Category: SL User Group Meetings

2025 week #31: SL TPVD meeting summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Calland, May 2025 – blog post †

The following notes were taken from my chat transcript + the video recording by Pantera (embedded at the end of this summary) of the Third-Party Developer meeting (TPVD) held on Friday, August 1st, 2025. My thanks to Pantera as always for providing it.

Meeting Purpose

  • 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. This meeting is held once a month on a Friday, at 13:00 SLT at the Hippotropolis Theatre.
  • Dates and times are recorded in the SL Public Calendar, and they are generally conducted in text chat.
  • The notes herein are a summary of topics discussed and are not intended to be a full transcript of the meeting.

Official Viewers

Code Contributions “Shovel List”

  • Signal Linden has produced a “shovel list” of code contributions the Lab are seeking from open-source developers.
  • Two high-value items identified in the list are:
    • A RFP for replacing Autobuild in the viewer build process.
    • A RFP for replacing the Havok convex hull decomposition mechanism with an open-source equivalent.
  • The former RFP is as removing Autobuild as a significant barrier / burden to those trying to learn how to the build the viewer. Suggestions for preplacement include pure Cmake, or using Vcpkg or Conan for dependency management, or vendor dependencies in the repo, etc.
    • Related to this, Brad Linden has started an experimental branch simplifying LL development environment. In is not ready for general use, but the idea is that the Build Instructions in the README should “just work” and not require having Autobuild installed or set up properly ahead of time. The is part of on-going work to overhaul the viewer build process.
  • The latter RFP above is part of the Lab’s aim to remove the Havok sub-library from the viewer, which also includes a means to still visualise the navmesh.
  • The above sparked a short conversation on the viewer build process.

Experimental Rewards / Bounty System

  • LL has launched an experiment rewards programme offering monetary rewards against certain Github issues.
  • Powered by Opire, the programme is explained here.
  • These rewards are not meant to replace regular open source development, but rather to drive contributions on items LL have been unable to get much traction on.

In Brief

  •  LL has also open sourced the LSL definitions project, the authoritative definition of LSL library functions, types, etc. It is used to perform codegen in the server, building out the bindings for LSL and SLua, and also drives the LSL editor tooltips.
  • PR Appearance fixes #3492 is still requiring attention from linden Lab, and is currently stalling the work on getting RLV into the official viewer. 
  • Camera Constraints Bug (below -0 metre altitude) has been filed. This affects all v7 viewers, and is under investigation.

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.

July 2025 SL Mobile UG meeting summary: latest releases

Posted on by Inara Pey
Campwich Forest grounds: location for the Monthly Mobile User Group (MMUG)
The following notes were taken from the Thursday, July 31st 2025 Monthly Mobile User Group (MMUG) meeting.

These notes should not be taken as a full transcript of the meeting, which was largely held in Voice, but rather a summary of the key topics discussed. The meeting was recorded by Pantera, and her video is embedded at the end of this summary – my thanks, as always to her in providing it.
Table of Contents

Meeting Purpose

  • The Mobile User Group provides a platform to share insights on recent mobile updates and upcoming features, and to receive feedback directly from users.
  • These meetings are conducted (as a rule):
    • The last Thursday of every month at 12:00 noon SLT.
    • In Voice and text.
    • At Campwich Forest.
  • 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.

Resources

Release Updates

[Video: 4:46-10:20]

Latest Releases

Version: 2025.7.560 (Android) – July 23 / 0.1.557 (iOS) – July 22.

Updates

  • Work has been devoted to overcoming some significant infrastructure issues:
    • A bug within one of the core networking libraries resulted in app update cause significant problems for users in the Alpha programme, who received the update first.
    • As a result, the library in question was been updated, but was then found to be incompatible with the version of Unity SL Mobile uses, necessitating a Unity update.
    • Most of this work has gone ahead and is working, although the network-related upgrades still need further testing (e.g. maintaining a connection to the servers when switching from a wifi connection to cellular, or vice-versa).
  • The network upgrade should result in generally better performance.
  • The Unity upgrade brings with it a new renderer, which should offer improved performance across the majority of devices, and the ability for LL to maintain compatibility with newer mobile ‘phones and OS versions.
    • [Video: 25:19-25:52] this upgrade will not directly address issues of rotations being off, textures changing after loading, etc. However, the Lab would like more bug reports sent directly from the app on these types of issue to help identify potential causes.
  • As soon as there is confidence in these updates, a new release of the app will be made.

