Category: SL User Group Meetings

The following notes were taken from my audio recording and chat log transcript of the Content Creators User Group (CCUG) meeting held on Thursday, January 4th, 2024.

• 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 viewer development work.
• As a rule, these meetings are:
  • Held in-world and chaired by Vir Linden, in accordance with the dates and times given in the the SL Public Calendar, which also includes the location for the meetings.
  • Conducted in a mix of voice and text.
  • 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.

Official Viewers Status

No updates through the week, leaving the current crop of official viewers as:

• Release viewer: version 7.1.1.7039128750, formerly the Maintenance V(ersatility) RC viewer, issued December 1, promoted December 14 – displaying user-customized keybindings in chat – 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).
  • Maintenance-W RC viewer, version 7.1.2.7213596294, December 18 – bug and crash fixes.
  • glTF PBR Materials Maintenance RC, version 7.1.2.7215179142 issued December 15 – numerous bug fixes and improvements.
  • Maintenance X RC, version 7.1.1.7088410646, December 7 – usability improvements.
  • Maintenance Y RC, version 6.6.17.6935642049, issued November 21 – My Outfits folder improvements; ability to remove entries from landmark history.
  • Emoji RC viewer, version 6.6.15.581551, August 31.
• Project viewers:
  • Puppetry project viewer, version 6.6.12.579958, May 11.

General Notes

• It appears that the glTF PBR Materials maintenance RC viewer is being fast tracked for promotion to de facto release status. This could happen in the next few (working) days.
• The Emojis viewer is currently held up due to some viewer library merging issues and some other unspecified issues. However, the hope at the Lab is that this will be the next viewer promotion after the glTF PBR maintenance release.

Client-Side Scripting

• This has been the subject of some discussions at a number of recently User Group meetings and also internally at the Lab. Key areas of use for such a capability are seen by the Lab as:
  • Allowing viewer modifications to the UI.
  • Enabling client-side script testing.
  • Providing support for viewer-side functionality.
• Those as the meeting saw the ability to use client-side scripting to generate HUDs (with the ability for the client scripts to trigger server-side supporting LSL events / functions); ability for custom menu generation for products, etc.
• In terms of HUDs, it was suggested by Vir Linden that a more cohesive approach might be to provide support directly through the existing viewer UI and using commands native to the UI rather than part of an additional scripting capability to build / operate HUDs.
• Note that this is not at present an active project, more the fact that discussions are going on about the potential for such a capability.

PBR Materials

• Runitai Linden has been working to improve the look of the PBR EEP settings in light (no pun intended) of the significant negative user feedback concerning it.
• Whilst it does have a large number of fixies and improvements, the glTF PBR maintenance viewer does not address all issues users have reported, and a further maintenance viewer for PBR is anticipated some time after the current update has been promoted.
• A discussion was raised on the inability to have PBR materials on a object together with “classic” (Blinn-Phong) materials underlying them as a fall-back (as to get to the “classic” materials, the PBR must effectively be stripped from the object.
  • As the two approaches are essentially incompatible, an effective means of making this possible is not seen as easy / possible. The decision to separate them was also a conscious one on LL’s part, specifically because they did not want to burden creators with the idea that they must provide two sets of materials for their content in order for that content to “look good” under bot PBR viewers and non-PBR viewers (particularly as glTF / PBR is seen as the future of Second Life .
  • One suggestion was to perhaps used the PBR albedo texture as the defuse texture with “classic” materials. However, it was pointed out that again, PBR albedo textures are not the same as diffuse textures, so whilst it might work in some cases, it probably won’t work in all cases, and mileage on effectiveness subsequently vary.
  • Given that PBR is intended to be the way forward for the majority of SL, the preferred approach (from LL’s perspective) is that where a need to offer products with both Blinn-Phong (classic) materials and PBR materials, then produce two versions of the product.
• A request was made to have more PDR assets added to the Library (notably PBR EEP settings). It was indicated that LL are looking to add more PBR content to the Library, which may well include additional sky settings.

