Category: SL User Group Meetings

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.

2025 week #20: SL CCUG meeting summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Hippotropolis Campsite: venue for CCUG meetings
The following notes were taken from my audio recording and chat log of the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting of Thursday, May 15th, 2025. Please note that this is not a full transcript, but a summary of key topics, and timestamps are to the official video, embedded at the end of this report. .
Table of Contents

Meeting Purpose

  • The CCUG meeting is for discussion of work related to content creation in Second Life, including current and upcoming LL projects, and encompasses requests or comments from the community, together with related viewer development work.
  • This meeting is generally held on alternate Thursdays at Hippotropolis.
  • Dates and times of meetings are recorded in the SL Public Calendar, and they are conducted in a mix of Voice and text chat.

Official Viewer Status and Updates

Viewer Status

2025.04 and Upcoming 2025.25 RC Viewers

[Video: 5:55-7:01]

  • The feature set for the 2024.04 RC viewer remains as per the currently available version:
    • Chat Mentions (Early Support): Type @ then pick a name. To follow: audible alerts and highlight colour pickers.  This does not support generic mentions such as @everyone or @here.
    • My Outfits subfolders: now supports the use of subfolders.
    • Hover height: the minimum/maximum is now +/- 3 meters.
    • UI Quality of life improvements.
    • Use the release notes link, above, for full details.
  • The upcoming 2025.05 RC looks set to include:
    • A “catch-up merge” of fixes and updates from the old Develop / Maintenance C branches.
    • Inventory Favourites (described at the meeting as “a little bit buggy”). As per [Video: 11:41-13:30], this is  a capability originally designed in 2024, and will see the addition of an Inventory tab where selected favourite items can be listed.

 glTF Mesh Uploader

[Video: 3:51-5:54 + as noted below]

  • The decision has been made to move this out of the upcoming 2025.05 RC viewer.
  • This decision also means that the Lab is evaluating what will be required to get PBR material imports working as part of the mesh upload process at the same time (rather than just having only the Base Colour uploaded).
    • Under previous plans, it had been stated that direct import of a full set of glTF materials as a part of a glTF mesh requires an large refactoring of code; so the initial release of the uploader would only support Base Colour, with other maps to be added in the future.
    • It also marks a switching away from discussions at the last CCUG, where creators expressed a preference to upload meshes with all materials and just have blank faces to which they could they apply their materials post upload. This is because the Lab would rather provide a complete drag-and drop solution, if this can be done.
    • The unspoken element of this update suggests that if direct upload of materials with meshes does prove to be complex, providing uploads with blank faces will likely be the fallback approach.
    • Either way, the ability for people to apply their own materials to objects that are Modify will remain unchanged.
  • [Video: 7:02-8:31] As to when an in which viewer the mesh uploader will surface is TBA, and subject to further internal discussions at the Lab.
    • There is currently a issue in getting rigged meshes (full avatars, as provided for testing by content creators, rather than individual items) to upload correctly.
    • LL is not opposed to shipping the uploader as a Project viewer once suitable for testing. This is liable to occur “sooner rather than later”, subject to the above mentioned issue.
  • [Video: 8:55-9:55] Will the glTF uploader support large meshes / those with more than 8 faces, rather than breaking them up?
    • The 8-face constraint a current system constraint and requires potentially significant simulator codes changes. As such, it is liable to remain “for now”
  • Implementation of a glTF mesh uploader will not mean the end of COLLADA (.DAE) upload support for SL – this will remain available. However, as modelling tools, etc., are deprecating COLLADA support, there is a recommendation that if creators wish to continue supporting their old mesh content, then they convert it to glTF .

In Brief

  • [Video: 13:32-15:00] Feature Request Add Custom Tags to Inventory Items – was raised at the end of 2024, and is currently marked as Tracked.  It was raised again at this meeting. Kyle Linden confirmed that a design for such tagging in on the viewer roadmap.
  • Terrain:
    • [Video: 15:15-16:12] Potential for better terraforming tools: Described as something LL would like to get to, including higher resolution texture support; the (currently on-hold) Terrain Painting work, etc. However, nothing is currently being worked on, and suggestions for terrain improvements request through the Feedback Portal.
    • [18:04-20:26] New terrain textures for Mainland: seen as a “nice to have”. However, given issues around enabling HDR skies to make PBR look good on Mainland (and the resultant “dim/dark” look to the skies) + the number of people still not using PBR-capable viewers (although this number is falling), LL is cautious about making widespread changes to Mainland. Nevertheless, updating terrain textures is something (per the above) LL “would like to do” in time.
    • [Video 44:41-46:26] WRT terrain and texturing a question was asked on whether it would be possible to have a “grass” functionality at so point, allowing land holder spawn grass on their land, rather than just having a texture. This does (to a point) exist in the viewer through the Build floater → plant rez option, although this is admittedly old and can be LI intensive, so likely needs revisiting in the future to update. Canny requests on what people would like to see with this were requested.
  • [Video: 17:10-17:45] It was asked if there was any further news on feature request: Make Appearances Height = Prim Height, noted at the last meeting as “something that could be looked at”.
    • Short answer: no.
    • The discrepancies in height are something LL would like to address, but involves where they are and what needs to be done (even different viewers can report different heights for the same avatar). But is it not something currently in progress.
  • [Video: 20:33-24:39] A discussion on being able to “share” attachments (e.g. one person being able to have a pizza box attached to them, and others being able to “take” a slice of pizza from the box a) without any complex means of taking an attachment to inventory and adding it (or similar) and b) having the corresponding slice of the pizza “vanish” from the box.
    • Rider Linden confirmed two approaches (to meet different use-cases) are “on the drawing board” to address this. One involves the use of Experience capabilities; the other enabling attachments to be made directly from an object’s inventory. However, neither option is currently being worked on.
  • [Video: 24:51-29:21] A request was made for further attachment points.
    • Providing additional attachment points is seen as sub-optimal, simply because of the additional rendering load / script processing requirements doing so will bring.
    • Rather, and while not currently on the roadmap, LL might look towards allowing customs skeletons (when supported) to have their own attachment structures, with a proxy system to offer back compatibility with the existing attachment point system.
    • This discussion touched on the Permissions system (e.g. allowing no modify items to be linked to others), which is really a no-no among many (although subject to debate within and without LL), as so unlikely to change in the foreseeable future, if at all.
  • [Video: 29:50-31:20] The above flowed into a discussion on the proposed permissions “bypass” that had been put forward by Geenz Linden for resolving issues of alpha/gamma issues causing some hairstyles to look “wrong” under PBR lighting.
    • This would have enabled uses to make a change through the viewer to enable “legacy” blending on the hair, even if it was No Modify. However, this was not seen as an optimal route to take by some at LL.
    • As such, the fix remains on hold until either those at LL can be persuaded that allowing such a bypass of permissions is not so bad, or an alternative solution can be determined, which could be used to detect all instances where legacy alpha blending is required.
  • [Video 33:22-34:55] Imposters and mesh proxies:
    • It is acknowledged that the current avatar imposter system is looking increasingly outdated.
    • The idea of providing some form of proxies (e.g. “visible triangle only” when seen from a distance) has been discussed internally at LL, however, this is not something being actively worked upon, nor is it part of any scheduled future work.
  • There were also general discussions around Gacha (more policy than content creation) and this Canny report; new user on-boarding; content being ripped from SL (or other platforms) and (re)uploaded to SL for sale (file a DMCA Take-Down request); LL addressing quality of life issues (usability) – being addressed, file Cannys!; items awaiting better prioritisation (e.g. dynamic Landmarks). Please refer to the last 20 minutes of the video for more on these.

