Category: SL User Group Meetings

2019 SL User Groups 30/1: Simulator User Group

Posted on by Inara Pey

Lotus Bay; Inara Pey, June 2019, on FlickrLotus Bay, June 2019 – blog post

Server Deployments

There are no planed deployments for this week, leaving the major simulator channels on server maintenance package 19#19.06.14.528215, comprising internal changes.

  • Note that a deployment to the Magnum RC on Wednesday, July 17th (simulator package 19#19.07.10.529179), was subsequently rolled back as a result of a bug being discovered during deployment.
  • Region restarts may occur in accordance with the Lab’s 14-day restart policy.

Also, there will be no simulator deployments in week #31, due to the Lab’s internal Second Life Feature Summit.

SL Viewer

There have been no LL viewer updates as of the time of writing this update, leaving the pipelines as follows:

  • Current Release version 6.2.3.527758, formerly the Rainbow RC viewer dated June 5th, promoted June 18th – No Change.
  • Release channel cohorts:
  • Project viewers:
    • 360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, July 16th.
    • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.2.3.527749, June 5th. Covers the re-integration of Viewer Profiles.
  • Linux Spur viewer, version 5.0.9.329906, 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.

In Brief

  • Aditi log-ins remained problematic during week #29 / the start of week #30, but the Lab believes the issues to now be resolved – see BUG-227357.

Android / Lumiya  / Mobile

Since the last of the UDP asset messaging deprecation, users on the Lumiya Android app have been unable to use certain functions – notably in relation to the in-world view the app has, changing their outfits, using animations / AOs, etc.

The problem here is that Lumiya needs to be updated to HTTP for asset data fetching across the board; unfortunately, with the developer out-of-contact, this (like the issue of the app remaining unavailable on the Google store) is unlikely to be resolved any time soon.

Currently LL is developing an iOS “companion app” – and there have been calls for the Lab to re-direct this work towards Android. However, these requests overlook two key points:

  • The initial versions will be for chatting and messaging only – which can still be done with the Lumiya app.
  • While the capabilities of the iOS app will be extended over time, the Lab has not committed to what additional capabilities will be provided or a time frame of when they will be provided. so whether or not a 3D world renderer of the type seen in Lumiya will be a part of any future expansion of the app is open to debate – as is any time frame in which it might appear.

Therefore, even if work were move from iOS to Android – it actually wouldn’t resolve the specific pain point Lumiya users are currently feeling (unable to change their appearance, use animations, etc), in the short or medium term.

It has also been suggested that LL should provide a streaming solution. However, the issue here is cost (the one operating streaming service for SL – Bright Canopy  – costs US $1.70 per hour, for example). LL currently (and most likely correctly) believe streaming costs for SL are above levels user would be willing to play. They would rather wait until said costs have (hopefully) come down in the future.

Next SUG Meeting

Due to the Lab’s internal Second Life Feature Summit taking place in week #31, there will be no SUG meeting on Tuesday, July 30th. The next meeting will therefore be Tuesday, August 6th, 2019.

2019 SL User Groups 29/2: Content Creation summary

Posted on by Inara Pey

Jilin Estates; Inara Pey, June 2019, on FlickrJilin Estates, June 2019 – blog post

The following notes are taken from the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting, held on Thursday, July 18th 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.

Viewer Update

The current Maintenance RC viewer, Umeshu (version 6.2.4.528492 at the time of writing) is now considered “very close” to promotion to release status, with Vir linden noting that if SL viewer users notice they get a message to update “that’s very probably it.”

Bakes On Mesh

Project Summary

Extending the current avatar baking service to allow wearable textures (skins, tattoos, clothing) to be applied directly to mesh bodies as well as system avatars. This involves viewer and server-side changes, including updating the baking service to support 1024×1024 textures, but does not include normal or specular map support, as these are not part of the existing Bake Service, nor are they recognised as system wearables. Adding materials support may be considered in the future.

