Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation
Updates from the week through to Sunday, September 11th, 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 – No change.
Release channel cohorts::
Izarra Maintenance RC, version 6.6.4.574885, September 9.
Maintenance P (Preferences, Position and Paste) RC viewer version 6.6.4.574750, September 6.
On Friday, September 9th, 2022 (PDT), the Firestorm team released version 6.6.3 of their viewer – the first such release since indicating they would be stepping up the cadence of releases with more in the way of “maintenance” cycles in order to better keep place with updates and improvements coming out of Linden Lab with the core viewer code.
Whilst technically a maintenance release, version 6.6.3 is significant for Firestorm users as it includes the Lab’s Performance Improvements code, which for this user yielded noticeable performance improvements in terms of general FPS. In addition, there are a number of additional updates from both the Lab and the Firestorm team.
As per usual, this article is a not a full blow-by-blow breakdown of absolutely everything in this release, but it does include notes on some of the more significant updates and fixes people are liable to find useful, and some general notes.
For a complete breakdown of changes, please see the official release notes for Firestorm 6.6.3.
Sidebar: some may have received a premature notification of this article, together with an invalid URL. My apologies for any confusion: I boobed – sorry!
Installation
There is no need to perform a clean install with this release if you do not wish to.
Do, however, make sure you back-up all your settings safely so you can restore them after installing 6.6.3.
Linden Lab Updates
Firestorm 6.6.3.67470 is fully merged up to the 6.6.2 Linden code-base, plus some cherry-picked fixes from upstream, per the notes below.
Edit Shape menu previously included every attachment, slowing down preview thumbnails significantly. With this update, only rigged attachments are displayed, in addition to prior avatar preview thumbnails .
Assorted fixes and UI tweaks.
Improved mouse responsiveness in situations where previously it would over-react to inputs.
This update should see reduced image decoding time, decreased frame stalls and decreased initial font rendering time, and the viewer should feel generally more responsive.
These changes include updates to Vsync (vertical synchronisation):
Vsync can now be toggled on / off via Preferences → Graphics → Hardware Settings.
When enabled, Vsync will synchronise (/cap) frame rates to your monitor screen refresh rate (e.g. if you have a 60 Hz screen, FPS will be capped at 60 fps) and should deliver smoother game-play.
The Performance Improvements viewer also includes the MeshOptimizer Project .
By default, this replaces obsolete GLOD’s mesh simplification in the mesh uploader with the newer and more powerful MeshOptimizer package to provide better level of detail (LOD) modelling during the upload process.
Note that as an option, Firestorm also retains the GLOD capability – see below for more.
This update adds the Tracy Profiler to the viewer to help developers interested in or working on performance improvements. For developers/self-compilers:
Running autobuild configured with –tracy will enable the telemetry.
At any time while running the telemetry recording can be disabled/minimised by deactivating it using the Developer menu entry profiling/telemetry → Profiling .
It contains no other user-visible changes.
Firestorm Updates and Improvements
UI Updates and Improvements
Notecards – Font Style, Size and Colour
Firestorm 6.6.3 brings the following capabilities to Notecards:
Set the font style and size:
Style: one of San Serif, Monospace, Scripting or Cascadia Code.
Size: one of Monospace, Scripting, Cascadia Code, Small, Medium or Large.
These can be set via Preferences → User Interface → Font → Notecard Editor Font drop-downs.
The new Notecard font options in Firestorm’s Preferences
Set the colour of: a notecard background, text, cursor and highlighted text.
Set via Preferences → Colors → Miscellaneous → Notecard Colors .
Note: these setting will only apply to notecards you view in Firestorm. Other users will see the notecards you send in whatever font / colours (if the latter can be set should the FS code be adopted by other TPVs) set within their viewer.
Other UI Updates
Inventory:
It is now possible to open Inventory folders in their own floaters. Right click an inventory folder → Show in new window.
The selection count is now given when deleting multiple items from inventory (FIRE-31816).
With Firestorm 6.6.3 you can open an inventory folder in its own floater
The Create Landmark floater (menu bar → World → Landmark this Place) will now open centred on the viewer window by default.
360-degree snapshot floater should now open at last-used quality setting in a session.
Region Details → Region should now:
Show the correct length of the region name text (no truncations).
Report the correct grid position for the region.
