Category: SL User Group Meetings

June 2024 SL Web User Group summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
The Web User Group meeting venue, Denby

The following notes cover the key points from the Web User Group (WUG) meeting, held on Wednesday June 5th, 2024. They form a summary of the items discussed and is not intended to be a full transcript. A video of the meeting, recorded by Pantera Północy, is embedded at the end of this summary – my thanks as always to Pantera for recording it and making it available.

Meeting Overview

  • The Web User Group exists to provide an opportunity for discussion on Second Life web properties and their related functionalities / features. This includes, but is not limited to: the Marketplace, pages surfaced through the secondlife.com dashboard; the available portals (land, support, etc), the forums.
  • As a rule, these meetings are conducted:
    • On the first Wednesday of the month and 14:00 SLT.
    • In both Voice and / or text.
    • At this location.
  • 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.

Meeting Date and Time

[Video: 4:10-7:04]

  • Following requests for an increased frequency of Web User Group meetings, the web team has been looking to move the standing meeting to a different day / time each month.
  • Specifically, the day being considered is Tuesday, and the time moved from 13:00 SLT to 12:00 noon SLT.
  • Insufficient numbers were present at this meeting (just 7 people, three of whom were Lab employees and one (that would be me) afk throughout the meeting!). Ergo, this idea will be raised at the July meeting.

Marketplace Updates, Testing and Ideas

[Video: 8:56-20:08]

  • “Good progress” has been made on a new responsive layout for the marketplace intended to improve MP displaying on a mobile phone or if you are looking at the marketplace in the viewer at smaller breakpoints.
  • The Marketplace team has just completed a “research spike” looking at Search issues and believe they have some good solutions for some of the problems user have reported, and will be looking to make updates to Search based on the results of this work.
  • Some live experiments have been carried out on Search filters in response to concerns raised at past WUG meetings.
    • Specifically, the experiments focused on how filter changes might impact sales of non limited quantity items.
    • After looking at the data on marketplace for a weekend the team didn’t see much meaningful change in terms of sales or traffic for non limited quantity items.
  • The team is still looking into ways to better promote the viability of original creators and their creations on marketplace. One idea is to have some form of carousel of “most popular creators” (similar to the “customers are buying now” carousel on the MP home page), listing the most popular creators in terms of sales over a given period (e.g. the past 24 hours).
    • Sntax Linden is open to suggestions via the Marketplace Board at Feedback Portal on how LL might accomplish this.
  • Additional ideas for carousels on the Marketplace home page being mulled by the Lab include: “hot and new creators”; “popular items” and “hot & new items”, the idea being to help alleviate the need to use Search and result filters to find new release, new items, etc.
One of the things I would like to accomplish is better promoting creators. Being able to discover a product on the marketplace is great, but I would love more tools for creators to organically promote themselves or for shoppers to be able to find stores/creators.

– Sntax Linden

  • Another area of discussion at the Lab is how a “for you” capability might be implemented down the road, correlating the sales of the most popular items selling on the MP globally with a user’s own shopping history, with it being noted that personalised relevancy is something the team would like to “tackle across the platform”.

General Discussion

[Video: 20:12-end]

  • There was a general discussion on Search and how it is used to find good, creators, etc. This touched on idea around a system-generated tag cloud based on new / popular / “hot” items; better system-managed filters, etc.
  • Providing a New MP category geared towards specifically for new users that would enable to them to locate items that would be interested in (e.g. Senra clothing and accessories, easy-to-unpack and use items), with an emphasis on ease-of-use (e.g. does not require in-world unpacking, the need to read a notecard or wade through lots of options, etc.
  • The above touched on the core limitations of Senra – that even for new users, it requires a level of understanding of SL to make proper use of it post web-customisation during on-boarding, including:
    • What inventory is, how the system Library works.
    • How to copy items from the Library to inventory.
    • The difference between clothing layers and attachments, understanding the basic iconography they use.
    • As such broadening the knowledge base for Senra, providing information on it beyond the web-based onboarding was discussed.
  • Towards the end of the meeting was a general discussion on how parcels and land might be better searched in general (e.g. allowing those with multiple parcels to group them together as a “place” entry (not to be confused with Place Pages) which can be searched, and which displays information on all the parcels.
  • As these were general discussion point, rather than ideas for implementation, please refer to be video below for further information.

