On Tuesday, March 31st, the majority of the grid (the SLS “main” channel) updated to simulator version 538914, containing simulator support for the upcoming mobile companion applications (see: Second Life companion app: mini update, March 2020).
On Wednesday, April 1st, RC update 539377 should be deployed, containing the llTargetedEmail() function, and EEP Fixes.
llTargetedEmail() Concerns
The llTargetedEmail() function has caused concern among users, partially due to a lack of any forewarning to users. Specific concerns that have been raised since the deployment thread was published, with concerns such as the following being raised:
Example then. If someone make 10 alts, then get an item created by me that is modifiable (from Marketplace for example) and drop a script with TARGETED_EMAIL_ROOT_CREATOR in it that sends mails in loop… Even with 20 seconds delay that’s 3 emails per minute. 180 emails per hour. Per user. With 10 alts it’s almost 2000 messages per hour on my mailbox. Because owner of said alts can spam my mailbox via Lab’s servers without even knowing my SL-only email address for getting emails from grid.
In response to seeing these issues, Oz Linden stated at the SUG meeting:
That function was added as part of an ongoing effort to clean up how we send emails from SL… we wanted a way to send some of the emails that creators might want without having to have people put email addresses into scripts. It sends to whatever address you’ve verified. The concerns about the ROOT_CREATOR version are being discussed; exactly what we’ll do about that remains to be seen, but we’ll try hard to make it difficult to abuse.
In Brief
BUG-228399 “Script deletion disables vehicle controls until re-rez” appears to be an issue arising from a recent simulator update. The cause for the problem isn’t currently known, but the report has been imported by the Lab to their internal Jira for investigation.
BUG-228405 “Residents attempting to log into any region which use an SL Experience for access (Key Experience) get sent to welcome hub despite having allowed the SL Experience”. This appears to be the result of a region /parcel with access control via an experience removing an avatar that is being logged-in prior to all of the avatar’s data (including its permission to be in the region / parcel) having loaded – thus causing the region to assume avatar is not supposed to be there. It is an issue known to the Lab.
The following notes were taken from my audio recording and chat log of the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting held on Thursday, March 26th 2020 at 13:00 SLT. These meetings are chaired by Vir Linden, and agenda notes, meeting SLurl, etc, are available on the Content Creation User Group wiki page.
SL Viewers
Following the promotion of the Premium RC viewer in week #12, the following viewers were merged up to that code base on March 25th:
At the time this report was written, the rest of the SL viewer pipelines remain as:
Current Release version version 6.3.8.538264, dated March 12, promoted March 18th. Formerly the Premium RC viewer.
Release channel cohorts):
EEP RC viewer updated to version 6.4.0.538823, March 20.
Zirbenz Maintenance RC viewer, version 6.3.9.538719, issued March 19.
Project viewers:
Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, December 9, 2019.
Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.532999, November 22, 2019.
Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.3.2.530836, September 17, 2019. Covers the re-integration of Viewer Profiles.
360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, July 16, 2019.
Environment Enhancement Project
Project Summary
A set of environmental enhancements (e.g. the sky, sun, moon, clouds, and water settings) to be set region or parcel level, with support for up to 7 days per cycle and sky environments set by altitude. It uses a new set of inventory assets (Sky, Water, Day), and includes the ability to use custom Sun, Moon and cloud textures. The assets can be stored in inventory and traded through the Marketplace / exchanged with others, and can additionally be used in experiences.
Is now “really close” to be ready for release, with all of the graphic team working hard to eliminate the last of the issues that have been seen as blocker to moving the project to formal release status.
There may only be two remaining blockers that need to be cleared.
ARCTan
Project Summary
An attempt to re-evaluate object and avatar rendering costs to make them more reflective of the actual impact of rendering both. The overall aim is to try to correct some inherent negative incentives for creating optimised content (e.g. with regards to generating LOD models with mesh), and to update the calculations to reflect current resource constraints, rather than basing them on outdated constraints (e.g. graphics systems, network capabilities, etc).
As of January 2020 ARCTan has effectively been split:
Immediate viewer-side changes, primarily focused on revising the Avatar Rendering Cost (ARC) calculations and providing additional viewer UI so that people can better visibility and control to seeing complexity. This work can essentially be broken down as:
Collect data.
Update ARC function.
Design and provide tool within the viewer UI (i.e. not a pop-up) that presents ARC information in a usable manner and lets users make decisions about rendering / performance.
Work on providing in-world object rendering costs (LOD models, etc.) which might affect Land Impact will be handled as a later tranche of project work, after the avatar work.
