Category: SL User Group Meetings

2018 SL UG updates #9/2: TPV Developer Meeting

Posted on by Inara Pey

Cece's Secret; Inara Pey, January 2018, on Flickr Cece’s Secret – blog post

The following notes are taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, March 2nd 2018. A video of the meeting is embedded below, my thanks as always to North for recording and providing it. Time stamps in the text below will open the video in a new tab at the relevant point of discussion. Not this was a foreshortened meeting (20 minutes), with some lengthy periods of silence.

SL Viewers

[1:27-2:53]

  • The Nalewka Maintenance RC viewer, version 5.1.2.512803 (dated February 23rd) was promoted to de facto release status on Thursday, March 1st, 2018.
  • The Love Me Render RC viewer updated to version 5.1.3.513005 on Friday, March 2nd, which incorporates KDU and other security improves and (I believe) brings it to parity with the new release viewer.

All other official viewers in the pipe remain as per the start of the week:

  • Release channel cohorts:
    • Media Update RC viewer, version 5.1.2.512574, February 15.
  • 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.

An update to the Media update RC is anticipated to bring it to parity with the new release viewer, and a new update to the 360-snapshot viewer is also anticipated, which hopefully addresses the fuzziness / resolution issues inherent in the current version (see my hands-on overview – link above – for more on this).

Upcoming Viewers

Maintenance Viewer

[3:00-3:09] A new Maintenance RC view should be appearing in week #10 (week commencing Monday, March 5th, 2018).

Bakes on Mesh Project Viewer

[3:10-4:30] A Bakes on Mesh project viewer, suitable for use with Bakes on Mesh test regions on Aditi is with th Lab’s QA team, and may be appearing in week #10.

Bakes on Mesh is a project to extend the current avatar baking service to allow wearable textures (skins, tattoos, clothing) to be applied directly to mesh bodies as well as system avatars. It does so by allowing the faces on a mesh body / head to be defined in terms that the Baking Service can understand, allowing system layers to be applied to those faces, using 1024×1024 textures (rather than the 512×512 currently used by the Baking Service).

It’s important to note that the project viewer (with simulator-side support) is only the first phase of this project (essentially providing the 1024×1024 texture support), and there will still be much more to be done after the project viewer has been made available. Please refer to my Bakes on Mesh updates, which form a part of my weekly Content Creation User Group updates, for more specific information on this project.

Animesh Update

[7:56-9:06 – with audio break-up] The current focus remains:

  • Viewer-side bug fixes.
  • Performance profiling for Animesh complexity and LI costs.

The next step is to deploy updated simulator code in support of the limits so it can be put to the test.

DDoS Attack

[10:38-11:00] Some have experienced audio stream issues since the widespread amplified,UDP-based Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack against memcached servers which took place across the Internet on Monday, February 26th / Tuesday, February 27th (memcached is a distributed memory caching system and is used to speed up dynamic database-driven websites and Internet-facing services by caching data and objects in RAM). As audio streams is handled by separate services (e.g. Shoutcast). It is possible they may have been suffering after-effects of the attack.

[11:05-11:56] The Lab has little to add to the blog post published by April Linden on the situation, other than they continue to harden systems and services. Overall, Second Life can come under frequent DDoS attack, but it myriad of parts are generally robust enough to withstand such attacks without them reaching the point of impacting users.

Off-Line IM Delivery Failures on Logging-in

[5:10-7:00] A project has been initiated to try to resolve problems with the viewer failing to receive all off-line IMs when a use logs in.

The cause appears to be that when a user logs-in, the simulator floods the viewer with UDP messages for the off-line IMs either before the viewer is ready to handle them, or as such a rate, messages are dropped.

To correct this, the Lab is making an API change in the simulator “in the next couple of weeks” and will be introducing a new viewer cap. Together, these will allow the viewer to indicate when it is ready to receive and handle off-line IMs, and ensure that the simulator correctly packages the messages for delivery, rather than simply sending a flood of items to the viewer.

These updates will hopefully be made available in a manner which allows TPVs to merge them relatively easily, rather than forming one part of a huge number of changes to the viewer.