Next Meeting

  • Wednesday, July 3rd, 2024.

2024 SL SUG meetings week #23 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
A Place in the Sun, May 2024 – blog post †

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, June 4th, 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 the video by Pantera – my thanks to her as always for providing it.

Meeting Overview

  • The Simulator User Group (also referred to by its older name of Server User Group) exists to provide an opportunity for discussion about simulator technology, bugs, and feature ideas.
  • These meetings are conducted (as a rule):
  • Meetings are open to anyone with a concern / interest in the above topics, and form one of a series of regular / semi-regular User Group meetings conducted by Linden Lab.
  • Dates and times of all current meetings can be found on the Second Life Public Calendar, and descriptions of meetings are defined on the SL wiki.

Simulator Deployments

  • On Tuesday, June 4th, the Main SLS channel was restarted without any deployment.
  • On Wednesday, June 5th:
    • The BlueSteel RC channel will be restarted.
    • The rest of the RC simhosts should be updated with a re-deployment of the Spring Break Simulator update.

Upcoming Deployments

The major deployment for June is set to be Summer Fun. Among other things this should include:

  • Leviathan Linden’s game controller event work to support game controllers – although these will require a viewer-side update to expose the updated viewer UI.
  • Rider Linden’s work on the SL Combat System (SLCS) 2.0 updates (see my Combat User Group summaries for more).
  • LSL updates:
    • A new parameter to llRezObjectWithParams REZ_PARAM_STRING – allows the passing of a 1024 char string to the object being rezzed.
    • llGetStartString() to retrieve the string.
  • A fix for the notecard cache so that it a fixed amount of memory (enough memory to store 48 max-sized notecards) rather than the count of notecards.
  • A fix for the “flying on logging-in” issue.

Those wishing to test any of the above in advance of the deployment of Summer Fun (due some time in June), can do so in the region Riders Test Channel on Aditi (the Beta grid).

The July simulator update is to be called Picnics, but there is no information on what it might contain at present, other than EZ_PARAM_DIE_IF_NO_REZZER, and llDerezMyObject.

Bugsmash Work

  • Bugsmash is the term given to a dev team suspending work on their core projects and spending a week(ish) focusing on resolving bugs and smaller features for inclusion in a future simulator release.
  • In recognition of this, it was suggested that if there are specific, niggling bugs people want looked at, they raise them at this meeting and the Tuesday, June 11th meeting. There is no guarantee any specific issues will be addressed during the Bugsmash period, but having a list  – and update to bugs on Canny will help the Lab assess what might be examined / fixed.

SL Viewer Updates

On Tuesday, June 4th, the Materials Featurettes RC viewer updated to version 7.1.8.9357006492.

The rest of the current official viewers in the pipeline remain as:

  • Release viewer: Maintenance X RC (usability improvements), version 7.1.7.8974243247, dated May 8 and  promoted May 13 – no change.
  • Release channel cohorts:
    • Maintenance C RC (reset skeleton in all viewers), version 7.1.7.8820704257, May 6.
    • Maintenance B RC (usability updates / imposter changes) 7.1.7.8820696922, April 29.
  • Project viewers:

In Brief

Please refer to the video for the following:

  • A discussion on further LSL functions / updates.
  • Commentary about avatar animations states / syncing between viewers / the simulator in terms of updates being passed back and forth.
  • The batting of ideas around particles and the particle system.

† 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 #22 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Mirai Melody, May 2024 – blog post †

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, May 28th, 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 the video by Pantera – my thanks to her as always for providing it.

Meeting Overview

  • The Simulator User Group (also referred to by its older name of Server User Group) exists to provide an opportunity for discussion about simulator technology, bugs, and feature ideas.
  • These meetings are conducted (as a rule):
  • Meetings are open to anyone with a concern / interest in the above topics, and form one of a series of regular / semi-regular User Group meetings conducted by Linden Lab.
  • Dates and times of all current meetings can be found on the Second Life Public Calendar, and descriptions of meetings are defined on the SL wiki.

