Category: SL User Group Meetings

2019 SL User Groups 2/1: Simulator User Group

Posted on by Inara Pey

Let It Snow!; Inara Pey, November 2018, on FlickrLet It Snow! – blog post

Server Deployments

As always, please refer to the server deployment thread for the latest updates and information.

  • There was no deployment wo the SLS (Main) channel on Tuesday, January 8th, 2019, leaving the channel on server release #18.12.05.522294, comprising a voice service adjustment and internal fixes. However, regions on the channel were restarted in keeping with the Lab’s 14-day restart policy.
  • On Wednesday, January 9th the RC channel updates are slated as being:
    • Magnum and LeTigre are slated for “no roll” and to remain on server release 18#18.12.05.522294, first deployed to it on December 12th, 2018.
    • BlueSteel should be updated on Wednesday, January 9th, 2019 with server maintenance package 19#19.01.03.522821, comprising logging improvements, including “logging to gather baseline information on simulator performance in various areas of interest”.
    • Snack should remain on EEP simulator version 18#18.12.14.522551, first deployed on December 17th, 2018.
    • All RC channels should be restarted, again in keeping with LL’s 14-day restart policy.

SL Viewer

  • Current Release version 6.0.1.522263, dated December 5, promoted December 13. Formerly the Spotykach Maintenance RC viewer – No Change.
  • Release channel cohorts:
    • Estate Access Management (EAM) RC viewer, version 6.1.0.522564, December 19.
    • BugSplat RC viewer, version 6.1.0.522614, December 18. This viewer is functionally identical to the current release viewer, but uses BugSplat for crash reporting, rather than the Lab’s own Breakpad based crash reporting tools.
    • Love Me Render RC viewer, version 6.0.2.522531, December 18.
  • Project viewers:
  • Linux Spur viewer, version 5.0.9.329906, dated November 17, 2017 and promoted to release status 29 November – 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.

Pathfinding Revisited?

Pathfinding is a capability deployed to Second Life in 2012. For those unfamiliar with it, pathfinding was intended to provide a means to allow a range of automated characters – people, animals, monsters, mobile objects (“mobs”) to be created and set into motion within Second Life with greater ease than had been possible.

Using various tools and LSL commands, together with the “navmesh”- a representation of a region’s geometry generated and used by the Havok physics engine to determine paths for pathfinding characters – these characters would be able to navigate their way around obstacles, follow roads, climb inclines, etc. Yoy can read more about it in my 2012 Pathfinding overview.

Unfortunately, and due to a number of reasons – not all of which were entirely fair – Pathfinding never really gained significant use (in fact, many region holders disabled the capability out of fear concerning performance issues.

With the arrival of Animesh, however, there is potentially a new opportunity for Pathfinding to find a use. However, in the time that’s elapsed since the original deployment, there are things that need to be looked at – the wiki documentation, for example, appears to be somewhat out-of-date (and was always a little confusing). Also,Pathfinding itself can also be somewhat unpredictable, while some of the capabilities could possibly do with update.

Whether or not Pathfinding will be revisited by the Lab or not is currently an open question; however it has been a topic that has been raised at a number of user group meetings (Simulator can Content Creation), so it is something the Lab is aware of as being of potential interest to users / creators.

2019 SL User Groups 1/2: TPV Developer Meeting

Posted on by Inara Pey

Lutz City; Inara Pey, November 2018, on FlickrLutz City, November 2018; blog post

The following notes are taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, January 4th, 2019. A video of the meeting is embedded below, my thanks as always to North for recording and providing it. Note that was a brief meeting, with extended silences while things were discussed in chat.

This was a shot meeting, given not a lot has changed since the December 21st, 2018 meeting, and a no change window has been in effect at the Lab. Note that in the recording, there are some significant pauses in voice, and the time stamps below reflect this.

SL Viewer

[1:04-3:00]

Still no viewer updates since 2018, week #51, leaving the official viewer pipelines as follows:

  • Current Release version 6.0.1.522263, dated December 5, promoted December 13. Formerly the Spotykach Maintenance RC viewer.
  • Release channel cohorts:
    • Estate Access Management (EAM) RC viewer, version 6.1.0.522564, December 19.
    • BugSplat RC viewer, version 6.1.0.522614, December 18. This viewer is functionally identical to the current release viewer, but uses BugSplat for crash reporting, rather than the Lab’s own Breakpad based crash reporting tools.
    • Love Me Render RC viewer, version 6.0.2.522531, December 18.
  • Project viewers:
  • Linux Spur viewer, version 5.0.9.329906, dated November 17, 2017 and promoted to release status 29 November – 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. This viewer will remain available for as long as reasonable, but will not be updated with new features or bug fixes.

