Category: SL User Group Meetings

2022 TPV Developer meeting summary, week #1

Posted on by Inara Pey
Pemberley, December 2021 – blog post

The following notes are taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, January 7th, 2022.

These meetings are generally held every other week.  They are recorded by Pantera Północy, and her video of the meeting is embedded at the end of this report – my thanks to her for allowing me to do so – and it is used with the chat log from the meeting and my own audio recording to produce this summary, which focuses on the core topics discussed.

SL Viewer

[Video: 0:00-1:28]

There have been no official viewer updates to mark the start of the year, leaving the current crop as:

  • Release viewer: version version 6.5.1.566335, formerly the Cache+ 360 Capture viewer, dated December 7, promoted December 15 – 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).
    • The Jenever Maintenance RC viewer, version 6.5.2.566860, issued on December 17.
    • The Koaliang Maintenance 2 RC viewer, version 6.5.2.566879, issued on December 17.
    • 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 6.5.2.566967, dated December 17.
    • Performance Floater project viewer, version 6.4.23.562625, issued September 2.
    • Mesh Optimizer project viewer, version 6.4.23.562614, issued September 1.
    • 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 Performance Improvements project viewer is currently going through a round of bug fixing prior to being promoted to RC status. However, no further additions / changes to the existing feature set beyond the fixes are planned.
  • Depending on how things go, it is possible the Performance Improvements viewer may be the next to be promoted to RC status.
  • [2:17-2:30] The Legacy Profiles project viewer is awaiting further server-side updates before proceeding.

Upcoming Feature Work

[1:30-1:51]

  • At the end of 2021, the Lab issued a blog post reviewing the year and offering an overview of some projects planned for release in 2022.
  • Vir indicated that discussion on those projects mentioned in the post (and others?) is still on-going, and that the Lab is not ready to discuss time frames, etc., for any particular feature or release at this point in time.

In Brief

  • Mojo Linden arrived after the meeting had ended, and reiterated that:
    • A focus for the year remains on performance improvements.
    • A key aspect of work as a whole remains improving the entire New User Experience (NUE).
    • He also clearly dodged questions on the specifics of the new “avatar expressiveness”.
  • [3:20-9:50] A general discussion on building the viewer, of interest to viewer devs and self-compilers.

2022 SUG meeting week #1 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Drune Giger City, December 2021 – blog post

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, January 4th, 2022 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. The meeting was recorded by Pantera Północy, and the video is embedded at the end of this summary. Note this summary focuses on the key points of the meeting; where there is something to report, the video should be referred to should full details of the meeting wish to be reviewed.

Server Deployments

There are no planned server deployments for this week.

Week #2 should see the simulator currently deployed to the RC will by rolled to the Main SLS channel.

Available Viewers

This list reflects those viewers available via Linden Lab.

  • Release viewer: version version 6.5.1.566335, formerly the Cache+ 360 Capture viewer, dated December 7, promoted December 15 – 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).
    • The Jenever Maintenance RC viewer, version 6.5.2.566860, issued on December 17.
    • The Koaliang Maintenance 2 RC viewer, version 6.5.2.566879, issued on December 17.
    • 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 6.5.2.566967, dated December 17.
    • Performance Floater project viewer, version 6.4.23.562625, issued September 2.
    • Mesh Optimizer project viewer, version 6.4.23.562614, issued September 1.
    • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.4.11.550519, dated October 26, 2020.
    • Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, dated December 9, 2019.

In Brief

  • Questions were asked about the “avatar expressiveness” mentioned in the “2021 review” blog post issued by the Lab. Specifically:
    • How the system will work given the plethora of mesh heads available, the different brans (and perhaps even different styles within brands) being weighted differently / possibly making use of different bones / sliders.
    • How this will be handled without body tracking, in order to avoid head gestures / expressions being mis-matched with AO body animations.
    • Will it use a 3rd party facial morph system.

In response, Simon Linden would only note:

Dissecting that slightly, a) there is a camera involved and b) there are gestures and movement involved. You can probably guess / connect that a bit yourself, ’cause I can’t talk more about it … I don’t think you’ll get more info until it’s ready to go out – and it’s not at the present. It’s under development.

There is also the question of how many people actually use cameras with SL – or would be interested in doing so.

  • A lot of general chatter about what SL “needs” and “the metaverse”, please refer to the video.

