Category: SL User Group Meetings

2024 SL SUG meetings week #45 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Dutch Pavilion, September 2024 – blog post

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, November 5th, 2024 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 the chat log and Pantera’s video of the meeting, which is embedded at the end – my thanks to her 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

  • No deployments for this week, just rolling restarts across the grid.

Simulator Deployment Plans

  • The next simulator maintenance update will be Barbecue (or BBQ), which is currently awaiting further bug fixing. This should include:
    • Support for “alpha-gamma” which will allow an object owner to adjust some of the PBR alpha values that were impacting legacy things like hair.
    • llSetAgentRot.
    • A new warning on receiving direct IMs from Scripted Agents (“registered” bots). Rider describes this as “Bot confessions”:
Oh. One of the other items coming in BBQ. Bot confessions. With IM sessions with bots there will be a warning sent to the receiver that they are having a conversation with a bot. Also, for viewer developers, there will be a bit of metadata attached to the IM_NOTHING_SPECIAL that indicates the sender is a bot.
  • Following Barbecue should be Apple Cobbler, which should include:
    • llTransferOwnership which enables a prim give itself to a new user (subject to owner permissions already set).
    • An extended llGiveInventory to allow for a destination folder (system folders + RLV/a) to be specified as well (+ the use of a parameter list, so further options can be added in the future).
    • llMapBeacon – like llMapDestination, but a) does not necessarily open the map window; b) can optionally open the map, with or without focus. This will also require a viewer update.
    • A new function for detecting attachments. If it is running with an experience it will be able to detect HUDs that also have scripts with the same experience (e.g. to ensure the correct HUDs are being used – this will not allow anyone to script to find out all the HUDs someone is using).

SL Viewer Updates

No changes at the start of the week:

  • Release viewer: version 7.1.10.10800445603, formerly the DeltaFPS RC (multiple performance fixes, etc), dated September 11, promoted September 17 – No change.
  • Release Candidate: ExtraFPS RC, version 7.1.11.11565212741, October 30.
    • Performance improvements: enhanced texture memory tracking, broader hardware compatibility and higher FPS gain;  additional code to improve texture streaming on rigged attachments (e.g. if an earring is made with 2K textures, the viewer will correctly calculate the required resolution for the textures and download them, rather than downloading the full 2K textures), etc.
    • Aesthetics improvements: new Antialiasing setting – SMAA; Contrast Adaptive Sharpening; Khronos Neutral Tone Mapping (can be changed to ACES via the RenderTonemapType Debug setting).
    • UI Optimisations.

In Brief

Please refer to the video below for the following:

  • LL are still holding back on throwing the WebRTC switch across the grid, waiting for more users to move to WebRTC-enabled viewers.
  • The new function for detecting attachments  / HUD in an experience, noted above, sparked a slightly interwoven conversation on “missing” attachments” and the detection of HUDs.
  • A discussion on the SL Lua(u) implementation and LSL. The official place for information on this is in this FAQ in the SL Wiki. A resident-written entry is also in the SL Wiki. In terms of LSL / LUA interoperability, see this section of the official FAQ.
  • Further discussion on llTransferOwnership, including the fact the end use need to accept the transfer of ownership in some kind of a dialogue, as per any other inventory transfer.
  • The “Bot Confessions” function sparked a further conversation on bots  / Scripted Agents & identifying them (e.g. adding an indicator in the Profile of registered Scripted Agents), their use, etc.

† 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.

2024 SL SUG meetings week #44 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Hailey’s Mystical Forest, September 2024 – blog post

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, October 29th, 2024 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 the chat log and Pantera’s video of the meeting, which is embedded at the end – my thanks to her 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

  • No deployments for this week, just rolling restarts across the grid.

Simulator Deployment Plans

  • The next simulator maintenance update will be Barbecue (or BBQ), which is currently awaiting further bug fixing. This should include:
    • Support for “alpha-gamma” which will allow an object owner to adjust some of the PBR alpha values that were impacting legacy things like hair.
    • llSetAgentRot.
    • A new warning on receiving direct IMs from Scripted Agents (“registered” bots): if a Scripted Agent “right clicks” you and sends you a message, it will trigger a warning about sharing personal information with bots within the chat window.
  • Following Barbecue should be Apple Cobbler, which should include:
    • llTransferOwnership which enables a prim give itself to a new user (subject to owner permissions already set).
    • An extended llGiveInventory to allow for a destination folder (system folders + RLV/a) to be specified as well (+ the use of a parameter list, so further options can be added in the future).

