Category: SL User Group Meetings

2019 TPVD meeting week #40

Posted on by Inara Pey
Clifton Forge, August 2019 – blog post

The following notes are taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on October 4th, 2019. A video of the meeting is embedded below, my thanks as always to Pantera for recording and providing it. This was a relatively short meeting, with the majority of the meeting conducted in text and revolving around Bakes on Mesh. This being the case, points are summarised below without the usual time stamps.

SL Viewer News

There have been no further updates to the official SL pipelines since the updates at the start of the week, leaving them as follows:

  • Current Release version 6.3.1.530559, formerly the Umeshu Maintenance RC viewer, dated, September 5th – No Change.
  • Release channel cohorts:
  • Project viewers:
    • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.3.2.530836, September 17th. Covers the re-integration of Viewer Profiles.
    • Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.530473, September 11th.
    • 360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, July 16th.
  • Linux Spur viewer, version 5.0.9.329906, dated November 17th, 2017 and promoted to release status 29th November 2017 – offered pending a Linux version of the Alex Ivy viewer code.
  • Obsolete platform viewer, version 3.7.28.300847, May 8th, 2015 – provided for users on Windows XP and OS X versions below 10.7.

Brief Notes

  • As noted in my recent CCUG summaries, the Lab have recruited two more graphics experts (Euclid Linden and one other), who will be working on EEP and rendering projects once they are up to speed.
  • The new Voice update viewer should be going to QA in week #41 (commencing Monday, October 7th). This was delayed as a result of a last minute issue preventing it going to QA and then being issued this week.

Bakes on Mesh (BoM)

There is reportedly some confusion about Bakes on Mesh, with some users believing it means that “have” to switch back to using system wearables. This is not the case; those who wish to continue to use applier-based wearables can do so. Similarly, those who prefer to use mesh clothing can continue to do so. Bakes on Mesh is simply a means to allow system wearables to be used on mesh bodies and heads.

It is also hoped by the Lab that BoM will allow mesh head and body makers simplify their products by removing the need for some of the “onion” layers. This should reduce the rendering complexity of bodies and heads, making them less resource intensive to render.

For more detailed information on Bakes on Mesh, please refer to the following links:

Linden Lab:

Creator-related BoM documentation:

Informative Bakes on Mesh blog post:

In addition, Firestorm has created their own Bakes on Mesh wiki.

TPV Notes

  • Catznip has a BoM beta (and has done for a while), but release is pending some more work being completed.
  • Radegast is close to having a BoM release available.

October 2019 Web User Group: Name Changes and new Premium option

Posted on by Inara Pey
© and ™ Linden Lab

The following notes are taken from my recording of the Web User Group (WUG) meeting, held on Wednesday, October 2nd, 2019. These meetings are held monthly. Dates and details of the meetings can be obtained through the Web User Group wiki page.

When reading these notes, please keep in mind:

  • The topics below are ordered in their likely interest to users / depth of discussion at the meeting, with some comments drawn together from different points in the meeting. This is not intended as a chronological set of meeting notes.
  • Audio extracts are taken from my recording of the meeting, but have again been grouped by topic. In addition, the audio relating to Premium and “Elite” subscriptions may sound fractured tin tone, as it is a grouping of verbal replies to questions asked in local chat at the meeting.

Summary

The TL;DR summary (items expanded upon in the sections below):

  • On Monday, September 30th, the Lab issued a blog post update on the web team’s work, and this was referenced during the meeting (see also my coverage of the blog post – Lab blogs on the SL Web Team’s work, including “last names”). Similar blog posts will likely be released ahead of each monthly WUG meeting, to both remind users of the meeting and to act as an informal agenda.
  • Web services have been a major focus of transitioning Second Life services to the cloud.
  • Name Changes: are getting closer to release but are not imminent. The feature will be Premium only, fees have not been finalised.
  • Premium options: work is progressing with the new “super Premium” option, but this will not be ready until after Name Changes have been deployed. The new level is – at present – likely to be called “Elite”. It will cost more than the current Premium subscriptions.
  • Search is being worked on across all of the SL web properties, including the Marketplace – but no time frames as to when improvements might be deployed.