Marketplace Discussion

• As members of the Commerce Team were present at the meeting, there was a further discussion on how the MP is being gamed. This focused on how some sellers are exploiting the fact that items which are intended for gifting to others must have a Linden Dollar value against them in order for the “Add Item To Cart As Gift” button to be available.
  • The gaming involves placing the term “gift” and multiple product titled, then charging only L$1.00 for each item
  • This results in multiple items being sold in high volumes, helping to promote the seller(s) to the top of the Marketplace Best Selling Products listing.
  • Garfield Linden indicated he had some ideas to help address this, but needed to discuss them internally.
• The above led to a wider discussion on Gifting through the Marketplace – such as clarifying the gifting process so people don’t end up using Buy Now in error, and sending an intended gift to themselves, and also on providing the means for creators to send copies of their own products as gifts through the MP (e.g. to bloggers for review purposes).

Next Meeting

• 13:00 SLT, Thursday, January 18th, 2024, at the Hippotropolis Campsite (but check the public calendar).

† 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.

The following notes were taken from my audio recording and chat log transcript of the Content Creators User Group (CCUG) meeting held on Thursday, December 7th, 2023.

• 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 viewer development work.
• As a rule, these meetings are:
  • Held in-world and chaired by Vir Linden, in accordance with the dates and times given in the the SL Public Calendar, which also includes the location for the meetings.
  • Conducted in a mix of voice and text.
  • 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.

Official Viewers Status

The Maintenance X RC viewer (usability improvements) updated to version 7.1.1.7088410646, on December 7.The rest of the official viewer stand as:

• Release viewer: version 7.0.1.6894459864, the glTF / PBR Materials viewer, issued November 17, promoted November 28.
• Release channel cohorts:
  • Maintenance-W RC viewer, version 7.1.1.7088402585, December 5 – bug and crash fixes.
  • Maintenance V(ersatility) RC viewer, version 7.1.1.7039128750, December 1 – displaying user-customized keybindings in chat.
  • Maintenance Y, version 6.6.17.6935642049, issued November 21 – My Outfits folder improvements; ability to remove entries from landmark history.
  • Emoji RC viewer, version 6.6.15.581551, August 31.
• Project viewers:
  • Puppetry project viewer, version 6.6.12.579958, May 11.

General Notes

• It is unclear which viewer is liable to be promoted (if any) to end-of-year de facto release status. Currently both the Maintenance V RC and the Emoji viewer are seen as possible candidates – although the latter has yet to be updated to Github Actions / merged with the PBR release viewer code base.

PBR Materials

• Maintenance work on the initial release is well in progress.
• This work includes updates to environmental haze, per my previous CCUG summary (e.g. making local lights and glow be subject to haze  / fog such that those further away appear dimmer / are blotted by the haze / fog, rather than poking through it; fixing BUG-234235 “[PBR] alpha blend on water is acting a bit like invisiprim” + correcting the fact that Linden Water is currently drawn twice in a rendered scene, when visible).
• There have been some reported permissions issues with PBR / glTF, and these are being worked on.
• A fix (courtesy of Ansariel Hiller) for BUG-234706 “[GLTF] [PBR] Performance unstable / massive performance loss compared to default release” has also been pulled into the maintenance update.
• BUG-234728 “[PBR] Masked alpha gradient textures change with viewing angle” has been accepted by the Lab, but is proving difficult to consistently reproduce, slowing the investigation.

PBR Terrain Work

• Per past meeting notes, Cosmic Linden is prototyping the application of PBR materials on terrain (see this blog post for more).
• Important notes with this work:
  • It is not terrain painting. It is the application of PBR materials – terrain painting is described as “something that’s on the radar” at LL.
  • The work does not include support for displacement maps.
  • The work is currently only viewer-side, with no corresponding server-side support, the idea here being to prototype what might be achieved and testing approaches / results.

Current Status

• With PBR Materials now having shipped, cosmic Linden is turning her attention back to this work.
• The first order of business she sees is to get a project viewer supporting PBR terrain made available for users to try.
• Cosmic is also working on refining the PBR swatch / picker in the viewer’s UI.
• There is an issue with how PBR normal appear when used within terrain which needed to be corrected.

