Category: SL User Group Meetings

2023 SL SUG meetings week #46 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
 Triple Sweet Café, September 2023 – blog post †

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, November 14th 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.

Apologies for the lateness of this summary, RL is not playing nice at the moment.

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.

Server Deployments

  • No deployments for SLS Main channel, but the simhosts were restarted.
  • Wednesday, November 15th should have seen the deployment of the PBR Material simulator support to all RC channels.
    • Please remember: if you have anything that uses PBR materials and you rez that object (or wear it) on a non-PBR simulator,  the PBR Materials will be stripped from the object and forgotten.
  • There are currently internal discussions on whether or not to deploy the simulator support for PBR before or after US Thanksgiving.

Viewer Updates

Two new Maintenance viewers were issued on Tuesday, November 14th:

  • Maintenance X, version 6855926535, comprising viewer usability improvements.
  • Maintenance Y, version 6.6.17.6855930358, comprising improvements to the My Outfits folder (display thumbnails on hover) and to remove entries from landmark history

The rest of the official remain unchanged at the start of the week:

  • Github Actions (GHA) RC viewer, version 6.6.16.6566955269, issued October 20 (with major CEF update and number version numbering) and promoted on October 25.
  • Release channel cohorts:
  • Project viewers:

Game Controllers

  • The simulator code for the game controller support is now in the “Fall Colours” simulator RC update, which is currently scheduled as the first simulator RC deployment in December.
  • The viewer code needs further work, including:  keyboard mapping to controller input channels; the ability to set the dead zone of various axes; support for “less common” controllers; additional UI to work alongside existing support options (e.g. SpaceNavigator).
    • In terms of the SpaceNavigator, the project will not include an update to support the latest 3dconnexion drivers, as it is felt this will break expected behaviour for the SpaceNav mouse in SL – the aim is to continue to support SpaceNav as is.
  • This work does not, as yet, include the ability to control avatar motion, although there was additional discussion around this.
  • Expansions to inputs have been filed in Feature Request BUG-234678.
  • There was also significant discussion on game controller / LSL interactions.
  • When available via the Alternate Viewers pages, the viewer will has a MacOS build as well. Meanwhile, documentation on the game controller work can be found on the SL wiki, and this includes Github link for downloading a pre-release version of the Windows viewer.

SL Combat

  • A further general discussion on updating SL’s support for combat gaming, most of which has been covered in recent SUG summaries here (e.g. adjusting the avatar bounding box and hit box when crouching  / seating (so the form allows for crawling under object, for example, and the latter makes for a small target).
  • Camera control options:
    • A new request was for a native means to set the camera to follow remote objects (e.g. RC vehicles) rather than having to relay on “janky” scripts to achieve the capability.
    • There were also requests for offsetting mouselook view (see VWR-28745 for an example of such a request).
    • Rider suggested updates to the camera control mechanism and positioning might be better suited to an update to scripted camera capabilities he is considering (but not anywhere close to being in a position to discuss in terms of what might / can / cannot be done).

In Brief

  • A lot of requests for updates to SL terrain, including updating the textures and improving the resolution (which should hopefully be covered by the PBR terrain support Cosmic Linden is developing, which should also reduce texture stretching as the heightmap is morphed); full terrain painting (not currently on the books); a general smoothing terrain deformations to make movement, etc., smoother.
  • Region Crossing: following the most recent pile-on tests, Monty Linden is working on some updated code, which he is trying to get onto Aditi (the Beta grid) on server channel DRTSIM-565, however there is a bug he needs to hammer on first.
  • Monty is also working on “an EventQueueGet thing”, which he hopes to get on to Aditi on DRTSIM-577.
  • Further requests for a means of masking Linden Water from the interiors of object – see BUG-227965 as a reference for this.
  • There was a request to be able to adjust the centre of mass for a linkset (e.g. a vehicle). While this can be done to some degree via prim cutting, it is not so possible with mesh; how it would be handled is unclear, but Leviathan Linden indicated he would kick some ideas around.
  • somewhat/ sort-of related to the above, a Feature Request has been filed to allow control of where a vehicle rotates from without having to do prim hackery – see BUG-234649, an update to SVC-6619). It was noted this could be useful for objects other than vehicles alone.