RC Viewers

Both the EAM and Bugsplat RC viewers are close to being at a point where either could be promoted to de facto release status. The current Love Me Render (rendering improvements) RC is liable to receive at least one more update before it will be ready to be considered for promotion. However, none of the viewers are ready for promotion in the immediate future.

Project Viewers

The Bakes on Mesh project viewer is still awaiting bug fixes, and the EEP viewer is awaiting UI updates and more atmospheric shader work, all of which is covered in my previous Content Creator UG summary. Both are expected to go to release candidate status “very soon”.

Texture Fetching and Caching

[12:58-19:39] Linden Lab is working on both overhauling how textures are fetched and how they are cached by the viewer. This work involves pretty much rebuilding the entire texture fetching pipeline(possibly using HTTP 2), and changing the state the data is cached in by the viewer (uncompressed, rather than using JPEG 2K, removing the need for the local computer to decode / decompress the texture for JPEG 2K when loading it from cache into memory).  This should itself improve texture loading, as well as all of the changes hopefully bringing improvements to texture handling as a whole, as well as hopefully getting to a point where cache clearing has even less significance than it does at present (and hopefully remove more of the myths about cache clearing).

This work has been on the back burner for a while, but a resource has once again been assigned to it, with a focus on fixing the bugs in the fetching changes. If all goes well, these updates – which also change how texture memory is used – should be appearing in a release candidate viewer some time “in the next several weeks”.

This topic kicked off a text chat technical discussion on texture handling among TPV developers, that continued through to almost the end of the meeting. Please refer to the video for details.

General Notes

  • [5:14-5:32] TPVs should hopefully get the most recent crash stats in the next couple of weeks.
  • [6:09-6:32] Again, as per my CCUG summary, the Lab has received contributions from Beq Janus (mesh uploader improvements) and Nicky Dasmijn (improved search capabilities on preferences and settings). These should be appearing an a maintenance RC once implemented by the Lab.
  • [7:38-9:20] The Lab has ceased doing debug builds with viewer. This speeds the build process as enough data is gathered via deb info to remove a dedicated debug build. However, it does mean viewers using the debug build path many well fail during the build process, and one TPV is reporting issues with deb info – although this may be due to their build process being at a variance to the Lab’s.
  • [10:50-11:12] The Lab’s development viewer builds for Mac now use macOS Sierra (10.12). It’s not certain if this is the case for the production builds as yet.

2019 SL User Groups 1/1: Content Creation

Posted on by Inara Pey

Snow Falls; Inara Pey, November 2018, on FlickrSnow Falls, November 2018 – blog post

The majority of the following notes are taken from the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting, held on Thursday, January 3rd, 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.

SL Viewer

Due to the end-of-year / new year break, at the time of writing, the official viewer pipelines remain unchanged from 2018 week #51:

  • Current Release version 6.0.1.522263, dated December 5, promoted December 13. Formerly the Spotykach Maintenance RC viewer.
  • Release channel cohorts:
    • Estate Access Management (EAM) RC viewer, version 6.1.0.522564, December 19.
    • BugSplat RC viewer, version 6.1.0.522614, December 18. This viewer is functionally identical to the current release viewer, but uses BugSplat for crash reporting, rather than the Lab’s own Breakpad based crash reporting tools.
    • Love Me Render RC viewer, version 6.0.2.522531, December 18.
  • Project viewers:
  • Linux Spur viewer, version 5.0.9.329906, dated November 17, 2017 and promoted to release status 29 November – 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.

Voice Update

There was a back-end update to SL voice on Wednesday, December 26th, 2018.

Hover Height / Vertical Positioning Issue

Ever since server release 18#18.10.25.521081 was deployed at the end of October / beginning of November 2018, there have been reports of a hover height / positioning issue for full mesh avatars of less than “normal” height. This can leave such avatars floating 0.2 to 0.3 metres off the ground if non-height related changes are made after hover height has been set (BUG-225893).

Current Status

Anchor Linden has been investigating this, and the current thinking is that it is related to a change made to the Appearance / Bake Service, rather than to a simulator update. However, it is still proving difficult to reproduce 100% of the time, so investigations are still in progress.

Animesh

  • The number of Animesh items on the Marketplace is increasing, and “Animesh” is now sufficiently recognised as a search term that using it will turn up relevant results, as well as using the Animated Objects category as a means of filtering.
  • The SL feature roadmap for 2019 is still being discussed, but Vir hopes to be able to put more work into Animesh in order to make Animesh characters easier to customise (e.g. applying a body shape). However, this work will not be appearing on the immediate horizon.

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 which include the ability to use custom Sun, Moon and cloud textures. These can be stored in inventory and traded through the Marketplace / exchanged with others, and can additionally be used in experiences.

The project also includes a new set of render shaders to support atmospheric effects such as rainbows, crepuscular rays (“God rays”), better horizon haze and fogging (but will not include rain / snow).

