The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, September 6th, 2022 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.
On Tuesday, September 6th, the simhosts on the Main SLS channel were re-started without any deployment, leaving them on simulator version 574550.
On Wednesday, September 7th, all simhosts on the RC channels will likewise be restarted without any deployment, leaving them on simulator release 574611.
Available Official Viewers
On Tuesday, September 6th, the Maintenance P (Preferences, Position and Paste) RC viewer updated to version 6.6.4.574750.
The rest of the current official viewers remain as:
Release viewer: version 6.6.3.574158 – formerly the Profiles RC viewer, dated August 18, promoted August 30 – NEW.
Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation
Updates from the week through to Sunday, September 4th, 2022
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 6.6.3.574158 – formerly the Profiles RC viewer, dated August 18, promoted August 30 – NEW.
Release channel cohorts::
Izarra Maintenance RC, version 6.6.4.574724, September 1.
Maintenance 3 RC viewer, version 6.6.4.574727, September 1.
Project viewers:
Puppetry project viewer, version 6.6.3.574545, issued on August 30.
My audio recording and chat log of the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting held on Thursday, September 1st 2022 at 13:00 SLT.
My notes and the video from the Third-Party Viewer Developer (TPVD) meeting held on Friday, September 2nd, 2002 at 13:00 SLT. The video is provided by Pantera – my thanks to her for recording it, and can be found at the end of this article. Times stamps to the video are included where relevant in the following notes.
Both meetings are chaired by Vir Linden, and their dates and times can be obtained from the SL Public Calendar.
This is a summary of the key topics discussed in the meeting and is not intended to be a full transcript.
Overall, the work on the viewer side of things – rendering in support of glTF 2.0 standards (and consistency of results when going from a tool like Substance Painter trough the uploader to displaying in SL) is now “near complete”.
It is hoped that it will “not be long” now before a project viewer is more generally available, although there is still additional back-end work to be completed, together with adding support for things like transparency support, ensuring PDR rendering works under linden Water, and similar.
Again, the focus of this work for the first pass is “core” glTF 2,0 support.
Ratified (under ISO) extensions may be up for inclusion in future enhancements to the capability.
Non-ratified extensions will not be up for inclusion in future updates.
In order for to be compliant with glTF, tangents are going to have to be generated in mikkTSpace, where normal maps are applied. This means that existing normal maps within Second Life / normal maps generated without using MikkTSpace may not look correct when rendered via the PBR pipe.
Runitai Linden noted that this project has been a valuable experiment in real-time collaboration between the LL dev and members of the community through the Discord server.
He expressed thanks to the TPV developers and the creators who have assisted the graphic team both in the development of the PBR rendering path and in helping with the reflections probe development, both in terms of code contributions and in helping to identify and address edge-case issues.
He further noted It is hoped more projects might by run this way.
Also pulled into this work are improvements to the texture handling (previously DRTVWR-559), This involves better core utilisation and VRAM usage.
For Windows, this work includes an API which:
More accurately track texture memory use in the viewer and report it back to the client operating system.
Should ensure all available video memory (i.e. that not being used by other applications) on Windows systems is used by the viewer prior to any texture paging occurring.
Works with both Intel and AMD hardware (the latter is important that the OpenGL extensions commonly used by TPVs to achieve a more efficient use of VRAM apparently no longer work correctly on AMD hardware).
For Mac OSX, the new method is to use internal accounting to attempt to track how much video memory is free and then estimate a value of available memory for textures from that.
This is because the operating will not simply report the amount of free video memory (only how much is installed), ruling out the use of a more scientific approach.
Once available in production viewers, these changes should mean those running systems with more recent video cards with decent amounts of free video memory should see much improved texture fetching and loading and see a reduction of textures being paged out to cache (the blurring / sharpening / blurring of textures) seen when the viewer thinks it is using all available / allowed video memory.
A further change is to specify the maximum amount of system memory the viewer can use for textures (16 GB, if available on 64-bit systems; 4GB on 32-bit systems).
The discussion on puppetry mentioned in the above articles will be the first such meeting, and if there is demand for it, there will be a similar meeting on Aditi on alternate Thursdays from September 8th onwards, to be held in the theatre on Aditi Castelet region.
These meetings will (initially) be very development focused rather than creator / user focused, given the overall status of the project.
It is advisable that attendees use the Puppetry project viewer when attending these meetings (available from the Alternate Viewers page), so that they might see any demonstration which may take place during meetings.
It’s important to notice that what has been made available is a very early stage “alpha” release.
The choice of the LLSD Event API Plug-in (LEAP) system means that it should be fairly easy to write third-party code to support capture devices (e.g. from Leap Motion through to (potentially) full body trackers – something Vru Linden is already tinkering with).
The Thursday meetings are being established to discuss precisely these kinds of opportunities and the potential for things like multi camera support, etc.
[TPV video: 31:09-33:24] Given the success of the real-tome collaboration with PBR / Reflection Probes, it is likely the Puppetry project will also follow a similar approach and utilise a Discord channel for discussion and contributions, etc., over and above the fortnightly meetings on Aditi.
This is something the Lab is considering, and has been looking for feedback from users on possible approaches. – see also the previous CCUG / TPVD meetings summary.
If / when this work goes ahead, it will also involve some general code and other technical tidying-up, including:
Reducing the number of different AIS APIs currently in use.
Removing deprecating (and eventually removing) UDP messaging paths for inventory, together with outdates inventory caps (particularly as the latter are superseded.
