Category: SL User Group Meetings

December 2022 Second Life Web User Group 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, December 7th, 2022.

These meetings:

  • Are held in-world, generally on the first Wednesday of the month – see the SL public calendar.
  • Are usually chaired by Reed Linden, who is the Lab’s Product Manager for the Second Life front-end web properties (Marketplace, secondlife.com, the sign-up pages, the Lab’s corporate pages, etc.).

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.

Marketplace

Marketplace Elastic Search Overhaul

[Video: 4:29-7:00]

  • The drive to get the MP search updates release is continuing.
    • It had been hoped that this would be completed by US Thanksgiving, but last minutes issues resulting from the sheer size / volume of the MP (which cannot be replicated in test environments) prevented this from being achieved.
    • The aim is now as soon as everything is working as anticipated.
    • Those using the Marketplace recently may have noticed some glitches with search – this has been due to the Search team banging on things under the hood in order to get the updates deployed.
  • 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).

Marketplace Styles

[Video: 7:15-7:54]

  • Work will resume on Marketplace Styles (allowing multiple colours, etc., for an item to appear within a single listing rather than each requiring its own listing) as soon as the MP Search updates are officially enabled. As such, Styles will not be deployed in 2022, but will be the first MP update for deployment in 2023.
  • It will obviously be up to merchants as to whether they use it to group variances in a product within a single listing or continue to list them separately – single listings for multiple versions of an item will not be mandatory.

Marketplace Refresh / Rebuild

  • This is still being looked at as a primary project for development and possible initial deployment in 2023, and as such will likely form a focal point for discussions and feedback through Web User Group meetings in 2023.
  • The work will at least comprise a refresh of the Marketplace appearance and the addition of further desired functionality; because of this, there is a push within LL to completely rebuild the Marketplace from the ground-up.
  • [Video 13:54-14:05] Any rebuild of the Marketplace would not require merchants to re-upload there items: a migration of listings from the current MP to any new MP would be provided.

New “Plus” Subscription Level and Beyond

[Video: 8:00-10:34]

  • The Plus subscription level was launched on November 18th, 2022 – for details please refer to the official blog post and my own reporting on the release.
  • Work is continuing to bed this in alongside of the other subscription options.
  • The Lab is generally pleased that the majority of users appeared to understand what they were trying to achieve within the introduction of Plus.
  • Plus is the last of the currently-planned subscription options the Lab has on the boards, and there are currently no plans to make further offerings available.
  • However, consideration is still being given to providing future possible options, such as:
    • A “Premium A-la Carte” level whereby your subscription fees are based on the options you select from a list.
    • Subscriptions based on specific interests (such as a “creator subscription”.
    • BUT these are only in the “Soon™” phase, indicating they are a feature or capability Linden Lab would like to implement, but which is not far enough along in development to determine if or when it might / could / will be implemented.
  • [Video 21:19-22:42] Will subscriptions ever support payment in Linden Dollars?
    • This is being considered, although the overall implications, etc., have yet to be fully understood.
    • In particular, it could have ramifications on the status of the Linden Dollar (which is not at present regarded as a virtual currency, but could be if it were to become a recognised payment system for benefits.
    • As such this is an idea that is not even in the “Soon™” criteria of thinking; however, there is an internal goal to make it possible to pay for “all things” SL-related in L$ – the questions are really what will this do to the Linden Dollar in making it a virtual currency; how will that effect how the LindeX will function / be regulated, how Tilia can support such a move, etc.

In Brief & Q&A

Video, 17:00 onwards, unless indicated.