Avatar and Appearance
Avatar:
The avatar should now turn the full 180-degrees when editing appearance (FIRE-31959 / BUG-232502).
All mesh bodies/objects should now show in the shape editor previews (FIRE-31966 / BUG-232503).
Animesh attachments should no longer show in shape editor previews.
Appearance:
Attempted fix for mesh attachments sometimes vanishing after teleports which should either fix / reduce the number of cases where this may occur (FIRE-31906).
Update to the warning given when attaching rigged meshes to HUD.
The new message reads: “An attachment named ”[NAME]“ contains rigged mesh but is attached to the HUD point ”[HUD POINT]“,/a>
Attaching rigged meshes to HUD was never supposed to be supported, per BUG-232489.
As noted above, Linden Lab introduced Mesh Optimizer as a new way to generate improved level of detail (LOD) models for mesh uploads. However, this can lead to higher upload costs and can cause issues in maintaining UV layout. To help prevent issues Firestorm 6.6.3 retains GLOD alongside of Mesh Optimizer.
To this end the Firestorm mesh uploader presents the following options when specifying a model’s LOD:
Load from file: Manually upload .DAE files for models at any level of detail. This enables you to control how your model looks at each level of detail, preserving key visual features that the automated algorithms may otherwise distort. If the viewer could “auto-detect” lower LOD models when it first loaded the model, these will be shown in the corresponding LOD “slots” here.
Generate Auto: Generate a new model at the currently previewed level of detail based on the model you uploaded. This method currently defaults to using the sloppy method and tries to set a target number of triangles based upon the high LOD. This is the method applied when first selecting your model if no auto-detected LODs are found.
Generate Precise: Uses the newer method (Mesh Optimizer) to construct a LOD model. This is more accurate than the “sloppy” method but will result in a more detailed model. Target triangle settings and thresholds are very loosely adhered to.
Generate Sloppy: Uses the newer method (Mesh Optimizer) to construct a LOD model. The “sloppiness” relates to the accuracy of the result compared with the original. Target triangle settings and thresholds are very loosely adhered to .
Generate Reliable: Uses the older method (GLOD) to construct a LOD model. This method is what we have been used to in the past; it gives reliable results based upon the target settings.
The “remaining capacity” LI count has been returned to the Edit / Build floater.
Flip texture scale buttons should no longer “magically jump” when switching texture modes.
The animation preview window should now have a link to the correct wiki page (FIRE-31836).
Full bright rigged meshes should now correctly display as full bright.
Full bright transparent objects should no longer render as solid when using highlight transparent – CTRL-ALT-T (FIRE-31986).
100% transparent objects on HUDs should now show when highlighting transparent – CTRL-ALT-T (FIRE-31917).
The Firestorm Bridge can now display object rez time with the Script info in extended info mode (enabled via Preferences → Firestorm → Build 2 → Enable extended script info details).
Other Updates of Note + Key Fixes
Third-Party Library + RLV Updates
FMOD Studio updated to version to 2.02.07.
Updated Collada with a C++17 compatible version.
Firestorm 6.6.3 is running Restrained Love API RLV v3.4.3 / RLVa v2.4.2.67470, and includes a fix for focus going unexpectedly to menu bar after calling llMapDestination with “@showworldmap=n” (FIRE-31920).
Linux Updates
3p Library Updates:
Boost updated to boost-1.72-linux64-222121224.
Collada updated to colladadom-2.3.222130404-linux64-222130404.
Curl updated to curl-7.81.0.222121724-linux64-222121724.
Libxml updated to libxml2-2.9.4.222130358-linux64-222130358.
Meshoptimizer updated to meshoptimizer-0.16.222121104-linux64-222121104.
Minizip updated to minizip_ng-3.0.2.222121607-linux64-222121607.
New Simple DirectMedia Layer-2 (SDL2) support for Linux to future-proof Firestorm, providing better low-level access to audio, keyboard, mouse, joystick, and graphics hardware via OpenGL and Direct3D. See the SDL2 Documentation.
The Linux viewer now uses xdg-open ahead of x-www-browser, as requested in FIRE-31929.
OpenSim Updates
There are no OpenSim updates with Firestorm 6.6.3.
Key Fixes
FIRE-31852 – Modified hotkey gestures should no longer play from any window.
