Category: SL User Group Meetings

June 2025 SL Mobile UG meeting summary: latest releases

Posted on by Inara Pey
Campwich Forest grounds: location for the Monthly Mobile User Group (MMUG)
The following notes were taken from the Thursday, June 5th 2025 Monthly Mobile User Group (MMUG) meeting. These notes should not be taken as a full transcript of the meeting, which was largely held in Voice, but rather a summary of the key topics discussed. The meeting was recorded by Pantera, and her video is embedded at the end of this summary – my thanks, as always to her in providing it.
Table of Contents

Meeting Purpose

  • The Mobile User Group provides a platform to share insights on recent mobile updates and upcoming features, and to receive feedback directly from users.
  • These meetings are conducted (as a rule):
    • The last Thursday of every month at 12:00 noon SLT.
    • In Voice and text.
    • At Campwich Forest.
  • Meetings are open to anyone with a concern / interest in the above topics, and form one of a series of regular / semi-regular User Group meetings conducted by Linden Lab.
  • Dates and times of all current meetings can be found on the Second Life Public Calendar, and descriptions of meetings are defined on the SL wiki.

Resources

Release Updates

[Video: 3:34-7:59]

Latest Releases

Version: 2025.5.550 (Android) – June 4; 0.1.548 (iOS) – June 5, 2025.

  • Avatar rendering:
    • A further fix to rotational movement on attachment bones. This will fix some avatars and attachments on avatars.
    • “Pivot” offsets as well as “pos” offsets are now handled when considering when to ignore a deformer. This should fix a few more cases of avatars rendering incorrectly.
  • Improvements to the v-stick controller – size, position and visibility.
  • Addition of a new water shader along with a new setting “Use New Water” that defaults to enabled.
  • A new setting so you can choose to enable or disable automatic log-in.
The new Settings options for automatic log-in (Settings → General) and to use the improved water rendering (Settings → Developer Tools)
  • iOS Specific:
    • SL Mobile now requires iOS 13 or newer
    • A fix for an intermittent crash when opening Second Life Maps links (release 0.1.548).

Comments on the Updates

  • The avatar appearance fixes were the result of issues around deformers identified too late to make the previous update release. These were related to:
    • Meshes having embedded deformers which weren’t being handled correctly.
    • Some of the default deformers which should ignore bone positions being “incorrectly” handled, mainly as a result of “some confusion” within the desktop viewer over which value to read when ignoring deformers, and this had to be replicated in the Mobile app to get it to handle those deformers as expected when compared to the desktop viewer.
  • With the exception one one possible bug fix, there will now be a pause in avatar fixes and updates while the focus of work switches back towards rendering and merging-in / testing a number of changes and improvements, including how long avatars remain in silhouette (transparent), amount of content displayed, etc.
  • Water improvements: the water shader has been updated to more closely match the desktop viewer, notably in low-lighting conditions.

Purchasing Linden Dollars

[Video: 8:16-10:11]

  • A release to iOS in May 2025 added the ability to make Linden Dollar purchases through the App. This includes support for all payment methods supported by Apple.
  • iOS has received this capability first, as Apple required LL to add it within a certain time frame.
  • In-app purchases of Linden Dollars is on the roadmap for Android, but LL would rather focus on feature development, particularly given the limited ways in which L$ can be spent through the app at present.

Chat History and Synching with the Desktop

[Video: 10:42-15:05]

  • LL acknowledge that in order to be a useful companion app, SL Mobile needs to be able to access all of a user’s conversations (chat), IMs, group messages etc., regardless of receipt when using the app, offline or using the desktop viewer.
  • As all of the above are currently locally stored by the viewer on the client computer. In order to be available across both desktop and Mobile, some form of cloud storage needs to be considered, which requires he building of an API and the provisioning of security to ensure only the designated user can access their chat and IM logs, etc.
    • Some cloud storage has been created to handle the same for Mobile, but it is limited.
  • A further complication is the desire to have users be able to log-in to the Lobby on Mobile without and in-world presence, thus potentially allowing for simultaneous access via the desktop viewer, which would require sharing of chat and histories, etc., between the two in order for them to remain in synch.
  • As such, the capability is not easy to implement and requires careful consideration, utilising multiple resources at LL (Mobile team, Server team, the teams that own the chat and IM, etc., services). Given this, while it will be coming in the future, there is currently no time-line as to when.