Resources

Current Status

  • There have been a couple of further issues show up during internal testing of Bakes on Mesh related to local appearance when editing an avatar’s appearance – changes don’t always resolve consistently, particularly with regards to texturing non-rigged meshes with bakes.
  • Transparencies on the Bake Service aux channels: after meeting with mixed expectations on how this should be handled (see recent previous CCUG summaries in these pages), the Lab is anticipating supporting two cases:
    • If a creator wants the aux channel to be opaque – this will require the placement of an opaque texture at the bottom of the bake stack (e.g. a skin-like universal), and setting Alpha Mode for the object (Edit > Texture) to None.
    • If a creator wants to have a translucent layer with portion of it see-through – this will likely require a universal wearable that just has transparent textures, and setting the Alpha Mode to Alpha Blending.
    • Vir noted that it is possible to have other combinations of textures and Alpha Mode settings, but these can give unpredictable results.  To help avoid this, the plan is to get some better documentation put together ready for when BOM reaches release status.

Note: there is an internal Bakes On Mesh review meeting scheduled for Friday, July 19th, at which the issues mentioned in the first bullet point will be examined. If these are determined to be edge cases, and no other issues are noted, the Bakes on Mesh project is liable to be moving to release status “very soon”. Creator wishing to test the capability are therefore asked to download the Bakes On Mesh RC viewer and use it and report and bugs or issues they encounter “right away”.

Animesh Follow-On

  • Vir is working on a project viewer in support of the new LSL functions that can be used to set visual parameters for Animesh objects.
    • It had been indicated that the capability would allow parameters to be looked up by name or ID, which is a little inconsistent compared to how things usual work (via using integer constants). It’s therefore been decided to support all of the applicable visual parameters by means of a set of corresponding constants.
    • There is no current time frame on when a project viewer may appear – this is dependent on the viewer being build and then passing through the Lab’s internal testing / QA.
    • Obviously, when the project viewer is released, it will be subject to further testing – including the impact updating the parameters for multiple Animesh objects (making them taller or shorter or fatter or thinner, etc) has on a region / viewer performance.
  • These commands will likely be throttled to prevent the mechanism being used as an alternate (and potentially impactful) means of animating Animesh. Concerns have be raised that the throttle could be set too low.Vir has requested that discussions on throttling wait until a project viewer is available, so they might b properly tested and discussed in terms of possible changes.
  • There are still requests for Bakes on Mesh for Animesh to be included in this project. This is unlikely, as it would require further extension of the BOM project before it has even gone live. Which is not to say Bakes On Mesh for Animesh might not be (part of?) a future project.
  • Attachment points for Animesh, however, may be something that is looked at “fairly soon”, possibly as a later part of this current Animesh follow-on.

Environment Enhancement Project

Project Summary

A set of environmental enhancements allowing the environment (sky, sun, moon, clouds, 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 not include certain atmospherics such as crepuscular rays (“God rays”).

Resources

Current Status

  • A further version of the RC viewer (6.4.0.529247) was issued on Monday, July 15th, but overall, testing is still on-going.
  • It’s been reported that the “forced sky update” ability in EEP could adversely impact performance. This is due to by looked at be the Lab.

2019 SL User Groups 29/1: Simulator User Group

Posted on by Inara Pey

Cherishville; Inara Pey, June 2019, on FlickrCherishville, June 2019 – blog post

Server Deployments

As always, check with the deployment thread for the latest news.

  • There are no deployment to the SLS (Main) channel on Tuesday, July 16th, on server maintenance package 19#19.06.14.528215, comprising internal changes.
  • On Wednesday, July 17th:
    • The Magnum RC should be updated to a new simulator package, 19#19.07.10.529179, this apparently contains internal fixes, described by Simon Linden as, “a tiny performance boost … one crash fix, an esoteric TP failure fix, update a system library … general fix-it stuff that isn’t likely to be visible.”
    • BlueSteel and LeTigre will remain on 19#19.06.14.528215.

SL Viewer

On Monday, July 15th:

  • The EEP RC viewer updated to version 6.4.0.529247 (dated Friday, July 12th).
  • The Love Me Render RC viewer updated to version 6.2.4.529302.

On Tuesday, July 16th, the 360 Snapshot project viewer was re-issued as version 6.2.4.529111. This brings the viewer up to parity with the current release viewer.

At the time of publishing this update, the remaining LL viewer pipelines were as follows:

  • Current Release version 6.2.3.527758, formerly the Rainbow RC viewer dated June 5, promoted June 18 – No Change.
  • Release channel cohorts:
  • Project viewers:
    • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.2.3.527749, released on June 5. Covers the re-integration of Viewer Profiles.
  • 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.