Upcoming Camera Improvements

[Video: 10:57-14:09]

  • Reset Camera button, which will be displayed when the two-finger swipe to detach the camera from the avatar is used.
  • Rotate around current camera position when the camera is detached from the avatar.
  • Zoom in and out from the current camera position when detached from the avatar.
  • First-person (Mouselook) view.

Feedback on App Notifications

[Video: 14:38-19:53]

  • LL recently started “playing around with some app notifications” (e.g. tips and tricks, links to events, etc.).
  • A request was made to have the ability to opt-in to specific types of event notifications (e.g. only those related to SL sports events or those related to role-play events, etc).
  • Concerned was voiced (by the LL folk at the meeting about the risk of spamming people by sending out too many notifications, but this did not appear to be an issue for those attending the meeting.

In Brief

Please refer to the video for details on the following and other questions which may have had a simple “yes” or “in progress” reply.

  • [Video: 20:01-21:34] Multi-factor Authentication – Make the mobile app a factor in MFA via notification like “Are you trying to log in…?” – seen as a good idea, and something even those at the Lab would like (as all LL accounts use MFA), but it is not currently on the immediate SL Mobile roadmap, due to the complexities in building it out.
  • [Video: 22:01-23:31] Continuity of messages and notification between Mobile and Desktop (e.g. so users get a full history of messages, etc., when moving between Mobile and Desktop):
    • This is a significant project, and requires a fair amount of back-end work involving the server teams as well as the Mobile team.
    • However, it also encompasses the ability for users not to be logged-out of their Desktop session should they log-in on SL Mobile as well.
    • It is hoped that this work, which had been awaiting resources, will be picked-up in early August, with the potential for a more definitive timeline for the release of these capabilities being available at the next Mobile User Group meeting.
  • [Video: 24:21-24:52] Displaying text messages from in-world objects (e.g. via llSay; llInstantMessage, etc.): this is apparently awaiting some UI/UX work, but Pluto Linden was not available at the meeting to address the state of the work.
  • [Video: 29:09-30:55] Inventory access, new users, and future work:
    • First step is to add support for the Avatar Welcome Pack available to the Desktop and Project Zero (viewer in a browser).
    • This is seen as a placeholder to help incoming new users to be able to dress their avatars.
    • Work on inventory access in general on Mobile is described as being a long road. Planning for the next tranche of work on Mobile will be a mix of things for new users to get their bearings and “fall in love with Second Life”, and features to help existing users further augment their Second Life using Mobile.

Date of Next Meeting

2025 week #31: SUG Leviathan Hour

Posted on by Inara Pey
TNC Commons, May 2025 – blog post

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, July 29th, 2025 Simulator User Group (SUG) off-week meeting (which I’ll be referring to as the “SUG Leviathan Hour” going forward). These notes form a summary of the items discussed, and are not intended to be a full transcript. The notes were taken from my chat log of the meeting and Patera’s video, which is embedded at the end of this article – my thanks to her for providing it.

Meeting Overview

  • The Simulator User Group (also referred to by its older name of Server User Group) exists to provide an opportunity for discussion about simulator technology, bugs, and feature ideas is held every other Tuesday at 12:00 noon, SLT (holidays, etc., allowing), per the Second Life Public Calendar.
  • The “SUG Leviathan Hour” meetings are held on the Tuesdays which do not have a formal SUG meeting, and are chaired by Leviathan Linden. They are more brainstorming / general discussion sessions.
  • Meetings are held in text in-world, at this location.

Simulator Deployments

  • There are no planned deployments to any channels this week, only restarts.

In Brief

Also refer to the video for the full meeting.

  • Leviathan has turned his attention back to the issue of some people experiencing failures on logging-in, which he describes thus:
So… the problem is the login.cgi computes a big “viewer return value” (aka the VRV) which it sends back [to the viewer]. It has “Content-type: llsd+xml” header on it, and can be several MB in size. It contains, among other things, the list of your friends, groups, and a skeleton summary of all of your inventory folders. When the data package is very big and your download rate is low… it can take a while for it to arrive. If it takes too long the viewer can timeout on the request… even though login.cgi thought it “succeeded” and sent an alert to the Region where you were supposed to arrive.