  • [Video: 12:10-12:54] Real-time population stats:
    • The Lab is working on improving the ability for the Destination Guide to provide a real-time reflection of the number of avatars within a specific in-world location.
    • Should this be achievable, the capability will be extended into Search so that Places searches will return the number of avatars within the location at the time of the search.
    • This work might be completed by 2022 year-end.
    • [Video: 14:20-14:54] Concerns were raised over the use of unregistered bots (i.e. avatars not correctly flagged as Scripted Agents) to game the numbers. LL is aware of the unregistered bot issue across Second Life, but outside of users reporting them on finding them, there is no easy solution to this issue.
  • [Video: 19:00-19:36] With the acquisition of CasperTech, will Caspertech Drop Boxes and vendors be integrated into the Marketplace?  Yes. However, what form this will take and when it might be undertaken has yet to be determined internally at the Lab / with Casper Warden.
  • [Video: 23:22-29:42 + via text earlier in the meeting] The suggestion was made to make OpenSpace regions (aka Void or Water regions – not to be confused with the 2008 OpenSpace offering which morphed into Homesteads in 2009) as a part of a “Super Premium” offering (+ a nominal tier fee on to of the subscription fee) purely for use as private homes.
    • These regions have a Land Capacity of 1000, and are limited to 10 concurrent avatars, and are regarded as being for light use and a special purchase via support with the requirement that the purchaser must hold at least one Full private region.
    • While the idea was taken under advisement, such a offer could still impact the existing private estate market, and so would have to be considered carefully.
  • The OpenSpace discussion further raised the idea of having these regions potentially on an on-demand basis (e.g. only spun-up when avatars are present within the regions. H
    • However, it was pointed out that regions, whether “up” or “down” require grid slots, and the infrastructure configurations means that grid slots have underpinning hardware, so there is still a potential hardware cost, regardless of whether a region is spun up for use or not.
    • As such, this cost impact would have to be resolved in order for regions (or a specific region type) to be made available through an on-demand system.
  • [Video; 30:11-30:35] Land ownership Overhaul:
    • As noted in previous WUG summaries, this is 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.
    • A focus at the moment is on defining what “land” and the associated terms around it actually means (e.g. what is “renting land”? Where can land be rented? How is it rented?, etc.) .
    • The first element that will be surfaced is a new Land Portal, a central hub from which to get to all aspects of land “ownership”.
  • For all other discussion points,  please refer to the video below.

Next Meeting

  • Wednesday, January 4th, 2023. Venue and time per top of this summary.

 

 

2022 SUG meetings week #49 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Perpetuity, October 2022 – blog post

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, December 6th, 2022 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

This week will see all simhosts on all channels restarted, but no deployments.

The hoped-for RC release (which includes a fix for BUG-229301 “Maximum Memory allowable by scripts not being reset until teleport or relog”) has been delayed as a result of a fix being required for an odd crash which could cause some regions to crash on starting. This has now been resolved, but the fix needs to pass through a QA cycle before any release is made, so the deployment should now occur in week #50.

Available Official Viewers

This list reflects those viewers available via Linden Lab.

  • Release viewer: version 6.6.7.576223 – MFA and TOS hotfix viewer – November 1 – No change.
  • Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself).
    • Performance Floater / Auto-FPS RC viewer, version 6.6.8.576737, November 28.
    • Maintenance P (Preferences, Position and Paste) RC viewer version 6.6.8.576863 Monday, December 5.
    • VS  2022 RC viewer, version 6.6.8.576310, issued November 4 – utilises Visual Studio 2022 in the Windows build tool chain.
  • Project viewers:
    • PBR Materials project viewer, version 7.0.0.576966, December 3 – 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 6.6.3.575529,  issued on October 12.
    • Love Me Render (LMR) 6 graphics improvements project viewer 6.6.2.573263, July 21.

In Brief

Refer to the video below for more information on the following:

  • There is a generic Puppetry-related discussion (Kinnect), but as there is a Puppetry meeting due on December 8th, so any updates will be covered in my summary of that meeting.
  • There is a similar generic discussion on the complexities of the PBR Materials Project, which is covered in my CCUG updates.
  • A discussion on potential LSD bugs / issues – no specifics from LL’s side, as Rider Linden (who runs the LSD project) was absent the meeting.

 

2022 week #48: CCUG meeting summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Village de Roqueblanche, October 2022 – blog post
The following notes were taken from my audio recording and chat log of the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting held on Thursday, December 1st 2022 at 13:00 SLT.  These meetings are chaired by Vir Linden, and their dates and times can be obtained from the SL Public Calendar. This is a summary of the key topics discussed in the meeting and is not intended to be a full transcript. Note: unfortunately, my recording software failed at the 50 minute mark of the meeting, so the end of the meeting and the after-meeting discussion were not recorded, so some discussion points are missing from this summary.

