Where Our Journey Begins, November 2022 – 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, January 19th 2023 at 13:00 SLT.
Pantera’s video of the Third Part Viewer Developer (TPVD) meeting held on Friday, January 20th, 2023 at 13:00 SLT, embedded at the end of this article.
These meetings are chaired by Vir Linden, and their dates and times can be obtained from the SL Public Calendar; also note that the following is a summary of the key topics discussed in the meetings and is not intended to be a full transcript of all points raised.
Note, The TPVD meeting was abbreviated to 20 mins.
Official Viewers Status – TPV Meeting
Available Viewers
On Thursday, January 19th, 2023, the Maintenance R RC viewer was updated to version 6.6.9.577678 – translation updates and the return of slam bits.
On Wednesday, January18th, 2023:
The Maintenance (Q)uality RC viewer was updated to version on 6.6.9.577581 – new Debug settings UI, quality of life improvements.
The PBR Materials project viewer updated to version 7.0.0.577610, on January 19, 2023 – SSR support.
This viewer has been reported as “broken” when running on systems with AMD GPUs, a situation that was being investigation as these notes were being written.
This leaves the rest of the currently-available official viewer as:
Release viewer: Maintenance P (Preferences, Position and Paste) RC viewer version 6.6.8.576863 Monday, December 12, 2022.
Release Candidate viewers:
Performance Floater / Auto-FPS RC viewer, version 6.6.9.577251, January 4, 2023.
Project viewers:
Puppetry project viewer, version 6.6.8.576972, December 8, 2022.
General Viewer Notes
Vir pointed out that as Microsoft has ended support for Windows 8 on January 10th, 2023, it is no longer regarded as a supported operating system for running Second Life, and the viewer will not be tested against it (and the System Requirements page has been updated to reflect this, specifying Windows 10+ most recent service pack as the baseline supported Windows OS.
The second phase of the Github work in on-going, notably updating all the viewer build libraries.
Inventory Enhancement Project – Both Meetings
Linden Lab is looking to enhance the Inventory system.
The first element of this work is to be the addition of a fixed-resolution thumbnail preview capability, allowing users to see a small image of a given object (where this makes sense – so the likes of note cards and scripts would be excluded) within inventory, with these thumbnails either being of individual items or entire folders.
This work has now started, but it will be “some time” before there is anything user-facing to show.
A code contribution from Kitty Barnett (Catznip) for an inventory texture tool tip / preview may well be folded in to this work.
Once the thumbnail preview work has been completed, it is possible the Lab will look to further enhancements to inventory management. One future enhancement under consideration is support for folders to be included in the Contents inventory of individual objects.
glTF Materials and Reflection Probes – CCUG
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.
To provide support for reflection probes and cubemap reflections.
The overall goal is to provide as much support for the glTF 2.0 specification as possible.
The project viewer is available via the Alternate Viewers page, but will only work on the following regions on Aditi (the Beta grid): Materials1; Materials Adult and Rumpus Room 1 through 4.
Screen Space Reflections (SSR) has now been integrated into the Project Viewer, (January 19th onwards), although work around this is still being finalised, notably mixed Reflection Probes with SSR.
Some fixing is required to the default colour curves in the viewer.
Stability issues have been noted on Intel integrated graphics hardware, and these are being investigated / fixed.
There have now been a total of two further weeks focused on optimising the viewer’s performance, and the results of this work should be available in the next update to the Project Viewer.
UI updates: the viewer will likely see some UI updates as it progresses:
The next update will likely include a new dedicated icon for on the Build floater for creating Reflection Probes.
The drop-down in the Build floater Textures tab (Currently Materials and Media on the release viewer, may be re-labelled for PBR (where it is Materials, Media, PBR) to more clearly differentiate between the current materials maps system and “new”” PBR materials.
Similarly, the new Materials Inventory folder in the Project Viewer may also be renamed to avoid the potential for confusion between the use of PBR materials assets and the current materials maps system.
Further, the menu option Build → Upload → Materials (in the Project Viewer) may be reamed to more clearly reflect it is for PBR materials, not material maps.