In Brief

  • [4:35-4:53] Viewer Texture Memory Use: the Lab still plans to look at the question of texture memory use within the viewer, although it is noted this is turning into a “bit of a minefield”.
  • [12:02-13:05] Dullahan Linux: there have been requests for the Lab to provide a Linux Dulllahan build of the viewer (see this repository). Callum Linden has confirmed he’ll try to put further work into this before moving on to a new project, to at least leave it in a state others with more knowledge of Linux might be able to use.
  • [15:35-15:48] Disabling UDP inventory messaging: this is still being targeted for summer 2018, but there is currently no confirmed date.

2018 SL UG updates #9/1: SUG, and DDOS

Posted on by Inara Pey

Les Reves Perdus; Inara Pey, January 2018, on Flickr Les Reves Perdus – blog post

Server Deployments

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

On Tuesday, February 27th, the Main (SLS) channel was updated with server maintenance package 18#18.02.12.512536, previously deployed to the three RC channels. This update was to directly address an odd viewer crash situation some users have experienced. Speaking at the week #8 Simulator User Group meeting, and reproduced here for completeness, Simon Linden said of the issue:

The server is doing some better checking on update data it sends to the viewer. We saw a very odd situation a week or two ago where the region was sending odd data and viewers would crash immediately. It went away after we restarted the region, and we think it was some memory corruption … FWIW, the server was sending a value of zero for a prim-code … which is totally invalid … There were also some other invalid data (like a zero’ed UUID) so my theory was memory corruption.

We didn’t have any other smoking guns. That region was fine after restarting, or when we tried our own copy. It was one of those mystery bugs, which we sometimes get since SL is so big and complex. We don’t know why it got that way, or how to make it happen again. we ended up making both the region and the viewer more robust. The underlying problem is still there and, assuming it happens again, will still cause problems.

(See also: BUG-214564.)

On Wednesday, February 28th, 2018 the three main RC channels should be updated as follows:

  • LeTigre and Magnum; no deployment, no restart, leaving them on server maintenance package 18#18.02.12.512536.
  • BlueSteel should received a new server maintenance package, 18#18.02.23.512831, containing further simulator logging improvements and internal fixes. This is dependent upon what happens with the ongoing global DDoS attack over the course of the next 12-18 hours.

SL  Viewer

There have been no official viewer updates at the start of the week, leaving the various pipelines as per the end of week #8:

  • Current Release version  5.1.1.512121, dated January 26, promoted February 7 – formerly the Voice Maintenance RC.
  • Release channel cohorts:
    • Nalewka Maintenance viewer, version 5.1.2.512803, February 23.
    • Love Me Render RC viewer, version 5.1.2.512751, February 21.
    • Media Update RC viewer, version 5.1.2.512574, February 15.
  • 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.

Log-in Issues

On Monday, February 26th and continuing through Tuesday, February 27th, large numbers of SL users experienced significant issues in trying to log-in as a result of a widespread UDP-based Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack on the Internet as a whole (rather than specific to SL).

On Tuesday, February 27th, whilst still dealing with the situation, April Linden at the SL Ops team took time out to post on the situation in the official blog:

Hi everyone.

As I’m sure most of y’all have noticed, Second Life has had a rough 24 hours. We’re experiencing outages unlike any in recent history, and I wanted to take a moment and explain what’s going on.

The grid is currently undergoing a large DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack. Second Life being hit with a DDoS attack is pretty routine. It happens quite a bit, and we’re good at handling it without a large number of Residents noticing. However, the current DDoS attacks are at a level that we rarely see, and are impacting the entire grid at once.

My team (the Second Life Operations Team) is working as hard as we can to mitigate these attacks. We’ve had people working round-the-clock since they started, and will continue to do so until they settle down. (I had a very late night, myself!)

Second Life is not the only Internet service that’s been targeted today. My sister and brother opsen at other companies across the country are fighting the same battle we are. It’s been a rough few days on much of the Internet.

We’re really sorry that access to Second Life has been so sporadic over the last day. Trying to combat these attacks has the full attention of my team, and we’re working as hard as we can on it. We’ll keep posting on the Second Life Status Blog as we have new updates.