Cloud Transition

  • As noted in the Monday Sept. 30th blog post, many of the Lab’s web services have been transitioned to running on Amazon AWS cloud services.
  • Other services previously operated on a third-party basis have (and are) being moved in-house or decoupled to standalone status, in readiness to be transitioned to the cloud where possible.
  • All of this work has been achieved without any significant disruption to services or – more particularly – without users actually being aware the services had been moved.
  • Specific benefits of the moves made to date are:
    • Future changes, updates and responses to issues can be handled a lot faster.
    • Due to the nature of AWS services, LL have been able to achieve almost 100% up time in running those services that have been transitioned.

Name Changes

  • As previously noted, Name Changes involve users being able to select any first name, and a last name via a list.
  • The capability will be Premium only.
  • Name changes will be subject to fee (still TBA) per change.
    • The fee charged will be less for “Elite” accounts than for Premium (see below for more on “Elite” and Premium).
  • The rough window for deployment is between 1 and 3 months, with a margin of error of around two months.
    • There is still more work to be done on the back-end systems.
    • The actual viewer UI in which name changes are made has yet to be implemented.
  • As an aside (not mentioned in the meeting, but indicated elsewhere): new users signing-up to Second Life will still be given the default name of “Resident” – they will be able to change names should they upgrade to Premium, as with all Basic account users.

New Premium Subscription

  • The idea of having additional levels of Premium subscription was first publicly mentioned in detail in 2018. See:
  • Since that time, it has been decided to just have a single additional Premium level, sitting “above” the current Premium level.
    • However, the new system is being structured such that if there is a need / opportunity for further subscription levels, they can be added in the future.
  • Currently the proposed name for the new subscription level is “Elite” – but this may still change.
    • There will be clear differentiators between Premium and “Elite”, including, as noted above, a lower fee applied to “Elite” users when changing their name.
    • There will be no requirement for merchants to have to upgrade to “Elite”, although some of the benefits of “Elite” might apply to Merchants.
  • Subscription rates:
    • Premium subscription rates will not change.
    • “Elite” upgrades will be offered on a monthly / annual basis.
    • As per my article Lab opts to temporarily continue Quarterly Premium plan for new sign-ups, relating to the Premium subscription fee changes announced earlier in 2019:
      • Quarterly subscriptions will be discontinued for those upgrading to Premium / Elite when the latter is launched.
      • However, quarterly payments will continue to be honoured for users already on the Premium quarterly payment plan.
    • Fees for “Elite” to be revealed when launched, but obviously, they will be higher than the current Premium rates.
    • Premium members upgrading to “Elite” will pay the difference between their current Premium fee and the “Elite” fee to which they decide to upgrade, and there may be a prorate option for qualifying users when upgrading.
  • “Elite” subscriptions will not be ready for introduction until at least a month after the deployment of Name Changes.

Profile Changes

  • The discontinuing of web profiles was first publicly raised in February 2019 (see: 2019 SL User Groups 7/3: TPV Developer Meeting), when it was indicated profile information would be moving back into the viewer.
  • One of the reasons for this change appears to be related to the transitioning services to the cloud as much as with the pain of provisioning the web-based profiles.
  • An initial Legacy Profile project viewer appeared in June (see: SL Legacy Profiles project viewer).
  • The Legacy Profile viewer will be updated over time, with one of the updates to come being a new tab to profile feeds, allowing users to see people’s feed updates through the viewer.
    • TPVs will still be able to use the option to point to profile feeds on the web, if they prefer.
  • It is hoped that the Legacy Profiles viewer will move to release candidate status Soon™ and promoted to release status “really soon after that”.
The new Legacy Profiles Project viewer replaces the current web-based profile panel (left), with an “old-style” profile floater panel (right)

In Brief

Web Services Release Notes

  • The web team is working “really hard” to implement formal release notes for updates to the various SL web services.
  • These will likely be in a similar format to the revamped server and viewer release notes, which can be reached via the recently implemented web-based Release Notes home page.
  • There is currently no date as to when this will be surfaced, but there are “a couple” web engineers working on this (when not working on more user-facing projects).