The belief is that “good” avatar ARC values can likely be used as a computational base for these rendering calculations.
Current Status
Vir is still trying to resolve the appearance / Bake Service issue he thought he might have a fix for.that has been causing problems with ARCTan testing. This has yet to be QA tested. Should it pass, then it will mean internal testing can resume.
Project Muscadine
Project Summary
Currently: offering the means to change an Animesh size parameters via LSL.
Current Status
Still technically on hold, but Vir has been looking at what will be required to get what had been worked up back up-to-date This work, when it can be tackled will include:
Merging the project viewer up to the current release viewer / EEP.
Updating the server code with all of the updates made to the simulator code, which is described as a “fairly major” piece of work.
General Discussion
LL is continuing to see a rise in Second life use as a result of SARS-Cov-2, and the majority of the services are handling things well.
There is a report that larger Animesh objects do not LOD (level of distance) swap gracefully if the viewer cache has been heavily used (e.g. as a result of going to an even), even if the Animesh has been previously cached. The only ways to clear the issue appear to be re-logging or clearing cache.
This is not a known issue or something LL have seen, and a Jira has been requested on the problem.
There is an issue with the LL viewer getting confused between RC viewers when updating to a more recent RC update. This is a known issue and is being investigated.
There was a discussion over animation priorities and expanding the current range of priorities (with one suggestion they should go as high as 15!).
An advantage with a greater range is that in theory allow for more granular control of animation types (e.g. 0-1 for default system animations; 2 for general AO animations (standing, walking, running, flying); 3-4 for common AO animations (e.g sitting); 5 for “speciality / custom” AOs; 6 for “must run in all cases”.
The flip side to this is the issue of creators just opting for the higher-end settings “because they are there”.
The ability to dynamically set animations via LSL was also re-mentioned and discussed.
Vir noted that were LL to look at implemented the dynamic application of animations, they might also look at priorities and priority ranges.
A further request was made for a “standalone”alpha channel for materials (separate to the one pre-baked into the diffuse texture channel. This is something that has been requested in the past (e.g. see: BUG-224928), and something not under current consideration.
The following notes were taken at the Simulator User Group meeting held on Tuesday, March 24th. Not a lot to report as an equinox party took priority at the meeting.
On Tuesday, March 24th, the majority of the grid (the SLS “main” channel) updated to simulator version 538605, containing fixes for object_rez timing in scripts.
This update does not change the on_rez delay, but adds code that will ensure that the object_rez messages are not lost.
An RC deployment is pending for Wednesday, March 25th, but details were TBA at the time of writing this summary, so please refer to the deployment thread for updates
SL Viewer
There have been no viewer updates to mark the start of the week to leave the official viewer pipelines as follows:
Current Release version version 6.3.8.538264, dated March 12, promoted March 18th. Formerly the Premium RC viewer.
Release channel cohorts:
EEP RC viewer updated to version 6.4.0.538823, March 20th.
Zirbenz Maintenance RC viewer, version 6.3.9.538719, issued March 19th.
Love Me Render RC viewer, version 6.3.7.536179, February 10th.
Camera Presets RC viewer, version 6.3.6.535138, January 24th.
Project viewers:
Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, December 9th, 2019.
Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.532999, November 22nd, 2019.
Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.3.2.530836, September 17th, 2019. Covers the re-integration of Viewer Profiles.
360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, July 16th, 2019.
The following notes are taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on March 20th, 2020. These meetings are generally held every other week, unless otherwise noted in any given summary. The embedded video is provided to Pantera – my thanks to her for recording and providing it. Time stamps are included with the notes will open the video at the point(s) where a specific topic is discussed.
The Premium RC viewer,version 6.3.8.538264 dated March 12th, updated to de facto release status on Wednesday, March 18th.
The Zirbenz Maintence RC viewer, version 6.3.9.538719, was issued on Thursday, March 19th.
The EEP RC viewer updated to version 6.4.0.538823 on Friday, March 20th.
The rest of the upcoming official viewer remain unchanged as:
Release channel cohorts:
Love Me Render RC viewer, version 6.3.7.536179, February 10.
Camera Presets RC viewer, version 6.3.6.535138, January 24.
Project viewers:
Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, December 9, 2019.
Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.532999, November 22, 2019.
Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.3.2.530836, September 17, 2019. Covers the re-integration of Viewer Profiles.
360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, July 16, 2019.
General Viewer Notes
Premium Viewer and Future Viewer Blocking
The Premium RC viewer contains new code to specifically handle benefits information related to benefits / limits applied to accounts based on subscription level (Basic, Premium or the upcoming Premium Plus).