Tip and Tricks

[Video: 29:36-31:35]

  • The Go To Lobby button is now available from the Mobile menu when users are in-world, allowing for a quick return to the Lobby.
  • Wearing Group tags:
    • Group tags are off by default.
    • To enable: Menu → Settings → General →  set Show Group Titles slider to On (√).
    • To change a Group tag: Menu →  People →  select Groups from the drop down →  select the required Group to display its information tap Wear Group Tag.
Left: The Go to Lobby Button, available from the menu when in-world on Mobile. Centre and right: enabling Group tags and setting a tag.
  • Share Security Data: can be enabled / disabled via Menu Settings Privacy toggle the slider.

In Brief

Please refer to the video for details on the following and other questions which may have had a simple “yes” or “in progress” reply.

  • [Video: 15:10-20:42] Map support:
    • There have been numerous requests for SL Mobile to support maps – both the World map and the Mini-Map.
    • As both the Mini-Map and the World map serve different functions, both were seen by those at the meeting as being useful to have.
    • It was also noted that the major reasons given: finding locations and teleporting (World) and seeing who is nearby (Mini), are use cases that do not necessarily require a map in order to be solved, if alternate mechanisms could be provided (e.g. a “nearby people” list).
    • For provisioning a World map style of solution, one option might be to use the web map system (although, as noted at recent Web User Group meetings, this does need some TLC in its own right), which would avoid the need for in-app map rendering.
      • Web maps already work with Mobile: use them via the browser on your device and TP links will open in Mobile.
  • [Video: 21:51-26:25] Continuous log-in – the ability to have a avatar logged-in Mobile all the time, without necessarily appearing as on-line, and able to receive and respond to messages etc.
    • Seen as positive by those at the meeting, with the caveat that there is the ability to maintain a full chat history, etc., between both Mobile and desktop.
    • This also included the suggestion of allowing users to save their chat logs, etc., to their own cloud storage and access it from both desktop and Mobile.
  • [Video: 26:30-28:23] Switching accounts: there have apparently been requests to make switching between accounts on Mobile “easier”.
    • General consensus was that switching accounts on Mobile is no worse than on the desktop viewer.
    • A suggestion of having multiple account be able to use Mobile and access the Lobby for messaging purposes would be useful.
  • [Video: 28:34-29:25] Clarification was given that the Mobile Team are looking at chat/message histories, continuous log-in and switching accounts as a set of deliverables that could be made together in some form, and were looking for indicators that they would be well-received by users.
  • [Video 33:50-34:55] The Mobile app can (at least for some, myself included) hang when loading the Lobby. The screen will simply freeze for multiple seconds (sometimes into double-digits). There is no clear cause for this, but might be related to network connectivity issues, which are due to be looked at, with those experiencing the problem asked to submit feedback through the app.
  • [Video: 35:44-37:04] PBR support – this is pending the rendering work, which should help optimise memory use to allow PBR support + one other piece of work. When done should be close to the desktop implementation.
  • Via chat: Scripted Rotation Broken on Mobile – to be looked at.

Date of Next Meeting

June 2025 SL Web User Group MP, Zero and a general discussion

Posted on by Inara Pey
The Web User Group meeting venue, Denby
The following notes cover the key points from the Web User Group (WUG) meeting, held on Wednesday June 4th, 2025. These notes form a summary of the items discussed and is not intended to be a full transcript.

A video of the meeting, recorded by Pantera Północy, is embedded at the end of this summary, with sections of this summary times stamped to the relevant points in the video for those wishing to refer to the audio. My thanks as always to Pantera for recording it and making it available.