Exactly was terms will be used is TBD, but the general push (from LL’s perspective is to use meaningful lbeels on options and menus which can be Googled with some relevance by those wanting to know more about the underpinning file formats / standards, etc.
Work is going into messaging between the back-end and the viewer to ensure it will scale once the viewer starts to see widespread use.
In Brief
As the PBR Materials project is approaching a possible RC release, the questions has been asked as to what is next on the graphics front. While no formal decision has been made, options include:
A return to looking at adding something like Vulkan / MoltenVK (for OS X) API support alongside of the OpenGL API (which has been slated for deprecation by Apple and is growing increasingly long in the tooth). This work is being looked at more as a performance optimisation rather than a visual boost to rendering (e.g. allowing SL to be less CPU-bound and make more use of the GPU, reducing the volume of draw calls, etc.).
Further expansion of the glTF work to include mesh (and moving away from Collada .DAE), animations, etc. But again, no definitive plans / direction has been agreed within the Lab.
While there is a appetite at the Lab to support as much as the glTF 2.0 specification, some aspects will be excluded from the list – mentioned at the meeting were Setting the filter mode and sampler state of textures, both of which were described as “problematic” for implementation within SL.
Overhauling / updating support / options for ground textures.
The CCUG meeting saw a general discussion on animations, the skeleton and all that it involves (bones, attachment points, collision volumes, rigging, etc., and the rules / policies surrounding them, couched initially in the potential for expanding the skeleton / avatar system – for which there are currently no plans to do so beyond what has already been done.
Pivot points: (related to the above) past CCUG meeting saw some extended discussion on implementing pivot points on the skeleton, and LL indicated they would investigate this. Since then, it has become increasingly apparent that a node hierarchy would be beneficial and potentially easier to implement; ergo pivot points have been pulled into the pot for a future hierarchy project.
There is a known bug where Premium Plus users – who gain free texture uploads – are being charged for textures included in mesh uploads. An upcoming simulator-side maintenance update should correct this.
A request was made at the CCUG meeting to allow mesh uploads greater than the 64m single object size limit, to make it easier to import large structures / scenes without having to curt them into sections (and thus avoid potential issues in fit, scale, update, etc, and can result in Interest List related rendering issues).
LL is unlikely to change the limit, but would prefer to provide improved tools that can help content creators / scene builders.
One should tool discussed – which is currently not in development – is that of a “scene view” tool which identifies every individual instance of an object in scene, and provides a mechanism to allow (subject to permissions, obviously) them to be swapped-out to fix things like “broken” items / those for which there is an update / replacement.
The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, January 17th, 2023 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 entire meeting is embedded at the end of the article for those wishing to review the meeting in full – my thanks to Pantera for recording it.
Server Deployments
On Tuesday, January 17th 2023, the simhosts on the Main SLS channel were restarted with no deployment, leaving them on simulator version 576542.
On Wednesday, January 18th, 2023: the RC simhosts should receive two new simulator updates:
577628 – (Le Tigre RC Channel) an update for HTTP_CUSTOM_HEADER usage in llHTTPRequest(). Previously, a maximum of 8 custom headers were allowed, and each header had a hardcoded limit of 253 bytes. With this update, both of these limits have been removed; the only limitation is that the total custom HTTP header size must be under 4096 bytes.
The cryptographic signing utilities – potentially llHMAC (per BUG-233005) and llSignRSA and llVerifyRSA (per BUG-233009) had to be delayed due to “last minute snag” requiring a further look at the functions.
577595 – (Bluesteel and Magnum RC channels) contains stability improvements, fixes a few miscellaneous bug. It also fixes the bug preventing 30-second sound loops from being played back, and introduces new functions to the LSL API to allow for sound playback across any prim in a linkset. The new LSL functions include:
Maintenance (Q)uality RC viewer, version 6.6.9.577418, January 4, 2023.
Performance Floater / Auto-FPS RC viewer, version 6.6.9.577251, January 4, 2023.
Project viewers:
PBR Materials project viewer, version 7.0.0.577486, January 11, 2023.