Game Controller Support

Project Summary

• The work is being led by Leviathan Linden, to provide game controller support at the scripting level (e.g. for handling things like vehicle movement, scripted objects etc.).
• It is not currently related to matters of avatar locomotion / camera movement, which is covered by the Preferences → Move and View → Other Devices (/Joystick) options, and considered out-of-scope for the work at present.
• Official documentation on the server-side support can be found on the Game Control page of the SL Wiki. Note this is based on the Simple Direct Media Layer (SDL) library for the button naming conventions, with some additional buttons added by the Lab to provide support for up to 32 buttons, rather than the 21 offered by SDL.
• At the time of writing, the Gingerbread maintenance branch with the prototype Game_Control feature is available on Aditi (the Beta grid) on the following regions: Aegis Island, Blake Sea – Turnbuckle, Cloud Sandbox 1, Cloud Sandbox 2, Firestorm Aerodrome, Gothlauth, Hona Lee Puff, Jigglypuff, Laefeon, LR151, LR 152, Mauve, Moonberry, Morris, SG2, and Smithereens.
• The current methodology for the Game_Control event is for whatever button is pressed on a games controller, an overall state is sent to the viewer, comprising:
  • The number of buttons available, presented in bitmask form to any controlling script.
  • A range of six axes in the range -1 to 1, given as floats), which the event then presents to an LSL script, which can then parse them.
  • The Game_Event function then passes this information to a controlling LSL script for parsing.
  • Notes:
    • The above points should not be considered tablets-of-stone, Leviathan is open to taking feedback from vehicle builders, etc., – such as including things like mouse input within the axes data.
    • Event_Control does not include a means for handling force feedback in its current form, but something like this might be added in a future iteration.
• Note that discussions on the project are also held within the Simulator User Group meetings (summaries here).

Current Status

• Consideration is being given to the fact that when the data on a games controller is sent to a script, it will have to be sent in sequence – so does this mean the inputs received by the Game_Control event should be given more meaningful names prior to being parsed by an LSL script?
• Also, what does the LSL script need to know? Is it what button is being pressed or what action is being performed? Three lines of thought emerged in discussions:
  • One for keeping button options as “standardised” as possible, rather than allowing actions to be arbitrarily mapping to buttons (with the result that every creator using the capability will do so differently), possibly backed-up with a “best practices guide”. A concern with this approach was that it would require a degree of proscription (“button x can do  this, this or this” – which do you require?”), which might not meet all use-cases.
  • Allowing for a more arbitrary button / action assignment, sending the button names as bindable options to the viewer, and providing users with a UI element (accessed via an on-screen button) so they can freely map buttons to vehicle / object actions based on personal preference.
  • Something of a half-way house: providing a “standard” set of buttons that can be used by a controller, then providing a scripted means  / UI option to map vehicle / object actions to that set of buttons.
• A further suggestion was made to have a core “glossary” of typical game controller inputs / actions (e.g. up, down, strafe left, strafe right, etc), but have the ability for script to identify the actions they require in controlling a vehicle / object, and allow the creator (/user, if a UI options for re-binding is provided), to map additional options to buttons /re-map preferences.
• Discussions around these ideas set to continue.

In Brief

• Not purely Content Creation related, but a Jira (BUG-234653 – “Feature Request: Invisible / Utility Login”) has been submitted requesting the ability for users to be able to completely hide their on-line status prior to logging-in. This is being considered for implementation.
• The question of the status of the Puppetry Project was again raised. In short:
  • The overall project remains on “hold” for a variety of reasons (including both complexities and also limitations within SL which require separate addressing).
  • Some of the work originally sitting within the Puppetry banner – such as animation import – is either being considered as a separate project, or being folded into other work – such as glTF scene import (which encompasses items such a node hierarchies which are required for IK systems etc.).
  • This lead to a broader discussion of the potential with glTF (perhaps best left until the project relating to scene import becomes more public) and a history of the Puppetry Project, mush of which is summarised in my Puppetry Project meeting summaries).

Next Meeting

• 13:00 SLT, Thursday, December 21st, 2023, at the Hippotropolis Campsite (but check the public calendar).

† 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.