Marketplace, Search, Events

  • In-world purchase notifications for store owners:
    • As per my article on this, this system will be opt-in, initially on an entire store basis. It might be extended to individual items in the future, if feasible / if there is a demand for this.
    • The notification will provide details on item purchased, amount received and who made the purchase.
When released, the in-world purchase notifications option will appear in a re-named settings page (e-mail notifications)
  • Work is proceeding on Marketplace improvements beyond those mentioned, but LL is not yet in a position to state what the next updates for deployment might be.
  • Search is being worked on right across the SL web properties. This is liable to see improved filtering of searches and (particularly useful for Marketplace searches) the use of exclusions.
  • Work is proceeding with the overhaul of the events system. This comprises short-term updates that are being carried out alongside a much larger, long-term project to completely overhaul the events system.

Related Links

2019 Simulator User Group week #40: Sept. 27th/28th rollback

Posted on by Inara Pey
Highland Hills, August 2019 – blog post

Simulator Version Rollback September 27th / 28th

A rollback was performed across the grid on September 27th/28th, which apparently moved all regions  back to server release 2019-09-06T22:03:53.530715, first deployed to an RC channel on September 10th. This was due to widespread issues being reported across the grid in relation to the script timing / performance fixes that were deployed – and which revealed a further underpinning issue. See the conversation in this forum thread and this status update for more.

Commenting on the situation, Simon Linden stated:

We had some chaos last week after our main channel roll exposed some “interesting” issues with the server update. That was all reverted early Saturday morning. We’re on track to have another update tomorrow morning [Wednesday, Oct 2nd] which should bring back the script performance work as well as fixing the issues we discovered.

[The Issue] was an ugly timing issue involving rezzing and starting up scripts … and unfortunately would work in some circumstances, not in others, or fail once and then work fine the next time you tried it. So it was tough to catch as well as sort out.

Mazidox Linden added thanks from LL to all those hitting script-related issues who took time to dig into matters, try to identify causes and raise bug reports, allowing the Lab to get a fix in the works.

While the offending code had only been deployed to the SLS (Main) channel on Tuesday, September 24th, it had already seen the light of day on an RC channel in previous weeks (server deployment 2019-09-13T19%3A08%3A35.530941, September 11th); so in order to completely remove it from the grid, a full rollback was performed and place the grid on the same simulator version.

It had been hoped that the fix mentioned above would be ready for an RC deployment on Wednesday, October 3rd. However, a late-breaking issue with the fix meant that the deployment of the update had to be cancelled,

This topic – including what might be done to avoid it in future, what was and wasn’t affected, what might or might not have been contributing factors – e.g. heavy region loads (pointed to as a possibly contributing reason), etc.

SL Viewer

A new RC version of the Love Me Render viewer was released on Monday, September 30th, version 6.3.2.531296, containing a handful of reported fixes:

  • SL-12025 (non-public) – “Animated mesh objects are disappeared when avatar rendering parameter is off”.
  • SL-11656 (non-public) – “Alpha textures with Alpha mask cut-off of 255 look glitchy while ALM is off”.
  • SL-11614 (non-public) – “Rotating objects flicker if Render type Avatar is disabled”.
  • BUG-2635 Objects rotating with llTargetOmega now “vibrate” on spin axis when the camera is focused on them.
  • BUG-225300 Disabling avatar rendering removes static objects.