This viewer will only function on the following Aditi (beta grid) regions: Materials1; Materials Adult and Rumpus Room 1 through 4.
Puppetry project viewer, version 6.6.8.576972, December 8, 2022.
In Brief
As well as the crypto signing noted above, there are a couple of new functions coming down the pipe dealing with cryptographic hashing which are described as being useful for things like JWT or other HTTP auth schemes:
It has been suggested that the server-side of Pathfinding might be in line for a re-visit, although no time frame for when this might be or what it might comprise has been determined as yet.
It is reported that llRequestAgentData(id,DATA_NAME); is failing with increased frequency (the issue was first reported in BUG-231884), with other request functions also reported as having issues (e.g. llRequestSimulatorData incorrectly reporting a region’s online status until the region is restarted). It’s not clear at this point in time what is causing these problems, but server-side caching errors might be the cause of some.
A request has (again) been made for the servers to have valid SSL certificates. A Jira has been filed on this, and the engineering team are going to try to get it moved forward with TPTB.
BUG-227303 “collisions makes a script stop running and revert its mono status”, is now described a “high on the list” of things to be addressed.
BUG-10442 “llGetHTTPHeader does not accept custom headers” has been raised as something to be addressed given the upcoming release of Simulator RC 577628.
BUG-233107 “Objects failing to render is happening more frequently of late” continues to be an issue, an might be occurring more frequently for some, and its priority has been raised.
BUG-233140 “LSL Feature Request: PSYS_PART_TEXTURE_ANIM” a feature request relating to animated particles has been raised and accepted. Whilst seen as a 2nice to have”, and something that might spark renewed interest at poking at the particle system (viewer performance permitting) – it generated interest and discussion at the meeting.
Puppetry demonstration via Linden Lab – see below. Demos video with the LL comment “We have some basic things working with a webcam and Second Life but there’s more to do before it’s as animated as we want.”
The following notes have been taken from chat logs and audio recording of the Thursday, January 12th, 2023 Puppetry Project meetings held at the Castelet Puppetry Theatre on Aditi. These meetings are generally held on alternate weeks to the Content Creation User Group (CCUG), on same day / time (Thursdays at 13:00 SLT).
Notes in these summaries are not intended to be a full transcript of every meeting, but to highlight project progress / major topics of discussion.
Project Summary
General description of the project and its inception:
LL’s renewed interest in puppetry was primarily instigated by Philip joining LL as official advisor, and so it really was about streaming mocap. That is what Philip was interested in and why we started looking at it again. However since Puppetry’s announcement what I’ve been hearing from many SL Residents is: what they really want from “puppetry” is more physicality of the avatar in-world: picking up objects, holding hands, higher fidelity collisions.
As a result, that is what I’ve been contemplating: how to improve the control and physicality of the the avatar. Can that be the new improved direction of the Puppetry project? How to do it?
Leviathan Linden
Previously referred to as “avatar expressiveness”, Puppetry is intended to provide a means by which avatars can mimic physical world actions by their owners (e.g. head, hand, arm movements) through tools such as a webcam and using technologies like inverse kinematics (IK) and the LLSD Event API Plug-in (LEAP) system.
Note that facial expressions and finger movements are not currently enabled.
Most movement is in the 2D plain (e.g., hand movements from side-to-side but not forward / back), due to limitations with things like depth of field tracking through a webcam, which has yet to be addressed.
The back-end support for the capability is only available on Aditi (the Beta grid) and within the following regions: Bunraku, Marionette, and Castelet.
Puppetry requires the use of a dedicated viewer, the Project Puppetry viewer, available through the official Second Life Alternate Viewers page.
No other special needs beyond the project viewer are required to “see” Puppetry animations. However, to use the capability to animate your own avatar and broadcast the results, requires additional work – refer to the links below.
This project is taking in a lot of additional ideas – animation standards, improving the current animation system, enabling truer avatar / avatar and avatar object interactions such that it is likely to evolve into a rolling development, with immediate targets for development / implementation as they are agreed upon, to be followed by future enhancements.
As such, much of what goes into the meetings at present is general discussion and recommendations for consideration, rather than confirmed lines o development.