 Table of Contents

Meeting Overview

  • The Web User Group exists to provide an opportunity for discussion on Second Life web properties and their related functionalities / features. This includes, but is not limited to: the Marketplace, pages surfaced through the secondlife.com dashboard; the available portals (land, support, etc), and the forums.
  • As a rule, these meetings are conducted:
    • On the first Wednesday of the month and 14:00 SLT.
    • In both Voice and text.
    • At this location.
  • Meetings are open to anyone with a concern / interest in the above topics, and form one of a series of regular / semi-regular User Group meetings conducted by Linden Lab.
  • Dates and times of all current meetings can be found on the Second Life Public Calendar, and descriptions of meetings are defined on the SL wiki.

General Work in Progress

[Video: 1:51-7:18]

  • Marketplace: work is continuing on making the Marketplace more responsive, both with product listings and with using Marketplace search options & the category responses.
  • Downloads page:
    • Work is being put into adding further language translations.
    • The current drop-down for viewer system requirements is going to be updated to point to the main system requirements page, rather than being a separate listing.
    • The addition of Firestorm buttons to the page, and there are no plans at presents to do the same for other TPVs.
      • The reason given for this the volume of users running Firestorm compared to other TPVs.
      • The flipside to this is that including Firestorm on the official download page both gives the impression of “official endorsement” of Firestorm & further funnels users towards that TPV over others.
  • Project Zero: updates are being made to make it easier for people who still have time available on their Project Zero use to get back to their session (also see below).
  • Work that had been going into the back-end infrastructure is now nearing completion, and should free-up resources.
  • SL Wiki:
    • As noted at the SUG meeting, LL are planning to move away from using the mediawiki platform for the SL Wiki to a new service.
    • Some SL Wiki pages have been ported to Readme.com as a test, but no formal decision as to which platform will be used has been made.

Project Zero (SL  in a Browser) Update

[Video: 8:26-10:44]

  • The URL for Zero will be changing to web.secondlife.com.
  • The current page link for Project Zero at the top of the secondlife.com dashboard page is to be replaced by an actual button.
  • The link to Firestorm Zero has been removed.
  • General web page design improvements.
  • Largely non-visible changes to the join flow for incoming users.

General Discussion

Please refer to the video for details on the following.

  • [Video: 12:11-17:09] A discussion on the CasperVend Sales and Coupons options – who uses them and how.
    • Those at the meeting indicated they tend to use both in several ways (e.g. as a means of providing a discount; as a means include a shared item that is bundled across multiple products;  for event sales; for individual item sales in-store, etc.).
    • It was suggested that LL contact the Mainstore Release Discord group to gain broader feedback.
  • [Video 17:36-28:15 – text] Marketplace unavailability: a comments was made about the Marketplace reporting to be “under heavy load” and thus inaccessible to users.
    • This appears to have been the result of the same kind of DDOS / aggressive and improper crawler bots issue has has been affecting the SL Wiki, and steps are being put in place to prevent it recurring.
  • [Video: 28:24-32:10] SL Wiki: syntax highlight is broken (see: [⚠️ URGENT] SL Wiki: syntax highlight is broken *and* in-world access via viewer is down…). This impacts most pages with function pages with example code.
    • This was apparently the result of an update to the version of MediaWiki LL are running, and fixes are in progress.
  • [Video: 32:17-39:51] A questions was asked on why the main image on a Marketplace listing no longer “zooms” when clicked , and why is there are large amount of whitespace between the image and the options on the right side of the listing page.
    • Juniper Linden indicated that previously, the main image was a modal view of the original image uploaded by the merchant, and the “zoom” was simply displaying it at its original size; now the image is displayed directly within it listing at its original size.
    • The image upload size limitation is still, but the hope is to eventually remove it, and simply have a zoom for very large images.
  • General comments on:
  • [Video:54:51-end] A general question: if people had a single poker chip per year to get something in SL fixed, what would they place it on? Responses included: Secondlife.com dashboard refresh; conversations floater overhaul; shape keys; a complete fix for animation constraints.
  • Overlapping with the above were comments on the state of the Events listings (particularly people posting one event multiple times and how to report them), with and agreement from Kali Linden that it is a mess, and could really do with a ground-up rebuild (resources allowing); in terms of reporting, that is to be referred back internally for feedback on the best way to do so.