See you inworld!
April Linden
Second Life Operations Team Lead

The attack led to a wide number of issues for SL users, from an inability to log-in to SL, through to disconnects or other problems. As Simon Linden explained in the Simulator User Group meeting on Tuesday, February 27th:

It’s not just logins … and often there is cascading problems. If one system gets attacked, it might actually be functioning fine but if the rack or network switch it’s on is overloaded, anything else connected there also has problems.

As it stands, the worst of the attacks appear to be over, at least where SL is concerned, but users should keep an eye on the official blogs for further updates, as well as grid status updates.

2018 SL UG updates #8/2: Content Creator User Group

Posted on by Inara Pey
A rally of (Animesh) raptors on Aditi

The following notes are primarily taken from the Content Creation User Group meeting, held on  Thursday, February 22nd, 2018 at 13:00 SLT. For the purposes of Animesh testing, the meetings have relocated to the Animesh4 region on Aditi, the beta grid – look for the seating area towards the middle of the region. The meeting is chaired by Vir Linden, and agenda notes, etc, are usually available on the Content Creation User Group wiki page.

SL Viewer

  • The project render viewer was updated to RC status on Wednesday February 21st become the Love Me Render viewer, version 5.1.2.512751. The two primary improvements to this viewer are:
    • An improvement to mesh LOD calculation (account for CTRL+0)
    • Agents that render as jelly dolls should have their attachments render at 0 LoD to prevent loading higher LoD complexity in memory thus deterring crashes. The debug setting RenderAutoMuteByteLimit has to be greater than the default of 0 for this feature to work.
  • The Nalewka Maintenance RC viewer also updated on Wednesday, February 21st, to version 5.1.2.512752.
  • The 360-degree snapshot viewer updated on Thursday, February 22nd to version 5.1.2.512774 – see my hands-on overview for more.

Bakes On Mesh

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 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. The project is in two phases:

  • The current work to update the baking service to support 1024×1024 textures on avatar meshes.
  • An intended follow-on project to actually support baking textures onto avatar mesh surfaces (and potentially other mesh objects as well). This has yet to fully defined in terms of implementation and when it might be slotted into SL development time frames.

This work does not include normal or specular map support, as these are not part of the existing baking service.

Current Status

Anchor Linden is currently working on viewer-side support, and hopes to have a project viewer, together with test regions on Aditi, available for testing “soon”.

There is a growing number of questions / concerns around this work which have yet to be fully answered:

  • How will the system avatar be masked? Via a dedicated alpha channel?
  • What creators need to do in order to leverage the capability. Essentially, the process requires specifying which mesh face gets what bake channel – but is this actually defined?
  • Will there be scripted support (seen as vital to allow continued use of normal or spec maps, for example)?
    • How might HUD systems that apply materials work in conjunction with bakes on mesh (e.g. to continue to simulate cloth textures, as seen in current clothing appliers)?
  • Has there been any attempt to reach out to and encourage the makers of popular mesh bodies / heads to engage in the project, body to understand what is being attempted and how best to ensure it is something they would be willing to leverage?
    • Alexa and Vir have both indicated that this is on the Lab’s plans for the project, once a basic project viewer is available so that people can actually start investigating what might be required to leverage the capability properly.
  • Is there a project specification people can refer to / contribute to?
    • Elizabeth Jarvinen (polysail) has offered to write a Feature Request Specification. Those wishing to contribute to it should contact her in-world.

Animesh

  • Vir is focused on bug fixes at the moment.
  • There is a potential new project viewer waiting in the wings, but this is dependent upon some of the bug fixes, such as LOD stability issues and camming problems.
  • There is still no definitive time-frame for the release of Animesh – it’s now largely dependent on the bug fixing work.

Project Arctan

This is the code-name for the project to re-evaluate object and avatar rendering costs. It is still in its very preliminary stages, and might, in time, lead to a change in how Land Impact is calculated and assigned. No decisions have been taken (as the data has yet to be collected and analysed and decisions made), so this not something that will be happening soon – and even when it does, it may not cause any appreciable changes for the majority of users, simply because the Lab is looking to minimise any impact which may come out of the work as much as they can.