There is a Puppetry Discord channel – those wishing to join it should contact members of LL’s puppetry team, e.g. Aura Linden, Simon Linden, Rider Linden, Leviathan Linden (not a full list of names at this time – my apologies to those involved whom I have missed).
Bugs, Feature Requests and Code Submissions
For those experimenting with Puppetry, Jiras (bug reports / fixes or feature requests) should be filed with “[Puppetry]” at the start of the Jira title.
See: OPEN-375: “LSL Functions for reading avatar animation positions”.
Rider Linden is starting to look at LSL integration – the first step being to make the simulator aware of what is actually animating.
Currently, the code he has developed lets the server know the position of an avatars attachment points; this sends details of 55 points (HUD points excepted). Attachment points have been selected over bones, as the simulator already has a solid concept of attachment points, and it avoids complications with rigged meshes “doing their own thing” with bone positions.
A concern with this is the number of updates being sent to the server for processing.
One idea is to refine the the code so that only the attachment points which change relative to the avatar centre (avatar frame/Local Position relative to the avatar) actually send information to the server, in order to reduce the number of updates being generated.
Another idea might be to only send updates every n frames, rather than every frame. This would reduce the fidelity of movement, but could still provide sufficient data while reducing the load on the simulator, particularly where multiple avatars in a region are using puppetry.
This issue is related to synchronising puppetry actions across multiple viewers as well; a long-standing issues, given that animation playback of animations is viewer-side, and not genuinely across viewers (the resync function found in some TPVs only does so locally).
All of the above lead to a discussions of ways and means to best allow LSL integration with animations and ensure a reasonable transmission of results together with decent synchronisation between the viewer and the simulator, whether by frame count or time stamp, in order to ensure predictability of results across multiple viewers. .
In addition, the discussion included the advantage in enhancing Second Life to support procedural animations as well as the current canned animations.
Rider is also looking into a script enhancement to register collisions.
There was some conflating of ideas during the discussion – immediate first steps in opening Puppetry to LSL, and more far reaching goals – setting position, registering collisions (per the above), defining better interpolation for positioning (e.g. as defined in the Khronos glTF specification), etc., which caused a degree of confusion.
However, the openness towards making Puppetry a good foundation for future enhancement (such as moving more to procedural-based animations, enabling SL to support “industry standard” animation workflows to encourage animators into the platform, etc., remains, together with (hopefully) enabling more realistic avatar / avatar and avatar / object interactions.
That said, Simon Linden did offer a not of caution to all discussing the work:
Not to pop the bubble, but every one please keep in mind all the stuff we’re talked about is experimental and really interesting. I have no idea what we can make into real features and what can work with crowds and all the other interesting problems to make it happen well – we’ll see what we all can do this year 🙂
The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, January 10th, 2023 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 entire meeting is embedded at the end of the article for those wishing to review the meeting in full – my thanks to Pantera for recording it.
Server Deployments
On Tuesday, January 10th 2023, the simhosts on the Main SLS channel were restarted with no deployment, leaving them on simulator version 576542.
On Wednesday, January 11th, 2023, the simhosts on the RC channels should see the deployment of the ability to to play 30-second sound clips and the new sound functions llLinkPlaySound, with llLinkStopSound llLinkAdjustSoundVolume and llLinkSoundRange which allow sounds in child prims of a linkset to be played without the need for a supporting script.
It is hoped that week #3 will see a deployment of an RC simulator update comprising custom HTTP headers (total space for headers will increase to 4k and the limit on the number of headers will be dropped), and new cryptographic signing utilities – potentially llHMAC (per BUG-233005) and llSignRSA and llVerifyRSA (per BUG-233009). These updates will be available for testing on the Juggly Puff region within Aditi (the beta grid) during the rest of week #2.
Available Official Viewers
This list reflects the current status of available official viewers at the start of 2023:
Release viewer: Maintenance P (Preferences, Position and Paste) RC viewer version 6.6.8.576863 Monday, December 12, 2022 – No change.
Maintenance (Q)uality RC viewer, version 6.6.9.577418, January 4, 2023.
