Category: SL Tech

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, October 17th Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They form a summary of the items discussed, and is not intended to be a full transcript.

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):
  • Every Tuesday at 12:00 noon SLT.
  • In text (no Voice)
  • At this location.
• 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.

Server Deployments

• No deployments for the week (again). However, all simhosts (SLS Main and RC) will be restarted.

Upcoming Deployments

• The Next simulator RC will likely include: llRezObjectWithParams, llIsFriend, llGetInventoryDesc() and llListFindListNext(), together with Leviathan Linden’s work on game controller support (see below for more).

Viewer Updates

The current batch of official viewer versions is as follows:

• Release viewer, version 6.6.15.581961, promoted October 2 (formerly the Inventory Extensions Viewer).
• Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself).
  • glTF / PBR Materials viewer, version 7.0.0.581886, October 12.
  • Maintenance V(ersatility) RC viewer, version 6.6.16.582201, October 16.
  • Maintenance-W RC viewer, version 6.6.16.582075, October 5.
  • Emoji RC viewer, version 6.6.15.581551, August 31.
• Project viewers:
  • Puppetry project viewer, version 6.6.12.579958, May 11.

Potential for Games Controller Use

• This work sees the introduction of a new LSL event called game_control, the format for which Leviathan defined as:

game_control(key id, list buttons_edge_down, list buttons_edge_up, list buttons_down, list axes). Lots of lists, but that was necessary to support treating the keyboard as a “big controller with lots of buttons”. I created some docs for the game_control stuff on the LSL wiki.

• Leviathan also noted there should be a GameControl category page, at the time of writing the link to it had yet to be added to the game_control wiki page.
• The server work is now considered wrapped, and the focus is on the viewer support.
• Overall, the work is seen as an initially simple pass to provide basic support for the use of game controllers in SL and intended to get things rolling; so capabilities such a building a “virtual game controller”, as requested at previous meetings are not available. However, he noted that, “Once the network protocol is nailed down and the script stuff… it will still be possible to modify the viewer. “
• Key points of note include:
  • The feature doesn’t require permissions, but can be enabled via checkboxes in the viewer UI. However, Leviathan noted it could be piggybacked on controls permissions.
  • Subject to testing, the keystrokes are the remapped ones according to other UI settings.
  • The capability currently only works for attachments and seats, it cannot be used for avatar movement.
  • Doesn’t as yet support controller gyro, or rumble feedback nor support for trackpad position for game controllers that have it, nor does it support the use of mouse position recognition and buttons.
  • The above two points have a potential to be added later, “perhaps”.

In Brief

• The official blog post on the deployment of a simulator update to resolved the communications / bandwidth issue referenced in recent CCUG meeting summaries was referenced.
• Two feature requests for avatar movement were raised – BUG-234557 and BUG-233175 – leading Rider to note:

Adjustable avatar movement would be possible… the only thing about it that gives me pause is… I know how delicately tuned the avatar motion logic is under the hood, to allow for walking up low ledges, friction when stopping, and how the avatar tries to stand still when at rest but still be “bumpable” by other avatars and objects.

This led to an extended discussion on avatar movement and options for allowing the use of a velocity model for avatar movement (thus allowing for avatars moving at different walking speeds, etc). This lead to a broader discussion on avatar movement / animations, etc., which touched on the dormant puppetry project.

• HTTP work. Rider Linden noted he is back to working on his HTTP code and simulator asset handling refactoring, and is hoping to get the underpinning code refactor completed in the next week(ish) and then work on the asset management side. This led to a request for the issue of Modify items becoming labelled as No Mod for the owner when a No Mod item is place in its contents & then taken back to inventory (even though the item still have Modify permissions), which in turn generated a request for a Jira report.

† 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.

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, October 10th Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They form a summary of the items discussed, and is not intended to be a full transcript. A video of the entire meeting is embedded at the end of the article for those wishing to review the meeting in full – my thanks to Pantera for recording 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):
  • Every Tuesday at 12:00 noon SLT.
  • In text (no Voice)
  • At this location.
• 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.

Server Deployments

• No deployments for the week. However, all simhosts (SLS Main and RC) will be restarted.

Upcoming Deployments

• The initial work on updates to the SL damage system – specifically making damage a property of the object (e.g. a bullet), rather than being a script property (see the previous SUG meeting notes and this forum thread discussion) will now hopefully be available for testing on Aditi in week #42 and are being lined-up with the upcoming “Fall Colours” simulator update.
• The rez_object_fail update planned for the upcoming “Fall Colours” simulator update is likely to slip back to a later simulator release.
• The ability to turn an avatar invisible when they are sitting is being targeted for a simulator release following “Fall Colours”. This will help address issues such as allowing avatars to sit on small vehicles without them having to be deformed and folded up inside them to fit. This may additionally encompass the likes of feature requests BUG-232678 and/or BUG-233175.

Viewer Updates

No updates to viewers for the start of the week, leaving the official viewer pipelines as:

• Release viewer, version 6.6.15.581961, promoted October 2 (formerly the Inventory Extensions Viewer).
• Release channel cohorts:
  • Maintenance V(ersatility) RC viewer, version 6.6.16.582093, October 6.
  • Maintenance W RC viewer, version 6.6.16.582075, October 5.
  • glTF / PBR Materials viewer, version 7.0.0.581684, September 8.
  • Emoji RC viewer, version 6.6.15.581551, August 31.
• Project viewers:
  • Puppetry project viewer, version 6.6.12.579958, May 11.

Potential for Games Controller Use

• No major update, Leviathan is trapped in a loop of bug-hunting whilst trying to set-up a test region on Aditi with the necessary LSL support for controllers.

Region Crossing Code Tests

Monty Linden provided an initial breakdown on the recent region crossing code tests (see the two previous SUG meeting summaries). The summary being:

• While chaotic and the resultant data not entirely reliable in all cases, it was sufficient to demonstrate the code tested can offer noticeable improvements to teleport and physical region crossings.
• The tests specifically demonstrated that the impact of “bad” (script-heavy) attachments can be significantly reduced with the new code (up to around 5-6 faster in the very worst cases). That presumably relates to vehicle-related crossings more than anything, but hopefully Monty will clarify this once he gets to a stage of confidence in the data to perhaps provide a forum post).
• Monty also commented that “bad” avatars (again for some undefined measure of “bad”) faired somewhat better during region crossings than he had anticipated.
• More formalised testing method for crossings is being developed within the Lab, but Monty expects that the revised code thus far tested is likely to find its way into simulator releases in the future.

In Brief

• Following the region crossing discussion, several people participating in the last pile-on test reported issues of attachments failing to re-load correctly following a teleport, and having to be manually re-attached. However, the same issue was also noted as occurring for some prior to the test, and also by some who didn’t attend the test, suggesting it may be an uptick in a pre-existing bug.
• Rider Linden indicated he is considering implementing a fix to correct the following scenario:

An agent can select a physical object that they do not own and have no rights to edit and stop it in place. It is useful to be able to select the object, but causing it to stop interferes with events like racing. Somebody in the stands can grab the leader’s vehicle and hold it there.

This sparked a debate on the issue having been fixed with the implementation of llSetStatus(STATUS_BLOCK_GRAB_OBJECT) having already achieve this, together with suggestion to revise it (if it requires implementation) to exclude land owners, so they might continue to stop and move unwanted physical objects rezzed on their land by others. This discussion took-up most of the latter half of the meeting.

• The end of the meeting includes a short discussion on revamping the Linden trees which focus on ideas and requests more than actual work being planned.

† 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.