SL Viewer Updates

No changes at the start of the week:

  • Release viewer: version 7.1.10.10800445603, formerly the DeltaFPS RC (multiple performance fixes, etc), dated September 11, promoted September 17 – No change.
  • Release Candidate: ExtraFPS RC, version 7.1.11.11296522354, October 18.
    • Performance improvements: enhanced texture memory tracking, broader hardware compatibility and higher FPS gain.
    • Aesthetics improvements: new Antialiasing setting – SMAA; Contrast Adaptive Sharpening; Khronos Neutral Tone Mapping (can be changed to ACES via the RenderTonemapType Debug setting).

Game Control

Leviathan Linden noted the latest news on this work:

GameControl is in develop branch, not sure when it will reach an official release or find its way into TPV. Meanwhile game controller hardware support has been temporarily disabled on Mac (although it didn’t work very well there anyway since most devices are not recognized by the OS) until we sort out some “duplicate keypress” issues.

In Brief

Please refer to the video below for the following:

  • Reports indicate the the most recent simulator deployment appears to have fixed most of the lost / ghosted attachment issues experienced during teleport / physical region crossings.
  • A general discussion on RLV and possible #RLV folder structure, and RLV extensions to folders. For those curious about RLV/a, given RLVa is currently to be incorporated into the official viewer, please refer to (among other sources):
  • Further discussion on llTransferOwnership and llGiveAvatarInventoryList. Part of the latter included the extent to which scripts should be able to use it to create new inventory items (e.g. such as preventing it from using the Current Outfit Folder, whilst removing the burden of everything going to the Inventory root folder.
  • Both the RLV and LSL commands above lead to a wider discussion on inventory, folder structures, how / where items should be placed when received via script, etc.,  filtering inventory, and so on.
  • There is no current work on HTTP/2 for CDN and asset fetching. This is described as something LL want to get to, but keeps getting stalled due to the focus being on other areas of work. Monty Linden also noted a move to HTTP/2 may not yield any significant loading improvement over HTTP/1.
  • A general discussion on feature requests such as object permission information [provided] with llgetobjectdetails; add rezremotescriptaccesspin to llrezobjectwithparams, both of which are currently being TRACKED by LL.

† 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.

2024 week #43: SL TPVD meeting summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Grauland / Primary Colors, September 2024 – blog post †

The following notes were taken from my audio recording + the video recording by Pantera (embedded at the end of this summary) of the Third-Party Developer meeting (TPVD) held on Friday, October 25th, 2024. My thanks to Pantera as always for providing it.

Meeting Purpose

  • The TPV Developer meeting provides an opportunity for discussion about the development of, and features for, the Second Life viewer, and for Linden Lab viewer developers and third-party viewer (TPV) / open-source code contributors to discuss general viewer development. This meeting is held once a month on a Friday, at 13:00 SLT at the Hippotropolis Theatre.
  • Dates and times are recorded in the SL Public Calendar, and they re conducted in a mix of Voice and text chat.
  • The notes herein are a summary of topics discussed and are not intended to be a full transcript of the meeting.

Official Viewers Status

[Video: 0:00-2:30]

  • Release viewer: version 7.1.10.10800445603, formerly the DeltaFPS RC (multiple performance fixes, etc), dated September 11, promoted September 17 – No change.
  • Release Candidate: ExtraFPS RC, version 7.1.11.11296522354, October 18.
    • Performance improvements: enhanced texture memory tracking, broader hardware compatibility and higher FPS gain;  additional code to improve texture streaming on rigged attachments (e.g. if an earring is made with 2K textures, the viewer will correctly calculate the required resolution for the textures and download them, rather than downloading the full 2K textures), etc.
    • Aesthetics improvements: new Antialiasing setting – SMAA; Contrast Adaptive Sharpening; Khronos Neutral Tone Mapping (can be changed to ACES via the RenderTonemapType Debug setting).
    • UI Optimisations: lessening the impact of UI rendering on frame rates / performance (discussed more fully at 16:52-18:04].