Previously, this information can from a variety of sources, with some also hard-coded into the viewer, which made management of benefit changes etc., difficult.
With the future launch of Premium Plus and multiple benefits / limitations and associated values across multiple SL account types, all of this information will be provided directly by the server to the viewer at log-in, to make the on-going maintenance of such benefits and values (including the addition of new benefits / values) as used by the viewer easier to implement and manage.
Until Premium Plus goes live (there is no date at present for when this will happen, other than after Name Changes has been deployed), the changes in this viewer should not impact users. However, TPVs are being asked to adopt the code as soon as they can.
[0:39-0:54] At some point after Premium Plus has been implemented, Linden Lab will be blocking older viewers that do not have this code update, in order to encourage users to switch to viewer that utilise the code.
This step is being taken to ensure the viewer presents accurate information to users about their benefits / fees / limitations, rather than being provided with out-of-date information that is hard-coded into their viewer.
[18:42-20:10] Benefits Service log-in failure messages: some people may have encountered an intermittent log-in failure messages similar to the one shown below over the past couple of weeks (I first encountered the problem on March 7th, 2020, others have been encountering it as recently as March 19th).
Benefits Service log-in failure, March 7th, 2020
The problems have apparently been due to “super brief” outages (and automatic recoveries) with the benefits service, which the Lab is still investigating for a root cause.
This is the type of message people will eventually see when trying to log-in to SL on viewers that do not have the code currently in the Premium RC viewer, once the Premium Plus service is live, and the switch to using the new benefits information service has been made.
Depending on its time in an RC cohort and the nature of any issues found, EEP version 6.3.8.538264 could be the final version of this viewer, and destined for promotion to release status in the next few weeks.
It is unlikely any promotion will occur during week #13 (commencing Monday, March 23rd), because a) the viewer requires time in its cohort to check for issues / crash rates, etc.; and b) the week #12 promotion of the Premium RC viewer.
If the viewer performs well, and no significant issues are found with it or with EEP in general, it would seem likely the view will be promoted some time in the two weeks after week #13.
However, if problems remain with EEP, it is possible the tools update viewer (see below), when available, might be fast-tracked for promotion ahead of EEP.
The previous iteration of the EEP viewer reportedly had one of the lowest crash rates for any LL viewer.
The love Me Render RC viewer is unlikely to be promoted until some time after EEP has reached de facto release status, so as not to have two blocks of rendering changes released one atop the other.
The Camera Presets RC viewer has an update, and should be appearing shortly, once merged with the new release viewer code. This will also not be promoted prior to EEP.
The first public viewer using the updated viewer build tools (VS 2017 and a recent version of Xcode for Mac and which uses the new Github repositories) is going through its “last massive rebuild”, and an RC version is expected to be made available in week #13.
This viewer will be functionality identical to the release viewer; there are no UI or other changes to it, other than bug fixes required by the move to the newer build tools.
This build has yet to address the notarising MAC application issue that results in warnings being issued by OS X “Catalina”. However, LL recognise this issue needs to be addressed , and will be doing so.
Depending on how this viewer fairs in RC compared to the EEP viewer, it might be fast-tracked for promotion to de facto release ahead of EEP.
[10:23-11:04] The Legacy Profiles RC viewer has a bug where under some circumstances it will display the profile web feed information in error, which needs to be addressed before the viewer progresses further (the web feed to the viewer will be turned off from the back-end once the Legacy Profiles viewer is promoted to release status).
In Brief
[17:15-17:36] There are some inventory operations (e.g moving a folder, renaming a folder, etc.) that are under UDP. There is a plan to move all such operations to AIS (HTTP), but this work will likely not be tackled until after the work on the cloud uplift has been completed.
[17:39-18:18] Because of the uplift work, and outside of major projects such as EEP, Name Changes and Premium Plus, the number of server / back-end changes that the Lab make will be “quite constrained” over the course of the next 12 months or so.
[20:15-21:53] The texture caching work in the viewer in on-going, alongside all other viewer-side work, as none of this conflicts with the cloud uplift work.
The first step will be to re-implement the VFS in a “simpler, cleaner way”.
After this, work will extend into revising the texture cache.
Also, “behind” the texture cache work, there is further work on texture fetching via HTTP2.
[22:02-26:25 (inlc. text chat)] BUG-227179 “All offline inventory offers from scripted objects are STILL lost” – LL are still “trying to figure out” the cause of this long-term issue. Firestorm reverted the problem, and requests have been made for LL to do the same, but the Lab would rather “fix” the problem – which doesn’t entirely help those who are victim to inventory loss resulting from it.