Simulator Deployments

  • On Tuesday, May 28, the Main SLS channel was restarted without any deployment.
  • On Wednesday, May 29th:
    • The BlueSteel RC channel should be updated with a re-deployment of the Spring Break Simulator update, after this had to be rolled back in week #20, and didn’t make the cut for week #21.
    • The rest of the RC simhosts will be restarted.

Upcoming Deployment

The major deployment for June is set to be Summer Fun. Among other things this should include:

  • Leviathan Linden’s game controller event work to support game controllers – although these will require a viewer-side update to expose the updated viewer UI.
  • Rider Linden’s work on the SL Combat System (SLCS) 2.0 updates (see my Combat User Group summaries for more).
  • LSL updates:
    • A new parameter to llRezObjectWithParams REZ_PARAM_STRING – allows the passing of a 1024 char string to the object being rezzed.
    • llGetStartString() to retrieve the string.
  • A fix for the notecard cache so that it a fixed amount of memory (enough memory to store 48 max-sized notecards) rather than the count of notecards.

SL Viewer Updates

No official viewer updates at the start of the week, leaving the pipeline as:

  • Release viewer: Maintenance X RC (usability improvements), version 7.1.7.8974243247, dated May 8 and  promoted May 13 – no change.
  • Release channel cohorts:
  • Project viewers:

In Brief

Please refer to the video for the following:

  • A further discussion on potential HTTP updates (such has the ability to read HTML).
  • A question on increasing the memory limit for scripts – in short, nothing in the works at present.
  • Both of the above sparked a general and overlapping discussion – please refer to the video below.
  • A request was made for a SL Combat 2.0 feature – the ability to teleport vehicles (which obviously could be used for other applications).
    • As Rider Linden pointed out, just one issue here is that regions (and parcels within them) can block object entry, and thus could cause teleports of vehicle at scale to go awry at times, as the teleport would have no way of knowing if vehicle entry is permitted at the destination location.
    • However, he requested the idea be submitted as a feature request so that it can be discussed internally.

† 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.

Second Life Combat User Group: May 23rd, 2024 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Credit: Rider Linden

The following notes were taken from the Thursday, May 23rd, 2024 Combat User Group meeting (also referred to as the Combat Committee User Group or CCUG, an abbreviation also used by the Content Creation User Group, and which I’ll not be using in these summaries to reduce the risk of confusion between the two). They form a summary of the core items discussed and responded to by Lindens, and are not intended to be a full transcript.

Meeting Overview

  • The Combat User Group exists as a forum to discuss improvements to the Linden Lab Combat System or LLCS to better support combat in Second Life.
    • The core idea is to provide additional events and capabilities which sit on top of LLCS to provide combat creators with better tools with which to create better combat systems for their specific scenarios.
  • The meetings are the result of a proposal document on improving the native damage system in SL, written by Rider Linden, and which is the focus for both the meeting and any work arising from them.
  • These meetings are conducted (as a rule):
    • By Rider Linden, with the support of Kyle Linden.
    • On alternating Thursdays (rotating with the Content Creation User Group) at 13:00 SLT. Meeting dates are recorded in the Second Life Public Calendar.
    • Initially in text, although voice might be included in the future depending on feedback from those attending.
    • At this location.
    • Discussion topics, requests, etc., can be found on the SL Feedback Portal Combat Board.
  • Additional details are available via the SL wiki Combat2 page.

Work In Progress

  • The current iteration of Combat 2.0 support on the server-side is due to be included in the Summer Fun simulator update. This is targeting a June 2024 release. However:
    • No date has been as yet given for when this update will commence deployment on the the main grid.
    • Any target dates given ahead of time are subject to final QA check-through and code clearances.
  • In preparation for the code going into the Simulator update, Rider is planning to freeze his own updates to the code in the week commencing Monday, May 27th, 2024.
  • This will very much be a release to find out exactly what works and what doesn’t for the Combat community/ies in Second Life and will be iterated upon going forward.
  • There are a couple of functions that might not make it into the initial release, although Rider is going to try to slip them in before QA freezes the Summer Fun code in preparation for deployment. These are:
    • Two additional parameter for llRezObjectWithParams – one that will set the collision filter on rez and a second that will make it derez if it’s rezzer goes away.
    • A new function – provisionally called llMedea (a reference to Greek mythology and vengeance), which will let an object unrez/kill something it has rezzed (hence the mythology reference).
  • The request for an llSensor function to check for objects with health has been acted upon. It is available in the Combat 2,0 sandboxes on Aditi and tests for “damageable” objects.