† 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 #45 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Tilheyra, September 2023 – blog post †

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, November 7th Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They form a summary of the items discussed, and is not intended to be a full transcript.

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.

Server Deployments

  • No deployments for SLS Main channel, but the simhosts were restarted.
  • The planned Wednesday, November 8th deployment of the PBR Material simulator support to all RC channels has been put on hold pending the resolution of a late-breaking issue.
    • At the time of the meeting, the proposal was to restart simhosts on the Ferrari and Magnum RC channels, whilst BlueSteel and LeTigre (the two currently with the PBR support) to receive updated code before the end of the week.
    • Please remember: if you have anything that uses PBR materials and you rez that object (or wear it) on a non-PBR simulator,  the PBR Materials will be stripped from the object and forgotten.
As it turns out the new message introduced by Materials was generating unacked packets back to the simulator. In groups of one or to agents this isn’t a big deal… but add a user here and a user there and pretty soon you’re talking about real data, and this extra overhead was causing some performance issues on our end that would eat into script time. We have a solution to it and we are just trying to reach a consensus on how best to roll that onto the grid.

– Rider Linden, describing the issue which prevented the simulator-side PBR code deploying to all RC channels

Viewer Updates

No updates to viewers for the start of the week, leaving the official viewer pipelines as:

  • Github Actions (GHA) RC viewer, version 6.6.16.6566955269, issued October 20 (with major CEF update and number version numbering) and promoted on October 25.
  • Release channel cohorts:
  • Project viewers:

SL Combat

  • Regarding the “Combat Committee” and requests for capabilities for combat in Second Life, Rider Linden stated:
I don’t have news on any sort of when for that. I am actively working on a proposal that I’m going to float around the lab and then bring to the community. That may end up involving creating what I’ve been calling a “Combat Committee”… because I love alliteration. I don’t think I’m going to have anything useful to report on that though until January next year. I would really like to get some tools in that would allow people to create some interesting combat systems.

– Rider Linden

In Brief

  • Requests from users:
    • An update on the recent region crossing tests (see October’s SUG summaries). Monty Linden is working on this, but has been out-of-office, so a further update may be forthcoming at an upcoming meeting once he is back.
    • Custom pivot points – a capability being considered as a further part of the glTF project, as this will enable hierarches that will make arbitrary pivots a lot easier.
    • Animation priority updates: these was going to be looked at as a part of the on-hold Puppetry project. However, any such work is unlikely to include things like changing priorities by script, as these are seen as problematic.
    • A request for new sensor functions which could better enable RP functions (e.g. detacting NPC, casting speeling), together with further requests for Feature Requests such as BUG-4329 “Feature Request: New sensor functions that are not bound to a prim’s position & rotation plus inclusion of an Owner filter” and BUG-233784 “Add sensor type LOW_SCRIPTED as an option”, and also increasing the number of objects a sensor can report on from 16 to 32.
  • Rider Linden is developing ideas for possible scripted camera control updates, and is adding BUG-6325 “More Flag parameters for llSetCameraParams()” to the list.
  • Requests are being made for those with games controller to try the pre-release Game Controller viewer and offer feedback. This is still currently Windows only, but a MacOS version is coming Soon™.

† 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 week #44: SL CCUG meeting summary: PBR

Posted on by Inara Pey
Shades of Autumn, September 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, November 2nd, 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.

Viewer Updates

The glTF / PBR RC viewer updated to version 7.0.1.6658224456 on November 2nd, bringing it into parity with the current release viewer and built via Github Actions.