2021 CCUG meeting week #50 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Elysium, October 2021 – 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 16th 2021 at 13:00 SLT. These meetings are chaired by Vir Linden, and meeting dates can be obtained from the SL Public Calendar.

Available Viewers

This list reflects those viewers available via Linden Lab.

  • Release viewer: version version 6.5.1.566335, formerly the Cache+ 360 Capture viewer, dated December 7, promoted December 15 – NEW – see: 360 Capture viewer now de facto SL release viewer.
  • Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself):
    • The Jenever Maintenance RC viewer, version 6.5.1.566306, issued on December 6.
    • The Koaliang Maintenance 2 RC viewer, version 6.5.1.565905, issued on December 6.
    • The Tracy Integration RC viewer version 6.4.23.563771 (dated Friday, November 5) issued Tuesday, November 9.
  • Project viewers:
    • Performance Improvements project viewer updated to version 6.5.1.566443, dated December 8.
    • Performance Floater project viewer, version 6.4.23.562625, issued September 2.
    • Mesh Optimizer project viewer, version 6.4.23.562614, issued September 1.
    • 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

  • It is possible the two Maintenance RC viewers will be combined into a single release prior to their promotion in early 2021.
  • Work is continuing to work out the bug in the Performance Improvements project viewer in the hope it will be fit for promotion to RC status early in 2022.

Second Life Terrain Discussions

It has long been noted that the terrain in Second Life has never received a major overhaul, although the subject has been discussed from time to time. Currently, a terrain project still is not on the roadmap, but the floor was opened for suggestions as to what users might like to see if such a project were to be adopted by LL.

The questions was framed around “terrain” being the overall appearance of a region – land, water, the use of any region surround, support for flora, interactions with the wind, having much improved texture quality, etc., so as to offer a much improved graphical experience that does not put an undue load on the viewer when rendering or requires the simulator to send a mountain (no pun intended) of data to the viewer.  In other words, how to make SL landscapes / environments “prettier” and “more up-to-date” without undue impact on overall performance.

  • In terms of the existing system, suggestions put forward included:
    • The ability to have Linden water on a prim (rather than animated diffuse, normal and specular maps).
      • One problem here is the potential for serious performance hits (e.g. linden water on prim / mesh faces being used (or over-used!) for mirror effects) – particularly given actually occluding “non-visible” Linden water (e.g. the “water” beneath the terrain map) in order to help improve viewer performance is very much something being actively looked at (and is being implemented in the case of the Catznip TPV).
    • Support for using splat / weight maps.
    • Proper blending / integration between terrain and any region surround.
    • Ability to instance “proper” trees, grass a fauna (rather than the (circa 2002) default Linden trees, etc., included in the build tools.
    • Ability to blend / layer textures to allow things like a base of dirt, overlaid with grass, then the two blend to give the impression of wheel ruts or a dirty / rock path through the grass, etc.
  • It was also pointed out that there are multiple limitations to the current terrain system and tools (e.g. the inability to create tunnels or caves, limitations is blending terrain between parcels under separate ownership, the manner in which alterations to the height fields can cause a bad stretching of the surface textures, etc.), as such, many region designers already prefer working entirely in mesh, and so a better effort might be to provided improved support for this approach, including:
    • The ability to use large terrain meshes that are not prohibitively expensive  in terms of LI,.
    • Allowing proper texture blending on mesh terrain surfaces.
    • Support (again) for splat / weight maps. etc.
  • In terms of instancing flora, concern was raised how this might impact the landscaping market / economy (e.g. if LL provide a range of “nice trees”, will people still, buy their own? could the instancing system be made extensible, so that content from creators could be “plugged into” it?, etc.).
  • Overall, no conclusions were drawn, but a lot was offered up in terms of ideas, with the discussion also touched on issues of physics (notably the use of mesh terrain elements across region boundaries, the potential for increased physics collision calculations resulting on a performance hit; and also discussions of an expansion of the materials system allow the use of additional maps / making the materials system more a asset-based system (like EEP settings), consideration of updating SL to offer reasonable / real PBR support, etc.

2021 SUG meeting week #50 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Hidden Bottle, October 2021 – blog post

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, December 14th, 2021 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. The meeting was recorded by Pantera Północy, and the video is embedded at the end of this summary. Note this summary focuses on the key points of the meeting; where there is something to report, the video should be referred to should full details of the meeting wish to be reviewed.

