Category: SL Tech

2023 SL SUG meetings week #12 summary: “Ban the Bots” Simulator Update

Posted on by Inara Pey
Highland Retreat, January 2023 – blog post

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, March 21s, 2023 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.

Server Deployments

  • On Tuesday, March 21st, the SLS Main channel servers were restarted without any deployment, leaving them on simulator version 577734.
  • On Wednesday, March 22nd, one half of the RC channel servers will receive an update to their current simulator release, the remainder will gain the Estate Level Scripted Agent Controls (aka “Ban the Bots”).

Estate Level Scripted Agent Controls (aka “Ban the Bots”)

This is the simulator update referenced in the March 10th Lab Gab session – see: Lab Gab summary: Grumpity, Mojo & Patch – SL Mobile, land, bots & more – Bots and Policies.

  • The update includes a console variable that can be set by estate managers to either True or False. When set to True it will prevent Scripted Agents from entering regions in an estate (those required by the estate can be added to the access list so they can continue to access regions).
  • This will be supported in time by a viewer UI update to allow the option to be managed more directly – but it will still be a while before this UI change surfaces in the viewer.
  • There will be a policy change update published soon which will further cover these changes and the operation of Scripted Agents.

Further changes have been suggested within the Lab – notably to traffic – but it has yet to be decided on whether / when these will be implemented.

Viewer Updates

There have been no official viewer updates to mark the start of the week, leaving the various pipelines as follows:

  • Release viewer: Maintenance Q(uality) viewer, version 6.6.9.577968 Thursday, February 2.
  • 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:
    • PBR Materials project viewer, version 7.0.0.578792, March 15 – This viewer will only function on the following Aditi (beta grid) regions: Materials1; Materials Adult and Rumpus Room 1 through 4.
    • Puppetry project viewer, version 6.6.8.576972, December 8, 2022.

LSL XML-RPC

Linden Lab is going to be picking a date for shutting down LSL XML-RPC functionality completely. This has been deprecated for well over a decade, and and LL has long been warning about shutting it down, and the vast majority of traffic has moved to HTTP-In, as recommended as a secure means of communications. Given the low volume of traffic – given as only a few dozen requests per hour, LL would rather put resources towards new developments, rather than supporting an outdated and insecure service. The next step will be a blog post with a date, and maybe some circuit-breaking exercises where we will shut it off temporarily, to make sure all creators have moved their services away from LSL XML-RPC.

In Brief

  • There was a fair amount of discussion concerning the Puppetry project. However, as this will be subject to a meeting on Thursday, Marcg 23rd, for which I plan to have a summary, I’ll leave updates on this work until then.
  • BUG-227303 – “collisions makes a script stop running and revert its mono status” – this bug is still awaiting work by LL.
  • Please refer to the video below for general discussions.

2023 SL viewer release summaries week #11

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, March 19th, 2023

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: Maintenance Q(uality) viewer, version 6.6.9.577968, promoted Thursday, February 2, 2023- no change.
  • Release channel cohorts:
    • No updates.
  • Project viewers:
    • glTF / PBR Materials project viewer, version 7.0.0.578792, March 15 – This viewer will only function on the following Aditi (beta grid) regions: Materials1; Materials Adult and Rumpus Room 1 through 4.

LL Viewer Resources

Third-party Viewers

V6-style

  • No updates.

V1-style

Mobile / Other Clients

  • No updates.

Additional TPV Resources

Related Links

2023 week #11: SL TPV Developer meeting summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
The Great Library of Eruanna, January 2023 – blog post
The following notes were taken from m y audio recording and chat log transcript of the TPV Developer (TPVD) meeting held on Friday,  March 17th 2023 at 13:00 SLT. These meetings are chaired by Vir Linden, and their dates and times can be obtained from the SL Public Calendar; also note that the following is a summary of the key topics discussed in the meeting and is not intended to be a full transcript of all points raised.

Official Viewers Status

  • Release viewer: Maintenance Q(uality) viewer, version 6.6.9.577968 Thursday, February 2.
  • 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:
    • PBR Materials project viewer, version 7.0.0.578792, March 15 – This viewer will only function on the following Aditi (beta grid) regions: Materials1; Materials Adult and Rumpus Room 1 through 4.
    • Puppetry project viewer, version 6.6.8.576972, December 8, 2022.