In Brief

  • Some are experiencing issues logging-in to Aditi (the beta grid), and fingers have been pointed at Firestorm, however, others aren’t encountering the same issues (myself included).
  • UDP and appearance issues: people on older viewers are continuing to report issues with their appearance (and in the case of Lumiya). This is most likely due to all UDP asset messages (including those related to appearance) have been deprecated on the simulators in favour of HTTP, but these older viewers / clients lack the necessary updates.
  • With the release of Firestorm 6.2.47588 there are reports that RegionCrossingInterpolationTime is acting more like a stop at region crossing within that viewer, sometimes with odd behaviour. One suggestion has been to set the debug to 2.00 seconds to stop the odd behaviour. I must admit that I’ve not been boating or flying with FS 6.2.4.57588 so hadn’t noticed any issues.
  • Summer vacations: the summer season means that vacations are rolling around at the Lab. Rider Linden, who had been digging into the script processing issues is currently out; Simon Linden is due on vacation (although SUG meetings should continue in his absence). And there is the SL “summit” among the developers, etc., so some development work is liable to slow down a little.

2019 SL User Groups 28/2: TPV Developer Meeting

Posted on by Inara Pey

Sweet Paradise; Inara Pey, June 2019, on FlickrSweet Paradise, June 2019 – blog post

The following notes are taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, July 12th, 2019. A video of the meeting is embedded below, my thanks as always to North for recording and providing it. The key points of discussion are provided below with time stamps to the relevant points in the video, which will open in a separate tab when clicked.

This was a short meeting with a lot of non-specific text chat. Please refer to the video for details.

SL Viewer

[1:19-3:20]

The Bakes on Mesh RC viewer updated to version 6.3.0.529185 on July 11th.

Viewer Pipelines

The remaining LL viewer list looks like:

  • Current Release version 6.2.3.527758, formerly the Rainbow RC viewer dated June 5, promoted June 18th – No Change.
  • Release channel cohorts:
  • Project viewers:
    • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.2.3.527749, released on June 5th. Covers the re-integration of Viewer Profiles.
  • 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.

Anticipated Viewer Updates

  • A further iteration of the EEP RC viewer is with QA and should appear in week #29 (week commencing Monday, July 15th).
  • Bakes on Mesh is expected to go through at least one further RC iteration, although it is believed that all viewer-side required fixes have now been implemented.
  • The July 9th Love Me Render (rendering pipe improvements / fixes) update moved that viewer closer to being ready for possible promotion to release status.
  • The 360 Snapshot viewer has now been merged up to the current LL viewer release and is undergoing testing, so should be re-appearing as a project viewer soon.

Viewer Build Process

[18:23-20:54]

The update of the viewer build process using Visual Studio 2017 / the latest Xcode is still stuck on a required update (to boost::fibers), and will likely remain that way for another week or so.

Texture Fetching / Texturing Caching Project

[21:01-23:05]

The project to improve texture fetching and caching in the viewer, which has been on hold for some time, is expected to re-start very soon. This work will likely including experimenting with using the HTTP/2 library, rather than the current curl library; this is also the project that includes support for higher texture memory in the official viewer as well as large on-disk caches. All of which, it is hoped will result in a noticeable performance improvement.

Other Topics

  • [5:15-7:23] It’s been noted the final deprecation of asset UDP messaging may be affecting the session times for scripted agent drivers built over LibOpenMetaverse, and the Lab threw out a question to open-source devs as to whether they could provide further information.
  • [27:02-27:40] There are some improvements coming to search, but it is too soon to say exactly how these will be reflected in the viewer; currently the focus is on improving the search infrastructure.
  • [29:40-31:25] work is continuing on the re-introduction of the “legacy” Profile floater. However, there are web-side changes needed (e.g. the feed needs to be turned into an API end-point). There is no planned simulator changes for this change, so profiles won’t be capabilities-driven.