Just what is being planned and how any negative impact on LI might be mitigated were discussed at both the week #7 CCUG meeting and that week’s TPVD meeting, and the following audio featuring extracts from both meetings will hopefully further contextualise how the work is being approached, and hopefully ally fears.

Environment Enhancement Project (EEP)

Project Summary

A set of environmental enhancements, including:

  • The ability to define the environment (sky, sun, moon, clouds, water settings) at the parcel level.
  • New environment asset types (Sky, Water, Days – the latter comprising multiple Sky and Water) that can be stored in inventory and traded through the Marketplace / exchanged with others.
  • Experience-based environment functions
  • An extended day cycle (e.g a 24/7 cycle) and extended environmental parameters.

This work involves simulator and viewer changes, and includes some infrastructure updates.

Current Status

  • Rider Linden is now “well on the way” to having working inventory Windlight assets.
  • Once he has finished this element of work, he hopes to put out a project viewer for use of test regions on Aditi which have the necessary support for managing the new Windlight assets – this could happen in March.
  • The will be no direct LSL support for the new assets in the first EEP release.
  • llGetSunDirection() will initially be broken as a result of the alterations to the day / night cycle:
    • The sun’s position will no longer be based on the default Linden Sun (which has a four-hour “day”), but defined by the environment itself, allowing for more physical world daylight times
    • The function will be updated to work with the new EEP capabilities before the project gets to release status.
  • Once llGetSunDirection() has been updated, sundials using it should accurately reflect the position of the Sun over a region, rather than being indicative of its general position in the sky. However, sundials using the scripted function to count the number of seconds since “midnight” in a 4-hour day cycle in order to simulate the Sun’s position in the sky will be broken.
  • Essentially, EEP should allow Windlight settings to work as we see them now, but a) as objects which can be applied from inventory; b) on the basis of agent application through an experience. It should also work closely with the planned atmospherics updates.

Atmospherics Updates

A separate piece of work in progress – albeit it related to EEP – is a set of updates to SL’s atmospheric shaders. This work is being carried out by Graham Linden, and among other things, will allow for things like Godrays, improved visual fogging, etc. There’s currently no time frame on when this work might publicly surface.

Next Meeting

The next CCUG meeting will be held on Thursday, March 8th, 2018.

2018 SL UG updates #8/1: server, viewer

Posted on by Inara Pey

Flying Coyote River; Inara Pey, January 2018, on Flickr Flying Coyote River – blog post

Server Deployments

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

There was no deployment to the Main (SLS) channel on Tuesday, February 20th, again leaving it on the same server release as weeks #6 and #7: 18#18.01.17.511913. as the channel was restarted in week #7, there was no rolling restart this week.

All three of the major RC channels should receive a new server maintenance package on Wednesday, February 21st. Release 18#18.02.12.512536 should hopefully improve (if not resolve) an odd viewer crash situation some users have experienced. At the Simulator User Group meeting on Tuesday, February 20th, Simon Linden described it thus:

The server is doing some better checking on update data it sends to the viewer. We saw a very odd situation a week or two ago where the region was sending odd data and viewers would crash immediately. It went away after we restarted the region, and we think it was some memory corruption … FWIW, the server was sending a value of zero for a prim-code … which is totally invalid … There were also some other invalid data (like a zero’ed UUID) so my theory was memory corruption.

We didn’t have any other smoking guns. That region was fine after restarting, or when we tried our own copy. It was one of those mystery bugs, which we sometimes get since SL is so big and complex. We don’t know why it got that way, or how to make it happen again. we ended up making both the region and the viewer more robust. The underlying problem is still there and, assuming it happens again, will still cause problems.

(See also: BUG-214564.)

SL Viewer

There have been no updates to the viewer in the current official pipelines thus far, leaving them as per the end of week #7:

  • Current Release version  5.1.1.512121, dated January 26, promoted February 7 – formerly the Voice Maintenance RC.
  • Release channel cohorts:
    • Media Update RC viewer version 5.1.2.512574, February 15.
    • Nalewka Maintenance viewer version 5.1.2.512522, February 14.
  • 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.