Next Meeting

2025 week #20: SL SUG meeting

Posted on by Inara Pey
The Forest of Hours, March 2025 – blog post

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, May 13th, 2025 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They form a summary of the items discussed, and are not intended to be a full transcript, and 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

  • On Tuesday, May 13th, the Main SLS channel was updated with the Elderberry simulator release.
  • Om Wednesday, May 14th, the RC channels should be restarted without update.

Upcoming Deployment – Fig Newton (2025.06)

  • Yes, the name changed in the passage of a week.
  • This is still being put together, and is unlikely to surface before June, as the simulator team has been focusing on some necessary internal work which has drawn attention away from feature work on the simulators.

SL Viewer Updates

In Brief

  • Rider Linden requested if people preferred code-names for simulator updates or their official initial version numbers (e.g. 2025.05, 2025.06).
    • Given that version umbers actually relate to minor things like RELEASE NOTES – they actually serve a use.
    • As noted by Fig Pudding Newtons, code names can change on a whim and seem pretty pointless.
    • However, it appears an attempt to use both will be used going forward 🙄(yes, I’m a carbon-based unit and I have no sense of fun‡).
  • PBR Colour data is lost when setting PBR overrides was raised some time ago, but has yet to be fixed. Responding to a question on why it had not been fixed when implementing llSetLinkGLTFOverrides, Rider Linden stated:
Because when PBR was implemented they did not separate the colour value from the alpha. The two are stored internally as a single number. Since the simulator does not have the actual value from the material (it does not read materials) there is no way to change one without impacting the other. Doing so would have required a protocol change in the way overrides are sent and protocol changes are big deals since they break the viewer.
    • He went on to note that overrides are among a number of things he would like to revamp and improve upon.
  • The above led to a request for creators refreshing older products with PBR to be able to supplement llSetLinkAlpha to some sort of llSetLinkPBRAlpha, without having to “dual stack” materials.
    • Rider Linden indicated that this would require adding a new function, and as such perhaps best done when overrides are being revamped, per the above comment.
    • Leviathan Linden further noted that Geenz Linden is currently thinking about how to overhaul GLTF override system, as fallout of planning on how to support object hierarchy.
  • A portion of the chat was around When an object is paid the object name being recorded should be controlled by the Server and not the Viewer, seen as a particular concern among providers of Skill Games. This topic was also raised extensively at the Skill Gaming meeting.
  • Most of the meeting revolved around Blinn-Phong, glTF, alpha and colour overrides, most of which I, frankly, am not qualified to talk about in a meaningful way. Please refer to the video.
  • The latter half of the meeting involved the potential for physical region crossings between regions that are non-contiguous (e.g. your are on “Region A” and can “see” and “cross into” (walking, via vehicle) “Region B” directly (no actual manual teleport trigger), even though “Region B” is on the 2other side” of the grid. See: “Wormhole Regions” (Non-Cartesian region crossing).
    • This is something that has apparently been raised a lot within LL and seen and a “neat idea” and potentially possible. But it would be “way down on a list, below all sorts of important stuff to fix.”
  • Leviathan Linden is still trying to work out the “sometimes objects don’t show up on login” problem. He now has a reliable repro for this issue and is using it to try to understand why and where things are going wrong.
  • Off-lines not appearing on log in until relogging his become an increasing issue of late.  Commenting on the report, Leviathan Linden stated:
The fact that the off-lines show up in a second session suggests that they were never successfully requested by the viewer in the earlier session, since otherwise they would have been cleared (considered delivered) at the server. So we’re wondering: why isn’t the viewer correctly invoking some cap? 

† 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.

‡That’s a Hitch Hiker’s Guide Reference, in case you read this far.