Category: SL User Group Meetings

The following notes were taken from:

• My audio recording and chat log of the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting held on Thursday, March 3rd 2022 at 13:00 SLT. These meetings are chaired by Vir Linden, and meeting dates can be obtained from the SL Public Calendar.
• My audio recording and the Video recording by Pantera (embedded at the end of this piece) from the Third-Party Viewer Developer (TPVD) meeting on Friday, March 4th, 2022 at 12:00 noon SLT.

This is a summary of the key topics discussed and is not intended to be a full transcript of either meeting in its entirety. However, the video does provide a complete recording of the TPVD meeting, and timestamps to the relevant points within it are included in the notes below.

Available Viewers

[Video: 0:41-2:10 and 7:41-9:00 + notes from CCUG]

This list reflects the currently available official Second Life viewers.

• Release viewer: version version 6.5.3.568554 – formerly the Maintenance J&K RC viewer, promoted Monday, February 28 – NEW
• Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself).
  • The Tracy Integration RC viewer version 6.4.23.563771 (dated Friday, November 5) issued Tuesday, November 9.
• Project viewers:
  • Performance Improvements project viewer version 6.6.0.567604, dated January 24.
  • Mesh Optimizer project viewer, version 6.5.2.566858, dated January 5, issued after January 10.
  • Performance Floater project viewer, version 6.4.23.562625, issued September 2.
  • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.4.11.550519, dated October 26, 2020.
  • Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, dated December 9, 2019.

General Viewer Notes

• The release of the Maintenance J&K RC as the de facto release viewer should see crash rates reduced for those on the official viewer (and hopefully for TPVs as the code is adopted).
  • This is the first official viewer to by built using Python 3.x.
  • It includes a fix intended to prevent the updater falling over on Mac OSX.
• The Performance Improvement viewer is still awaiting RC release, this is pending some final bug fixing.
  • [CCUG Meeting] The Performance Improvements viewer bumps the feature table version number. This means that those placed in the cohort when it goes to RC status will see their custom graphics presets reset (as will anyone else switching to it during RC and when it gets to release status).
• [CCUG Meeting] It appears the Mesh Optimiser viewer has a bug that is causing it to re-order triangles in an upload. So, if an explicit ordering is contained within a Blender export (e.g. for alpha sorting, for example), the Mesh Optimiser will effective destroy the ordering when running the LOD optimisation on upload. It’s not clear on how widespread the issue might be, as it has only been reported with alchemy-next thus far.
• [CCUG Meeting] the definitions for “Low”, “medium” and “high” on the graphics slider are being redefined within the Performance Floater project viewer. This will also see the number of non-imposter avatars set on a per detail level, rather than being set to 16 across the board.
• [CCUG Meeting] the benchmark for determining low-end systems is being adjusted to better reflect the number of uses coming into SL using low-end GPUs.

MFA Viewer

[Video: 9:12-13:42]

• Summary:
  • Multi-factor authentication (MFA) is coming to the viewer.
  • As MFA is implemented in the official viewer, there will be a “grace” period to allow TPV adopt the viewer code.
  • During this period, users will be able to access SL on TPVs as they currently do now, regardless of whether or not they have opted-in to MFA.
  • After this “grace” period, all users who have opted in to MFA will be required to authenticate themselves when using any viewer to log-in to Second Life (with the usual 30-day period of valid authentication, as per secondlife.com MFA), but those who have not opted-in to MFA will see no difference in their log-in steps, regardless of whether the viewer they are using supports MFA.
• The viewer-side code is currently going through QA. If is passes, it is hoped it will surface in week #10 (commencing Monday, March 7th).
• However, the decision has not yet been taken as to give it a dedicated viewer, or to merge the code into the next upcoming Maintenance RC viewer.

In Brief

From the Content Creation Meeting

• Viewer project work: the focus is on getting the Performance Improvements viewer stabilised and promoted to RC status (and thence to de facto release). After this, it is not clear what may come next, the options being:
  • Clearing the current backlog of project viewers.
  • Further viewer-side performance improvement work.
  • Additional maintenance viewers.
  • Other work still in early planning.
• Further materials / Bakes on Mesh (BoM) Discussion:
  • Materials support for Bakes on Mesh is commonly requested, but there are several impediments to this (e.g. the Bake Service would require significant update just to be aware of materials; there needs to be a means to define how materials should be ordered during compositing, how alpha channels are properly managed, etc.).
  • It was asked by LL if things might be improved with just the introduction of a new wearables type, capable of allowing a single materials map to be worn per outfit / look.
  • Cathy Foil has also demonstrated a possible approach – although this also requires some significant updates to SL, as well as work being carried out externally to to the platform by content creators – see the video below (originally produced as a demonstration for the Lab).