Server Deployments

See the server deployment thread for further updates.

  • On Tuesday, December 14th, all simulators on the SLS Main channel received a new simulator version 566406, which includes back-end support for the new IMs-to-e-mail options that go live on December 15th – see Lab announces change to e-mail preferences for Group notices).
  • On Wednesday, December 15th, the tools update simulator will be deployed to all remaining RC channels.

These deployments mark the end of planned simulator deployments for 2021. Monday, December 20th marks the start of the end-of-year No Change window.

The Main channel deployment / restart also saw a number of regions become inaccessible for an extended period (up or and possibly exceeding 3 hours), the latest to due so. These longer restarts are the result of LL still trying to get the concurrency – how many regions can be restarted in a pass – right.

Available Viewers

This list reflects those viewers available via Linden Lab.

  • Release viewer: version version 6.5.0.565607, formerly the Maintenance RC and dated November 10, promoted November 15 – this viewer now contains a fix for the media issues caused by the Apple Notarisation viewer.
  • Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself):
    • The combined Simplified Cache and 360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.5.1.566335, issued on December 7.
    • The Jenever Maintenance RC viewer, version 6.5.1.566306, issued on December 6.
    • The Koaliang Maintenance 2 RC viewer, version 6.5.1.565905, issued on December 6.
    • The Tracy Integration RC viewer version 6.4.23.563771 (dated Friday, November 5) issued Tuesday, November 9.
  • Project viewers:
    • Performance Improvements project viewer updated to version 6.5.1.566443, dated December 8.
    • Performance Floater project viewer, version 6.4.23.562625, issued September 2.
    • Mesh Optimizer project viewer, version 6.4.23.562614, issued September 1.
    • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.4.11.550519, dated October 26, 2020.
    • Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, dated December 9, 2019.

In Brief

  • The SUG meeting on Tuesday December 21st, 2021 will be a party to mark the winter solstice. As such, this is liable to be my last SUG summary for 2021.
  • There has been a report of the viewer recording failing/timing out event polls for neighbouring regions, as seen from within a region.
    • This is something that has not apparently been reported to LL via Jira, and it is not clear if it is specific to a region.
    • The concern raised was that it might impact region crossings, but LL do not see why this should be so.
  • Map API:
    • The issue of “empty” land showing on the World Map was raised (i.e. just the terrain, no buildings, etc., despite the land being built-out). This is usually (but not exclusively) the result of a known map issue in rendering mesh objects, particularly if the mash structure is large, but has a very small prim root.
    • It has been reported that the World Map API (used to interrogate the Map and produce things like the web-based maps for SL) seems “happy” to return region name/location data for a “large number” of regions that no longer exists (search for them with the in-world Map, and you’ll get a “None Found” error.
The Lab’s experiment with using textures on “empty” Map tiles offers this compass.
    • As a side-note to this – and while revealed some time ago by Alexa Linden – Simon Linden noted the Lab has a proof-of-concept for replacing map tiles with textures, offered in the form of a compass rose visible on one part of the World Map. There are obviously some concerns over how such a capability might be used were it to be rolled out to users, so the idea appears to be to allow LL provide additional info on map tiles via “empty” spaces.

 

2021 TPV Developer meeting summary, week #49

Posted on by Inara Pey
DARYA, October 2021 – blog post

The following notes are taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, December 10th, 2021.

These meetings are generally held every other week.  They are recorded by Pantera Północy, and her video of the meeting is embedded at the end of this report – my thanks to her for allowing me to do so – and it is used with the chat log from the meeting and my own audio recording to produce this summary, which focuses on the core topics discussed.

SL Viewer

  • The combined Simplified Cache and 360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.5.1.566335, issued on December 7th.
  • The Jenever Maintenance RC viewer, version 6.5.1.566306, dated November 30th, and the Koaliang Maintenance 2 RC viewer, version 6.5.1.565905, also dated November 30th, both issued on December 6th.
  • The Performance Improvements project viewer updated to version 6.5.1.566443 on December 8th.