FIRE-31823 / FIRE-31648 – torn-off menus should now correctly update enabled/visible state
FIRE-31882, FIRE-31896 / BUG-232463 – The main menu bar should no longer become the focus when minimising docked floater or after changing graphics preset
FIRE-31913 – CTRL+Tab should now correctly switch to the active floater.
Crash fixes:
FIRE-31818 – Firestorm should not longer crash when inspecting a Linden tree.
FIRE-31942 – Firestorm should no longer crash when taking a 360 snapshot when “Improve graphics speed” is enabled – note that this may mean that slower machines timeout during a 360 snapshot, so a new debug setting FSUseCoRoFor360Capture – Use co-routine to extract 360 photos – has been added. By default, this is set to False to prevent crashing. Setting it to True may result in crashes.
Again, please refer to the 6.6.3 release notes for the full list of fixes with this release.
Feedback
As noted towards the top of this article, Firestorm 6.6.3 is the first release of the viewer since the Firestorm team moved towards a faster release cadence, allowing the viewer to pretty much reached parity with the official viewer, which should ease matters of parity going forward, assuming a 6-8 week release cadence can be maintained – and hopefully, it will be.
Probably the most significant inclusion in this release is that of the Lab’s updated viewer code and thread handling, intended to improve general performance. As I noted at the time this code reached release status in the official viewer, this code gave me an average boost of around 20 fps compared to a version without the improvements; in comparing Firestorm 6.5.6 and 6.6.3, I noted a similar fps boost. This is also the first viewer I’ve ready played around with the updated Vsync functionality, and have found that it does offer a far smoother experience for me when flycamming.
Elsewise, I’ve not had a a lot of time to test this release, but have found it to be stable during my personal use, so those updating may want to keep an eye on the Firestorm in-world support groups and the Jira for info on any possible issues.
The following notes cover the key points from the Web User Group (WUG) meeting, held on Wednesday, September 7th, 2022.
These meetings are generally held in-world on the first Wednesday of the month, with dates and venue details available via the SL public calendar. They are usually chaired by Reed Linden, who is the Lab’s Product Manager for the Second Life front-end web properties (Marketplace, secondlife.com, the sign-up pages, the Lab’s corporate pages, etc.).
A video of the meeting, courtesy of Pantera, can be found embedded at the end of this article (my thanks to her as always!), and subject timestamps to the relevant points in the video are provided. Again, the following is a summary of key topics / discussions, not a full transcript of everything mentioned.
A complete re-write of every route by which users can obtain and hold land, from Premium (+Plus) Linden Homes, obtaining Mainland (incl. Abandoned Land), and private island regions, and renting from private estates.
This involves not only a re-write of existing land-related web pages (again, as examples, the Premium Linden Homes selection page, the Mainland auction page, the region purchase pages (which date from 2005!), etc.), and the development of completely new pages related to land “ownership”.
The work is being carried out using technology that is “new to Linden Lab”.
Initially, this work will not involve any changes to Land tools within the viewer UI. However as the project progresses, it will see changes being made to the viewer’s land management tools, etc., as well.
The first element of the land work to be user-facing will be the new Land Portal, which is expected to be made available in the next few weeks.
This will provide access to land.secondlife.com and offer a “preview” of what form the new “land journey” will take.
[Video: 15:36-17:15] Following the work on the Land Portal, the focus will likely either be on updating the Linden Homes pages OR the price region purchase pages.
Once the Portal is up and running, the Lab will be monitoring where people go on accessing it, which may influence the order in which the land-related web properties are updated.
Secondlife.com Beyond Land
The “land journey” work is the first phase in a larger project to completely update all of the secondlife.com web pages and portals, and which will also eventually encompass Marketplace as well.
Some of the thematic elements of this work can already be seen in places such as join.secondlife.com.
The overall aim of this work is to offer a modern look and feel to the Second Life web presence which is both easier to maintain / update and allows for new capabilities / functionality to be more easily added.
Marketplace Search
This work is to leverage all of the recent work put into “regular” such (e.g. the relevance engine, etc.) for Marketplace Search.
The current focus is on importing all the infrastructure work carried out for Search into the Marketplace search capability, including the framework for the relevance engine.
However, rather than using the current relevance engine, a version specific to Marketplace searches will be built for better optimisation.
The updated Search will likely include additional search options.