– Leviathan Linden

Leviathan believe one aspect that makes the VRV so big is the number of folders within inventory (not the contents of folders, just the count of folders). However, Leviathan believes he has a solution (which is pending deployment):

So anyway: a relatively simple change on the login server allows the data to be gzipped, which can speed up the transmission … The Second Life Viewer (SLV) uses libcurl for its http requests, and it can handle gzipped data implicitly. Any viewer that picked up that capability from SLV should see benefits when login gets the update.

– Leviathan Linden

  • Another issue Leviathan is looking into a bug where Premium+ users can’t upload mesh for L$0 after crossing a region boundary, although he hasn’t found a root cause as yet.
  • There is apparently some exploratory work going on with in the engineering team(s) on the potential to use AI tools for code generation.
  • An update to SLua is in development, and might be deployed to Aditi (the beta grid) in the next week or so.
  • A general discussion on the (currently stalled) game_control project. As noted in my previous Leviathan Hour summary, the game_control work (and the work for a Linux version of the SL Viewer) is currently archived during the most recent switch to the viewer development and release workflow.
  • A Function to Detect Right click (which has it own debate) was raised. Leviathan Linden noted there subject is stalled. This led to an extended discussion on the ticket, and the issue(s) it encompasses. This discussion extended to one on Touch Pointer Capture, together with ideas for extended mouse hover operations, and expanded use of the mouse scroll wheel.

Date of Next Meetings

  • Formal SUG meeting: Tuesday, August 5th, 2025.
  • Leviathan Linden: Tuesday, August 26th, 2025, due to Leviathan being on vacation (unless he can find a volunteer to fill-in for him).

† 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.

2025 Week #30 Project Zero User Group Meeting

Posted on by Inara Pey
via Linden Lab
The following notes were taken from the Thursday, July 24th 2025 Project Zero User Group (PZUG) meeting.

  • They are based on the official video of the meeting (embedded below) + my chat log.
  • They should not be taken as a full transcript of the meeting.
Table of Contents

Meeting Purpose

  • The Project Zero User Group provides a platform  for open discussion about Project Zero, the cloud-streamed version of the Second Life Viewer. Topics can range from sharing the goals for Project Zero, demoing the current experience, and gathering feedback to help shape the future of cloud access for Second Life.
  • These meetings are conducted (as a rule):
    • The second and fourth Thursday of every month at 13:00 noon SLT.
    • In Voice and text.
    • At the Hippotropolis Campsite.
  • 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.

Resources

Recent Updates

[Video: 0:00-7:48; initially no sound on the video, as local chat is being used]

  • LL continue to experiment with sending some new users accessing SL via Project Zero to different start locations.
    • Part of July saw these users directed to the sandbox of the Welcome Hub; currently, they are being directed to Ahern.
    • LL is paying attention to what new users do when they get there and how likely they are to come back.
    • There is an intentional move to avoid traditional tutorial zones with these users, primarily because these tutorial areas are focused on the Desktop viewer, and Project Zero, within its emerging UI is starting to differ from the Desktop viewer.
      • There may in the future be a tutorial area designed specifically for Project Zero.
    • Suggestions for other locations new users could be sent to were sought.
  • Work is being carried out to move Project Zero’s Go menu to a sidebar within the browser window, so it operates in a similar manner to the Avatar Picker.
    • The number of available locations on the Go menu may also be expanded to more than three choices.
  • A focus remains on helping new users how to better understand avatar customisation and making new avatars.
  • A further focus is the development of a new web-based (presumably React / HTML5, as has been previously discussed) UI for Project Zero. This is designed to be a simplified UI specifically aimed at encouraging new users to give SL a try.

General Discussion

  • The general discussion revolved in part around further questions of a similar nature asked of users in the July Web User Group meeting. previous meeting: what was your first purchase; have you ever used a complete avatar; what originally brought you to Second Life; why did people say; were the first things you obtained in SL purchased or free; how did people obtain their first Linden Dollars (purchased, camping, etc), etc.
    • Obviously the responses were mixed, and mostly given in text chat.
    • his being the case, please refer to the video.