Region Crossing Issues Investigation

As noted over the last few weeks, user Joe Magarac (animats) has been digging into the viewer code handling region crossings in an attempt to improve avatar handing  when seated on objects and looking at the “partial unsit” issue (when the avatar becomes visual detached from a vehicle on a region crossing, but acts as if still attached (e.g. appearing seated, with any attempt to stand causing a viewer crash. Information pertaining to his effects can be found at the following location:

He now believes he has an extrapolation fix for unsits at region boundaries, which could be appearing in a future Firestorm release.

In addition, he believes he has now isolated the cause of the “partial unsit” issue as being a network bottleneck issue, and is confident he can recreate the problem simply by “overloading” his network connection by running multiple net-intensive operations in the background (resulting in packets being lost or arriving out-of-order), or by forcing packet loss.

Rather than using RLV(/a) to address this problem as a workaround, he’s now looking at using a “scripted seatbelt” – essentially a scripted attachment which can detect a partial unsit, and teleport the avatar to the last known “good” position for the vehicle, attempting to deliver the avatar 3m above the vehicle, which might make it possible for the user to then re-sit. It’s not a total solution, particularly if the vehicle has been handed-off OK and is continuing along its path, but as Simon Linden noted, at least it puts the avatar (hopefully) in the vicinity of the vehicle. And as was also acknowledged in the meeting, anything more direct is likely going to require the Lab find resources to bang on the region crossing code in both simulators and in the viewer.

2018 SL UG updates #7/3: TPV and Web Meetings

Posted on by Inara Pey

Neverfar; Inara Pey, January 2018, on FlickrNeverfar – blog post

The following notes are taken from the TPV Developer meeting and the Web User Group meeting, both held on Friday, February 16th 2018. A video of the TPVD meeting is embedded below, my thanks as always to North for recording and providing it. Time stamps in the text below will open the video in a new tab at the relevant point of discussion.

SL Viewer

[0:55-3:02] The Media Update RC viewer version updated to version 5.1.2.512574 on February 15th, and the Nalewka Maintenance viewer updated to version 5.1.2.512522 on February 14th, bringing both into line with the current release viewer (currently version 5.1.1.512121, at the time of writing, formerly the Voice RC viewer).

The rest of the SL viewer pipeline remains as:

  • Current Release version  5.1.1.512121, dated January 26, promoted February 7 – formerly the Voice Maintenance RC.
  • 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.

Note that the voice package in the SL release viewer will not work with older versions of the viewer. A further voice SDK update for Mac systems is also due from Vivox.

Updates should be forthcoming soon on the Animesh and 360-snapshot viewer.

Viewer with 1024 Support for Avatar Textures

[4:33-7:05] A project viewer for handling 1024×1024 wearables should be appearing “soon”, as a prelude to the Bakes on Mesh project (see my Content Creation User Group (CCUG) updates for more on this project). This will have an impact on the avatar rendering cost for system avatars making use of 1024×1024 textures and wearables.

Linux and the Viewer

Also see week #50 2017 and #week 46 2017 TPVD updates.

The goal for a Linux flavour of the viewer is for the Lab to provide a basic Debian build of the viewer, without additional libraries so as to allow TPVs to add the dependencies they require for their flavour of Linux build. Once this has been achieved – with the help of open-source contributions – the Lab will then maintain the Linux build, with the caveat that it will only be subject to cursory QA, and will continue to look to the Linux community for contributed updates and fixes.

[15:44-20:40] The repository for Linux contributions is awaiting update to the current viewer release and needs to be publicly made available. A skeleton build process of the Debian package is available, but again has yet to be made visible.Both of these should happen in the next few weeks.

Several of the libraries which will be used in the build are seen as “problematic” and requiring patches, etc.Until this work has been done, the Lab can’t supply the build process.