Official Viewers Status

Available Viewers

On Friday, December 2nd, the PBR Materials project viewer updated to version 7.0.0.576966 on Friday December 2nd. This viewer will only function on the following Aditi (beta grid) regions: Materials1; Materials Adult and Rumpus Room 1 through 4. The following reflect the rest of the current official viewers available through Linden Lab.
  • Release viewer: version 6.6.7.576223 – MFA and TOS hotfix viewer – November 1 – No change.
  • Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself).
    • Performance Floater / Auto-FPS project viewer, version 6.6.8.576737, November 28.
    • Maintenance P (Preferences, Position and Paste) RC viewer version 6.6.8.576812 on Monday, November 28.
    • VS  2022 RC viewer, version 6.6.8.576310, issued November 4 – utilises Visual Studio 2022 in the Windows build tool chain.
  • Project viewers:
    • Puppetry project viewer, version 6.6.3.575529,  issued on October 12.
    • Love Me Render (LMR) 6 graphics improvements project viewer 6.6.2.573263, July 21.

General Viewer Notes

  • The Lab is aiming to get the Maintenance P RC viewer promoted to release status before year-end.

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.

Status

  • Please also see previous CCUG meeting summaries for further background on this project.
  • Bugs and regressions continue to be reported via the project viewer on Aditi,  and it is now unlikely the project will advance to a release state before early 2023 (end of 2022 always seemed ambitious).
  • Despite hopes to the contrary, a lot of legacy content is impacted when rendered via the glTF PBR path,  largely as a result of using linear alpha blending.
    • As a result, LL are working on turning to smooth around some of the edge cases without having to introduce a code fork in the viewer between “legacy” alpha handling and PBR alpha handling.
    • The aim remains to preserve as much of the appearance of legacy content under PBR rendering and reflection probes, without necessarily being slaved to preserving its looks over time. The major exception to this is would be situations where PBR rendering reveals seams between layers.
    • However, if it proves necessary, an “opt out” button will be provided to switch out of linear alpha blending.
  • mikkTSpace tangents affect all objects rendered in the PBR viewer. Unfortunately, due to the way mesh data has been stored prior to the PBR viewer, this means that creators wishing to get exactly the same results in their mesh models as they saw in their tool of choice (e.g. blender, etc.) when building their models, they will need to re-upload those models. This might result in a slight increase in the object’s Land Impact, if done.
    • This does mean, however that all tangents on uploaded meshes will be correctly handled going  forward.
  • Capabilities will change with the PBR viewer: for example, there will be a basic glTF materials editor within the viewer; texture will rotate from a corner, rather than the centre (per the glTF specification extension for texture transforms); the upload will allow for the upload of individual materials from a glTF file.

Bakes on Mesh and Materials

  • Providing materials support to Bakes on Mesh has been a long-standing request which has been thus far resisted by the Lab on the grounds of the impact it would have on the Bake Service  – both in terms of code updates and the potential number of servers used.
  • However, at the CCUG, Runitai and Vir floated the idea of materials on Bakes on Mesh being added – but only for the PBR rendering path. This would “drastically” cut down on the amount of back-end work required to make materials on BOM possible, and would mean that all avatar wearables would be Materials-capable.
  • This is not something that has been currently road mapped for implementation at any time by LL, and it would require time and effort to determine a mechanism to manage it, but the support were there for it, it is something that might be considered.
  • If this work was carried out, it might also pave the way for terrain painting – another popular request.
  • As PBR Materials is released, it will become the focus for SL going forward; whilst efforts will be made to ensure “pre-PBR” contact continues to look right, whether or not work is put into trying to “pull” legacy materials content into PBR is questionable, simply because the layered complexity of the underpinning code =, the updating / altering of which can result in content breakage.

In Brief

  • As noted in the summary of the last meeting, there are reports that the PBR project viewer generating some 10% more CPU temperature and 17% more GPU temperature.
    • LL are working on updates they hope will see any GPU increases return to the levels of the current release viewer.
    • Issues with CPU temperature are not believed to be related to PBR, but more to general texture rendering, where a couple of errors have crept in and are being actively corrected.
  • LODs and Land Impact:
    • Lower value LODs on models. Some creators attempt to “game” Land Impact by having extremely low values as their low-end models, thinking they are “never seen”; unfortunately, these are seen by people running SL on very low-end machines and thus can account for new users feeling SL “looks rubbish due to the official viewer defaulting to a RenderVolumeLODFactor of 1.25.
    • The RenderVoumeLODFactor setting will be more dynamic be default in the upcoming Performance Floater / Auto FPS viewer, although extremely lower LODs on models should still be avoided.
    • More broadly, LL is still considering how to better adjust the Land Impact system and the mesh uploader so that creators are not penalised for creating accurate LODs on their models (one of the goals originally stated for project ARCTan).
  • Linden Lab will be closed over the holiday period from end of business on Friday, December 23rd, 2022 through until start of business on Tuesday, January 3rd, 2023 (except for urgent support cases).