Performance Floater / Auto-FPS RC viewer, version 6.6.9.577251, January 4, 2023.
Project viewers:
PBR Materials project viewer, version 7.0.0.577157, December 14, 2022.
This viewer will only function on the following Aditi (beta grid) regions: Materials1; Materials Adult and Rumpus Room 1 through 4.
Puppetry project viewer, version 6.6.8.576972, December 8, 2022.
In Brief
An update to Linkset Data to fix the sorting for LSDFindKeys is being targeted for a maintenance release in early February. Further LSD updates and fixes are being considered, but Rinder Linden would like to get this update out ASAP, rather than waiting to bundle it with other LSD updates.
BUG-232037 “Avatar Online / Offline Status Not Correctly Updating” – LL may have a fix available by earlier March.
BUG-233107 “Objects failing to render is happening more frequently of late” – is still believed to be an Interest List issue, although that code has not been directly touched in a while. One theory is the server is unsubscribing users from certain objects for reasons unknown (and which would impact entire linksets were the root to be unsubscribed). However, further investigation is required.
This issue leads to an extended discussion on passible causes and on the Interest List in general – please refer to the video below.
Mullein Woods, November 2022 – blog post
The following notes were taken from m y audio recording and chat log transcript of the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting held on Thursday, January 5th 2023 at 13:00 SLT.
These meetings are chaired by Vir Linden, and their dates and times can be obtained from the SL Public Calendar; also note that the following is a summary of the key topics discussed in the meeting and is not intended to be a full transcript of all points raised.
Official Viewers Status
On Wednesday, January 4th, 2023:
The Maintenance Q(uality) RC viewer updated to version 6.6.9.577418.
The Performance Floater / Auto-FPS RC viewer updated to version 6.6.9.577251.
Both the VS 2022 Build RC viewer and the LMR6 project viewer have been withdrawn.
This leaves the rest of the currently-available official viewer as:
Release viewer: Maintenance P (Preferences, Position and Paste) RC viewer version 6.6.8.576863 Monday, December 12, 2022.
Project viewers:
PBR Materials project viewer, version 7.0.0.577157, December 14, 2022. Note: this viewer will only function on the following Aditi (beta grid) regions: Materials1; Materials Adult and Rumpus Room 1 through 4.
Puppetry project viewer, version 6.6.8.576972, December 8, 2022.
Inventory Enhancement Project
Linden Lab is looking to enhance the Inventory system.
The first element of this work is to be the addition of a fixed-resolution thumbnail preview capability, allowing users to see a small image of a given object (where this makes sense – so the likes of note cards and scripts would be excluded) within inventory, with these thumbnails either being of individual items or entire folders.
The first phase of the work is determining how to generate the thumbnail images and ensure they maintain an association with the objects to which they are related (e.g. so if an item is sold or transferred to another user, the thumbnail goes with it).
Once this has been decided, the next phase will be to build-out the UI so that such thumbnails can be viewed from inventory.
This work will not replace the Outfit Folder image capability nor will it prevent creators from including high resolution images with their products if they wish.
Once the thumbnail preview work has been completed, it is possible the Lab will look to further enhancements to inventory management. One future enhancement under consideration is support for folders to be included in the Contents inventory of individual objects.
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.
To provide support for reflection probes and cubemap reflections.
The overall goal is to provide as much support for the glTF 2.0 specification as possible.
The project viewer is available via the Alternate Viewers page, but will only work on the following regions on Aditi (the Beta grid): Materials1; Materials Adult and Rumpus Room 1 through 4.
The focus remains on bug and regression issue fixing within the viewer and quality of life improvements, particularly as in wider grid testing, it has been found the PBR viewer can only generate single-digit FPS in some regions.
Screen Space Reflections (SSR): Geenz Linden continues to work on integrating SSR into the PBR viewer, but is encountering issues.