• • Before committing to considering any materials / BoM work, LL would like to see a properly scoped design documents explaining what is felt would be required (including supporting protocols, etc.), and how it might work.
• BUG-225519 “Mesh Uploader] Add option for automatic convex hull physics shape”.
  • This was a subject of discussion at the previous CCUG meeting, the request calling the provision of simpler physics shapes to be available for use when uploading a mesh than are currently available – the simplest being a “cube” mesh physics asset. This is something Firestorm already provides:

• • The question was raised as to what to do when uploaded multiple mesh objects, and the physics shapes don’t match the expected number (so four when uploading 5 objects, for example). The consensus at the meeting appeared to be to use whatever is defined as the default physics shape within the file itself.

From the TPVD Meeting

• [Video: 2:17-5:44] The Lab is considering moving the time of the TPVD meeting and adjusting the frequency so as to avoid running back-to-back (so to speak) with the Content Creation meetings, which inevitably leads to a lot of repetition between two meetings held less than 24 hours apart.
  • The straw poll of attendees pointed towards the meeting having a later start time than the current 12:00 noon. Exact time TBC.
  • There will be a move to try to have TPVD meetings on alternate weeks to the CCUG meeting.
• [Video 6:10-7:23] During the log-in process, a series of flags are set on logging-in to SL, including one called “Gendered”. This apparently meant something in the past, but since around the time of the introduction of Viewer 2.0 (2010), it has effectively been ignored. LL are therefore looking to possibly pull the code relating to it, but wanted to make sure there are no TPVs using it for some reason before doing so.
• [Video 13:54-17:14] The question was floated on the animation poser code contributed several years ago by NiranV Dean from his Niran’s Viewer, and whether it would be appropriate for TPVs to implement it if LL is not going to.
  • The Lab’s view is that the code does not support the “shared experience”, in that poses are only seen by the user setting them, nothing is sent to the simulator for over viewer to see. This requires additional code to overcome.
  • Currently, LL is planning some other work “related to avatar posing the movement”, and it is possible the poser code might get folded into that work.
  • While, in principle, there are no objections to other TPVs implementing the code, they would have to do so on the basis that the code only allows the user’s own avatar to be posed, and not extended to posing other avatars (which would not be seen by the users of those avatars).
• [Video 17:28-32:00] There have been some recent overlaps / crossed lines in aspects of viewer work between Linden Lab and TPV. As a result the question was raised by the Lab as to what could be done to improve communications between TPV and LL and vice-versa to avoid future misunderstandings.
  • One suggestion was to make the TPVD meetings more of a two-way discussion in terms of what both the Lab and TPVs are working on, etc., particularly if appropriate action points could be produced when required.
  • Another suggestion was to have the Lab create a secure sandbox environment in which they could gain greater familiarity with TPVs and their capabilities as a part of their own work time (policy dictates – with good reason – LL employees are only allowed to use TPVs on systems and accounts that have no direct association with the Lab).
  • An alternative to the above that was offered would be for LL staff to peek into the support groups, etc., run by TPVs to get an understanding as to what users are asking for, and what is being responded to.

 

The following notes were taken from:

• My audio recording and chat log of the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting held on Thursday, February 17th 2022 at 13:00 SLT. These meetings are chaired by Vir Linden, and meeting dates can be obtained from the SL Public Calendar.
• My audio recording and the Video recording by Pantera (embedded at the end of this piece) from the Third-Party Viewer Developer (TPVD) meeting on Friday, February 18th, 2022 at 12:00 noon SLT.
• It is a summary of the key topics discussed, and in the case of the TPVD meeting, timestamps to the relevant point of the video are included.

Available Viewers

[Video: 0:16-3:26 + notes from CCUG]

This list reflects the currently available official Second Life viewers.

• Release viewer: version version 6.5.2.567427 – Mac Voice hotfix viewer, January 13 – no change.
• Release channel cohorts:
  • Maintenance J&K RC viewer, version 6.5.3.567451, issued on January 20th.
  • The Tracy Integration RC viewer version 6.4.23.563771 (dated Friday, November 5) issued Tuesday, November 9.
• Project viewers:
  • Performance Improvements project viewer version 6.6.0.567604, dated January 24.
  • Mesh Optimizer project viewer, version 6.5.2.566858, dated January 5, issued after January 10.
  • Performance Floater project viewer, version 6.4.23.562625, issued September 2.
  • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.4.11.550519, dated October 26, 2020.
  • Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, dated December 9, 2019.