The remainder of the official viewer pipelines remain unchanged, as follows

  • Current Release version 6.3.1.530559, formerly the Umeshu Maintenance RC viewer, dated, September 5th – No Change.
  • Release channel cohorts:
  • Project viewers:
    • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.3.2.530836, September 17th. Covers the re-integration of Viewer Profiles.
    • Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.530473, September 11th.
    • 360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, July 16th.
  • Linux Spur viewer, version 5.0.9.329906, dated November 17th, 2017 and promoted to release status 29th November 2017 – offered pending a Linux version of the Alex Ivy viewer code.
  • Obsolete platform viewer, version 3.7.28.300847, May 8th, 2015 – provided for users on Windows XP and OS X versions below 10.7.

 

2019 SL User Groups 39/2: Content Creation summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Alternate Reality, August 2019 – blog post

The following notes are taken from my audio recording of the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting, held on Thursday, September 26th 2019 at 13:00 SLT. These meetings are chaired by Vir Linden, and agenda notes, meeting SLurl, etc, are usually available on the Content Creation User Group wiki page.

This was a shorter than usual meeting.

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).

Current Status

Work is continuing on getting the logging and analysis elements of the project up and running. Right now the (in-development) test viewer is described and pouring out a lot of “gibberish” on frame draw rates and all of the attributes in a scene, and the idea is to try to pull this together into a predictive model that is more accurate than the current rendering cost model.

Project Muscadine

Project Summary

Currently: offering the means to change an Animesh size parameters via LSL.

Status

  • Largely on hold while ARCTan is being focused on.
  • A bug whereby physics parameters weren’t being correctly applied has been resolved and a fix should be available in the next viewer update.
    • The default viewer-size avatar animations (fidgets, eye tracking, etc), were disabled for Animesh and have not been re-enabled, this update only applies to physics params.

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.

Due to performance issues, the initial implementation of EEP will now likely not include certain atmospherics such as crepuscular rays (“God rays”).

Resources

Current Status

  • A new graphics resource – Euclid Linden – joined Linden Lab last week. He is currently finding his way around the rendering system and will be working on EEP in the near future.
  • A further graphics expert is due to start with LL in the next month, and once up to speed, they will also be lending support to EEP.

General Notes

  • Script breakage: there have been a number of reports filed concerning script breakage recently (see: BUG-227669,  BUG-277667 and BUG-227659 for examples). The reports have been noted by the Lab but have yet to be triaged
  • The next CCUG meeting will be on Thursday, October 10th.

2019 SL User Groups week #39/1: Simulator User Group

Posted on by Inara Pey
Nevglide Gaard, August 2019 – blog post

Not a lot to report – the meeting was largely a solstice party with live music. Simon Linden did, however, use the larger-than-usual gathering to monitor animation performance, lag and streaming performance.

Server Deployments

Update, September 28th: a rollback was performed across the grid on September 27th/28th, which apparently moved all regions  back to server release 2019-09-06T22:03:53.530715, first deployed on September 10th, this was due to widespread issues being reported across the grid in relation to the script timing / performance fixes that were deployed – and which revealed a further underpinning issue. See this status update for more.

Please refer to the server deployment thread for updates.

  • On Tuesday, September 24th, the SLS (Main) channel was updated with server release 2019-09-13T20:04:44.530946, comprising minor improvements to starting and stopping regions and EEP updates and fixes, and which was originally deployed to the Magnum RC channel.
  • On Wednesday, September 25th, the RC channels are to be updated with two deployments (no channel details provided):

SL Viewer

The Ordered Shutdown viewer updated to version 6.3.2.530972 on Tuesday, September 24th, 2019

  • Current Release version 6.3.1.530559, formerly the Umeshu Maintenance RC viewer, dated, September 5 – No Change.
  • 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:
    • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.3.2.530836, September 17. Covers the re-integration of Viewer Profiles.
    • Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.530473, September 11.
    • 360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, July 16.
  • Linux Spur viewer, version 5.0.9.329906, dated November 17, 2017 and promoted to release status 29 November 2017 – offered pending a Linux version of the Alex Ivy viewer code.
  • Obsolete platform viewer, version 3.7.28.300847, May 8, 2015 – provided for users on Windows XP and OS X versions below 10.7.