Date of Next Meeting

2025 week #30: SL SUG meeting

Posted on by Inara Pey
Lavender Springs, May 2025 – blog post

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, July 15th, 2025 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting (“off week”). They form a summary of the items discussed, and are not intended to be a full transcript. The notes were taken from my chat log of the meeting  – no video this week.

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):
    • Every other Tuesday from July 8th, 2025, at 12:00 noon SLT.
    • In text (no Voice).
    • 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.
  • The term “off week” is used to describe meetings held by Leviathan Linden on those weeks when a “full” Simulator User Group meeting is not scheduled to be held.

Simulator Deployments

  • There are no planned deployments to any channels this week, only restarts. Although the Main channel apparently had some issues on Tuesday July 22nd, leading to multi restarts for some regions.

In Brief.

  • Rider Linden is working on a few new script features that the moles need for an upcoming project. These mostly deal with land and being able to transfer or sell land using a script.
  • Pepper Linden has been working on a re-write of LL’s Conductor service, and is currently wrapping this up as it goes through QA. The Conductor service is responsible for placing regions onto servers, and the re-write is designed to allow the team responsible to more optimally place regions and prevent things like ‘hot-spots’ (e.g. one region on a host using more resources than it should and starving other regions of CPU time).
  •  Signal Linden is working on number of projects:
    • Making “shovel-ready” tasks for open source contributors. This includes: bringing back legacy search; implementing drag-and-drop uploads; resizing large textures before uploading; etc.
    • Looking at bounty/reward platforms for compensating people for working on initiatives LL hasn’t got much traction on.
    • Getting budget approval for taking SLua to production and merging some “nice small fix-up PRs” on the LSL-definitions repo.
  • The idea in having a series of defined tasks for contributors is to have more people contributing upstream to the viewer and providing “ready to go” code and thus free the Lab’s core viewer team to focus on larger viewer projects.
  • Having the ability to replace mesh / prim HUDs with something more suitable was discussed. One suggestion has been the development of an HTML5/CSS/JS solution of some sort. However, this would require quite a bit of both viewer and server work; as such, a proof of concept from the community would go a long way towards getting some server attention on it.
    • Some concerns were raised about this leading to people having to connect to unknown external websites.
    • Another suggestion was for a  small mobile subset of SVG within SL, although this is a potential awkward solution as it doesn’t allow thing like buttons lighting up on HUDS when moused-over.
    • This led to a discussion on options (HYML5, SVG, some form of modal system built-into the viewer, using MOAP / CSS, with various opinions being expressed.
  • glTF mech import:
    • As reported in my CCUG meeting notes, this is to go to “beta” with the next viewer update.
    • Full glTF scene import is regarded as “seriously deprioritised”, with Signal Linden expressing a preference for keeping it so until it can be implemented server-side.
    • There s a report that a change in the glTF uploader broke the glTF scene rendering. no further details available.
  • The plan to replace the SL Wiki (powered by Media Wiki) with a new documentation platform was discussed (see:  Modern Documentation Platform: docs.secondlife.com).
  • As of the next official meeting, the Simulator User Group will be at a new location (still TBC at the time of writing). What this should look like was a source of extended discussion, as was whether or not Simon Linden’s home (the meeting place until now) should be left intact or destroyed (“destroyed” won that part of the discussion).

Date of 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 rooftop of people every week. They are taken from my list of region visits, with a link to the post for those interested.

2025 week #29: SL CCUG meeting summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Hippotropolis Campsite: venue for CCUG meetings
The following notes were taken from my audio recording and chat log of the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting of Thursday, July 17th, 2025. Please note that this is not a full transcript, but a summary of key topics, and timestamps are to the official video, embedded at the end of this report.
Table of Contents

Meeting Purpose

  • The CCUG meeting is for discussion of work related to content creation in Second Life, including current and upcoming LL projects, and encompasses requests or comments from the community, together with related viewer development work.
  • This meeting is generally held on alternate Thursdays at Hippotropolis.
  • Dates and times of meetings are recorded in the SL Public Calendar, and they are conducted in a mix of Voice and text chat.