Comments and Requests

  • There were three Combat-related regions available to simulators on the Teen grid: Lexington, Concord, and No Man’s Land. These were seen as meaningful for many in the Combat community/ies, and a request has been made that, if possible, to bring them back to simulators on the main grid.
    • Rider passed this request directly to Product Operations, who were able to bring up all three regions after they had been off-line for 10 years 7 months (+some days, hours, minutes).
  • The request made at the previous Combat meeting for a possible new llSensor function has been written up – see Creation of llSensorwithParams.
  • A request was made to add a “fast” parameter to llRezObjectWithParams which would allow objects to rez at a reduced delay, thus allowing higher rates of fire for some weapons without the need for additional rez nodes. The issue here is that any such parameter could open up griefing vectors, as such it needs to be handled cautiously – if at all.
    • It was suggested the parameter could be managed at region owner / estate level (e.g. so only enabled where specifically required).
  • A further request for additional estate managements tools was made: one to disable the rez queue where required, as it is seen as causing major interruptions in combat scenarios.
  • There have been requests (including a feature request) for the first-person shooter improvements that have been added to the Black Dragon viewer to be considered for official implementation. This is a viewer-side feature, so would a) require a code contribution; b) would have to be considered for implementation by the viewer team.
  • A question was asked about avatar orientation / rotation (larger a viewer-side function) as whether it could be made more granular to determine where an avatar may have been hit with a projectile, rather than just getting a hit yes / no response.
    • Rider indicated he has some ideas for improving the handling of avatar rotations (e.g. force rotation, and / or determine rotation); however, it is going to take further research and testing before anything is made available.
    • Such a capability would have applications beyond just Combat.
  • There was a general discussion on RezObjectWithParamater bullets (and possibly “regular” bullets) colliding with an avatar / mesh on the same tick and not damaging the avatar (see related request here). Rider indicated there is no fix for this in the initial updates.
  • A request was made if there might be improvements to help with melee combat situations, to which Rider replied:
As a matter of fact yes. We’re going to have to hold off on collision type combat (just because of the way that works right now on the simulator) BUT you can use the technique of doing a quick sensor scan in the arc of your weapon and then applying damage directly to what you hit with llDamage.
  • An informal request was made for the Combat Log (Brigadier Linden) to record death positions. Rider felt this could be quickly added, and requested a formal Feature Request via the Feedback Portal. This was done, and he is now working on it.
    • A suggestion was added to this to also include the position of the damage object’s owner at that same instant. since people seem to be worried about auditing for cheating.

2024 SL SUG meetings week #21 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Quiet, Alpha Auer, May 2024 - click any image for full size
Quiet, Alpha Auer, May 2024 – blog post †

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, May 21st, 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 the video by Pantera – my thanks to her as always for providing it.

Meeting Overview

  • The Simulator User Group (also referred to by its older name of Server User Group) exists to provide an opportunity for discussion about simulator technology, bugs, and feature ideas.
  • These meetings are conducted (as a rule):
  • Meetings are open to anyone with a concern / interest in the above topics, and form one of a series of regular / semi-regular User Group meetings conducted by Linden Lab.
  • Dates and times of all current meetings can be found on the Second Life Public Calendar, and descriptions of meetings are defined on the SL wiki.

Simulator Deployments

  • On Tuesday, May 21st, the Main SLS channel was restarted without any deployment.
  • On Wednesday, May 22nd:
    • The BlueSteel RC channel should be updated with a re-deployment of the Spring Break Simulator update, after this had to be rolled back in week #20.
    • The rest of the RC simhosts will be restarted.

Upcoming Deployment

The major deployment for June is set to be Summer Fun. Among other things this should include:

  • Leviathan Linden’s game controller event work to support game controllers – although these will require a viewer-side update to expose the updated viewer UI.
  • Rider Linden’s work on the SL Combat System (SLCS) 2.0 updates (see my Combat User Group summaries for more).
  • LSL updates:
    • A new parameter to llRezObjectWithParams REZ_PARAM_STRING – allows the passing of a 1024 char string to the object being rezzed.
    • llGetStartString() to retrieve the string.
  • A fix for the notecard cache so that it a fixed amount of memory (enough memory to store 48 max-sized notecards) rather than the count of notecards.