Animation System Enhancements – A Discussion
In response to requests for the animation system to be improved (e.g. via CCUG meetings, as a result of the Puppetry project, etc.), Vir Linden asked those at the meeting to state what they see as the most important changes / updates they would like to see. Responses included those expressed at the Server User Group meeting earlier in the week:
A procedural animation system to allow creators / users to set the rules of how avatars walk, run, jump; their timings, how animations play priority wise and mixing wise in the series, all able to be packaged up into an item – it has been suggested that whilst “old” the SL is well-placed to be folded into a procedural animation system.
Improved animation formats and easier means of animation import into Second Life.
The ability to dynamically set animation priorities for more fluid animation integration (e.g. when you are holding and pointing a gun, you continue to point it as you walk, rather than the avatar’s arm dropping to a walking animation when moving).
Viewer-side animation editor.
Better support for inverse kinematics.
Collaboration between the Puppetry team, the glTF team and any animation project to ensure consistency of decision-making about formats, proper LSL support / calls, etc.
This discussion covered a lot of ground, including the potential for the implementation of an “animation 2.0” system which could potentially operate alongside the existing system (much like PBR materials and “legacy” materials); the benefits in greater adherence to emerging standards – particularly in the area of avatar / skeleton formats and capabilities, and the fact that SL is both well-placed to be a part of defining those standards whilst also being hamper by the fact the existing SL avatar format is a niche product / approach, and more. However, the two key points of the discussion might be summarised as:
Changes to the animation / avatar systems are not projects the Lab is working on at present.
However, the it demonstrates that, as with recent projects, the Lab is looking seriously at enhancing SL and moving it towards more readily understood standards. As such, it is taking the time to ascertain options that are exciting to creators an users and which might be seen s benefiting the platform and its future growth, and so might be formalised into active projects – and include user engagement where appropriate in their development.
In terms of what might be attempted by way of “small-scale” improvements to the animation system, the viewpoint from LL is that the ability to dynamically set animation priorities and adding scaling support to the animation format are seen as providing users / creators with recognisable benefits.
Cover Second Life front-end web properties (Marketplace, secondlife.com, the sign-up pages, the Lab’s corporate pages, etc.).
They are not intended for the discussion of Governance issues, land fees / issues, content creation & tools, viewer or simulator development / projects. Please refer to the SL calendar for information on available meetings for these topics.
A video of the meeting, courtesy of Pantera, can be found embedded at the end of this article (my thanks to her as always!), and subject timestamps to the relevant points in the video are provided. Again, the following is a summary of key topics / discussions, not a full transcript of everything mentioned.
Following recent delays, it had been hoped the MP search updates would be deployed before the end of 2022. Unfortunately, issues with the updates continued to prevent this.
The hope is now to have thing deployed as the “first thing” for web-related deployments, hopefully by the end of January 2023.
As a reminder: this work is essentially the same kind of back-end update as carried out with Web search a few months ago, with the emphasis on faster, more robust performance, together with new search options, including:
Merchant and store names will no long be searched in product searches.
Wildcard (e.g. using *) will be possible.
Better exact matching against search terms
The back-end supports fuzzy matching to better handle typos when inputting searches.
There should be a noticeable increase in speed of search results being returned.
Once running, these updates will allow LL to add-in the relevance engine AI to the Marketplace search (as a separate API entity to the relevance engine already running on the web search).
Summary: A complete re-write of every route by which users can obtain and hold land, from Premium (+Plus) Linden Homes, obtaining Mainland (incl. Abandoned Land), and private island regions, and renting from private estates.
The first user-facing element of this work – the new Land Portal, a central hub from which to get to all aspects of land “ownership” – will likely be deployed by the end of January 2023.
The Portal layout is liable to be a template / proof of concept for overhauling the rest of the Second Life web properties to give them a coherent appearance, make them easier to maintain and add new pages, make SL’s web presence more performant overall and ensure it works on mobile devices as well as desktops / laptops.
Once the Portal has been deployed, the focus will shift to the Linden Homes selection pages.
Work had been expected to resume on Styles (allowing multiple colours, etc., for an item to appear within a single listing rather than each requiring its own listing) following the deployment of the MP Search updates, with the plan for a deployment early-ish in 2023.
As the Search updates deployment has been delayed, the work on Styles is currently being “re-prioritised”.
LL provide an individual RSS feed to all Marketplace stores for announcing new releases, etc.