Upcoming Viewers

  • ExtraFPS is described as having some “high priority” bug which require fixing before it progresses to release status.
  • The next RC viewer to follow ExtraFPS is likely to be the Maintenance B build, which includes work put on hold while the focus was on PBR and non-PBR related performance fixes.
  • Performance improvement will continue to be part of the on-going work with the viewer, but once ExtraFPS is promoted to release status, it is unlikely that the Lab will produce viewers dedicated only to performance fixed for a while.
  • From the comments made, it appears as if LL are going to try to pull work from what had been the Maintenance C RC viewer (also put on hold whilst the performance work was going on) into the next viewer build as well.
    • It was acknowledged that this approach may need toa delay in getting the updated Maint B viewer out and to release status, but it is hoped that in the long run, it will mean a faster release cycle with the viewer builds which eventually follow behind Maint B.
  • [Video 21:09-22:27] Vir reiterates that as the Maint B(/C) viewer appears, it should mark the return  of Linux to the list of official viewer builds.
    • However, the Linux flavour will be based on code contributions rather than dedicated support from with in the Lab.
    • If things break with it, the Lab will attempt to fix them, but will not hold back viewer releases as a result of Linux-specific breakages / bugs.

WebRTC

[Video 2:31-4:20]

Summary

  • The replacement of the Vivox Voice service and plug-in, with the WebRTC communications protocol (RTC=”real-time communication”). Roxie Linden is leading this work.
  • Key benefits:
    • WebRTC supports a wide range of real-time communications tools in common use (e.g. Google Meet), supporting audio, video and data communications, and is thus something of a “standard” approach.
    • Offers a good range of features: automatic echo cancellation, better noise cancellation and automatic gain control, much improved audio sampling rates for improved audio quality.
    • Opens the door to features and capabilities to voice services which could not be implemented whilst using Vivox.

Status

  • There is now a “pretty significant fraction” of users still using a non-WebRTC capable viewer.
  • LL would like this number to be further reduced before they completely pull the back-end support for Vivox. As such, the exact time frame on when the switch might be thrown is still TBA.
  • [Via chat throughout the 10-25 min point in the meeting, and with some Voice from approx 18 mins] It was noted that Voice roll-off under WebRTC should work the same as for Vivox, BUT the range at which is rolls-off completely is greater (60m).
    • Some have reported that this does not appear to be the case, with roll-off potentially not working at all (also reported at the last TPVD meeting).
    • LL to investigate further.

Graphics Work

[Video: 5:28-end]

  • The first part of this update referenced rigged attachment texture streaming as noted in the ExtraFPS summary, above.
  • Also as noted above, the work on improving performance has reached a point of diminishing returns for dedicated viewer updates, so future performance improvements will be folded in ither other viewer updates making it to the Develop branch.
  • The above noted, LL is still digging into specific hardware types where the viewer does not perform well (e.g. some AMD graphics chips) in order to determine what might be done to improve things.
    • If people running a viewer with the DeltaFPS code included are still fining they have very poor performance (e.g. single-digit FPS; an already low FPS cut in half, etc.), they are asked to file a Canny report and included information on their hardware (e.g. copy-paste their hardware information as displayed in Help → About, in the viewer).
  • [Video: 7:57-9:07] A change was introduced with the Delta FPS code such that if the viewer is running in the background on a system for more than 10 seconds, it will down-rez textures to prevent over-use of VRAM when it is not the application in focus.
    • This has received completely mixed feedback: some feel 10 seconds is too long a period to wait; others feel it is too short; those running multi-screen systems with SL on one monitor dislike the fact that when they focus away from SL to work on their other screen, SL “goes blurry”, etc.
    • As a result, LL is considering making this a switchable option, so users can decide whether they want to utilise it or not.
  • [Video 9:20-11:13] A discussion on using Vsync in the viewer vs. limiting frame rates (e.g. through the viewer or via something like the Nvidia control panel).
  • [Video 27:29-33:33] A discussion on brightness and  gamma / PBR vs non-PBR / use of HDR rendering + tone mapping.
    • In terms of tone mapping, the decision is to move back o ACES as the default in light of feedback, but people will remain able to select Khronos Neutral or ACES through Preferences.
    • The long-term plan is to have tone mapping and colour correction per sky setting, allowing region holders / designs to choose which ones they want.
    • As such, content creators are reminded no to bake tone mapping in their base colour / diffuse map but let the viewer’s post-processing handle the tone mapping.
  • [Video: 33:25-38:33] Alpha / gamma work:
    • As per previous meetings: in order for PBR lighting to render anywhere close to correctly, alpha blending had to be switched from SRGB to linear colour space. This can cause some older content using Blinn-Phong, to look either more opaque or more transparent than in did pre-PBR.
    • The fix for this giving people the ability to adjust the alpha/gamma on per texture entry for the object (including no mod items)
    • A link was provided to an installer for a viewer with the code at the meeting, but this later generated a 404 error.