Puppetry demonstration via Linden Lab – see below. Demos video with the LL comment “We have some basic things working with a webcam and Second Life but there’s more to do before it’s as animated as we want.”
The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, August 30th, 2022 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.
On Tuesday, August 30th, the simhosts on the Main SLS channel were updated with simulator version 574550. This release fixes an issue with some system textures being unavailable – notably the default water map being absent, resulting in totally flat glassy water or view-transparent mode having everything look solid..
On Wednesday, August 31st, all simhosts on the RC channels will be updated with simulator release 574611,which includes the above fixes + additional fixes (release notes pending at the the time of writing.
Available Official Viewers
On Tuesday, August 30th:
The Profiles viewer, 6.6.3.574158, was updated to de facto release status.
The Puppetry project viewer, version 6.6.3.574545, was issued – see below.
The remaining official viewers stay listed as:
Release channel cohorts:
Maintenance P (Preferences, Position and Paste) RC viewer version 6.6.3.573877 issued August 15.
Izarra Maintenance RC, version 6.6.3.573920, August 15.
Maintenance 3 RC viewer, version 6.6.3.573882, August 5.
Project viewers:
Love Me Render (LMR) 6 graphics improvements project viewer 6.6.2.573263, July 21.
Performance Floater project viewer, version 6.5.4.571296, May 10.
Previously referred to as “avatar expressiveness”, Puppetry is intended to provide a means by which avatars can mimic physical world actions by their owners through tools such as a webcam and using technologies like inverse kinematics and the LLSD Event API Plug-in (LEAP) system.
We are excited about Puppetry’s potential to change the way we interact inside Second Life. For example, using a webcam to track your face and hands could allow your avatar to mimic your face animations and finger movement, or more natural positioning of the avatar’s hands and feet against in-world objects might also be possible. Alternative hardware could be used to feed information into Second Life to animate your avatar – a game controller or mocap equipment. There’s a lot to explore and try, and we invite the Second Life community to be involved in exploring the direction of this feature.
– from the official blog post
Note that this capability is still very much experimental / in development and is not feature-complete. Also, the following should be noted:
The Puppetry viewer is very much experimental, and is required to view any puppetry animations – viewers without the supporting code will not show them.
The back-end support for the capability is only available on Aditi (the Beta grid) and within the following regions: Bunraku, Marionette, and Castelet.
No other special needs beyond the project viewer are required to “see” Puppetry animations. However, to use the capability to animate your own avatar and broadcast the results will take more work.
For further information, check out the documentation links below:
Again, please remember this is very much a “alpha” implementation of Puppetry:
Linden Lab is looking for feedback from the community in determining potential use cases and onward development.
The Lab will be hosting an open discussion on Puppetry on Thursday, September 8th, and 13:00PM SLT. This will take place at the Puppetry theatre in the Aditi region of Castelet.
Please refer to the video for further discussion on the capability.
Update, September 1st
The discussion on puppetry mentioned in the above articles will be the first such meeting, and if there is demand for it, there will be a similar meeting on Aditi on alternate Thursdays from September 8th onwards, to be held in the theatre on Aditi Castelet region.
These meetings will (initially) be very development focused rather than creator / user focused, given the overall status of the project.
It is advisable that attendees use the Puppetry project viewer when attending these meetings (available from the Alternate Viewers page), so that they might see any demonstration which may take place during meetings.
Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation
Updates from the week through to Sunday, August 28th, 2022
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 6.6.2.573358 – formerly the Maintenance 2 RC viewer, dated August 1, promoted August 4 – NEW.
The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, August 23rd, 2022 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.
On Tuesday, August 23rd, the simhosts on the Main SLS channel were updated with simulator version 574216. This includes the new LSL functions:
llReplaceEnvironment() – a scripted means to replace the environment in a parcel or a region, either for a single elevation track or the entire environment.
llSetEnvironment() – a scripted function to override the environmental settings for a region or a parcel. The owner of the script must have permission to modify the environment on the parcel or be an estate manager to change the entire region.
On Wednesday, August 24th, all simhost on the TC channel will be restarted without any deployment, leaving the also on simulator version 574216.
Available Official Viewers
On Monday, August 22nd, the Mesh Optimiser and Copy / Paste project viewers were both finally withdraw from the Alternate viewers download page, leaving the available official viewers as:
Release viewer: version 6.6.2.573358 – formerly the Maintenance 2 RC viewer, dated August 1, promoted August 4 – no change.
Profiles RC viewer updated to version 6.6.3.574158, on August 18<.
Maintenance P (Preferences, Position and Paste) RC viewer version 6.6.3.573877 issued August 15.
Izarra Maintenance RC, version 6.6.3.573920, August 15.
Maintenance (N)omayo RC viewer, version 6.6.3.573882, August 5.
Project viewers:
Love Me Render (LMR) 6 graphics improvements project viewer 6.6.2.573263, July 21.
Performance Floater project viewer, version 6.5.4.571296, May 10.
In Brief
HTTP discussion: a fair amount of the meeting was given over to HTTP which touched upon:
HTTP/2 multiplexing / pipelining (to replace the current HTTP 1.1 pipelining (which in turn touched upon TLS updates and Curl version updates) – in short, something the Lab is looking towards, but not on the immediate horizon.
The potential to obtain headers from an HTTP response using llGetHTTPHeader, which itself incorporated discussions of requirements, risk in exposing SL to returns of strings with uncontrolled lengths such that a verbose web site might cause a LSL stack overflow,
I’m actually hardly the best place to relay the ins and outs of the discussions, so I’ll refer you to the video for more.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 