Next Meeting

  • Wednesday, July 2nd, 2025.

2025 week #23: SL SUG meeting

Posted on by Inara Pey
Soul Deep, March 2025 – blog post

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, June 3rd, 2025 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They form a summary of the items discussed, and are not intended to be a full transcript. The notes were taken from my chat log of the meeting. No video this week.

Meeting Overview

  • The Simulator User Group (also referred to by its older name of Server User Group) exists to provide an opportunity for discussion about simulator technology, bugs, and feature ideas.
  • These meetings are conducted (as a rule):
  • Meetings are open to anyone with a concern / interest in the above topics, and form one of a series of regular / semi-regular User Group meetings conducted by Linden Lab.
  • Dates and times of all current meetings can be found on the Second Life Public Calendar, and descriptions of meetings are defined on the SL wiki.

Simulator Deployments

  • There are no planned deployments to any channels this week, only restarts.

SL Viewer Updates

In Brief

  • As noted in the previous update, the WebRTC “switch on” has been on hold, in part due bugs, performance optimisations, and infrastructure updates.
    • A new version of the code is due to be deployed, aimed at addressing some of the first two of these requirements.
    • There is also the issue of around 21% of Firestorm users not running a WebRTC capable version of that viewer, which is also a potential impact on the switch-over.).
    • In the WebRTC prototype the audio mixing/relaying happens on the same host as the region; there is a project to move that compute onto dedicated server stacks.
  • Given the on-going issues with the SL wiki (the latest being a sustained DDOS-type impact, thought to be caused by “aggressive and improper crawler bots”), it was indicated that LL are planning to move away from using the mediawiki platform to a new service. No details were given on what service this might be,  and the statement was followed by numerous appeals for all existing SL wiki data to be ported and/or not lost.
  • SLua:
    • There is something of a performance bottleneck with SLua in that SLua scripts run so much faster = people want to make content that thrashes prim params quickly = the server struggles to send the updates fast enough, causing the bottleneck.
      • Leviathan Linden had been looking at this and is hoping to get back to it soon, noting that he should be able to offer some gains in the speed with which the server sends the updates.
      • However, he doubts the Lab will “be able to fully unlock the SLua potential for thrashing object properties” without a “major overhaul of the communication protocol”.
    • It has been noted that  some ll.List functions produce SLua run-time errors when working with lists (tables) that contain nil values. This is a known issue at the Lab, and discussion on how to address it are in progress.
  • General, user-led discussions on:
    • Bots (e.g. better account verification).
    • The potential to improve / replace Media on a Prim (MOAP) – such as replacing it with SVG rendering on a prim (seen as handy for use in HUDs and well), or reducing the requirement for every object using MOAP to call its own browser instance. LL do not appear to have any work on the roadmap for either of these, although feature requests for SVG support were noted as having been “seen”.

† The header images included in these summaries are not intended to represent anything discussed at the meetings; they are simply here to avoid a repeated image of a rooftop of people every week. They are taken from my list of region visits, with a link to the post for those interested.

2025 week #22: SL SUG meeting

Posted on by Inara Pey
Memories of Spring, March 2025 – blog post

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, May 27th, 2025 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They form a summary of the items discussed, and are not intended to be a full transcript. The notes were taken from my chat log of the meeting. No video this week.

Meeting Overview

  • The Simulator User Group (also referred to by its older name of Server User Group) exists to provide an opportunity for discussion about simulator technology, bugs, and feature ideas.
  • These meetings are conducted (as a rule):
  • Meetings are open to anyone with a concern / interest in the above topics, and form one of a series of regular / semi-regular User Group meetings conducted by Linden Lab.
  • Dates and times of all current meetings can be found on the Second Life Public Calendar, and descriptions of meetings are defined on the SL wiki.