Next Meeting

  • Thursday, December 15th, 2022.

2022 SUG meetings week #48 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey

Moorcroft, October 2022 – blog post

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, November 29th, 2022 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

This week will see all simhosts on all channels restarted, but no deployments.

There should be a new RC release available in Week #49 (commencing Monday, December 5th, 2022. This should include a fix for BUG-229301 “Maximum Memory allowable by scripts not being reset until teleport or relog”.

Available Official Viewers

On Monday, November 28th:

  • The Performance Floater / Auto-FPS project viewer was promoted to RC status with the release of version 6.6.8.576737.
  • The Maintenance P (Preferences, Position and Paste) RC viewer re-upped to version 6.6.8.576812.

The rest of the official viewer currently available official viewer remain as follows:

  • Release viewer: version 6.6.7.576223 – MFA and TOS hotfix viewer – November 1 – No change.
  • Release channel cohorts:
    • VS  2022 RC viewer, version 6.6.8.576310, issued November 4 – utilises Visual Studio 2022 in the Windows build tool chain.
  • Project viewers:
    • PBR Materials project viewer, version 7.0.0.576331, issued on November 3.
      • 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 6.6.3.575529,  issued on October 12.
    • Love Me Render (LMR) 6 graphics improvements project viewer 6.6.2.573263, July 21.

In Brief

Refer to the video below for more information on the following:

  • There has been a noticed uptick of objects failing to rez / render (see this forum thread). Whilst the issue has been around long enough to have been reported at least once (see: BUG-9439) and for workarounds such as ALT-zooming out  a long distance from a region and the using ESC to “jump” back to it, it is thought it issues might be related to the Interest List (simply put, the exchange of data between simulator and viewer as to what is in the region, what you should be able to see, how / when it is updated, etc). LL have noted the uptick  in issues, although no underpinning cause has been indicated, although there is an internal lean towards the Interest List theory.
I’m fairly certain that the current vanishing object issue is in the Interest List. I’m not sure what we changed that could have aggravated though. I’ve been seeing it pretty regularly for about a month now.

– Rider Linden

    • The discussion of this issue takes up the majority of the meeting, and touches other issues related to object rendering, / rezzing / re-rendering, and also includes views on improving the robustness of the Interest List as a whole – including a capability function (for which LL has requested a Feature Request Jira).
  • There is some further discussion on combat in Second Life,  and the need for improved projectile systems and generally improving the current capabilities. This follows on from the last meeting, and involves this forum discussion.
  • The final 10 minutes of the meeting touches on potential updates to the recently release Linkset Data (LSD)

 

2022 SUG meetings week #47 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey

Green Story, September 2022 – blog post

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, November 22nd, 2022 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

At the time of writing, a server deployment thread had yet to be published.

  • On Tuesday, November 22nd, the Main SLS and Events channels were updated with the single fix designed to keep regions from running out of voice connections (BUG-229984 “Voice chat is not working” and BUG-7371 “Voice cannot connect”).
  • On Wednesday, November 23rd, simhosts the RC channels will be restarted without any deployment.

Upcoming Simulator Releases

The run of simulator updates through to the new year will likely comprise:

  • Link sounds will most likely the last roll of the year (this should behave exactly as though you had a script in the linked prim and called llPlaySound from that prim).
  • llGetSimStats updates are liable to be the first update of 2023.
  • llHTTPRequest updates (see below) will likely follow later in January 2023.
  • LSDFindKeys sorting updates will most likely be fixed in the first simulator maintenance release for next year.