In Brief

  • The latter part of the meeting included a discussion on documentation + communication (e.g. communicating more fully the reasoning behind PBR – the move towards better and more consistent content using glTF).

Next Meeting

† 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 gathering of people every week. They are taken from my list of region visits, with a link to the post for those interested.

2024 SL SUG meetings week #43 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Loch Dhoire an Chláir, September 2024 – blog post

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, October 22nd, 2024 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 and Pantera’s video of the meeting, which is embedded at the end – my thanks to her 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, October 22nd, the Main SLS channel received an updated version of the simulator Doubtfire release, which incorporates a fix for the attachment issues that people have been seeing, together with a fix for the last of the problems for things like region traffic.
  • On Wednesday, October 23rd, this version of Doubtfire should be deployed to all RC channels.

Simulator Deployment Plans

  • The next simulator maintenance update will be Barbecue, which should include:
    • Support for “alpha-gamma” which will allow an object owner to adjust some of the PBR alpha values that were impacting legacy things like hair.
    • llSetAgentRot.
    • A new warning on receiving direct IMs from Scripted Agents (“registered” bots): if a Scripted Agent “right clicks” you and sends you a message, it will trigger a warning about sharing personal information with bots within the chat window.
  • Following Barbecue will be Apple Cobbler, which should include:
    • llTransferOwnership which enables a prim give itself to a new user (subject to owner permissions already set).
    • An extended llGiveInventory to allow for a destination folder (spystem folers + RLV/a) to be specified as well (+ the use of a parameter list, so further options can be added in the future).

SL Viewer Updates

No changes at the start of the week:

  • Release viewer: version 7.1.10.10800445603, formerly the DeltaFPS RC (multiple performance fixes, etc), dated September 11, promoted September 17 – No change.
  • Release Candidate: ExtraFPS RC, version 7.1.11.11296522354, October 18.
    • Performance improvements: enhanced texture memory tracking, broader hardware compatibility and higher FPS gain.
    • Aesthetics improvements: new Antialiasing setting – SMAA; Contrast Adaptive Sharpening; Khronos Neutral Tone Mapping (can be changed to ACES via the RenderTonemapType Debug setting).

In Brief

Please refer to the video below for the following:

  • llTransferOwnership: concerns were raised over ensuring proper safeguards to ensure the function cannot be abused. For example:
    • If person A has edit rights to person B’s objects, and one of those objects has something like a money() event (or similar), and A drops a llTransferOwnership into the object, so it is automatically transferred, potentially exposing the recipient to an unexpected outcome (such as L$ transfer).
    • Safeguards against these potentials is to be investigated before making the function available.
  • The proposed new message for Scripted Agents raised a discussion on bots which have not been explicitly “registered” as a bot at creation still presenting a range of issues: spamming people, gaming the system, etc, and how better to manage them.
    • One suggestion is provided via this Canny report. The discussion covered other options / ideas.
  • The idea of llGiveInventory being able to target folders resulted in discussions of how far this should go, with strong opposition to the idea of the option allowing it to establish multiple sub-folders in a tree, or placing items in a system folder with out requesting permission first; and suggestions that maybe the extension should offer a means for the recipient to browse their folder tree and determine where the object’s contents should go (if at all possible).
  • Both of the above conversations became intertwined throughout most of the rest of the meeting.
  • Some have reported issues with Voice chat working on the official DeltaFPS viewer, even when Enable Voice Chat is checked. It’s not clear if this is an issue within the viewer or not. If the problem occurs, the suggestion is to toggle Enable Voice Chat off/on. If the problem persists – file a report.
  • Assorted end-of-meeting discussions on Lua (no actual news on status to give) and on issued such as scripted functions for easy PBR alpha switching – which unfortunately weren’t addressed due to the continuing discussions on the likes of llGiveInventory, and so missed.