Simulator Deployments

  • There are no planned deployments to any channels this week, only restarts.
The team has been working on a lot of backend work getting things rebuilt for a more modern artifact management solution (think: rebuilding docker containers, libraries, etc.) –this is ongoing work. We also are doing more invisible work updating hardware to a newer configuration.

– Signal Linden

SL Viewer Updates

In Brief

  • A useful Feature Request: Log in Screen: “Region Offline” or “Region Restarting” warning prompt – vote!
  • A question on whether or not a viewer should expose the channel llDialog is operating on, or whether that is private information. Short answer: no it is not private; it’s in the viewer.
  • A debate as to how many regions run on a simulator and how many simulators run on a server, after a claim was made it is not 1:1:1.
    • Leviathan Linden: SL runs one Region per Simulator process. The actual Server (machine) runs multiple Simulators.
    • Monty Linden: the old 1/core vs 4/core is long gone – departed with uplift.
  • Confusion was voiced about region crossings and the idea that an avatar’s inventory is “handed over” between regions. This is not the case; only object inventory (scripts in your attachments) is transferred.
    • The confusion may have arisen by conflating issues of inventory size causing issues at log-in (which the Lab has been investigating) with the idea that the same is true for region crossings.
  • WebRTC “switch on” is still being held – currently because it still needs some bugs fixed; LL is looking to get the infrastructure sorted for a wider deployment across regions and is also looking at performance optimisations (as well as the issue of around 21% of Firestorm users not running a WebRTC capable version of that viewer).
  • A lot of general chit-chat about myths, frame rates, PBR and its impact on older hardware, why the avatar count in the Destination Guide tend not to match the actual count in the region (because people can come and go quickly / time is required for the simulator to forward the information to the relevant service handling the DG and for it to be processed and displayed; updates to the DG are not real-time), and science fiction series (sorry, you had to be there).

† The header images included in these summaries are not intended to represent anything discussed at the meetings; they are simply here to avoid a repeated image of a rooftop of people every week. They are taken from my list of region visits, with a link to the post for those interested.

2025 Week #21 Project Zero User Group Meeting: updates

Posted on by Inara Pey
via Linden Lab
The following notes were taken from the Thursday, May 22nd 2025 Project Zero User Group (PZUG) meeting.

  • They are based on my audio recording of the meeting + chat log.
  • They should not be taken as a full transcript of the meeting.
Table of Contents

Meeting Purpose

  • The Project Zero User Group provides a platform  for open discussion about Project Zero, the cloud-streamed version of the Second Life Viewer. Topics can range from sharing the goals for Project Zero, demoing the current experience, and gathering feedback to help shape the future of cloud access for Second Life.
  • These meetings are conducted (as a rule):
    • The second and fourth Thursday of every month at 13:00 noon SLT.
    • In Voice and text.
    • At the Hippotropolis Campsite.
  • Meetings are open to anyone with a concern / interest in the above topics, and form one of a series of regular / semi-regular User Group meetings conducted by Linden Lab.
  • Dates and times of all current meetings can be found on the Second Life Public Calendar, and descriptions of meetings are defined on the SL wiki.

Resources

Note: “Zero” or “Project Zero” in these summaries always refers to the SL official viewer running in a browser; “Firestorm Zero”, “FS0” or “FS Zero” always refers to the Firestorm viewer offering in a browser.

Recent Updates

Avatar Picker

The Avatar Picker. Credit: Linden Lab
  • The Picker is actually a browser HTML element separate to the viewer, popping out and to the left of the viewer within a browser tab.
    • This is currently experimental, but is something the Lab would like to move towards.
    • The idea is is move away from floaters in the viewer, where appropriate, moving things to one side in the browser so as to leave the in-world view less cluttered.
  • The picker is associated with the new Avatar Welcome Pack also issued in April, and forms first part of presenting Project Zero with a new UI, built using HTML / React, and first discussed by Philip Rosedale when Project Zero was initially launched.