Available Official Viewers

No changes to any of the current batch of official viewers, leaving them as follows:

  • Release viewer: version 6.6.7.576223 – MFA and TOS hotfix viewer – November 1 – No change.
  • Release channel cohorts:
    • Maintenance P (Preferences, Position and Paste) RC viewer version 6.6.8.576431 on Monday, November 14.
    • VS  2022 RC viewer, version 6.6.8.576310, issued November 4 – utilises Visual Studio 2022 in the Windows build tool chain.
  • Project viewers:
    • PBR Materials project viewer, version 7.0.0.576331, issued on November 3.
      • 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 6.6.3.575529,  issued on October 12.
    • Performance Floater / Auto-FPS project viewer, version 6.6.5.575378, October 4.
    • Love Me Render (LMR) 6 graphics improvements project viewer 6.6.2.573263, July 21.

In Brief

  • BUG-232171 “Issue with regions becoming full, but still showing available prims” – this is been causing noticeable issues recently, with a lot of speculation that it may be a griefing vector. However, the important point with the issue is that LL know what the cause actually is, and will be addressing it.
    • BUG-229382 “Vehicles stopping dead at region borders” may be related to this issue.
    • BUG-BUG-227303 “collisions makes a script stop running and revert its mono status” was also raised later in the meeting in relation to Mono concerns.
  • Concerns have been raised about bout removing the LSO bytecode compiler (non-Mono), leaving only the Mono compiler (the run-time environment for LSO scripts would remain – it just wouldn’t be possible to compile new scripts via the LSO compiler or re-compile updated scripts using it).
    • These issues (apparently related to rapid rezzing of objects  and / or some vehicles the Mono control scripts behaving badly at region crossings) have not been the subject of any bug report(s) and so lack documented details. A Jira has been request.
  • A core part of the meeting was given over to combat systems and providing improved means of projective operation (in part related to the Mono discussion above) – please refer to the video for details.
  • BUG-37727 “Regex for LSL” may have a better chance of being implemented now that Regex is exposed to LSL via Linkset Data.
  • With the implementation of LSD, an suggestion has been made to add publicly editable key-value pairs that could be set in the build window via object owners, and then accessed via scripts using an interface similar to Linkset Data. A  similar suggestion has also been made within the forums, however, that does not appear to be a feature request Jira for these ideas (at least at the time of writing this summary).
  • BUG-232551 “We need significantly more RAM for scripts in non-attachments” was raised in discussion;  it has been accepted by the Lab, but no indication of when it it  might be actioned, or how.
  • Rider Linden is playing some enhancements to LSL for 2023, including (but not limited to) allowing a response to an HTTP request with the contents of a notecard.

2022 week #46: CCUG and TPVD meeting summaries

Posted on by Inara Pey

Vue Sur Mer, September 2022 – blog post

The following notes were taken from:

  • My audio recording and chat log of the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting held on Thursday, November 17th, 2022 at 13:00 SLT.
  • My audio recording and chat log from the Third-Party Viewer Developer (TPVD) meeting held on Friday, November 18th, 2022 at 13:00 SLT. Pantera attended the meeting, but was unfortunately held-up beforehand, so around the first 10 minutes is absent from her video (embedded at the end of this summary).

Both meetings are chaired by Vir Linden, and their dates and times can be obtained from the SL Public Calendar.

This is a summary of the key topics discussed in the meeting and is not intended to be a full transcript.

Official Viewers Status

[Video: 0:00-2:00]

Available Viewers

The following reflect the list of current official viewers available through Linden Lab.

  • Release viewer: version 6.6.7.576223 – MFA and TOS hotfix viewer – November 1.
  • Release channel cohorts:
    • Maintenance P (Preferences, Position and Paste) RC viewer version 6.6.8.576431 on Monday, November 14.
    • VS  2022 RC viewer, version 6.6.8.576310, issued November 4 – utilises Visual Studio 2022 in the Windows build tool chain.
  • Project viewers:
    • PBR Materials project viewer, version 7.0.0.576331, issued on November 3.
      • 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 6.6.3.575529,  issued on October 12.
    • Performance Floater / Auto-FPS project viewer, version 6.6.5.575378, October 4.
    • Love Me Render (LMR) 6 graphics improvements project viewer 6.6.2.573263, July 21.

General Viewer Notes

  • There is unlikely to be any major changes to the list above in week #47, as this is a short working week for the Lab due to the Thanksgiving holiday (Thursday / Friday).

Github Changeover and Streamlining the Code Contributions Process

Github Work

As previously announced, there is an initiative to improve continuous update integration in the viewer and improve the viewer deployment process.