† 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.

2024 week #42: SL CCUG summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Mad Hatter’s Tea Room, September 2024 – blog post †

The following notes were taken from my audio recording and chat log transcript of the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting held on Thursday, October 17th, 2024. There was no livestream or video for this meeting

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 held on alternate Thursdays at Hippotropolis.
  • Meeting dates and times are recorded in the SL Public Calendar, and they re conducted in a mix of Voice and text chat.
  • The notes herein are a summary of topics discussed and are not intended to be a full transcript of the meeting.

Official Viewers Update

  • Release viewer: version 7.1.10.10800445603, formerly the DeltaFPS RC (multiple performance fixes, etc), dated September 11th, promoted September 17th.
  • Release Candidate: ExtraFPS RC, version 7.1.11.11074622243, September 30.
    • Performance improvements: enhanced texture memory tracking, broader hardware compatibility and higher FPS gain.
    • Aesthetics improvements: new Antialiasing setting – SMAA; Contrast Adaptive Sharpening; Khronos Neutral Tone Mapping (can be changed to ACES via the RenderTonemapType Debug setting).

Near-Term Viewer Release Roadmap

  • ExtraFPS work remains focused on bug fixes.
  • The first maintenance RC to follow ExtraFPS will be the Maint B viewer, which will include updates put on hold during the focus on performance issues plus additional updates, some of which may be further “post-PBR” performance / aesthetic improvements.
    • Maint B, as noted previously in these summaries, will have updates to help with Linux support / builds.
  • Maintenance C is also being put together, but updates changes have not yet be specified, outside of a desire to keep the changes separate to Maint B in the interests of keeping updates easier to manage.

Avatar LookAt /  Eye Tracking in the Viewer

  • A conversation relating to avatar eye movement / use of Look At cross hairs (& the resultant drama it can cause (“Stop perving me!”), and whether because of the latter, the capability should be removed completely from the viewer.
    • The core problem is, even though the option for a user to see their own LookAts in the Official viewer is disabled by default, the data (cross hairs and avatar name) is broadcast to surrounding viewers, resulting in unwarranted drama (“Stop perving me!” or “You’re on the wrong viewer!”).
    • Various viewers handle this situation in different ways; some follow the SL viewer, other’s provide means to see the LookAt crosshairs from others whilst supressing their own LookAt data (e.g. so I can see your LookAt crosshairs (if not supressed), but you cannot see mine – possibly leading to more drama).
    • Given this, LL sought the best way to reduce the level of upset: remove the LookAt broadcast altogether, or limit it / make it subject to having be physically turned on through a debug. The consensus of replies appeared to be to limit it / disable it behind a setting.
  • This conversation also crossed-over into avatar head movement tracking the movements of the mouse (e.g. you move the mouse up to the menu bar and your avatars head tracks upwards, then you move to a toolbar to the side or bottom of the window, and your avatar’s head again tracks).
    • This is perhaps more immersion-breaking that Look Ats (drama on the latter notwithstanding) and as  some TPVs allowing such head movement to be disabled, there was a consensus that this should be disabled / removed from the viewer.

Graphics Team Work

PBR Terrain Transforms and PBR Terrain Painting

  • PBR terrain transforms: As per my week #38 update, PBR terrain Texture transforms for applying scale, offset and rotation to any one of the four PBR terrain materials, have been developed for use in the viewer.
    • The capability is a subset of the KHR texture transform.
    • Currently the viewer-side options are setting behind debug flags.
    • The simulator support for this work is currently targeting the Barbeque simulator update, which is due to start deployment after the  WebRTC simulator deployments.
  • PBR Terrain Painting: the work on PBR terrain painting (see my week #31 update for a summary and previous status) has been “shelved” for the foreseeable future.
    • While no specific reason for this was given at the meeting, it seemed implied that this work has been superseded by the need to focus on other work for the time being.

General glTF / Graphics Comments

  • In response to a question about additional  glTF work, Runitai Linden confirmed that user-made shaders will not be supported, but blend shapes and (possibly) animation of texture coordinate transforms from Blender.
  • Displacement maps won’t be supported for the time being as their is no available glTF specification for them.
  • Given the percentage of people not using PBR enabled viewers, LL is considering adding a simulator-side update that can detect a non-PBR viewer, and then take the base colour and Normal layer from the PBR material and move them to the Blinn-Phong parameter, so users on those viewers will at least see some surface detail on PBR objects rather than only seeing then a flat grey surfaces or untextured prims.