The remaining official viewer flavours remain as:

  • Release viewer: version version 6.5.0.565607, formerly the Maintenance RC and dated November 10, promoted November 15 – this viewer now contains a fix for the media issues caused by the Apple Notarisation viewer.
  • 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 updated to version 6.5.1.566443, dated December 8.
    • Performance Floater project viewer, version 6.4.23.562625, issued September 2.
    • Mesh Optimizer project viewer, version 6.4.23.562614, issued September 1.
    • 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 combined Simplified Cache and 360 Snapshot project viewer is likely to be the next viewer to be promoted to de facto release status. Depending on how many use the RC cohort, this could be promoted before the code freeze period comes into effect. If not, it will be the first viewer promotion in 2022.
  • The Performance Improvements viewer has been updated, but remains at project status, but will hopefully be promoted to RC status in the New Year. With regards to this viewer:
    • It has been noted that it is still subject to some brief frame stalls “from unusual places”, which are still being investigated. There is also a report of some media-related frame stalls.
    • It has also been noted that due to the changes made, some the stats reported by the viewer (e.g. Ktris per frame / per second, some of the memory usage stats) are no longer accurate / are zeroed out because the counts associated with these stats were impacting performance, and it was deemed more preferable to have them logged by external tools from which the data could be extracted, rather than having every viewer performing its own profiling cycles.

Code Freeze

Subject to final confirmation, the end-of-year code freeze period is likely to come into effect on Monday, December 20th, and will run through Monday, January 3rd, 2022. During this time, there will be no official viewer updates and no server-side releases or simhost updates.

In Brief

  • Mojo Linden reiterated that the Lab is keen to hear back from users on the Performance Improvements viewer, and in receiving suitable performance improvements code from TPVs, and the emphasis remains on trying to improve overall performance for all users.
  • He also indicated that LL are in discussions about other improvements that can be made to the viewer and again, he is interested in hearing back from TPV developers and users on potential areas in the viewer that could benefit from improvement.
  • The log-in services update that caused issues for scripted agents (bots) at the start of the week and had to be rolled-back (see my week #49 SUG summary) was in part originally been made in order to remove outdated code from the servers. Mojo apologised for the issues it caused on deployment.
  • A request has been made for the new search front-end to return a JSON blob, so that TPVs can parse it and present search results in a manner that is more in keeping with the rest of the viewer UI.
  • Unless there is a strong case for it, the Lab is liable to drop GLOD support for mesh uploaders at some point in the future in favour of the mesh optimiser currently within the Mesh Optimiser project viewer. GLOD may therefore become a matter of legacy support among TPVs.
  • Runitai Linden noted that there is a mis-match between the benchmarks used to determine viewer default settings and the capabilities of systems the viewer is installed on. For example, a laptop running Intel HD Graphics can default to running on Ultra or High graphics due the the current benchmark threshold, whereas it might be better suited to running at Medium. He’s therefore asked TPVs for input on which viewer defaults might need adjusting going forward (And update to the maximum VRAM usage for the official viewer is apparently already in the works).
  • The last 20 minutes of the meeting is devoted to a technical discussion on what might be done to improve the appearance of SL in ways that might help lift retention by encouraging people to keep exploring (and hopefully meeting up with like minds and so generating the social links that will further encourage their continued engagement).
    • This discussion included the potential for using back-end baking for lighting, etc., to relieve the viewer load, and how it might work within a dynamic build environment like Second Life, together with updated ambient occlusion capabilities, etc.
    • The discussion also covered LODs on mesh, and the problems the current system has pushed onto performance (due to encouraging over-use of low LODs & creators then insisting users should over-tax their systems through high LOD render settings, etc.).
    • Please refer to the video for details on this discussion for the full context, including the fact that the discussion was only around ideas, and not projects LL is about to start working on.

December 2021 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 8th, 2021.

These meetings are generally held on the first Wednesday of the month, with dates and venue details available via the SL public calendar. 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 the following is a summary of key topics / discussions.

Web Properties – Past Month

  • Search: most of November was focus on the Search facelift that launched on November 22nd – those interested can see my own thoughts here.
    • LL are aware of criticism the new look has received, both performance-wise and in the design. The latter drew the comment, “we like it, so we’re keeping it.”
    • Again, as a reminder, this was a cosmetic update, the underpinning Search engine was not touched or altered as a part of the work – see below for notes on functional updates.
  • E-mail preferences changes: part of November was spent preparing for splitting the receipt of Group notices away from general IM receipt via e-mail when off-line. See the official blog post here, and my own notes.
    •  This change comes into effect from Wednesday December 15th.
    • There was a bug within the Change Email Settings page whereby re-enabling the receipt of Group notices would disable the receipt on IMs via e-mail. This is said to now be fixed.