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

  • Release viewer, version 6.6.16.6566955269, promoted October 25 (formerly the GHA RC viewer).
  • Release channel cohorts:
  • Project viewers:

glTF Materials and Reflection Probes

Project Summary

  • To provide support for PBR materials using the core glTF 2.0 specification Section 3.9 and using mikkTSpace tangents, including the ability to have PBR Materials assets which can be applied to surfaces and also traded / sold.
  • The overall goal for glTF as a whole is to provide as much support for the glTF 2.0 specification as possible.
  • Up to four texture maps are supported for PBR Materials: the base colour (which includes the alpha); normal; metallic / roughness; and emissive, each with independent scaling.
  • In the near-term, glTF materials assets are materials scenes that don’t have any nodes / geometry, they only have the materials array, and there is only one material in that array.
  • As a part of this work, PBR Materials will see the introduction of reflection probes which can be used to generate reflections (via cubemaps) on in-world surfaces. These will be a mix of automatically-place and manually place probes (with the ability to move either).
  • The viewer is available via the Alternate Viewers page.

Further Resources

Status Update

Server-side deployment

  • The simulator code supporting PBR Materials was deployed to the BlueSteel and LeTigre simulator RC channels, making it “live” across some 3,000 simulators.
  • This has seen a number of additional bug reports filed, but currently nothing which has been seen as constituting a major blocker to further deployment.
  • At the time of the meeting, it was hoped that the PBR code could be deployed to all of the RC channels simhosts on Wednesday, November 8th, 2023. This is seen as the best way to test for additional cases of non-PBR content suffering breakage which may have thus far slipped through the net.
  • If things continue as planned, the aim is to have PBR support on the simhosts fully deployed “by Thanksgiving”.

Viewer Updates

  • The PBR viewer has been updated to build via the new Github Action process, marking it as up-to-date with the current release viewer (version 6.6.16.6566955269, October 25th, at the time of writing).
  • It is possible that one of the Maintenance RC viewers may be pushed to de facto release ahead of the PBR viewer in order to correct a statistics reporting issue.
    • At the time of the meeting, a final decision on this has yet to be made. However, if this proves to be the case, and if LL decide to maintain the 2-week minimum period between viewer promotions, this could mean the PBR viewer might not be released until after the simulator code is grid-wide.
  • The PBR viewer release is also dependent upon whether or not any remaining reported / open issues are considered serious enough to require fixing ahead of any promotion.
    • Currently, there is one blocker which is under investigation: if the PBR viewer is used, and then a swap is made to using a non-PBR viewer, then it is possible some objects may not show-up on logging in, and will never show up until object cache is cleared.
  • For those interested – this is the list of currently open issues for PBR.
  • The current PBR RC viewer replaces the term “Materials” in the Build / Edit floater Texture tab with Blinn-Phong. Whilst this is the technically correct term for the current implementation of materials support in SL and was seen as a means of differentiating between the current materials support and PBR, the switch to the term has been raised as potentially confusing to users not deeply versed in graphics  / rendering but who are familiar with using and applying current materials maps. As such, the use of an alternate term has been requested.

Tone Mapping and Full Bright Issues

  • A recently-reported issue is with tone mapping not applying correctly to Full Bright objects, resulting in darker colours / blacks being crushed and white highlights being blown out.
  • This has been highlighted in BUG-234506 and this forum thread, where it is reported as an issue facing content creators trying to produce advertising images for their products for use on in-world vendor boards, etc. However, the issue has the potential to affect SL photography in general, where snapshots are taken to be uploaded for display in-world as textures (e.g. as art, “family” snapshots, etc.).
  • The problem is the result of tone mapping being applied to such textures twice:
    • The first time as a result of tone mapping being enabled (and captured) when the snapshot is taken.
    • The second time as a result of the uploaded texture being rendered with tone mapping active in the viewer.
  • This is seen as “expected behaviour”, and the lighting model will not be changed for dealing with Full Bright (e.g. by making it a straight pixel pass-through).
  • This means the current work-around is to use the No Post Build menu option, thus:
    • Edit the object using Full Bright to open the Build  / Edit floater.
    • Go to menu bar → Build → Options and enable No Post – this will try off tone mapping and exposure, and will remain active as long as the Build / Edit floater is open.
    • Take the snapshot.
    • Close the Build / Edit floater.
  • As this workaround is seen as heavy-handed (and also not helpful to those taking photos who may need to disable tone mapping at times, but who are unfamiliar with the Build / Edit floater and Build menu), it has been requested to incorporate a toggle checkbox for No Post directly into the snapshot floater.
  • Runitai Linden has also proposed the addition of a HDRI export to the 360º Snapshot floater.