General Viewer Notes

  • The Performance Floater / Auto FPS viewer is still being worked on in the hope that performance can be further improved on lower-end systems.
  • Work is also being carried out to have the viewer work with a broader cross-section of translation tools.

Inventory Enhancement Project

  • The work to provide thumbnail images of  folders and items in Inventory is progressing on the viewer-side, but deployment will be dependent on both viewer availability (project / RC to release) and assorted back-end service and simulator updates to handle the new data.
  • Once the thumbnail preview work has been completed, it is possible the Lab will look to further enhancements to inventory management. One future enhancement under consideration is support for folders to be included in the Contents inventory of individual objects.

In Brief

  • See also my CCUG meeting summary, as this meeting crosses topics with that.
  • Estate Level Scripted Agent Controls (aka “Ban the Bots”): per my SUG meeting notes, there is a new simulator release due to be deployed which will provide estate / region holders and their managers limit access to their regions by scripted agents (bots).
    • This work will initially be console-based in the viewer until UI updates can be made and a viewer update with them deployed.
    • However, a bug has been found in the simulator code, which is currently being worked upon. The hope is this will be fixed without any delay to the code being rolled-out.
  • It was re-iterated that the next major new graphics project following glTF materials is likely to be support for Vulkan / MotenVK as the graphics API of preference (Windows / Mac). No time frame on when this work will commence, tho.
  • As I reported in November 2022, Atlassian has announced it will be restructuring how it licenses the Jira bug reporting product from 2024 onwards.
    • No decision on the direction LL will take as this change in made has as yet been taken, but there are ongoing internal discussions on options.
    • However, at this point it appears as if whatever route LL decides to take, they will need to review how public issues are raised and passed to them, etc.

 Next Meeting

  • Friday, April 14th, 2023.

2023 week 11: SL CCUG meeting summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Gothbrooke Forest, January 2023 – 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, March 16th, 2023 at 13:00 SLT.  These meetings are for discussion of work related to content creation in Second Life, including current work, upcoming work, and requests or comments from the community, together with viewer development work. They are chaired by Vir Linden, and dates and times can be obtained from the SL Public Calendar. Notes:
  • These meetings are conducted in mixed voice and text chat. Participants can use either to make comments / ask or respond to comments, but note that you will need Voice to be enabled to hear responses and comments from the Linden reps and other using it. If you have issues with hearing or following the voice discussions, please inform the Lindens at the meeting.
  • The following is a summary of the key topics discussed in the meeting, and is not intended to be a full transcript of all points raised.

glTF Materials and Reflection Probes

Project Summary

  • To provide support for PBR materials using the core glTF 2.0 specification Section 3.9 and using mikkTSpace tangents, including the ability to have PBR Materials assets which can be applied to surfaces and also traded / sold.
  • To provide support for reflection probes and cubemap reflections.
  • The overall goal is to provide as much support for the glTF 2.0 specification as possible.
  • In the near-term, glTF materials assets are materials scenes that don’t have any nodes / geometry, they only have the materials array, and there is only one material in that array.
    • It is currently to early to state how this might change when glTF support is expanded to include entire objects.
  • The project viewer is available via the Alternate Viewers page, but will only work on the following regions on Aditi (the Beta grid):  Materials1; Materials Adult and Rumpus Room 1 through 4.
  • Please also see previous CCUG meeting summaries for further background on this project.

Status

  • The PBR Materials project viewer updated to version 7.0.0.578792, on March 15th 2023. Note that this viewer will only function on the following Aditi (beta grid) regions: Materials1; Materials Adult and Rumpus Room 1 through 4.
  • Texture handling / management:
    • As a result of data gathered by the Lab revealing a lot of users only have around 1 GB of texture memory, Dave P (Runitai Linden) has been making another pass through texture handling to making loading faster and memory use more efficient.
    • VRAM management has been improved to more selectively release texture memory on systems which might otherwise “run low” on available VRAM.
    • The hope is these will reduce texture trhashing issues (texture blurring, clearing, blurring, clearing) in the future for those so affected.
  • Geenz Linden continues to work on the Mac side of the PBR work; Comic Linden is finalising UV treatment  and Bed Linden is working on the one remaining server-side bug the team is aware of and  is working on atmospherics and issues with rendering them in linear space.
  • Brad Linden is working on a series of bugs in PBR materials handling where editing via LSL or manually sees the updates (changes) dropped rather than applied in various edge-cases and situations.
    • The simulator-side fixes for this issues are in place; fixes within the viewer are awaiting inclusion in a upcoming viewer update.