Official Viewer Status

  • Official Viewer: 2025.04 – 7.1.14.15192634334, issued May 25, promoted May 28 – No Change.
  • Second Life Project glTF Mesh Import, version 7.1.14.15976006598 July 2 – No Change.
    • This is an early Alpha release with some of the rough edges and already resolved many bugs and crashes, although more are to be found, together with general feedback from the community. Please read the release notes if you intend to test this viewer.
  • Second Life Project Lua Editor Alpha (Aditi only), version 7.1.12.14888088240, May 13 –  No Change.

 glTF Mesh Uploader

[Video: 1:41-3:03 – and as noted below]

  • This project is moving into beta testing, and the updated viewer for beta testing is currently with QA, and should appear on the Alternate Viewers page “pretty soon”.
  • Again, as a reminder this project is providing the overall functionality available for uploading COLLADA .DAE files to the upload of glTF mesh files. As such all current constraints will continue to exist within this work.
  • Enhancements will be coming (and Feature Requests have been received for things like increased tri counts and vertex limits), but are regarded as a separate tranche of work.
  • [Video 4:50-6:00] A request was made for enhancements to the convex physic hull limits (e.g. number and complexity). This would require simulator-side changes, as some of the constraints are enforced server-side, and are “fundamental” to how Second Life works.
    • There is no work currently being planned around this.
    • In general it was considered something that might be better tackled if / when the Lab gets to “re-doing” SL’s internal mesh format.

Lighting Discussion

  • [Video 6:05-7:40] Light and particle exclusion volumes – the question was asked that as SL now has water exclusions “volumes”, how hard would it be to do the same for lighting and particles (e.g. to prevent lighting in one room bleeding into another).
    • In actual fact, SL does not currently support water exclusion volumes – it only supports water exclusion surfaces, which operate more-or-less in 2 dimensions to “hide” water”, rather than excluding it from a volume area.
    • Geenz noted that water exclusion and light / particle exclusions are “very different” in nature, with water exclusions surfaces being handled by a dedicated rendering pipe, and both light and particles requiring their own specific solutions.
    • He further noted that for lighting, other engines typically support linking a light source to a volume, constraining the light to it. SL does not have that capability, and while it would not be impossible to enable it, the work would be non-trivial, and is not something being looked at. His preferred approach would be to get shadows working more efficiently and at a larger scale.
  • [Video: 10:39-11:25] Related to the above, it was noted that non-shadow punctual lighting could help with lighting / darkness / shadow issues. These had been something Runitai Linden had started to look at prior to departing the Lab; in Geenz’s view, a means to determine which lights should / should not cast shadows might offer a partial solution.
  • [Video: 12:17-13:43] Geenz also noted there are been several requests on Canny for lighting improvements, and he would like to get some work on lighting prioritised. However, there is a large amount of work already identified for the viewer, and so prioritising and further work has the be done “carefully”.
    • He also noted issues with point lights were noted (fall-off being incorrect; the light radius tends to exceed the value set; point light penetrate objects far too much, etc), and suggested they could potentially benefit from a revisit at some point.
  • [Video: 24:36-25:30] Would it be possible to create a reflection probe-like if volume and assign an EEP setting to it?
    • There is no means to do this directly, but in theory could be done via LSL.
    • Rider Linden noted that by using an Experience, it is possible to trigger EEP settings for individual agents, which might achieve something similar.
    • A Feature Request on the idea was requested.

Viewer-side Havok Sub-Library and Pathfinding

[Video: 25:39-32:38]