General Notes

  • The viewer performance issue on older versions of MacOS has been addressed, but it is not clear if the fixes work with Apple silicon SoC, pending further tests.
  • It is acknowledged that there will be a learning curve among all users where PBR is concerned due to the level of changes involved in the lighting model (e.g. objects with a specular map – even indoors – having a blue sheen to them, due to reflecting the ambient environment; an issue which can be fixed through the correct placement of reflection probes indoors).
    • Efforts are being made to ensure cases like this are being covered in the PBR documentation being put together by LL.
  • It was re-iterated that there will be follow-on glTF work following PBR materials (see the general roadmap, below), with it being noted that some would allow the implementation of hierarchical structures which could allow for options such as arbitrary pivot points in meshes, whilst adoption of the glTF specifications for animations could result expanded animation capabilities, etc.
  • A number of requests for new features (e.g. the ability to be able to simulate Linden water on surfaces via materials). These were noted as all having pre-requisites and potential limiters on them, so while they are not refused, mention of them here will be held over until LL have determined if and how they (and their pre-requisites) might fit into the overall roadmap.
  • Whilst concerns remain about Apple simply ceasing to support OpenGL, thus driving a potential need to switch the viewer away from using OpenGL to using Vulkan / MoltenVK, this is not seen as an immediate priority compared to moving ahead with further glTF work. Which is not to say LL won’t move the viewer to alternate graphics API as the glTF work progresses beyond scene import work (see below).

Likely Roadmap for glTF

  • Complete and deploy the current PBR materials work.
  • Resume work on real-time mirrors and terrain support for glTF materials. In brief, these comprise:
    • Mirrors: providing the means to have mirrors within scenes to reflect their immediate surroundings. These will leverage a “hero” reflection probe concept (512×512 resolution), with one such probe per scene being active for any given avatar, based on the avatar / camera distance from the mirror.
    • Terrain support: providing the means to apply glTF materials to terrain as a viewer-side effect to improve the appearance of the SL terrain. Note that this is not PBR terrain painting.
  • Alongside the mirrors / terrain work will be a period of PBR Materials maintenance work to fix reported bugs / those issues still open at the time of release.
  • Also start to develop a prototype for glTF scene import – with no overall time frame for the latter being indicated.
  • Once there is an initial prototype for glTF scene import, he Lab will proceed in much the same was as for PBR materials: an iterative development cycle which fully engages the user community / 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.

November 2023 SL Web User Group (WUG) meeting 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 November 1st, 2023. They form a summary of the items discussed and is not intended to be a full transcript.

No video this time, Pantera was unavailable, and the meeting was exclusively text chat.

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 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.

Updates Since the Last Meeting

  • Linden Homes Store:
    • There has been a high degree of feedback on the Linden Homes store since its launch (see: Looking at the New Linden Homes Store).
    • As a result of this, improvements and updates are being made to the store, and feedback is continuing to be reviewed.
  • Marketplace:
    • The Marketplace team have been looking into the case of some merchants changing their store name to include 5 stars to seem like their store rating is 5 stars. This is an ongoing investigation, but preliminary results indicate it is a small percentage of merchants, and a course of action has yet to be determined.
    • Marketplace search relevance is again being worked upon, primarily in response to feedback received, and updates will be forthcoming once they are ready.

Caspervend and the Marketplace

  • In September 2022, Linden Lab acquired CasperTech (see the official blog post and my own article, which includes a Lab Gab interview with Casper Warden for more), a family which includes the popular Caspervend system.
  • This meeting saw questions taken on how merchants use Caspervend, and capabilities within Caspervend they’d like to see incorporated in the MP. This drew a breadth of feedback including:
    • Caspervend’s use of graphs to present data relating to sales, deliveries, etc., being carried over to the MP and broadened.
    • A general expansion of MP stats (e.g. top selling products and sales over time).
    • Integration of Caspervend’s in-world selling tools with the MP to allow items viewed on Caspervend sales kiosks to be delivered via the MP.
  • This discussion broadened into more general requests for capabilities related to both Caspervend and the Marketplace both together and individually. These included:
    • Having items purchased via the MP or via dedicated Caspervend in-world servers (and other third-party vending solutions?) to be delivered to a folder within Inventory called “Purchased Items”, rather than “Received Items” or “Objects” – as *everything* users receive might be regarded as a “received item”.
    • Having the means to report broken links within MP so they might be fixed (e.g. by a store owner where the links in their MP listings refer to the former location of any in-world store they own, as they’ve forgotten to update following a move).