Go Menu and Toolbar Button

  • Previously referred to as the “Destination Picker”, the Go Menu has now been implemented, the name aligning with the Go button seen on the web account registration  / join pages.
  • Accessed by a new Toolbar button within Project Zero – also called Go – the “menu” is a scrollable  panel of potential destinations for (new) users.
  • Currently, the panel contains three destinations, rather than the 12 indicated in the April meeting. These have been selected on the basis of activity, rather than location; the activities being: meeting people, building, joining a role-playing game.
The Go Menu panel. Credit: Linden Lab
  • The Go Menu is automatically displayed when a new user first launches Project Zero, and is experimental at this point, and:
    • May well be expanded more towards the notional 12 places.
    • Is not intended as a replacement for the Destination Guide.
    • Is being monitored by LL to gather information of how well it is used and the potions people tend to use the most.
  • In addition, a new Toolbar button has been created.
    • This is called “Go” and has an airport-style image of an aircraft departing.
    • It is part of the default set of Toolbar buttons.
    • Allows a user to re-display the Go Menu panel.
  • Even with the limited choice on offer, the Lab has already noted that users coming into SL tend to pick on the option that has other avatars present, rather than being purely driven by activity. However, s noted in the meeting, it is still too early in testing to say this is definitively so (it might just be that as the first location in the panel, London City is just naturally clicked on, for example).

Toolbar Refresh

  • The general display of the toolbar buttons has been refreshed for Project Zero.
  • In particular, buttons are no longer displayed on the left side of the viewer window; everything defaults to the bottom of the window, with the number of buttons reduced to better-suit the initial needs of incoming new users.
The new Project Zero Toolbar layout as seen by incoming new users – click for full size, if required. Credit: Linden Lab
  • By default, this Toolbar comprises:
    • Go button – described above.
    • Avatars – opens the avatar picker, also described above for changing an avatar / altering the style of dress.
    • Six unchanged buttons: Destinations, Walk/Run/Fly, Camera Controls, Profile, Speak, Chat.
  • During the meeting, the following default buttons were additionally suggested:
    • Chat Bar (per most viewers outside of the official viewer).
    • Inventory.
    • People / Friends + access to Groups.

General Discussion

  • It was noted that those attending the meeting had all been unable to access Project Zero to test the new features – it is hoped (no promises) that this might bee addressed.
  • Suggestions for alternative Go Menu destinations were offered:
    • Builders Brewery and Ivory Tower of Prims as places for those wishing to learn to build.
    • A broader selection of game destinations, rather than just MadPea.
    • Places like Dreamer’s Bay, where newcomers can receive assistance, have the opportunity for free housing, etc.
  • There was a general Discussion on how people make friends, and the various means of doing so, possibly in the hope of finding a route to making it easier for newcomers to do so, rather than them getting confused by multiple different ways.
  • The above led to a more esoteric discussion on Calling Cards; the Friends List (and how it’s not really that, it’s more a contacts / acquaintances list for many, which strayed into the realm of Firestorm Contact Sets); feedback on how people might go about making friends. These discussion appeared to be more for gleaning information than aiming towards anything planned for Project Zero.
  • The point was made that Second Life is potentially far less sociable nowadays than previously, and that while the onus seems to be on creators and content – which can help – the sense of wider community and of having places to go and things to do has been somewhat lost. In this, mention was made of fun activities such as skydiving, regions like the Greenies and other builds by Rezzable, etc.

Date of Next Meeting

2025 week #21: SL SUG meeting -SLua

Posted on by Inara Pey
Chaos and Calm – Chaos Theory, March 2025 – blog post

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, May 20th, 2025 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They form a summary of the items discussed, and are not intended to be a full transcript. The notes were taken from my chat log of the meeting. Pantera also recorded the meeting, and that recording is embedded at the end of this piece – my thanks to Pantera, as always, for providing it.

Meeting Overview

  • The Simulator User Group (also referred to by its older name of Server User Group) exists to provide an opportunity for discussion about simulator technology, bugs, and feature ideas.
  • These meetings are conducted (as a rule):
  • Meetings are open to anyone with a concern / interest in the above topics, and form one of a series of regular / semi-regular User Group meetings conducted by Linden Lab.
  • Dates and times of all current meetings can be found on the Second Life Public Calendar, and descriptions of meetings are defined on the SL wiki.