One of the problems in seeking contributions is that Linux developers appear to be in short supply – the Lab doesn’t have any Linux resource in-house for the viewer, and some TPVs are finding it similarly difficult to find a resource they can use, and who can provide contributions to the Lab. The flip side of this is the Lab is not seeking contributions that provide a “complete” solution for a Linux build; they would rather people work on specific aspects of the viewer, the only criteria being that:

  • Contributions are in line with the Lab supporting a basic Debian package build process.
  • Contributions do not require changes to the build process which could break the Windows or Mac build process.

Project ARCtan

Note: some of the following also appears in my week #7 CCUG meeting update.

[12:01-15:40 and 24:55-28:23] Project Arctan is the code-name for the project to re-evaluate object and avatar rendering costs, and hopefully make them more reflective of the actual cost of rendering objects and avatars and also remove some of disincentives for making optimised content.

  • This work is still in its preliminary stages, focusing on how best to gather the required data.
  • For avatar complexity, it will include evaluating the cost of avatars and their attachments (tri counts, textures, use of alpha layers, skeletal animations used, etc), with a view to adjusting the avatar rendering cost weightings – with the caveat that even when made more reflective of the actual cost of avatar rendering, people will still see some variation in the ARC information displayed by their viewer as a result of using different GPU cards, and how well different cards handle things like alpha masking and / or alpha blending.
  • For Land Impact: LI will be scrutinised as well, to take into consideration texture cost. However, as LI changes could be disruptive (e.g. unexpected objects returns), any new LI calculations will be run alongside the current calculations, to allow LL gather data on if and  how many parcels will be pushed over their LI capacity were the new calculations to be applied (and thus force object returns) and by how much. They then might increase region land capacity to compensate as far as possible. Then, for those who still exceed their limit, there will be a period of grace when they can consolidate and bring their LI use within the limit of the revised calculations before the latter are enforced.

As Animesh will likely be released before Project Arctan is complete, this means Animesh will be released with an initial land impact calculation assigned to it for objects, which may then be revised once Arctan is finalised.

Project Arctan – Oz and Vir Linden discuss (CCUG and TPVD meetings)

Note again: this work is just re-starting, and there will be no immediate or sudden changes made to either ARC or Land Impact.

Other TPVD Items In Brief

Deprecating UDP Messaging for Asset Fetching And Further Inventory Improvements

[7:24-11:05] The Lab is looking to remove the remaining UDP code for all assets now fetched via HTTP and the CDNs from the simulator code, most likely in the June-August time frame. Once this has happened, any old viewer versions not using the latest HTTP asset fetching code will be unable to retrieve inventory assets.   A version of the updated simulator code will be made available on Aditi, likely in the spring of 2018, so TPVs can double-check asset fetching.

A further general clean-up of inventory messaging should follow this work to improve inventory handling and robustness. This will include a clean-up on UDP inventory management paths and the remove of multiple ways of manipulating inventor, and may be a multi-round effort of work.

Abuse Reporting Capability

[39:30-42:26] A new cap is being introduced to the viewer to return the currently accepted Abuse Report categories. This is a change, once available, TPV well be asked to adopt quickly, as it should help smooth the initial triaging of ARs, by reducing the amount of time spent trying to marry old / no longer valid AR categories with valid options, etc. (or risking ARs being closed on account of a filing that appears non-actionable).  For information on how ARs are handled and should be filed, please see: Raising Abuse Reports in Second Life.

Web User Group

The following notes are taken from the Web User Group meeting held on Friday, February 16th, 2018. These meetings are chaired by Alexa and Grumpity Linden at Alexa’s barn. The focus is the Lab’s web properties, which include the Second Life website (including the blogs, Destination Guide, Maps, Search, the Knowledge base, etc.), Place Pages, Landing Pages (and join flow for sign-ups), the Marketplace, and so on and the Lab’s own website at lindenlab.com.

Meeting Changes

  • Going forward, the Web User Group will meet MONTHLY and on a WEDNESDAY, possibly at 13:00 SLT.
  • Notice of each meeting will appear on the Web forum section and on the Web User Group wiki page a couple of days ahead of each meeting.