Dynamic Landmarks

  • Part of the discussion on Caspervend / the Marketplace raised the matter of dynamic landmarks.
  • This is a subject raised numerous times in the past – most notably by Toysoldier Thor under the term Virtual Landmarks (VLM), see:
    • Feature request SVC-8082 “Proposed Global Service for SL: VIRTUAL LANDMARKS & VLM Mapping Services”
    • The Virtual Landmarks forum thread.
    • My own article on the VLM concept.
    • The third-party attempt to address VLMs, developed by Darius Gothly (but now discontinued – illustrating the need for centralised support of such a system by LL).
  • The general idea for “dynamic landmarks” was referenced by Sytax Linden as a good idea, and the above points are being passed to him for reference (assuming they might be of interest).

In Brief

  • Holding the Web User Group more frequently is still being looked into.
  • Requests were made for the following:
    • Make the *entire* Destination Guide (+ things like the SL public calendar) directly viewable through the viewer(!).
    • Support for 360 snapshots within the Destination Guide.
    • Utilising different colours  counts on DG entries to denote scripted agents rather than active avatars.
    • Expanding parcel Search categories to match those in the Destination Guide in order to make public parcels more discoverable.
    • A public-facing document outlining what is being worked on, what feedback has been taken on-board, etc.,  so people are more generally aware of what is happening with web properties + updates.
    • More Search categories / filtering (web / viewer search) – e.g. “clothing”, “landscaping”, “Building”, etc.

Next Meeting

  • Wednesday, December 6th, 2023.

2023 SL SUG meetings week #44 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Grauland, August 2023 – blog post †

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, October 31st Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They form a summary of the items discussed, and is not intended to be a full transcript. My thanks to Yuzuru Jewell for the meeting transcript – for once, clock changes caught me off-guard, and I missed the greater part of the meeting!

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.

Server Deployments

  • No deployments for SLS Main channel, but the simhosts were restarted.
  • On Wednesday, November 1st the BlueSteel and LeTigre will receive the simulator support for PBR Materials.
    • Please remember: if you have anything that uses PBR materials and you rez that object (or wear it) on a non-PBR simulator,  the PBR Materials will be stripped from the object and forgotten.

Viewer Updates

No updates to viewers for the start of the week, leaving the official viewer pipelines as:

  • Github Actions (GHA) RC viewer, version 6.6.16.6566955269, issued October 20 (with major CEF update and number version numbering) and promoted on October 25.
  • Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself).
  • Project viewers:

Games Controller Update

  • Leviathan Linden is having issues getting the viewer to build for Mac.
  • He hopes to have support for arbitrary controllers before this is shippable in the viewer, Which means some way to remap keys and axes.
  • The server-side code has been largely settled for any initial release, although there are some questions about whether some LSL constant names will be added for the various buttons and axes.
  • The documentation for the Game Controller SL event can be found with the SL wiki.
  • A projects viewer is available via Github actions, but per the above, simulator support is pending the Fall Colours RC release.
  • Pending main grid availability, the simulator support is available on Aditi (the Beta grid) within the following regions: Ahern, Cloud Sandbox 3, Cloud Sandbox 4, Mesh Sandbox 2, Sandbox Wanderton, Snark, and Tyl.