  • For TPVs and developers, the most visible aspect of this is moving the viewer repositories from BitBucket to Github. This includes the viewer code base and the other public code bases currently in BitBucket (Autobuild, LLCA, etc.).
  • There is still no firm date as to when the actual switch-over to using the new repositories will occur, but the viewer development team is working steadily towards it, and the plan remains to provide plenty of advanced warning to TPVs on when LL plan to cut over to the new repositories before making a clean cut-over.

Status

  • The switch-over to using Github is now slated for “early in the morning” (PST / SLT) on Monday, November 21st, 2022.
  • This means that from the point of switch-over, the Bitbucket repositories will be locked and carry a warning that they are no longer current, and developers / viewer builders should use the GitHub repositories, as directed to in the warning.
  • The master viewer branch is already up-to-date on GitHub as of Friday, November 18th, 2022.
  • Notes on the switch-over were posted to developers on the open-source developers list.
  • There is no plan in place to phase out the Bitbucket repositories immediately, but they may well be removed in time.

PBR: Materials and Reflections

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.

Status

  • Please also see previous CCUG meeting summaries for further background on this project.
  • The  viewer is available as a project viewer 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 is currently on reviewing bugs reported by those testing the viewer, and creators using glTF PBR workflows to create content are encouraged to test out their content on the project viewer to ensure things look as expected when imported into SL.
  • One aspect of SL that does require testing is EEP assets; changes have had to be made to the shaders which mean that commercial EEP settings may not render as expected (things like haze density my  be modified, etc).
    • EEP creators may therefore want to test their settings using the project viewer, and Jira issues – please include “non PBR viewer” shots of how the settings should look and shots taken with the PBR project viewer for easier comparison / understanding of the issues seen.
  • Issues with alpha blending are being investigated – particularly linear space alpha blending and how best to carry forward “pre-PBR” alpha blending, which does not use linear space.
  • It has been reported that the PBR project viewer generating some 10% more CPU temperature and 17% more GPU temperature – this may be the result of the viewer having to work that much harder with PBR in order to maintain frame rates.
  • Reflection probes: concern was again raised over people excessively using probes (e.g. attaching them to all their products / objects they own).
    • Providing a means for users to disable probes attached to objects they purchase has been previously discussed within the project / CCUG meetings.
    • It is hoped the latter (people just randomly setting-up probes all over their house / land) can be mitigated against through a mix of education and explicit warnings / actions in the viewer.
    • Concern was also raised about the potential of localised reflection probes (essentially an invisible prim) could interfere with intended interactions (e.g. a probe enclosing a chair could block people’s ability to sit on the chair). If cases like this are found in testing, a request has been made for bug reports.
    • The PBR viewer does include a Build / Edit option to “ignore invisible prims” so that when building / editing, an attempt to select an object within the volume of a reflection probe prim will ensure the object is selected, not the probe prim, but it is acknowledged that this kind of operation needs to be better integrated with other mouse click options.
  • (TPV Meeting video)
    • It was noted that this project also marks the start of the deprecation (and eventual removal) of some real-time console performance reports, such as Fast Timers.
    • It has been reported that some testing the PBR viewer are finding that within the texture console, Bias is constantly being reported at 5 (which tends to cause texture thrashing in non-PBR viewers). However, within the PBR viewer  a Bias of 5 should indicate that the viewer is swapping – and keeping to – a lower texture resolution, and so should not result in any texture thrashing.

Screen Space Reflections (SSR)

  • LL does have a “subtle” SSR system working to replace Linden water reflections as currently rendered.
  • There is some further work to be carried out before it is “viewer-ready”, with the focus being on ironing out the bumps and cleaning-up bugs.
  • It was made clear that while this implementation of SSR will be applicable to scenes as a whole, it is not intended to be a replacement for creating mirrors – and so expectations should be set accordingly.