Simulator Deployments

  • There are no planned deployments to any channels this week, only restarts.

SL Viewer Updates

SLua Updates

I’m going to write up an implementation of better event handling in pure SLua so that people can get a feel for the API and make suggestions before we commit to actually implementing a specific implementation in the server.
Got sidetracked improving setlinkprimitiveparamsfast perf with many PRIM_LINK_TARGETs since I saw that bogging down the SLua alpha sims but I’m back on track now 🙂

– Harold Linden (SLua development contractor)

  • It was reiterated that the plan remains to move SLua to a more open beta on Agni (the Main grid), once further updates have been made by LL. (Such as the event handling and memory management mentioned). When this happens, it will initially be to a “handful of regions” prior to gaining broader deployment.
  • Harold Linden indicated that most of the current Canny Feature Requests for SLua will be implemented during the beta phase of the project – although some, such as “require” will take time to “do properly”, and so there may be stopgap solutions “similar to the ones people already use for LSL that uses local pre-processing.”
Not ideal but there’s a lot of yak shaving that needs to be done to get proper “require” working with new “library” type assets and don’t want to block the rest of SLua on it. 
  • In responding to a comment about an possible inter-script dependency system, he further noted:
There would be no inter-script dependencies per-se, this is more akin to pure modules that can just export types and functions etc with no shared state. More like a statically linked library that only gets evaluated when the script is compiled. It’s essentially just enabling something that people already tend to do with pre-processors, the only difference is the assets live with the rest of your stuff.
  • This sparked a debate on the use of libraries, plug-ins ,etc., a lot of which is “still TBD”, other with matters of object update handing, etc. This discussion ran through must of the remaining 40 minutes of the meeting. Please refer to the video for specifics (as I am not a coder, and far from qualified to interpret all of the discussion!).
  • One important additional point was raised by Harold Linden:
Oh right, I feel like I should mention, we’re trying to track down a couple potential memory corruption bugs in SLua that we’ve had trouble reproducing on our dev machines. We’re going to look at pushing a version of the server with debugging instrumentation (AddressSanitizer) to the SLua sims on beta grid. It might make things slightly slower, but it’s only temporary.

In Brief

“Missing Content on Login”

We had a repro recipe for “missing content on login” and I was able to kinda fix it. It was semi-reliable (would happen maybe 20% of the time) for one our viewer dev contractors, but I couldn’t reproduce it myself. It is “kinda” fixed in that I have eliminated some unnecessary resets during login that would help trigger the bug, with a subsequent savings of effort and bandwidth of object update data on arrival. However the root race condition that is being avoided… I didn’t actually figure that out. 
So… I would expect improvements (reduction of missing content on login) but I don’t think this fixed everything. In particular, I thought maybe it would help reduce the rate of missing attachment items on avatars, but upon more thought I realized this fix is not relevant to that problem. Anyway, heads up: this fix is expected to be in Fig Pudding [the next simulator update].

– Leviathan Linden

TP Failure and Log-in Issues

  • Reports suggest that that has been a “big increase” in TP failures and login failures over the last week (I can attest to the former; having had around a 40% TP failure rate on first attempts to get somewhere on several days). Viewer logs and times incidents occurred, submitted via Canny, would be helpful in debugging issues.
  • It was also noted that LL is engaged in making some network infrastructure changes, so again, a request was made for those “experiencing connectivity problems not of the usual sort or frequency” to file a Canny report would be useful. Times, places, names, and log files.
  • The game_control capability remains on-hold. Leviathan Linden is currently engaged in other work, and unfortunately, game_control is is “near the bottom of” the stack of work he has on-hold as a result.

† The header images included in these summaries are not intended to represent anything discussed at the meetings; they are simply here to avoid a repeated image of a rooftop of people every week. They are taken from my list of region visits, with a link to the post for those interested.