The overhaul of the search tools is seen as a further step that will better enable the use of Styles (i.e. single listings with multiple variances (e.g. colours) of the same product), although the first element of this work is liable to be the “next” significant release for the MP.
All of this work is being seen as a lead-in to the potential complete ground-up build and phased implementation of a completely new Marketplace, with 2023 being designated “the year of Marketplace”.
The New User eXperience (NUX) has been identified by the lab’s Executive Team as a major area of focus for the at least next 12 months.
Some of the Lab’s work in this are has been previewed in terms of the upcoming “all mesh” New Starter Avatars (see here and here), but LL recognises more work needs to be done within the NUX as a while.
Questions asked at the meeting (from a Web Team perspective) were:
Are there “silver bullets” existing users think might improve the overall NUX from sign-up to engagement?
Is there something that could be implemented that would immediately change the NUX to improve retention?
What specifically could be done on the web side of things to present a more engaging NUX to incoming users?
Have people specific feedback from recent new users (e.g. those whom they may have asked to come try out SL) which might feed into thinking about improving the NUX (e.g. worries users have expressed in having to download and install the viewer as an “unknown” piece of software, issues of people being pressured into believing they are using the “wrong” viewer in favour of another, etc?
This is liable to be a major topic of conversation at the next WUG, so those with constructive ideas, particularly (but not exclusively) on the web side of NUX, are invited to attend.
Premium Subscriptions – Looking Beyond Premium Plus
Premium Plus take-up is still viewed as being “very successful” to the point the Lab is now considering ideas for other possible Premium subscription options, which may include things like:
“Premium Lite” – which might offer some of the options available in Premium, but not all of them, and at a lower price.
“Premium a-la Carte” – which might offer users the ability to pick and chose at least some of the options available to the current Premium / Plus offerings, each with its own fee, and thus pay a subscription based on the options selected.
No timeline on if / when any new subscription options might arise, what they might comprise or the pricing involved, as this is only in the “discussion” phase within the Lab, but feedback is being taken through the WUG meetings.
In Brief
Multi-factor authentication: moving beyond just the use of a third-party authentication tool (Google Authenticator / Microsoft Authenticator) to offer additional means to complete the MFA process is unlikely to come before 2023.
A further request was made to de-couple Homestead “ownership” from having to hold at least one Full region. While not entirely ruled out for future consideration, there are some very practical considerations around this idea that need to be considered:
One of these is the heavy use of Homesteads by private estates and the potential of severely damaging the market if Homesteads were to be de-coupled from Full region holding at the same price.
Another is the question of whether, if offered at a higher tier than when coupled to Full region holdings ($109 a month), what that tier would be in order to avoid too severe a disruption to the current land market.
Lower mesh upload fees for Premium Plus: this has been indicated as a future Premium Plus benefit. However, it is proving difficult to implement because unlike the other fees for uploads, etc., mesh does not have a “one fee fits all” structure – the cost varies in accordance with things like model complexity, LODs, etc., and injecting a fee reduction based on a percentage calculation into the process is proving to be a more complex task than imagined.
Eliminating store names appearing in Marketplace searches using item names: this is a fix currently being worked on as a part of weighting changes to search (e.g. store names and user names will not carry as much weight as item names).
Conversely, when searching for store names, these should have a higher weighting as the initial MP search updates are deployed.
SL Wiki: it was restated that, outside of various “official” pages, the SL wiki is no longer “officially” supported or subject to updated for a number of reasons.
Feature requests:
BUG-232355 “Group Name Change” given the desire to reduce the proliferation of Groups in SL and the load they can place on various back-end services, this has been a long-running request, now accepted by the Lab.
BUG230941 “Add a store blocklist to the Marketplace” – will possibly be amongst the “Soon ™” Marketplace updates.
BUG-231257 “Incorporate 360 Snapshots in to the Destination Guide” – is viewed as a more nuanced request requiring interaction across different services which may make implementation difficult, but the request has not been ruled out.
Next Meeting
Wednesday, October 5th, 2022. Venue and time per top of this summary.
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.
On Friday, September 9th, 2022 (PDT), the Firestorm team released version 6.6.3 of their viewer – the first such release since indicating they would be stepping up the cadence of releases with more in the way of “maintenance” cycles in order to better keep place with updates and improvements coming out of Linden Lab with the core viewer code.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 