2019 SL User Groups 28/1: Simulator User Group

Posted on by Inara Pey

Iona Shore; Inara Pey, June 2019, on FlickrIona Shore, June 2019 – blog post

Server Deployments

There are no deployments planned for this week, leaving the SLS (Main) channel and the major RCs all running on server maintenance package 19#19.06.14.528215, comprising internal changes. The updated planned for the RC channels turned out to be “not quite ready” and so are being held over until week #29, commencing Monday, July 15th, 2019.

SL Viewer

The Love Me Render RC viewer updated to version 6.2.4.529065 on Tuesday, July 9th, 2019. At the time of writing, the rest of the current LL viewer pipelines remain unchanged:

  • Current Release version 6.2.3.527758, formerly the Rainbow RC viewer dated June 5, promoted June 18 – No Change.
  • Release channel cohorts:
  • Project viewers:
    • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.2.3.527749, released on June 5. Covers the re-integration of Viewer Profiles.
  • 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.

Region Crossings

User Animats believes he has identified two consistent types of vehicle region crossing failure:

  • The vehicle makes it, but avatar is left behind.
  • At high speed, a complete failure occurs. The vehicle is gone, the avatar is left on the ground or underwater, and often the vehicle is never returned to Lost and Found.

In terms of the latter, it is possible the issue is caused by the vehicle crossing between more than two regions, so that the second region crossing commences before the first has completed – something that can occur when corner crossing between regions, and not just a high speed.

Commenting on this, Simon linden indicated the Lab should potentially slow things down, forcing the first region hand-over to complete before the second commences. He further noted that while this may not be smooth from the perspective of riding the vehicle – but it will be better than a total crossing failure.

Script Processing Issues

For those who may not have seen the comments on script run time issues (see  BUG-226851 and BUG-227099) in my week #26 Content Creation User Group and TPV Developer meeting summaries:

  • There are simulator updates awaiting deployment that should provide better script performance on the “more expensive [resource-wise] scripts events”, such as sensors. This could potentially reduce the overhead of idle scripts by as much as 20-30%, although actual mileage, may vary. The hope is that once deployed, the changes will help push script processing performance in the right direction.
  • These updates are now set to be deployed “soon” as result of the cancellation of this week’s RC deployment.

2019 SL User Groups 27/1: SUG and Singularity

Posted on by Inara Pey

Blaylock Island; Inara Pey, May 2019, on FlickrBlaylock Island – blog post

Server Deployments

Please refer to the server deployment thread for the latest news and updates on the week’s deployments.

  • On Tuesday, July 2nd, the SLS (Main) channel was updated with server maintenance package 19#19.06.14.528215, comprising internal changes.
  • Due to this week being the 4th July holiday week in the US, there are no deployments planned for the main RC channels for Wednesday, July 3rd These will remain on server maintenance package 19#19.06.14.528215.

SL Viewer

At the time of writing, there have been no official viewer updates to mark the start of the week, leaving the pipelines as follows:

  • Current Release version 6.2.3.527758, formerly the Rainbow RC viewer dated June 5, promoted June 18 – 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 6.2.3.527749, released on June 5. Covers the re-integration of Viewer Profiles.
  • 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.

Script Processing Issues

For those who may not have seen the comments on script run time issues (see  BUG-226851 and BUG-227099) in my week #26 Content Creation User Group and TPV Developer meeting summaries:

  • There are simulator updates awaiting deployment that should provide better script performance on the “more expensive [resource-wise] scripts events”, such as sensors. This could potentially reduce the overhead of idle scripts by as much as 20-30%, although actual mileage, may vary. The hope is that once deployed, the changes will help push script processing performance in the right direction.
  • These updates may be initially deployed to the RC channels in week #28 (week commencing Monday, July 8th – although the deployment might be after that week, depending on deploy requirements.
  • Viewer-side tools are to be provided (“after July”) viewing statistics on general script usage across a simulator to help diagnose local problems. These might even include / take the form of a visual indicator, such as the visual object update option (CTRL-ALT-Shift-U).

Singularity Issues

I don’t usually post TPV updates as a part of this report, however, there are two issues affecting Singularity users. In short, these issues can result in a user’s avatar remaining a cloud to them, and may result in other issues. Those experiencing problems are advised to update to the 7640 test version or the 7667 (redo2) version (note the latter link should only be used until such time as a new build (or the 7667 (redo2) build) appears on the Singularity Alpha viewer list.