  • Pathfinding’s future is still up in the air, with no final decision taken as yet. Currently all that is being looked at is the removal of the Havok sub-library from the viewer, which impacts Pathfinding.
  • This sub-library is used for two purposes:
    • For convex decomposition in mesh uploads.
    • Visualising / managing the Pathfinding Navmesh.
  • In terms of mesh uploads, there are alternative open-source libraries which could be used in place of Havok. Some of these alternatives are already being used by TPVs in preference to having to obtain a Havok sub-library licence from LL, and Geenz noted that a Pull Request from any viewer using such an alternative would be “welcome”.
  • Using Havok in the viewer purely for visualising the Navmesh is seen as overkill, again considering there are potential alternatives which could be used.
  • Philip Linden noted the need to reduce the amount of technical debt in the codebase, and removing Havok from the viewer would assist in this.
  • As far as Pathfinding as a whole is concerned, Geenz reiterated that currently, the Lab is not looking to completely deprecate it (both within the viewer and on the server-side); all that is being discussed at present is the need to remove Havok from the viewer.
  • An ancillary question asked by Rider linden was how many people at the meeting actually used Pathfinding characters, as opposed to NPCs using llGetStaticPath (which appears more popular, given the 15LI penalty and overall complexity of build Pathfinding characters).

In Brief

Please refer to the video as well.

  • [Video: 3:14-4:10] There is some work going into “beefing up some frame time metrics” – this will mean the viewer’s Statistics Floater (CTRL-SHIFT-1) will be updated with “a lot more” statistics going forward.
    • Some of this work will be surfaced in the next update to the glTF Mesh Upload RC viewer.
    • How many of the new stats are to be tracked in real-time is still TBD within the Lab.
  • [Video: 8:05-8:40] In terms of water exclusion volumes, this work has not yet bee prioritised and would required co-ordination between the simulator and viewer teams as it would require the passing of new object flags in order to work properly.
  • [Video: 20:41-24:08] General Linden Water update:
    • Improvements to Screen Space Reflections (SSR) on water are currently on hold pending the work on gathering better frame time metrics to be sent to the logs (how often is a user’s frame rate significantly dipping, for example), rather than just logging a user’s frame rate at the time they log-off.
    • The work that has been done on water SSR also still needs some further polish.
    • Overall the aim is to offer real-time reflections on any surface without it being a “gigantic frame rate killer”.
    • Other things that Geenz would like to bring back include shoreline fading, which had to be disabled due to alpha rendering issues – but this kind of work may have to wait for expanded EEP settings for water.
  • [Video: 33:40-36:02] PBR texture stretches when “stretch textures” is unchecked was raised over a year ago, and is marked as “complete”. It is not clear if a fix was actually deployed (and it does keep occurring), so Geenz and Atlas linden are going to take this back for a further review.
  • [Video: 37:04-48:24] A discussion on “lag”, and the (still common) assumption that most of it is simulator-side, and thus LL’s problem, rather than the viewer becoming overloaded thanks to people’s proclivity to jam-pack their avatar with complex meshes, multiple attachments, high-resolution textures, etc., thus impacting their own system’s performance (and potentially that of the people around them).
    • Geenz acknowledged that there is more LL could do to allow people to better quantify the impact they are having on themselves and others, vis à vis their avatar outside of the (inaccurate) avatar complexity system.
    • A problem here is that whether provided via options in the viewer, documentation, etc., people will ignore recommendations, warnings, reminders, etc.
    • Potential approaches to helping people understand the impact of the avatar include: indicating how much of their VRAM their Avatar is absorbing; having a meter display over their avatar’s head indicating the level of impact on general performance their avatar is having (both of which would only be visible to the user viewing them – and not to everyone else).
    • Technical solutions which might also help and under potential consideration for future implementation include texture streaming.
    • This discussion also encompassed the deficiencies with the ARC (Avatar Render Cost calculations & figures, and regulating the tension between people dressing their avatars so that they are resource-intensive to render, then going to a club or social venue and then dragging down the performance experienced by other users vs. allowing the venue owners to have the ability to set an “upper limit” on how resource-intensive avatars entering their club can be in order to preserve an experience that can be enjoyed by everyone.
  • The first 10 minutes of the meeting included a largely text-based discussion on the physics engine and viewer freezes. In short, there are no planes to change the physics engine, and the kind of viewer freezes experienced by SL as physics calculations are carried out are not uncommon within platforms using user-generated content (UGC), so trying to replace the current Havok engine (or even updating it) would not necessarily solve these issues.
  • A discussion between a user and Geenz concerning an EEP setting setting and use of an RGB cloud map, and whether this is supported. No definitive answer, other than Geenz would need to investigate.
  • The end of the meeting touched on SL Mobile issues and Project Zero – these are covered in other user group meetings.

Next Meeting