2022 “Roadmap”

Whilst not a roadmap in the strictest sense (as no specific order was assigned to them), the Web team was looking to implement (or start) the following projects in 2022:

  • Search: an attempt to overhaul and refine the way the current web search engine works.
    • The two watch-words for this project are to make Search more useful and to return more relevant results.
    • This work is to be undertaken with a 3rd party SEO specialist company, rather than being handled by LL themselves.
  • Web Properties facelift: a facelift of all of the Lab’s public/user-facing web properties.
    • The two watch-world for this are to make all web properties more user-friendly and mobile friendly for tablets and smartphones.
    • This is seen as a major project to run through 2022.
    • This work will include the Marketplace, which is going to see “a lot of changes”.
    • Presumably  – and this is purely my personal take on this – the facelift work will see more utilisation of the Flat Design approach seen with the Search front-end and in things like the Second Life landing pages.
  • Infrastructure updates: 2022 will include various infrastructure projects aimed at better leveraging the tools and capabilities that are now available to LL via Amazon.
  • Premium Plus: the hope is that Premium Plus will be revisited and launched in 2022. Any questions on what it might look like, fees, etc., will not be answerable until the option is available for deployment.
  • Other projects: there is the potential for other work to be carried out in 2022, some of which may not be user-visible, but the details on other work for 2022 are still in a state of flux, and updates will likely be given at WUG meetings through the year.

Place Pages

Reed Linden asked the question on what would people like to see Place Pages actually do, and what would they like to get out of them.

Second Life Place Pages
  • It has been accepted by the Lab that as they stand, Place Pages are under-utilised and with a genuine raison d’etre for their existence, having been left hanging since their introduction in 2017.
  • There is functionality within Place Pages that might be better leveraged to help people find out more about specific locations within Second Life, but it is acknowledged the capability requires tuning and a more clearly defined purpose.
  • Some of the suggestions that were put forward included:
    • Allowing more than the current 3 screenshots + hero image.
    • Better integration between Place Pages and web Search.
    • Allowing Place Pages to be filtered by Maturity Rating and also selected options such as “private island”, “mainland”, etc.
    • Better promotion, so that people actually understand Place Pages exist and can be used as a promotional / informational tool about locations in Second Life independently of Search.
    • Offering the ability to provide information on events / activities, etc., allowing Place Pages to become more of a general web presence for locations in-world (which was actually part of the original promotion for Place Pages when they first launched).
      • This might be seen as something between a simple listing of events and a blotter-like feed of information and updates, possibly with ability to have it displayed as media in-world, removing some of the the need for script-intensive event boards.
    • Displaying historical  / predictive information on a location – e.g. how many have visited in the past week / month / how many are present at the moment, when the best times are to visit and find people there, etc.
    • Providing the means to include links to other social media / platforms utilised by a venue / business (e.g. Twitter, Discord, etc.).
    • Possibly de-coupling Place Pages from public search – useful for private groups who wish to have a central place for information that can be used purely by Group members, without it necessarily being surfaced through Search, etc.
  • It should be noted that currently, updating Place Pages is not a planned project from the Lab – Reed is simply seeking feedback on directions the capability might be taken should it become a focus for overhaul / update.

In Brief

  • Marketplace Q&A “forum”: Reed is still mulling the idea of where and how to place a means for the Web team to take and address Marketplace-specific questions / feedback.
  • Multi-factor Authentication: the work is focused on rolling the current capability across key web properties – including the Marketplace – and getting it into the viewer. This work will be in advance of any work to allow authentication using verified e-mails, etc.
  • Dashboard Communications option: the suggestion was made that, in addition to the planned mobile app, LL should consider adding a capability to the secondlife.com dashboard that would allow users to communicate with Friends who are currently in-world.
    • This is something LL are apparently in the process of discussing, together with providing the means for users to access things like Group functionality  / options via the web. And even – maybe – providing some level of inventory interaction via the web.

Next Meeting

  • Check the SL public calendar.
  • The core topic will likely be on the use of sub-brands within Marketplace stores vs using alt accounts to manage multiple brands / stores. That is the pros and cons, how it might work, what people expect of it, etc.