Category: SL User Group Meetings

2019 SL User Groups 30/3: TPVD Meeting and Singularity

Posted on by Inara Pey

Summer Edge; Inara Pey, June 2019, on FlickrSummer Edge, June 2019 – blog post

The following notes are taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, July 26th, 2019. A video of the meeting is embedded below, my thanks as always to Pantera 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 text chat around animation systems and options – please refer to the video for details.

SL Viewer

[0:00-1:48]

There have been no changes through the week with regards to the viewer pipelines. With the SL Feature Summit in week #31, it likely means there will be no updates then, either.

  • Current Release version 6.2.3.527758, formerly the Rainbow RC viewer 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.

Both Love Me Render and Rakes On Mesh are considered as being “very close” to promotion. However, as noted in my notes from the Content Creation meeting, BOM is going to be going through a QA review at the Lab, so Love Me Render might be the nearer of the two in terms of suitability for promotion.

SL Feature Summit

[1:51-2:00]

As noted, there is a SL Feature Summit in week 31, so there will also be no simulator releases next week.

Other Topics

UDP Messaging – Further Deprecation

[22:29-23:48]  There are still “a couple” of inventory-related UDP operations that need to be deprecated. This will not be a short-term change, however, as the corresponding HTTP operations handling has yet to be written. Once they have been, the UDP operations will be removed from the official viewer. Time – measured in months – will be allowed for TPVs to adopt the HTTP before the UDP is deprecated on the back end.

In Brief

  • [3:10-5:50] Can we have more than two shadow casting projectors? Short answer: not without measuring performance impact. Long answer: no further rendering type changes are up for consideration until after Love Me Render, EEP and BOM have been released. See also STORM-2147.
  • [4:04-4:17] OS X and OpenGL deprecation: the lab is still investigating options for Mac support after Apple deprecates OpenGL support.
  • [9:38-10:45] BUG-227350 – a feature request to allow LSL scripted toggling of voice on / off, which could be useful for guest-moderate talks, etc., when a land owner isn’t present – has been accepted by the Lab for consideration, but with the caveat the potential for abuse may prevent it being implemented. However, it stands as a good example of how to submit a feature request.

Singularity News

[16:59-17:33] Singularity was one of the viewers affected by the majority of UDP asset messaging paths being deprecated and removed from the back-endcode recently. While there are Singularity nightly builds to overcome the issue, there has yet to be an official full release – although this is being worked on. Commenting at the TPVD meeting, Inusaito Kanya stated:

We’re nearing release very soon, the build directed to on our site right now is http://links.singularityviewer.org/?to=nightly because we really don’t want anyone getting the UDP assets. We have Linux ready mostly and we’re working on a couple last minute fixes here and there but otherwise we should be good. Mostly graphics fixes and last minute UI touches[ still to be done].

 

2019 SL User Groups 30/2: Content Creation summary

Posted on by Inara Pey

56578 Go Wild Blvd, Watery Cove, IS 245785; Inara Pey, June 2019, on Flickr56578 Go Wild Blvd, Watery Cove, IS 245785, June 2019 – blog post

The following notes are taken from the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting, held on Thursday, July 25th 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.

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 is in the pipeline and will be available soon.
  • As the project is seen as a “getting closer” and that now is the time for issues to be reported.
  • EEP and Bakes on Mesh have also swapped their internal QA teams, so that each project has fresh eyes on it as it gets closer to a potential release.

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

  • As noted above, the BOM and EEP QA teams have swapped responsibilities, so that there are fresh eyes on both projects.
  • With BOM in particular, this means the project is to be subject to extensive internal review by the Lab ahead of possible release dates being considered.

Animesh Follow-On – Project Muscadine

  • DRTSIM-421 on Aditi now has the server-side code to support the new visual parameters LSL code.
  • The simulator build and a build of a project viewer supporting the new LSL code are both undergoing LL QA testing.
  • Once both have passed QA, the viewer will be made available for public testing on the relevant regions on the DRTSIM-421 channel on Aditi.
    • The viewer might be available within the next 2-3 weeks.
  • It’s been suggested that imposters for Animesh and imposters for avatars should be separated.
    • This would be possible, although it would require some code re-working within the imposter system, which hasn’t been planned.
    • There’s also the question of how many people would use a separate Animesh setting, even if it were provided – or perhaps even be aware of it – or if two settings might not confuse people

General Discussion

Tutorial Videos

  • The Lab is looking to again start producing tutorial videos.
  • Some of these will focus on the basics with content (e.g. how to dress an avatar, wear jewellery, etc.), and how to recognise well-made / optimised content. These videos may start to appear later in 2019.
  • The hope is that as well as helping to educated consumers, these videos may start encouraging creators to think more about issues of optimisation.
  • The Lab will be interested in hearing ideas on this from creators.
  • It is likely this work will be linked to things like Project ARCTan, which will look at rendering costs, etc.
    • It was intimated that in the future, landowners might be able to limit access to their land by avatar complexity as well as by the more recognised script load.
    • Any such changes will be introduced gradually, with the educational programme – videos, etc., preceding it to try to help users better understand optimisation and benefits.

In Brief

  • In-World Pose System: this has grown out of a code contribution, but is current on hold pending resources.
  • Pathfinding: something the Lab would like to look at again, but unlikely to be in 2019.
  • Puppeteering: this is an old project that several have suggested re-vitalising. The view from the lab appears to be that it is now too old and SL has moved on too far for it to be practical to try to just resume work.

Meetings

Due to the Lab’s internal SL Feature Summit and the monthly All Hand meeting at the Lab, the next CCUG meeting will likely be on Thursday, August 8th, 2019 – but check the wiki page to confirm,as it might be possible there is a meeting on August 1st, depending on the start of the SL Feature Summit.

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.