Whilst not refused as a suggestion, the point was made that implementing and maintaining such a service would not necessarily be easy or direct – as every MP store would require a feed, regardless of whether or not the store owner uses it / people actually subscribe to it via their RSS readers.
There is already functionality available for this within the MP via Favourite Stores > Age: Newest First. This gives a thumbnail view of the most recent 4 releases for every store a user has selected as a Favourite, providing something of an at-a-glance view. It is not as proactive as an RSS feed but has the benefit of already being available.
A request to include a Date Uploaded field in Marketplace descriptions. This would:
Help determine the overall age of a product, allowing it to be better (but not perfectly) assessed against more recent improvements to the platform.
If also included in the Favourite Stores summary list, would further help users determine new releases.
This is seen as being a part of LL’s wish list for MP improvements.
With the move towards supporting the glTF 2.0 specification (initially for PBR materials, but potentially to be expanded to mesh content in general (and eventually possibly animations), these request was made to enable a glTF specific description / search indicator to be added to MP listings.
This is something LL has not considered – but given the shift in emphasis involved in glTF adoption, it is something that should be considered over and above the simple “Mesh” definitions in listings.
For those unaware, details of the glTF / PBR project work can be found in by CCUG meeting summaries.
Requests were also made for:
The ability to preview the contents items sold on the MP as boxes – the problem here being the box is seen as just that; a single object, so a means to “access” its contents and then generate a listing them would need to be built.
The inclusions of triangle counts / VRAM usage / complexity values for objects and attachments – the problems here are numerous, from how would lists be generated / populated (e.g. some form of automated analysis of folder / box contents would be required for accuracy),through how should it be presented without “overloading” listings with information, to the question of whether the results would be properly understood by potential purchasers).
The ability to add multiple items to a shopping basket, but then select which are to be purchased immediately, and which can be “shelved” for a later purchase (if required), rather than having to purchase everything in the basket.
This was also indicated as being on LL’s own wish list of future options for the MP.
Currently, there is no clearly-defined use case for Place Pages, although they do have a number of interesting features and capabilities.
The think at the Lab at the moment is whether Place Pages:
Should be given a degree of work to overhaul them in order to make them more broadly usable, or
Scrap them entirely and replace them with something more attractive to users overall – whatever that might be.
A perceived attraction with Place Pages is the ability for people to show off / promote their Second Life without necessarily having to have others log-in to the platform – or as a means to encourage them to do so – using tools that might be better attuned to presenting SL through the web compared to “ordinary” website building tools
The major reason for not overhauling Place Pages thus far is the fact that they underpin the land auction system.
It is acknowledged that given the plans for overhauling the SL web properties in general, there is potential the produce a version of Place Pages with better integration into SL’s web presence, etc.
User suggestions for Place Pages are welcome, again via the Second Life Jira.
[Video: 27:29-28:02] Communities: a request has been made to expand the range of Second Life communities represented through the Communities landing page (such as the furry community, the sci-fi community, etc). Feature Requests are suggested on these, although it was hinted the number of communities to be rotated on the landing page may be increased.
[Video: 34:24-39:00] “Premium a-la Carte”: whilst indicated as something LL would like to do, the idea of an “a-la carte” set of Premium benefits users can choose from and they pay a fee based on their selection, there are significant issues around general maintenance and billing and tracking which options each user has subscribed to.
What happens if a user selects option A as a part of their package, but then decides they don’t need it, and they want to remove it (and its cost) or swap it for one or more other options + their costs? How frequently should this be allowed? How are the changes to track and recognised by the viewer and relevant back-end services? How is billing to be managed?
How much work is involved in managing an options list (adding new options to it or remove unpopular items from it, in order to maintain its appeal with users, etc.?
How complex any a-la carte system might be was demonstrated by the number of different views expressed in the meeting as to what options might be attractive to different people.
There is also the question as to whether an “a-la carte” option is required, or whether the existing Premium / Premium Plus subscription levels need to be adjusted.
Next Meeting
Wednesday, February 1st, 2023. Venue and time per top of this summary.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 