Marketplace

  • Marketplace updates:
    • Updates are being planned, and the Lab is keen to receive ideas (even if they cannot necessarily be implemented).
      • Suggestions for improvements / new features should be made via the Second Life JIRA under the Project type BUG Project, and then selecting the Issue Type New Feature Request.
      • Bugs and issues should be raised using the  Project type BUG Project, and Issue Type Bug.
    • Variant of items in a single listing (e.g. different colours for a dress) are being considered as a possible part of the Marketplace updates.
    • Ideas for discouraging “false” listings, etc., are being considered by the Lab, but there is an understandable  reluctance to openly discuss measures until options are better defined, in order to prevent incorrect assumptions and rumours from spreading.
  • Flagging content and “policing” the Marketplace: requests have been made for more flexibly means to flag / report content / stores on the Marketplace, and the Lab is again considering options.
    • One suggest put froward by users is for merchants to be able to police the MP, the level of trust in their reports being based on the number of valid reports they file. The Lab is reticent to allow user-based moderation, as this can become subject of subjective feelings, personal disputes, etc.
  • As part of the overall Marketplace road map, the Lab is considering offering some form of Marketplace-focused benefits for creators and merchant who are / opt to up to a Premium account.
  • Marketplace featured items: a question was asked about how featured items are selected for display on the Marketplace. There is a section in each item’s listing page which can be used to have it displayed on the Marketplace page, a category landing page, etc., for a fee. Those items actually displayed on a page are then rotated by criteria by the Marketing team.
  • Recent issues at Hippo Technologies have seen Hippo legacy web services go off-line with a decision to step back from continued support. This promoted questions about enforced removal of no longer functional products from the Marketplace. This is something the Lab is reticent to do (there’s a risk of functional goods being removed in error, etc.), and would prefer creators to take the responsibility to unlist goods that no longer function. However, this specific matter is being taken back to the office for discussion.

Destination Guide

  • Places to be included in the Destination Guide can be submitted via the Destination Guide application form. General information on the DG, including submissions can be found here.

2018 SL UG updates #7/2: CCUG and Project Arctan

Posted on by Inara Pey
Queen of Dragons? Surrounded by Animesh dragons by Wanders Nowhere and used by Lucia Nightfire as Animesh test models

The following notes are primarily taken from the Content Creation User Group meeting, held on  Thursday, February 15th, 2018 at 13:00 SLT. For the purposes of Animesh testing, the meetings have relocated to the Animesh4 region on Aditi, the beta grid – look for the seating area towards the middle of the region. The meeting is chaired by Vir Linden, and agenda notes, etc, are usually available on the Content Creation User Group wiki page.

Medhue Simoni streamed the meeting, and his video is appended to the end of this update. Timestamps in the text will open the video in a separate browser tab at the relevant point in the meeting. As always, these notes cover the core points of discussion, and my thanks to Medhue for recording 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 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. The project is in two phases:

  • The current work to update the baking service to support 1024×1024 textures on avatar meshes.
  • An intended follow-on project to actually support baking textures onto avatar mesh surfaces (and potentially other mesh objects as well). This has yet to fully defined in terms of implementation and when it might be slotted into SL development time frames.

This work does not include normal or specular map support, as these are not part of the existing baking service.

Current Status

    • A reminder that this will not initially include Animesh as the Baking Service requires an avatar shape, which Animesh currently does not support.
    • There is a lot of confusion about this project and what it will do, so an overview document has been suggested.
      • One example of some confusion: Anchor linden mentions being able to “upload 1024 textures” – this is actually a reference to the Baking Service supporting 1024×1024 textures, not to users uploading 1024 textures (because they are already supported).
    • [5:21] The target date for completing this first phase of this work is the end of March 2018.
    • [12:09-22:15] Alpha layer and Alpha masking discussion:
      • [12:09-13:55] A means to hide the system avatar has yet to be determined, but Anchor hopes to focus on this in the course of the next week.
      • [13:06-15:44] One suggestion for this is to have a new “avatar” alpha mask which would allow specific parts of the system avatar to be hidden in a similar manner to how it is currently handled (e.g. to allow the body to be hidden when using a mesh body, but the head exposed, for those not using a mesh head).
      • [13:55-15:44] These updates should allow elements of a mesh body to be hidden much as can be done with the system avatar, possibly eliminating the need to break the avatar into multiple faces which can be individually masked. However, this has yet to be tested.
      • [19:05-22:15] Repeat that alpha layering via the Baking Service (e.g. make-up / tattoo layers), and full alpha masking (e.g. hiding an entire body / body part) should work with mesh avatars exactly the same was as for system avatars at present (again, as per above, without the need for the mesh itself to have multiple faces which can be individually masked).
    • [22:56-24:46] Clothing layers when applied to a mesh body should hopefully work as per the system avatar (e.g. “jacket” layers are applied over “shirt” layer, which are applied over “underwear” layers, with the last worn item in each layer being uppermost and the most visible.
  • [25:56-27:37] Discussion on wearable layers for specific mesh models, branding and creator / user understanding.