In Brief

  • glTF format for geometry (mesh), animations, etc., this is something the Lab does want to do, but will take the form of follow-on project(s) from the current glTF PBR materials work.
    • supporting glTF geometry imports is seen as a major project as it will likely require handling of arbitrary hierarchies, which is not something SL currently handles – although it is acknowledged that once done, will offer a lot of benefits.
  • There  was a general discussion on terrain improvements. This is something that LL had been considering, but content creators attending the CCUG meeting favoured the PBR work and graphics updates, so the terrtain updates have just to be put back onto the road map. Where it would slot, is not clear, as the desire from creators is to see the glTF work continue with geometry import support, etc., as noted above.
  • Another major graphic project waiting in the wings is the introduction of support for the Vulkan graphics API / MoltenVK (for Mac). This would likely take priority over any significant terrain work.

Next Meeting

  • Thursday, March 30th, 2023.

2023 SL SUG meetings week #11 summary: “Ban the Bots” Simulator Update

Posted on by Inara Pey

Lyric, January 2023 – blog post

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, March 14th, 2023 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.

Server Deployments

  • On Tuesday, March 14th, the SLS Main channel servers were restarted without any deployment, leaving them on simulator version 577734.
  • On Wednesday, March 15th:
    • The BlueSteel & Magnum RC channels will receive the Estate Level Scripted Agent Controls (aka “Ban the Bots”)
      simulator update.
    • The Ferrari and LeTigre RC channels will be started without change.

There was no promotion to the Main SLS channel as a bug on the RC deployment made to Ferrari and LeTigre causing issues for some breedables.

Estate Level Scripted Agent Controls (aka “Ban the Bots”)

This is the simulator update referenced in the March 10th Lab Gab session – see: Lab Gab summary: Grumpity, Mojo & Patch – SL Mobile, land, bots & more – Bots and Policies).

  • The update includes a console variable that can be set by estate managers to either True or False. When set to True it will prevent Scripted Agents from entering regions in an estate.
  • This will be supported in time by a viewer UI update to allow the option to be managed more directly – but it will still be a while before this UI change surfaces in the viewer.
  • There will be a policy change update published soon which will further cover these changes and the operation of Scripted Agents.

Further changes have been suggested within the Lab – notably to traffic – but it has yet to be decided on whether / when these will be implemented.

Viewer Updates

There have been no official viewer updates to mark the start of the week, leaving the various pipelines as follows:

  • Release viewer: Maintenance Q(uality) viewer, version 6.6.9.577968 Thursday, February 2.
  • 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:
    • PBR Materials project viewer, version 7.0.0.578613, March 10 – This viewer will only function on the following Aditi (beta grid) regions: Materials1; Materials Adult and Rumpus Room 1 through 4.
    • Puppetry project viewer, version 6.6.8.576972, December 8, 2022.

In Brief

  • A general discussion on scripting – such as adding a TypeScript-style support for writing LSL to script memory, use of C#, use of containers for services, LL selling AWS services through SL for scripters / scripted services, etc. This took up most of the meeting, so please see the video for reference.
  • BUG-227303 – “collisions makes a script stop running and revert its mono status” – this bug is still awaiting work by LL.

2023 SL viewer release summaries week #10

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, March 12th, 2023

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: Maintenance Q(uality) viewer, version 6.6.9.577968, promoted Thursday, February 2, 2023- no change.
  • Release channel cohorts:
    • No updates.
  • Project viewers:
    • glTF / PBR Materials project viewer, version 7.0.0.578613, March 10 – This viewer will only function on the following Aditi (beta grid) regions: Materials1; Materials Adult and Rumpus Room 1 through 4.

LL Viewer Resources

Third-party Viewers

V6-style

V1-style

Mobile / Other Clients

  • No updates.

Additional TPV Resources

Related Links