General Viewer Notes

• The Maintenance J&K RC viewer is still the next in line for promotion to de facto release status.
  • Progress of this viewer had been delayed due to the viewer updater needing to be updated from Python 2 to Python 3.
  • This change has now been made, and the viewer is ready to be issued as an updated RC viewer.
• Work continues on the Performance Improvements project viewer to lift that to RC status.
  • It was found that bump (normal) maps were being processed on the main viewer thread, causing the viewer to exceed 60 fps with Vsync enabled (which should hold it to 60fps), causing frame jitter. Bump map processing has therefore been moved to a separate thread.
  • There has been a pass to improve hardware compatibility with AMD GPUs.
  • An issue with rigged meshes failing to render in the thumbnail panels when editing an avatar’s shape has been addressed,
  • This could be the first in a series of viewers produced under the Performance Improvements banner, with the Lab already discussing additional improvements that could be made in future versions.
• The Performance Floater viewer is being updated with further options to manually adjust viewer settings to help maintain frame rates.

MFA Viewer

[Video: 3:58-6:43]

• As noted in the week #5 summary, multi-factor authentication (MFA) is coming to the viewer.
• The viewer-side code is complete, and had been awaiting the implementation of server-side support.
• The latter has now been deployed to the Main grid, so it is anticipated that an RC version of the official viewer will be available in the very near future.
• It is  recognised that TPVs will need time to integrate the necessary viewer-side code into their offerings, therefore:
  • As MFA is implemented in the official viewer, there will be a “grace” period to allow TPV adopt the viewer code.
  • During this period, users will be able to access SL on TPVs as they currently do now, regardless of whether or not they have opted-in to MFA.
  • After this “grace” period, all users who have opted in to MFA will be required to authenticate themselves when using the viewer to log-in to Second Life (with the use 30-day period of valid authentication, as per secondlife.com MFA).
  • Please refer to my week #5 summary for the full list of notes on MFA in the viewer.

In Brief

Content Creation Meeting

• Honouring joint rotation at mesh upload:
  • There are a number of long-standing bugs and requests concerning support (or lack that of) for maintaining mesh joint rotations at upload – currently, overrides are only provided for position and scaling.
  • The Collada .DAE file format does allow for rotation to be maintained through a number of ways, but currently SL doesn’t support all of them – hence when joint rotations tend to be ignored.
  • The general discussion leaned towards having the ability to override join rotation at upload would be a nice to have, with the view from LL that if done, it would be a check box at upload, so it would only apply to new content being uploaded, and not affect existing content.
• Preference over the above was expressed for the ability to scale bones via animations.
  • This could allow for things like animals to increase in size as they grow from kitten / cub / pup, etc., to adulthood; possible improvements to clothing; enabling more complex avatar animations etc.
  • One potential issue with this is that scaling by animation might / will conflict with the skeletal sliders.
  • Providing animation scaling adds a further point of complexity, presenting 3 points at which scale is being impacted: within the mesh (from values at upload), trough the application of animations and via the shape sliders. Ergo, some form of ordering hierarchy is potentially required to avoid conflicts between the three.
  • No conclusions were drawn on this in terms of possible implementation or further investigation of options.
• BUG-225519 “Mesh Uploader] Add option for automatic convex hull physics shape”.
  • Sparked an extended conversation on physics shapes and LI – not all of which, I confess, I could not entirely follow in listening back through the audio, as some of it depended on some in-world testing – and I was absent from my screen through the majority of the meeting, so did not get to see the in-world examples being manipulated.
  • Essentially, the feature request calls for the provision of simpler physics shapes to be available for use when uploading a mesh than are currently available – the simplest being a “cube” mesh physics asset. This is something Firestorm already provides:

• • The conversation also folded into it requests to have direct access to Havok (the physics engine) primitive physics shapes (sphere, cube, cylinder, etc., and the ability to upload them.
  •  For now, a contribution of the code used by Firestorm has been offered / requested.
  • This is turn lead to a discussion on, if implemented by LL, whether the default upload physics shape (Convex Hull) should be changed to “Cube” – with the preference being to leave it as is, although it was noted that with PBR set for future implementation, the upload mesh form may at some point need to be changed.
  • Given the confusion evident within the discussion, this also perhaps points to the need for the uploader to have a link to relevant and maintained documentation on best practices for mesh uploads, physics, etc.
• The end of the meeting featured a further request for materials support for Bakes on Mesh (BoM)
  • This is something which, as noted in the past, would require a not insignificant extension to how bakes are handled, together with and expansion of the Bake Service itself – particularly if it was expected that individual layers would have an associated normal and specular channel associated with them.
  • A suggested alternative would be to have a single normal and single specular channel then is applied to the entire bake. While this might work for specularity, it’s not clear how this would work with a normal maps and be effective when trying to define different fabrics through the use of normals.
  • Currently, LL have no direct plans to implement materials for BoM.

TPV Developer Meeting

• BUG-225696 “All offline inventory offers from scripted objects are lost” is to be the subject of a simulator-side project that is now “gearing up” to fix it “once and for all”, which is “coming for a near value of ‘Soon™’.
• There are a lot of “new initiatives” in the pipeline with LL beyond those outlined in things like the 2021 year-end review, but nothing that has reached a point where it can be discussed in detail at TPVD (or other) meetings.