In Brief

  • A fair portion of the meeting was taken up with issues pertaining to the New User Experience / Marketplace issues – both of which those Lindens (Engineers) at the meeting were unable to directly address as these areas are outside of their remit.

Next Meeting

† 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 gathering of people every week. They are taken from my list of region visits, with a link to the post for those interested.

2024 SL SUG meetings week #42 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
La Côte Sauvage, September 2024 – blog post

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, October 15th, 2024 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 and Pantera’s video of the meeting, which is embedded at the end – my thanks to her 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

Quoting Rider Linden:

Two weeks ago we had a bit of a rough roll, so some of the main grid was left on Summer Fun. Last week the entire engineering team was at an offsite and we decided it was probably not a good idea to do anything while we were all distracted. We believe that we have a fix for the issue and are going to be making a final decision later today about doing an off schedule roll on the SLS regions that are still causing problems. Once we have that out of the way we’ll be able to get back to the regular schedule. I believe that that the next in line is WebRTC, but we need to make sure that enough people have upgraded to an RTC capable client.

SL Viewer Updates

No changes at the start of the week:

  • Release viewer: version 7.1.10.10800445603, (formerly the DeltaFPS RC), dated September 11th, was promoted to de facto release status on September 19th. This includes:
    • Performance boosts. Memory management has been optimized and users will experience a higher FPS across various systems. A comprehensive range of bug fixes are also provided. This includes better PBR material handling and resolving frequent crashes. See the release notes for more.
    • UI for scheduling region restarts now available via a new button located in the Region/Estate floater. (Note: there is currently an issue with scheduled region restarts working correctly and a fix is due to come in the next server release).
  • Release Candidate: ExtraFPS RC, version 7.1.11.11074622243, issued September 30th.
    • Performance improvements: enhanced texture memory tracking, broader hardware compatibility and higher FPS gain.
    • Aesthetics improvements: new Antialiasing setting – SMAA; Contrast Adaptive Sharpening; Khronos Neutral Tone Mapping (can be changed to ACES via the RenderTonemapType Debug setting).

In Brief

Please refer to the video below for the following:

  • Leviathan Linden requested a “top five” (or so) features / options people would like to see added to the official viewer. Responses at the meeting included:
    • RLV  – currently, RLV/a code is being submitted to LL by its author, Kitty Barnett, for inclusion in the Official viewer and (I believe) RLV author Marine Kelley may have also provided information on RLV functionality to LL.
    • Client- side animation override (AO) capability.
    • Object derender.
    • Contact Sets (Firestorm).
    • Autrespond outside of Do Not Disturb mode.
    • Automatically rezzing under land Group.
    • ADD instead of WEAR as the default behaviour for attachments.
    • Adjustable toolbar button sizes.
  • Leviathan also dropped the following question into the meeting:
Suppose SL added a VR mode that allowed for seeing SL content in stereo vision a-la VR goggles. NOT the ability to be in the avatar body and move the limbs with trackers but just the ability to view SL content as a fly-cam in VR mode… would that be useful to anyone? Would anyone here use it? What would you use it for?
    • Responses were broadly positive, if the capability could be tired to the likes of using a vehicle in world.
    • Concerns were raised over the viewer’s ability to maintain a smooth, high enough frame rate consistently through a VR session.
    • The above does nor mean LL is about to implement and kind of VR / partial VR element within the viewer; Leviathan made it clear he was just looking at feed back in relation to the general idea of a partial VR experience with SL.
  • A further discussion on the issue of attachments failing (being dropped / lost / ghosted issues (see: Attachment loss on RC channel 2024-08-29.10619830788) which can be experienced during region crossing (TP or physical) & the fact the LL are working on a fix.  is being
  • A discussion on making Media on Prim (MOAP) safer, and which threaded throughout much of the meeting.
  • The above drifted into discussions general media handling and also on rendering, colour maps, support for look-up tables for rendering / colour grading in the viewer (e.g. to give post-processed effects).
  • A further discussion on editing tools, scripting options, etc.

 

† 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.