Resources

Current Status

  • Rider Linden is working on updates to the EEP settings tabs for both the Region / Estate floater and the About Land floater (parcel-level controls). These should be appearing in an EEP viewer update “soon”TM.
  • The viewer will hopefully be moving to RC status in the near future. In the meantime, it is hoped that the back-end will be expanded to a to least one further RC soonTM as well.
  • By the time the back-end role-out occurs, support for crepuscular rays should also be available through the viewer.

ARCTan

ARCTan is the code-name for the project to re-evaluate object and avatar rendering costs to make them more reflective of the actual impact of rendering both, which it is hoped will also help correct some inherent negative incentives for creating optimised content (e.g. with regards to generating LOD models with mesh). This project has been on a slow burn through 2018, but is due to resume in 2019 – although when is still to be determined.

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, and may in time lead to a reduction in the complexity of mesh avatar bodies and heads.

This work 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 Anchor Linden is still involved in determining and trying to fix the hover height / vertical positioning issue for smaller avatars, BoM is still pretty much on hold.

In Brief

  • Viewer contributions: The Lab have received contributions from the Firestorm Team:
    • Beq Janus has contributed her improvements to the mesh uploader (see my Firestorm 6.0.1 review).
    • Nicky Dasmijn has contributed improvements to the viewer’s search capabilities on preferences and settings.
    • Hopefully, these updates will be appearing in a Maintenance RC viewer at some point in the future.
  • SL 2019 Roadmap: It’s been acknowledged that 2019 is going to be something of a balancing act for Second Life between new features implementation and also all the infrastructure work involved in the transition to the cloud.
  • Baked Mesh “seams” issue: there have been reports of issues with “seam” appearing on meshes using baked textures. This appears to go back to a normal maps related issue (BUG-5975). Within the Lab, it had been thought the problem was the result of the used normal maps being discontinuous, rather than a shader issue. Further investigation will require further examples with “non-broken” normals in order to determine if it is a shader bug.

2018 SL UG updates 51/3: TPV Developer meeting summary

Posted on by Inara Pey

Dagger Bay; Inara Pey, November 2018, on FlickrDagger Bay – blog post

The following notes are taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, November 30th, 2018. A video of the meeting is embedded below, my thanks as always to North for recording and providing it. Note that was a brief meeting, with extended silences while things were discussed in chat.

SL Viewer

[0:53-4:05] The Love Me Render RC viewer updated to version 6.0.2.522531, dated December 18th.

  • Current Release version 6.0.1.522263, dated December 5, promoted December 13. Formerly the Spotykach Maintenance RC viewer – NEW.
  • Release channel cohorts:
    • Estate Access Management (EAM) RC viewer, version 6.1.0.522564, December 19.
    • BugSplat RC viewer, version 6.1.0.522614, December 18. This viewer is functionally identical to the current release viewer, but uses BugSplat for crash reporting, rather than the Lab’s own Breakpad based crash reporting tools. It also makes the version update check a child process to the viewer, which should prevent the creation of multiple viewer icons.
  • Project viewers:
  • Linux Spur viewer, version 5.0.9.329906, dated November 17, 2017 and promoted to release status 29 November – 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.

Currently, it would appear that the BugSplat RC will most likely be the next RC viewer promoted to release status.

As per my most recent CCUG summary, the Bakes on Mesh viewer will most likely have one more round as a project viewer before moving to RC status. It is also hoped that the EEP viewer will go to RC status in early January.

Feedback from estate / region owners / managers is still being sought for the Estate Access Management viewer, so if you have estate / region management rights for a region / estate, please give the viewer a go and report any issues back to the Lab via Jira.

Voice Service Update

[5:08-6:02] The Lab is planning an update to the voice service back-end over the holiday period. This should have been deployed prior to the break, but had to be postponed. When deployed, it could cause a brief interruption to services, and users may have to re-log to regain voice. Notification of the deployment will be given ahead of time via the grid status page. There is also a roll-back plan in place if the update causes issues.

 

2018 SL UG updates 51/2: Content Creation Summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Whirly Fizzle’s EEP Saturn

The majority of the following notes are taken from the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting, held on Thursday, December 20th, 2018 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.

With the Christmas / holiday break now on our doorstep, this was a short meeting.

SL Viewer

There have been two further viewer updates:

  • The Estate Access Management  RC viewer updated to version 6.1.0.522564 on Wednesday, December 19th. See my preview of this viewer here for more information.
  • The Environmental Enhancement Project (EEP) project viewer updated to version 6.0.2.522550 on Thursday, December 20th.

Hover Height / Vertical Positioning Issue

Ever since server release 18#18.10.25.521081 was deployed at the end of October / beginning of November 2018, there have been reports of a hover height / positioning issue issue for full mesh avatars of less than “normal” height. This can leave such avatars floating 0.2 to 0.3 metres off the ground if non-height related changes are made after hover height has been set (BUG-225893).

