – which may well be looked at down the road.
    • The current advice is to – if necessary – “bomb” a scene with reflection probes  – and if that doesn’t work, disable probe ambience in favour of the global ambience – it will still allow the probe radiance and so generate reflections.
  • Occlusion volumes: the question was asked if it will ever be possible to have occlusion volumes in SL such that a room and its contents are never rendered in a viewer until the user actually enters the room in question.
    • It was acknowledged that this is the kind of thing the work with reflection probes might lead to, in terms of the basic mechanics being similar from a user’s perspective.
    • However, there are no current plans for developing such occlusion volumes at present, and a feature request on how user might want to use them / see them as working has been requested so the idea can be more formally reviewed / considered.

Next 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 gathering of people every week. They are taken from my list of region visits, with a link to the post for those interested.