Category: SL User Group Meetings

2024 SL SUG meetings week #3 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Sakura Cranes, December 2023 – blog post †

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, January 16th, 2024 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They form a summary of the items discussed, and are not intended to be a full transcript. A video of the meeting is embedded at the end of this summary, my thanks as always to Pantera for recording the meeting and 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):
  • They 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 SLS Main channel deployment on Tuesday, January 16th, 2024; the simhosts were all just restarted.
  • Wednesday, January 17th should see the Falls Colours simulator update once more deployed to all of the RC channels. This includes:
  • If all goes well, week #4 should see Fall Colours deployed to the SLS Main channel and the Gingerbread simulator update deployed to at least some of the RC channels.

Viewer Updates

No changes at the start of the week, leaving the list of official viewers as:

  • Release viewer: version 7.1.2.7215179142, formerly the glTF PBR Materials Maintenance RC, issued December 15, promoted January 8, 2024 – numerous bug fixes and improvements.
  • Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself).
    • glTF PBR Materials Maintenance-2 RC viewer, version 7.1.3.7467259489, issued January 12, 2024.
    • Maintenance-W RC viewer, version 7.1.3.7453541295, January 9, 2024 – bug and crash fixesz.
    • 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:

Jira End-of-Road – Reminder

  • Linden Lab is ending its use of Atlassian Jira for the filing of bug reports and feature request, and is instead moving to Github / Canny. For specifics, please refer to the following:
  • Note that this is a work-in-progress (so things like additional ticket categories are being introduced, such as the recent Server Bug category), and both the new system and Jira remain open at this time (although the latter will shutdown in February 2024).

Game Control Update

  • The game_control event for using game controllers has been removed from the Gingerbread maintenance RC to become its own branch / channel (currently on Aditi (the Beta grid), where it can be found on the regions LeviathanLove and LeviathanLost.
  • As per the previous SUG meeting summary, the game_control event signature has changed in that the button_edges parameter is no longer provided to the event and must be computed by the scripter if still needed.

In Brief

  • Further discissions on Leviathan Linden’s LSL updates for camera control, due to be deployed in the Gingerbread update (see my previous SUG summary for details)
  • A general discussion on attachment points – such as reserving some for specific uses, or providing a separate pool of attachment points for HUDs / on-screen attachments (so that they are counted separately, rather than being part of the total limit of 38 attachments).
  • Concerns were raised over the fact the PBR now makes it harder to show / hide prims/object faces (e.g. alpha cuts in mesh bodies) using LSL to set the alpha visibility, with loops now being required to achieve what could previously be done via a single function call.
    • The problem is seen as exacerbated by the fact there appears to be no way for a script to determine if PBR materials is applied, making it necessary for creators to add to their script overheads.
    • It had been thought that a bug report had been raised on this issue, as it has been discussed at the Lab and is seen as a issue which needs to be fixed – although it might not be possible to change the semantics of the current Blinn-Phong alpha setters in LSL without breaking content.
    • llSetAlpha was not expanded to handle this out of concern over mixing semantics of setting legacy and PBR alpha values correctly.
    • This led to a general discussion on possible options to manage this issue, which continued through most of the rest of the meeting.
  • Please refer to the video for these items. and on TTAORAIMWEATCP (the throwing about of random acronyms in meetings without explanation and thus confusing people).

† 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 #2 summary: Jira end-of-road

Posted on by Inara Pey
Borkum, November 2023 – blog post †

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, January 9th, 2024 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They form a summary of the items discussed, and is not intended to be a full transcript. A video of the meeting is embedded at the end of this summary, my thanks as always to Pantera for recording the meeting and 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):
  • They 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 scheduled deployments, just region restarts.
  • It is hoped the issues with the Fall Colours simulator update (e.g. collision sounds reverberating) have now been addressed, and that these fixes will be deployed across all simulator RCs during week #3.
  • A further simulator update – Gingerbread – will be following thereafter.

Viewer Updates

  • The glTF PBR Materials Maintenance RC, version 7.1.2.7215179142 issued December 15th, 2023 and featuring numerous bug fixes and improvements (including haze / fog affecting point lights), was promoted to de facto release status on Monday, January 8th, 2024.
  • The Maintenance-W RC viewer comprising bug and crash fixes was updated to version 7.1.3.7453541295 on January 9th, 2024.