 

2019 SL User Groups 38/3: TPVD meeting

Posted on by Inara Pey
HollyWeird, Hotel California – August 2019 – blog post

The following notes are taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on September 20th, 2019. A video of the meeting is embedded below, my thanks as always to Pantera for recording and providing it. This was a relatively short meeting, with the majority of topics covered in the first 20 minutes.

SL Viewer News

There have been no further updates to the official SL pipelines since the updates at the start of the week, leaving them as follows:

  • Current Release version 6.3.1.530559, formerly the Umeshu Maintenance RC viewer, dated September 5th.
  • Release channel cohorts:
    • Vinsanto RC viewer, version 6.3.2.530962, September 17th.
    • Ordered Shutdown RC viewer, version 6.3.2.530901, September 16th. This viewer has changes intended to make crashes on shut-down less likely, but does not have any changes to existing features.
    • EEP RC viewer, version 6.4.0.530150, August 19th.
  • Project viewers:
    • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.3.2.530836, September 17th. Covers the re-integration of Viewer Profiles.
    • Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.530473, September 11th.
    • 360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, July 16th.
  • Linux Spur viewer, version 5.0.9.329906, dated November 17th, 2017 and promoted to release status 29th November 2017 – offered pending a Linux version of the Alex Ivy viewer code.
  • Obsolete platform viewer, version 3.7.28.300847, May 8th, 2015 – provided for users on Windows XP and OS X versions below 10.7.

Note: Bakes on Mesh introduced an at-login crash that some viewers are experiencing. This has been the subject of a bug report and a fix will be making its way into a maintenance viewer.

Brief Viewer-Related Notes

EEP Viewer

EEP progress has been slowed down for the time being – but for good reasons. The Lab has hired two new rendering system experts, one of whom has already started. They are due to work on EEP related rendering but they will both take time to be introduced to the Lab’s working environment and the EEP project as a whole. This expertise will also be put to work on general rendering work through projects such as the Love Me Render pipeline.

Voice Viewer

The long-awaited Voice viewer update should be appearing in week #39 (commencing Monday, September 23rd), containing assorted fixes for the viewer side of voice.

  • In particular, it is hoped this update will fix the (predominantly Mac-related) issue of disconnects as a result of a user speaking too softly / having the microphone set too low / pausing for extended period when speaking.
  • However, there are some issues believed to be server-side that are still being addressed (such as users appearing to be on a separate voice channel to the region of a region, requiring a relog).
  • It is believed the version of SLvoice.exe in this viewer will function OK with TPVs, although the Lab has obviously not tested this.

Once out, this viewer will likely be pushed through to release status as soon as progress / lack of issues allow.

Viewer Caching / Texture Memory Use

This work is again getting attention, but it will still be a while before it received “substantive” attention once more, in order for a project /RC viewer to make an appearance.

Viewer Build Related Notes

Viewer Build Manifest Updates

From a development perspective, the Voice viewer also includes change to the viewer build manifest, so it accurately reflects viewer build library requirements and correctly reports on missing libraries. Those who self-compile should listen to the video between 10:30 and 14:00.

Viewer Build Tools Project

The work to update the viewer build process to use Visual Studio 2017 and Xcode 10.3 for OS X is still progressing. It is anticipated that results from this work will be visible in the next few weeks.

Mercurial to Github Migration

Bitbucket, used to manage viewer repositories) will be sunsetting support for Mercurial; Linden Lab will therefore be switching to git on bitbucket for their repositories.

  • Currently, the Lab is experimenting with converting come of their internal repositories from Mercurial to git to see if it is possible to do code merges in both directions via the same tool.
  • If successful, LL will document the tool and process, then move to try the same procedure against their build repositories, then run things in parallel before finally switching over.
  • The process is expected to be measured in 2-3 months rather than weeks, and the documentation the Lab produces will be made available to TPVs to allow them to migrate where required, and efforts will be made to keep TPVs informed on overall progress.
  • Overall, it is anticipated that the overall process will not be quite as “scary” as has been feared.