SL Combat

  • Rider Linden noted that LL will likely start a “Combat Committee” in early 2024 (presumably a new User Group meeting).
  • He will endeavour to put a strawman put together in terms of what might be addressed and the broad scope of changes which could be implemented ahead of any meetings. Currently, he is investigating the number of combat systems within SL.
  • However, what his is currently considering is an “on_damage() event, which he defines thus:
On damage-enabled regions that event would be called rather than the system simply applying damage. That would allow the combat system to make modifications to the damage (e.g. fire resistance, armour, etc) That event could then apply the damage to the avatar it was attached to. My goal for this project is to provide the tools to build combat systems. Not proscribe one to fit all situations.  
  • This idea received broadly positive feedback from the combat enthusiasts attending the meeting, with the caveat that the event must be able to report any damage source, to allow for moderation where there are differences of opinion over things like hits received.
  • Further suggestions for this idea and combat in general included:
    • on_damage(): the LL damage system should work as a “fallback”,  so people don’t require an attachment.
    • on_damage(): estates should be able to configure “minimum” and “maximum” damage hit limits to prevent people trying to game things via scripted means (e.g. using a scripted attachment to prevent taking any damage at all or weapons which “instakill” all the time).
    • A further request for a capability such as BUG-6707, “[Experience Tools] Feature Request – Parcel/region setting to allow/disallow non-experience scripts”, which  – for combat regions using SL Experiences – could do much to negate scripted means of trying to “cheat” per the above bullet point.
    • An update to the the rez with parameters event to allow those engaged in combat to be able to instantly swap weapons without having to attach all the weapons they might require ahead of entered a combat game.
    • Enabling region owners to set the response to “dying” in combat (/games in general) – such as a flag which allows the “dead” to be teleported to a specific location (e.g. a specific spawn point” or the region / parcel’s landing point), together with a “respawn cooldown” period (e.g. players being respawned receive no damage for a given period of time – preventing someone just taking up shop near a respawn point and picking people off as soon as they arrive).
    • A request for a capability such as BUG-233175 “llSetAgentParams: a way to customize certain agent attributes” – this would not only have general applications (e.g. those outlined in the Jira), it might potentially allow things like the avatar hitbox to resize in accordance with the avatar size.
  • Intermixed with this was a broader discussion both related to and separate from combat in SL, including scripted object collisions (raised specifically with issues of vehicle use and region crossings / striking banlines (e.g. see BUG227303), but which can also impact combat play in SL – e.g. by shutting down worn combat meters on region crossing).
  • As Rider noted, is is still putting together a strawman specification as to what might be considered as having potential to be addressed, scope of possible changes etc., doubtless with at least some of what was discussed in the meeting feeding into it, as he continues to visit combat regions and investigate the current systems in use, etc. As such, this will likely become a more focused discussion once any such “Combat User Group” is up and running.

In Brief

  • It has been noted that on the current PBR RC viewer, texture LOD has apparently changed, breaking the majority of on prim boards at a distance over 20m, and leaving the only way to get clear text on objects such as a sports scoring board is by using individual font character text per face rather than font map/atlas. This issue appears to be awaiting a Jira.

† 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 week #43: SL TPVD meeting summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Goatswood, August 2023, blog post †

The following notes were taken from my chat log transcript and audio recording of the Third Party Viewer Developer (TPVD) meeting held on Friday, October 27th, 2023. Afraid no video for this month, Pantera has a lot going on.

Meeting Overview

  • 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.
  • As a rule, these meetings are:
    • Generally held once a month  the third or fourth Friday, at 13:00 SLT at the Hippotropolis Theatre. See the SL Public Calendar for specific meeting dates.
    • Open to all with an interest in viewer development.
    • Conducted in a mix of text and voice.
  • The notes herein are drawn from a mix of my own chat log and audio recording of the meeting, and are not intended to be a full transcript.

Viewer Updates

The Github Actions (GHA) RC viewer, version 6.6.16.6566955269 was promoted to de facto release status on October 25th. This marks the first release viewer built using the Github Actions (indicated by the extended version number). This viewer also includes a significant update to the Chrome Embedded Framework (CEF) for media handling.

The rest of the current crop of official viewers remains as:

  • Release channel cohorts:
  • Project viewers:

General Viewer Notes:

  • Upcoming official viewer can be viewed on the Github Actions build page, so what is coming down the line can be seen; however artefacts within the list are not publicly linked to downloadable items such as installers. This may change in the future.
  • The Emoji RC viewer is defined as being “in test”, with the other RC viewers in a maintenance cycle to gain parity with the new release viewer.