The rest of the official viewers currently in the pipeline remain as follows

  • Release channel cohorts:
    • Maintenance X RC, version 7.1.1.7088410646, December 7 – usability improvements.
    • 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:

Jira End-of-Road

  • While yet to be formally announced, as a result of Atlassian changing their licensing model and making it prohibitively expensive for Linden Lab to continue using Jira as  reporting tool open to all users, the decision has been taken to replace Jira as a the bug reporting / featuring request filing toll for Second Life.
  • In the very near future, Jira will be replaced by a two-pronged approach:
    • Bug reports will be taken directly though Github.
    • General feedback and feature requests will be made via Canny, from where they will be imported by the Lab as GitHub issues for the purposes of internal tracking.
  • Work is already underway internally to move existing open and incoming Jira tickets to Github, and it is anticipated that the switch-over to using Canny as well as Github will be made very soon. An official blog post on the switch-over is expected to be made either later this week or early in week #3.
  • The use of Canny has already drawn some strong negative feedback from technical users due to several limitation within the service as it has been developed. These concerns have been noted by LL, who are also providing feedback to the Canny developers.
  • However, it was noted that an advantage with Canny is that the Second Life environment there allows users to log-in to it using their SL credentials (just as is currently the case with Jira). However, Github doe not allow this, but requires uses to have dedicated accounts – with the concern this would like be seen as a objectionable requirement by many SL users.

Scripted Camera Control Updates

  • Leviathan Linden has been working on some LSL updates for camera control, which are expected to be deployed with the Gingerbread update in the next few weeks. These are:
    • float llGetCameraAspect(): returns aspect ratio as known to the camera on the server. Basically width/height of SL window.
    • float llGetCameraFOV(): returns “field of view” of the camera as known to the server, in radians. Is a measure of angle of view of the vertical span of the window.
    • vector llWorldPosToHUD(vector world_pos): returns HUD position that maps to the world-pos as seen by current camera as known by server. HUD attachment point doesn’t matter: the server figures it out.
    • string llComputeHash(string message, string algorithm): returns hash digest of message using the algorithm, without any “nonce salt” as in llMD5String(). Supported algorithms are: md5, md5_sha1, sha1, sha224, sha256, sha384, and sha512.
  • Concerns were raised over the float llGetCameraAspect() being used to “fingerprint” users (e.g. whether two accounts are being used by the same user) through returned information on window size & resolution. In response, it was pointed out the return is only the window aspect ration, which is regarded as more secure against such fingerprinting.

Game Control Update

  • Leviathan also encountered a bug in the game controller code he is developing which meant that sometimes bits could be lost in the button_edges argument supplied to the game_control event.
  • The fix for this has been a change to the game_control event signatures from game_control(key id, integer button_levels, integer button_edges, list axes) to game_control(key id, integer button_levels, list axes).
  • Thus, it will be the responsibility of scripters to compute button_levels as necessary. Scripters who want the edges will have to track a global variable previous_button_levels.

In Brief

  • Questions were asked about LL developing a “scripted UI”. These likely arose out people hearing second-hand some comments made at the first Content Creation User Group meeting. For fuller context, please see my notes from that meeting.
  • For all other topics, please refer to the video below.

† 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 #1: SL CCUG meeting summary: PBR and MP

Posted on by Inara Pey
Blue Finch Frosty Hollow, November 2023 – blog post †

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:

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

† 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.

January 2024 SL Web User Group summary: Marketplace issues

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 January 3rd, 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.

Marketplace

The meeting started with an apology for the issue over the New Year period which included items merchants were trying to list failing to appear, items and stores failing to show up in search results (see BUG-234924). The Lab believe the causes of the issues have been fixed, and processes have been put in place for the back-end systems to better alert support / engineering when issues of this nature occur.

A request was also made for any merchants still experiencing problems in trying to list items or in having their items / stores show up in searches, to file a Jira with LL.

The above was followed by a meeting-length discussion with what are seen as getting to be long-term terms issues with the MP, some of which are the results of changes which have inadvertently given rise to opportunities for the Marketplace to be gamed, and merchants losing revenue as a result. Key among the complaints being made were (but not limited to):

  • Active stores seeming to vanish from the Marketplace entirely.
  • Listed items failing to show up in any searches.
  • Exploits such as items being falsely labelled in the Product title field producing misleading search results.
  • Exploits being opened as a result of the 2022/23 overhaul of ElasticSearch (the engine powering MP searches), and relevancy weightings being given to product titles .
  • Exploits allowing spamming through the features tab which further influences search results in favour of those doing the spamming.

It was noted that these issues – including the problems of items and stores not appearing in searches – go back over several months (rather the the issue witnessed over the new year period being a “one off”), and they are giving rises to across-the-board upset and frustration among MP merchants, and with their customers.