CCUG Meeting Specific Notes

The majority of the meeting was given over to a general discussion, per the cliff-notes below:

  • VR hardware and Second Life:
    • While frame rates are not so much an issue now in broad terms, there is still the need to get a high frame rate on a consistent basis for VR viewing to be enjoyable – and this is still not a giving with SL.
    • However, VR isn’t just about headsets; its about the “full” experience in using a range of associated peripherals: controllers, haptic gloves, the ability to have a “full-body experience” that VR users would want and expect, such as seeing your hand and arm when going to pick something up, being able to grip an object in your hands and feel responses from it when using it (e.g. the strike of a blade against another or a baseball sat against the ball, etc.).
    • The level of support for this more complete sense of immersiveness requires some extensive re-engineering of Second Life (e.g. facilitating a full and proper Inverse Kinematics system  as a single example).
    • The Puppetry project may facilitate some work towards this. However, the focus of this project is not on providing any form of in-depth VR support (it is intended to work with a broader range of peripherals, notably webcams, although use of some VR software support via OpenVR is being considered), being intended for use by as broad a cross-section of SL users as might be interested in it.
    • Another problem is determining what people want from VR; is it purely a mechanism for games, or does it need to be capable of “realistic” social interactions (some do still proclaim games, other demand social capabilities; the truth is probably more a blending of the two, just like life in the physical realm).
  • New users and their experience:
    • Much was made of the need for a completely new avatar system (LL is actually working on a new all-mesh “starter avatar”, but using the existing skeleton) – but overhauling / replacing the current avatar system raises its own compatibility / market issues.
    • A fair point was raised by LL concerning the use of eviction / ban scripts that specifically ban avatars that are less than X days old and / or avatars that do not have Payment Information On File.
      • These tend to get used at event spaces etc., to try to prevent griefers / trolls using throwaway accounts from accessing the space, rather than using other available moderation tools (which, admittedly tend to require human intervention with the right permissions, which might not always be available).
      • The problem here is that often, a “genuine” new user will often sign-up, go through the new user experience, then try to go to a event – only to immediately find they are denied entry or are ejected without warning or explanation, and as a result, they log-out.
      • The need for improved tools to handle griefing and trolling are likely required – but no discussion on what form these might take.
  • Audio: a general conversation on the potential of “full” spatial audio, including directional (e.g. so an audio stream at a disco appears to be coming from the speaker system in the venue) and also sound volumes.
    • Nothing is currently planned for audio in the roadmap, but it was noted that the first test of using volumes (reflection probes) is in Aditi testing, and LL will obviously seeing how well that works.
  • It  was made clear that scripts will “NEVER” be allowed to create new assets (so no ability to generate notecards from a script). One of the reasons cited for this is the cost of storing assets if there is an uncontrolled ability to generate them through scripts (particularly given SL’s asset count is already in the petabytes range in terms of storage).

TPVD Meeting Specific Notes

Atlassian Jira and Bug Reporting

  • Atlassian has announced it will be restructuring how it licenses the Jira bug reporting product from 2024 onwards. Currently, LL can run a public-facing Jira reporting system that effectively allows every Second Life user to create an account on it to view all the public SL bug reports and feature requests.
  • Under the 2024 pricing restructure (which will be pretty much per-account), this will be prohibitively expensive for LL, so they are starting into the process of looking for an alternative means to provide some form of user-facing bug reporting mechanism.
    • one option being considered is to continue to use Jira internally (where the number of licensed accounts can be controlled), and use a different mechanism for public bug reporting, with a bridge between the two.
    • Another is to move away from Jira entirely.
  • No decision has been made as yet, but as Firestorm also use Jira, the suggestion has been made that the two develop a joint plan to resolve the situation in terms of future tools.
  • The topic lead to a general discussion on possible options, but no conclusions drawn – and there is sufficient lead-time on the matter for various options to be looked into, allowing for the time required to transition to any alternate that might be selected / finding the means to keep the wealth of information on the SL Jira available for reference.

General Notes

  • There is a report that Active Voice on at least some viewers is not updating correctly (e.g. following a teleport, and it is proving easier to enable  / disable Voice morphing vie the menu than to disconnect / reconnect Voice in order to correct.
    • The issue here is not so much which is the preferred method to correct the problem, but whether the Active Voice list failing to update is a widespread issue with viewers, and whether it can be reproduced on the official viewer & a bug report raised.
  • Beq Janus has written a post on alpha blending issues (see: Alpha blend issues? Get them sorted – subtitled Making it easier to avoid alpha-clashes with Second Life and OpenSim outfits). Rather than have me  decimate the discussion, please refer to the video fat 35:56 through video end for more.

Next Meetings

  • CCUG: Thursday, December 1st, 2022.
  • TPVD: Friday, December 23rd, 2022.