On Tuesday, March 17th, the majority of the grid (the SLS “main” channel) updated to simulator version 538236, containing internal fixes, as previously deployed to a selection of RC servers.
An RC deployment is pending for Wednesday, March 18th, but details were TBA at the time of writing this summary. This update will apparently replace versions 538236, and 538222, both previously deployed to RC servers (March 11th).
I believe I was able to isolate what was going on with object rez and I think I have a solution for it. It should roll on Magnum.
This deployment should be part of the RC rollouts on Wednesday, March 17th.
SL Viewer
There have been no viewer updates to mark the start of the week to leave the official viewer pipelines as follows:
Current Release version 6.3.7.535996, formerly the Yorsh Maintenance RC, dated February 7, promoted February 20th.
Release channel cohorts:
Premium RC viewer, version 6.3.8.538264, March 12.
EEP RC viewer updated to version 6.4.0.536347, February 11.
Love Me Render RC viewer, version 6.3.7.536179, February 10.
Camera Presets RC viewer, version 6.3.6.535138, January 24.
Project viewers:
Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, December 9, 2019.
Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.532999, November 22, 2019.
Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.3.2.530836, September 17, 2019. Covers the re-integration of Viewer Profiles.
360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, July 16, 2019.
iOS Client
Simulator update 538222 (March 10th) saw the first deployment of code specifically in support of the upcoming iOS client, suggesting that the indicated testing period for the client may be approaching (although there are no details as yet on what form any such testing will take, and / or if users will be asked to offer feedback).
The last detailed summary I have for the client can bee found in Second Life iOS companion app – mini update, and a key bullet point summary for the initial release could be said to be:
The app should initially be regarded as more of a communicator / companion app than a fully-rounded client:
It will provide a log-in option, and chat options (e.g. IM, group chat). Local chat will not initially be supported.
It will not present you with an in-world location, nor will your avatar rez in-world.
Seen as being useful for merchants / business owners to maintain contact with customers when away from their viewer.
In theory, the app should work with both iPhones and iPads, although there may be some configuration differences.
Over time it will be enhanced – but additional capabilities are still TBD.
On Tuesday, March 10th, the majority of the grid (the SLS “main” channel) updates to server release 537423, primarily focusing on improvements to make rolling the grid more gentle on the Lab’s non-simulator servers.
This update has some changes that may help improve vehicular-based / physical region crossings. People are asked to check & report.
An RC deployment is pending for Wednesday, March 11th, but details were TBA at the time of writing this summary. According to Simon Linden, the update shouldn’t contain any user-visible changes.
Continuing Object Rezzing Issues
There continue to be reports of on-going object rezzing issues (reported and noted in past SUG meetings), some of which appear to be specifically tied to the 53743 release whilst on an RC deployment (see: Potential showstopping bug on many mainland regions. Anyone else experienced this?). The issue is again being complicated in that it cannot be easily tied to simulators specifically on that release, because – as some of the comments on the thread note – the possibly offending script calls do not misbehave consistently between different regions on the same channel / release.
No update was provided at the SUG meeting, but within the thread, Mazidox Linden notes:
Just to chime in here that we’re aware of this issue (as mentioned up-thread it’s not particularly new unfortunately, dating back to late last year), and using the latest information you all have provided we’re able to confirm that the issue under discussion (object_rez events never fire) reproduces in the regions mentioned, but work fine in other regions running the same code. We’re not sure why that is just yet, but we’re going to do our darnedest to find out and get a fix for this behaviour in your hands as quick as we can.
Some people have also reported of a return of breedable issues which may (or may not be) related to this problem. In short, if you are seeing issues with scripted object rezzing – file a Jira.
SL Viewer
There have been no viewer updates to mark the start of the week to leave the official viewer pipelines as follows:
Current Release version 6.3.7.535996, formerly the Yorsh Maintenance RC, dated February 7th, promoted February 20th – No Change.
Release channel cohorts:
Premium RC viewer, version 6.3.8.537335, released March 3rd.
EEP RC viewer updated to version 6.4.0.536347, February 11th.
Love Me Render RC viewer, version 6.3.7.536179, February 10th.
Camera Presets RC viewer, version 6.3.6.535138, January 24th.
Project viewers:
Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, December 9th, 2019.
Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.532999, November 22nd, 2019.
Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.3.2.530836, September 17th, 2019. Covers the re-integration of Viewer Profiles.
360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, July 16th, 2019.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 