PBR Materials Update

  • The back-end support for PBR Materials is liable to be deployed to both the BlueSteel and LeTigre RC channels (so approx 3,000 regions) in week #44 (commencing Monday, October 30th), pending the code clearing QA.
  • Core work remains in “maintenance mode” with bug fixing and a focus on driving the project forward towards release.
    • It is believed the only significant blockers remaining are those of performance issues on the Mac version of the viewer – and LL are happy to take suggestions from TPV developers on how to get the Mac variant of OpenGL perform better.
  • One additional issue which had been reported was that of non-PBR enabled viewers appearing to suffer high pack losses on PBR regions (BUG-234550). However:
    • Investigations appear to have shown this as being a “sensor ghost” – the viewer reporting messages it receives but which are not in its message template (a would be the case with a non-PBR viewer receiving PBR specific messages) as a packet loss, which is not really accurate.
    • To deal with the specific issue with non-PBR viewers on PBR regions, and as an interim measure until the PBR viewer is the de facto release viewer, the updated message template for the PBR viewer is to be incorporated into the current RC viewers, together with a suppressor to prevent non-PBR viewer generating false packet loss updates. The code will then be available to all official “pre-PBR” viewers as they are updated with the RC code.
    • TPVs wishing also wishing to eliminate the false reporting of packet loss in their non-PBR viewer releases are encouraged to also pull the PBR viewer message template commit from Github and incorporate it in any upcoming pre-PBR updates they may have in the works.
  • Overall, and allowing for any list-minute issues + clearing the Mac viewer issues, the plan is to pretty much release PBR Materials on the basis of what is currently incorporated in the simulator code and the current RC viewer.
    • This means there will be a range of known issues within the release; however, it is believed that none of them will break any existing content on the Main grid, nor will any fixes for them which are introduced following the initial release.
  • One of the outcomes of the glTF  / PBR project has been a closing of the “divide” between the simulator and viewer engineering teams, with people working on both sides as the PBR project has progressed. This will continue through further iterations of glTF support (e.g. through elements such as the Interest List, which is both viewer-side and simulator-side, and which is not currently geared towards optimal handling scene-wide updates, as will be required as additional aspects of the glTF specification are incorporated into SL).

In Brief

  • There was a general discussion on the internals of viewer development (general message handling, viewer asset throttling, location of “official” masters of things like the message template, the status of the Lab’s Libcurl implementation in light of recent libcurl security issues (in short: “stuck” on an earlier version, so not directly affected), HTTP2 vs. HTTP3 updates,  etc.).
  • A general commentary on Windows 32-bit usage (not no longer officially supported) – with Firestorm stats reporting around 1.9% of their user base still appear to be running 32-bit windows – but the majority of this figure might be down to an Intel bug reporting 64-bit users running 32-bit.
  • A general discussion on the viewer + time-zones, providing a means to add the day of the week to the viewer log-in screen, rather than those in time zones other than California have to check the local day via the viewer clock tool-tip once logged-in.
    • In this, the fact that the time reported in the viewer is “PDT” (and/or PST? I’ve never actually noticed if the viewer reflects changes between PDT and PST notation) rather than “SLT” – which is the acronym everyone in SL understands – can also be a source of confusion. As can the fact that elsewhere within Second Life properties UTC (GMT) can be used.
    • during the discussion it was indicated that LL will likely try to be more consistent in referencing SLT rather than physical-world time zones.
  • Reference was made to a forum discussion on event message polling (particularly viewer side region start-up) which can have an impact (/unintended consequence) in terms of things like message execution. Monty Linden is involved in these discussions and in investigations, and improvements will be appearing in upcoming simulator releases.
  • The above led to a general conversation on reliable SL documentation sources (the broad answer in case of technical documentation being “the code”), and the historic reasons for public-facing documentation becoming fragmented (e.g. the old issue of SL wiki pages being repeatedly vandalised & so locked from editing by users who might otherwise be well-placed to update them), etc.

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.