The conversation was very much one in which people spelled out the issues being experienced, whilst Lab representatives at the meeting mostly listened and took notes. This being the case, and rather than risk parsing the meeting through my own subjective presence as someone who is not a merchant, I will refer readers to the video of the meeting as embedded below, and encourage anyone experiencing any of the issues raised to file a Jira bug report with Linden Lab on the matter.

Marketplace Styles

  • Part of the above discussion touched on Marketplace Styles (allowing things like different colour variants for a product in a single listing).
  • This was promised as being an active project throughout 2022, with (the since departed) Reed Linden stating in November 2022 (see November 2022 Web User Group: new “Plus” subscription level) the capability could appear before the end of that year or in 2023.
  • As more than a year has passed without mention, I raised the topic at the end of the meeting, requesting the actual status of the work (particularly as when it was raised in 2023, not long after Sntax Linden has taken over the WUG meetings, he did not appear to be aware of the project). The response was:
Styles is at the top of my list for things for MP. Just need to find the right time to slot it in. I can’t promise when but I am hopeful we can make headway on it this year. 

– Sntax Linden

  • Which probably means that if you are a Merchant who has been looking forward to this capability, probably best not to hold your breath for its arrival. Unless you’re especially fond of blue.

Next Meeting

  • Wednesday, March 6th, 2024.

2024 SL SUG meetings week #1 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
The Hamptons, November 2023 – blog post †

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, January 2nd, 2024 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They form a summary of the items discussed, and is not intended to be a full transcript. A video of the meeting is embedded at the end of this summary, my thanks as always to Pantera for recording the meeting and 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):
  • They 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 scheduled deployments, just region restarts.

Viewer Updates

The current official viewers list starts the year unchanged from where it saw out the old year.

  • 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, 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:

In Brief

  • A quiet meeting as a number of the engineering team are on extended vacation (so no Rider, Leviathan, et al).
  • LL are continuing to work on the issue of repeating collision sounds on the RC channel and the Fall Colors update (see:
  • BUG-234835 “Can hear Collisions “play” on RC channels”). This should have been reverted over the holiday period to minimise the annoyance, but no news on when an actual fix is likely to be deployed.
  • Simon Linden has been poking at the Avatar Appearance message, so that at some point soon it will get both a list of attachments as well as some info on pending attachments. He’s also tweaking ObjectUpdate for root prims so it will  include the number in the linkset.
  • A lot of general conversation on region crossings, PBR (and the issues being experienced by those on PBR-enabled viewers). Please refer to the video below for specifics.

† 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.

2023 SL SUG meetings week #51 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Nom Nom Café Library, November 2023 – blog post †

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, December 19th Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They form a summary of the items discussed, and is not intended to be a full transcript. A video of the meeting is embedded at the end of this summary, my thanks as always to Pantera for recording the meeting and 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):
  • They 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 scheduled deployments, just region restarts.

Viewer Updates

On Monday, December 18th, the Maintenance-W RC viewer (bug and crash fixes) updated to version 7.1.2.7213596294.

  • Release viewer: version 7.1.1.7039128750, formerly the Maintenance V(ersatility) RC viewer (displaying user-customized keybindings in chat), issued December 1, promoted December 14.
  • Release channel cohorts:
    • 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, 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:

Game Controllers Update

From Leviathan Linden:

I had a fresh working game_control viewer [on Github] on Wednesday [Dec 13]. There is an updated viewer that allows avatar control “Actions” to be translated into GameControl input. 
DaveP pointed out that game_control could be hijacked to supply midi input if the number of supported buttons was uncapped. Right now the game_control event is limited to 32 buttons because they are stored in a 32-bit mask. However, that would require button state to be represented in lists, which I had originally proposed, but received feedback saying scripters would prefer the bitwise masks –> much faster to process.

In Brief

  • Party week + No Change window, so not a lot discussed / little news.
  • Leviathan Linden has implemented llGetAspectRatio() for attachments, and is aiming to release it in the new year with the Gingerbread simulator update (likely mid-to-late January).
    • There are no parameters for the function, it just returns horizontal/vertical ratio float value if the scripted object is an attachment.
    • The item doesn’t need to be attached as HUD, any attachment point works.
  • The bug within the current Fall Colors simulator release (currently on all RC channels) which causes repetitive collision sounds has not been completely resolved. See BUG-234835 “Can hear Collisions “play” on RC channels”.
  • The first hour of the meeting focused on a general discussion on possible scripted updates for the SL camera (including whether or not some general camera improvements might be better handled viewer-side).
  • Please refer to the video below for the core meeting – which extended beyond the hour due to the live music; unfortunately, I had to depart for the physical world just after the first hour was up.

† 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.