SL Viewer Updates

No official viewer updates at the start of the week, leaving the pipeline as:

  • Release viewer: Maintenance X RC (usability improvements), version 7.1.7.8974243247, dated May 8 and  promoted May 13 – no change.
  • Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself).
    • Materials Featurettes RC viewer, version 7.1.8.9103842320, May 17.
    • Maintenance C RC (reset skeleton in all viewers), version 7.1.7.8820704257, May 6.
    • Maintenance B RC (usability updates / imposter changes) 8820696922, April 29.
  • Project viewers:

In Brief

Please refer to the video for the following:

  • The feature request to prioritise 2K support for Bakes on mesh is gathering a lot of support.
    • This sparked discussion on VRAM being maxed out, and a reiteration that the viewer show only download textures at the resolution required to match their screen size (e.g. if the texture takes up 512×512 pixels – that’s the resolution downloaded and used), and only download and use the full 2K version when zoomed right in, then discarding higher resolutions and clearing VRAM on zooming out. This also lead to comments as to the overall effectiveness of this approach.
  • llSetContentType and setting it text/html:  a discussion on the restriction whereby if the requesting html viewer is not owned by the server object, or is not the built in html viewer, the sent content type is just “text”, and the implications of removing that restriction (e.g. to make media on a prim (MOAP) more generally usable).
  • Further discussion on the notecard cache change.
  • Monty Linden noted that the issue of the Friends list being unreliable in reporting people’s on/of-line status is being reported again (he referenced this report). He requested that anyone experiencing issues with on-line friends showing as off-line (or vie-versa) to please comment on the report.

 

† 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 #20: SL CCUG summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
The Butterfly Effect, May 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, May 16th, 2024.

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.
  • In regards to meetings:
    • Dates and times are recorded in the SL Public Calendar.
    • Commence at 13:00 SLT on their respective dates.
    • Are conducted in a mix of Voice and text chat.
    • Are open to all with an interest in content creation.
  • The notes herein are a summary of topics discussed and are not intended to be a full transcript of the meeting.

Official Viewers Status

  • Release viewer: Maintenance X RC (usability improvements), version 7.1.7.8974243247, dated May 8and  promoted May 13 – NEW
  • Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself).
    • Maintenance C RC (reset skeleton in all viewers), version 7.1.7.8820704257, May 6.
    • Materials Featurettes RC viewer, version 7.1.7.8883017948, May 2.
    • Maintenance B RC (usability updates / imposter changes), version 7.1.7.8820696922, April 29.
  • Project viewers:

Graphics / glTF

Featurettes Viewer – Recap

  • Support for:
    • Viewer-side setting of PBR materials for terrain.
    • 2K texture upload support.
    • Mirrors: using reflection probes to generate local static or dynamic (incl. avatar) reflections in real-time.
  • Both Geenz Linden (mirrors) and Cosmic Linden (PBR terrain) are engaged in follow-up work for both of these projects, which will hopefully appear in a future graphics featurette viewer – not the current version (e.g. allowing PBR materials on terrain to have custom repeats, offsets, rotation).
  • It terms of PBR terrain, it was noted:
    • Emissive is supported on terrain.
    • There is a issue with Mac systems (either emissive or normal may “fall off”).
    • As running all four PBR materials on terrain can put a load on the viewer, there are some automatic fallbacks for systems unable to handle the full load which mean some of the materials may not be applied
    • Those opting to use PBR for terrain, as the viewer capability gains adoption (and region owners enable it), there is not requirement to also provide textures for terrain (to allow for those on non-PBR viewers).