Project ARCTan

[3:55-5:03] This is the code-name for the project to re-evaluate object and avatar rendering costs. It also now falls under Graham Linden’s leadership as a part of the overall rendering system work.

[32:02-34:06] Oz explains the function of the project, and the fact that originally, the weightings (land impact / avatar complexity) applied to avatars and in-world objects, were somewhat biased to allow for the simulator having to handle a lot of texture, etc., transfers to the viewer (so for example, avatar complexity include texture counts, LI doesn’t). As all of this data now goes via the CDNs, rather than the simulators, this bias can be removed, and the actual costs of rendering complex objects made (hopefully) a lot more accurate and thus promote better content creation.

[34:48-35:48] There are currently no details of how LI / avatar complexity values may change, as the Lab is still gathering data at this point in time in order to make informed decisions on how best to revised the calculations.

[35:51-37:04] For Animesh this means the project will be released with an initial land impact calculation assigned to it for objects. However, as with the rest of SL, these may be subject to change as a result of the work on Project Arctan. See this Animesh forum comment from Vir for more.

  • [39:59-43:30] In brief: the value for Animesh will primarily be based on tri count based on the high detail LOD version of the mesh, with Medium,, Low and Lowest having less of an impact in pushing up the overall LI. This will be added to a basic cost component for driving an avatar skeleton (uniform across all Animesh objects). Again, no precise values are available as yet, as LL are still performance testing.

[37:07-39:40] Land Impact: obviously, Land Impact changes are potentially disruptive. To ease this, the Lab plan to add code to the simulator and the viewer to calculate the new LI values but not enforce them. Instead the data on LI using the new calculations will be gathered with data on the existing values, and the Lab will then assess how many parcels they might push over their LI capacity (and thus force object returns) and by how much, were the new values to be enforced. Depending on the overall impact, they will look at increasing region land capacity to compensate to some degree.

So, for example, if the new calculations so parcels will on average go over their LI limit by 10% under the new calculations, region LI might be increased by 15% to compensate. Then, for those who still exceed their limit, there will be a period of grace when then can consolidate and bring their LI use within the limit of the revised calculations before the latter are enforced.

Overall, the Lab is extremely aware of the risks in altering LI values, and will be approaching this work carefully to try to avoid it having a major negative impact with object returns, etc.

Animesh Updates

  • Some of the Animesh test regions on Aditi (animesh1 through Animesh4, Animesh Adult and Animesh XL, have become more sandbox than testing areas (including being used for non-Animesh items). To prevent this, the regions are to start being cleaned-up, auto-return made a little more aggressive and warnings that they are only for Animesh are to be added to the About Land descriptions.
  • [50:52-51:50] Worn Animesh Limit:  there shouldn’t be an LI cap on worn Animesh, although the limit of only wearing one Animesh at a time remains in place pending performance testing results.

Other Items

Rendering Improvements and Fixes

[2:10-3:50] The Lab recently split work on the viewer’s rendering pipe into a separate viewer development branch (Project Render, with a project viewer – version 5.1.1.512446, dated February 9th at the time of writing – currently available).  Graham Linden, a long-time Linden, will be working on rendering updates more-or-less full-time going forward. He’ll be looking at things like increasing rendering stability, fixing bugs, and potentially other aspects of the rendering system.