Current Status

Anchor Linden has been investigating this, but is hampered by the fact the behaviour cannot be properly reproduced with consistency. This is making a root cause determination difficult. As this work is currently Anchor’s main focus at the moment, it means the Bakes on Mesh project is somewhat on hold.

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, and may in time lead to a reduction in the complexity of mesh avatar bodies and heads.

This work 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 per the notes above, Bakes on Mesh is “on hold” at present while Anchor is otherwise engaged in bug hunting.
  • There are apparently a couple of issues with BoM still to be ironed out, and there is also an internal wiki issue preventing the Bakes On Mesh documentation being published on the SL wiki.
  • Allowing for the hover height / positioning issue mentioned above and the remaining work on Bakes on Mesh (+ the QA testing), it’s possible it will be a few weeks after the start of 2019 before this project progresses again.

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 which include the ability to use custom Sun, Moon and cloud textures. These can be stored in inventory and traded through the Marketplace / exchanged with others, and can additionally be used in experiences.

The project also includes a new set of render shaders to support atmospheric effects such as rainbows, crepuscular rays (“God rays”), better horizon haze and fogging (but will not include rain / snow).

Resources

Current Status

  • This week has seen updates to both the simulator code (available on Aditi for test, and also on limited release on Agni via the Snack RC channel) and, as noted above, to the viewer.
  • It’s hoped that the last of the shader work (e.g. crepuscular rays) will be completed in January.
  • The set agent environment scripted controls (allowing the entire environment for an avatar to be replaced when using an experience) is now in place.
    • Documentation for this will be pushed on the wiki after the holiday break.
  • Rider Linden is working on some further UI clean-up / clarification.

In Brief

  • There has been an issue with joint aliases not being correctly supported (the “avatar_xxx” aliases were not working for all the bones in the skeleton). Vir now has a fix for this, which should be appearing in the relatively near future.
  • Date of next CCUG meeting: Thursday, January 3rd, 2019.

2018 SL UG updates 51/1: Simulator User Group

Posted on by Inara Pey

Magritte; Inara Pey, November 2018, on FlickrMagritte – blog post

Server Deployments

As always, please refer to the server deployment thread for updates.

  • On Tuesday, December 18th, the SLS (Main) channel was updated with server maintenance package 18#18.12.05.522294, comprising a voice service adjustment and internal fixes.
  • On Wednesday, December 19th, the three main RC channels should be updated with server maintenance package 8#18.12.03.522210, comprising a further voice service adjustment.
  • Also on Wednesday, December 19th, the Snack channel should be updated with a new EEP simulator update, 18#18.12.14.522551.

SL Viewer

There have been two viewer updates to start the week, bringing two of the viewers up to parity with the current release viewer (formerly the Spotykach Maintenance RC viewer). These are:

  • The Bugsplat RC viewer, which updated to version 6.1.0.522614. This viewer is functionally identical to the current release viewer, but uses BugSplat for crash reporting, rather than the Lab’s own Breakpad based crash reporting tools.
  • Love Me Render RC viewer, which updated to version 6.0.2.522531.

The remaining viewers in the pipeline remain (at the time of writing) unchanged from the end of week #50.

  • Current Release version 6.0.1.522263, dated December 5th, promoted December 13th. Formerly the Spotykach Maintenance RC viewer – NEW.
  • Release channel cohorts:
    • Estate Access Management (EAM) RC viewer, version 5.2.0.520057, September 28th.
  • Project viewers:
    • Linux Spur viewer, version 5.0.9.329906, dated November 17th, 2017 and promoted to release status 29 November – 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.

Last Name Changes – Supporting External Databases

A number of creators and others utilise external databases that use their own log-in authentication process bases on their customers’ Second Life names. Concern has therefore been raised as to how they’ll be able track changes to users’ lasts names once the ability for them to be changed has been re-introduced, with requests for LL to offer some kind of RSS feed providing name change updates.

However,Oz indicated this would not likely be the case, noting:

I don’t think that keeping current with a feed would really work, and it could easily be misused. Don’t store names – store IDs (agent UUIDs). IDs will never change [So] just have them enter name, then internally translate to the UUID. The translation will always be correct whether they use a current name or an old one. We will not be providing a feed or any way to look them up in bulk.

– Oz Linden

No Change Window

Due to the Christmas and New Year holiday period, there will be a No Change window in effect from close of business on Friday, December 21st, 2018 through until at least Wednesday, January 2nd, 2019. During this time there will be no planned updates or releases for the SL simulators or the official viewer.

The next Simulator User Group meeting will take place on Tuesday, January 8th, at the usual time of 12:00 noon.