General Notes on glTF / PBR

  • As an extension to the last point above, it was further noted that as PBR gains adoption, there is no enforced requirement for creators to continue to provide fallbacks to handle “non-PBR” viewers.
    • This lead to a further statement (first made at the May 10th TPV Developer meeting) that creators building for SL21B are not required to provide Blinn-Phong materials fallbacks on their builds when using PBR.
    • The above can be taken as an informal view that viewers need to support PBR either fully or with a “beta” release by the time of SL21B (commencing Friday, June 21st, 2024).
  • One of the reasons Linden Water reflections are not as good under PBR is due to attempts to optimise the rendering load so that any potential frame rate hit is minimised for more users.
    • Geenz Linden is looking at improving them once more as a result of the work done for mirrors. This work, if successful won’t bring water reflections up to the standard of pre-PBR water reflections (updated every frame), but will offer an improvement over what is currently seen with PBR.
    • Water as a material has been requested and is something LL “is interested in”, but this is not part of the current glTF / PBR work.
  • LL believe that most users should not see a dramatic fall-off in viewer FPS as a result of PBR, such that their experience is heavily impacted.
  • There remains no current plan to support displacement maps.
  • As well as working on mirrors, Geenz Linden is now working on Index of Refraction (IOR) and transmission, both in line with the glTF 2.0 specification (e.g. allowing transparent surfaces that distort what is behind them, as can sometimes be seen in the physical world).

glTF Scene Import

  • Recap:
    • Runitai Linden is continuing to work on glTF scene import. This has reached a point where (on test viewers) it is now possible to preview a scene (tied to an in-world object) in-world.
    • The initial aim is to get to a point where scenes can be imported and seen, and nodes within them updated with both tools in the viewer and / or using LSL, and ensuring they stay in synch with the rest of the scene.
    • Scenes are liable to use the MSFT glTF extension for Level of Detail (LOD), as this allows LODs to be set per node within a scene, providing more intuitive / consistent LOD switching management (based on screen coverage).
    • There will be constraints placed on scene imports (e.g. will not be able to have a scene which exceeds the capacity of a region; scenes will not be able to span more than one region (so as to avoid issues with physics, etc.); and so on).
  • In terms of scene import / export, while it is still earlier days, Runitai noted again that:
    • The idea is to make the import / export a two-way street for creators so they can modify their scenes with relative ease by taking it back to Blender to fix issues that cannot be fixed in-world.
    • This will be subject to the permissions system to prevent the wholesale export of content added to a scene.
    • Scenes uploaded will have attributions appended by the asset service (we owns the asset, when it was uploaded, etc).

In Brief

  • PBR and Bakes on Mesh:
    • LL “keenly aware” this needs to be done, and is noting support for it coming via the Feedback Portal.
    • However – it is not currently a live project.
    • The discussion also again carried the caveat that updating the Bake Service to support 2K textures is only part of the issue: all SL wearable definitions all also need to be revised to be able to support 2K textures, as these are also currently limited in their resolution.
  • There was an extended discussion on content ripping from Second Life and copybotting (with the latter covering a number of flavours). In short:
    • The is the hoary old (but nevertheless true) acknowledgement that Second Life relies on local computer rendering; ergo, regardless of whether it is via a”copybot viewer” or not, content can be ripped from SL and used elsewhere by those determined to do so.
    • Insofar as content being ripped and re-sold in Second Life (or elsewhere) there is the DMCA process – and in terms of other platforms, it does not matter if they have a DMCA Portal or not – a formal identification of content being misused (with proof of ownership) can still be sent to them in order to initiate a take-down process.
    • There was discussion on why “obvious” copyright-infringing content in SL was not taken down (with the example of Chanel products being used). As I understand it (and IANAL), this is bound up with the Safe Harbor provisions of the DMCA, design to provide immunity to ISPs and website operators for copyright infringement committed by their users by providing them with a framework for taking action. Pro-actively removing content potentially circumvents this process, leaving the company open to possible legal action if mistakes are made (and / or for simply not pre-actively addressing all infringements, large and small).
  • There was also a discussion on animations under glTF. However, as this will be a future element of the glTF scene support project, so I’ll leave specifics until such time as the work starts and LL talk more directly as to what they are doing and when.
  • The latter part of the meeting included (an occasionally heated) discussion on the new Modesty Layers being proposed by Linden Lab (see: 2024 SL Governance meeting week #19: Child Avatar Policy). However, as this was somewhat entangled with matters of policy, and those directly involved in making the changes to said policy / overseeing changes were not available  / present at the meeting, ad what was suggested as to possible technical solutions was somewhat speculative, I would prefer to leave further reference out of this summary, and leave matters until those at Linden Lab responsible for the policy have more fully engaged directly with content creators.

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.