The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, June 8th, 2021 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. These notes relate to the core points of discussion; other topics may have ben raised without specific feedback from LL as actionable items, so please refer to the video at the end of this report for the full meeting and all points covered.
Server Deployments
At the time of writing, there had (again) been no server deployment thread available for review. However:
Tuesday, June 8th saw servers on the SLS Main channel updated with simulator release 560108, previously deployed to the RC channels. It includes a new LSL function: llGetInventoryAcquireTime(), which returns the “Acquired” timestamp that inventory name was added to the object’s inventory.
There is no planned deployment to any of the RC channels planned for Wednesday, June 9th.
SL Viewer
The Love Me Render 5 (LMR 5) viewer, version 6.4.19.560171 and dated May 27th, was promoted to de facto release status.
The Project UI RC viewer updated to version 6.4.20.560422 on June 8th, bringing it to parity with the new de facto release viewer.
The rest of the official viewer pipelines remain as follows:
Release channel cohorts:
Maintenance 2 RC viewer – Fernet, version 6.4.19.559726, dated May 19.
Project viewers:
Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.4.11.550519, dated October 26.
Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, dated December 9, 2019.
Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.532999, dated November 22, 2019.
360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, dated July 16, 2019.
In Brief
The core of the meeting focused on scripts: the need for large scripts, improved script management (including reducing the current cap on avatar scripts – particularly if large scripts are allowed), and generally improving script resources. There is currently no commitment from LL on any of the items raised in the text chat. Please refer to the meeting video for more.
Rider Linden indicated that his focus remains on updating the monitoring tools used by the lab to leverage those offered by AWS.
Video
The following video of the meeting is courtesy of Pantera Północy.
The following notes were taken from my audio recording and chat log of the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting held on Thursday, June 3rd, 2021. These meetings are chaired by Vir Linden, with dates available via the SL Public Calendar and the venue for the CCUG is the Hippotropolis camp fire.
SL Viewer
There have been no updates for the viewer for the week, leaving the pipelines as follows:
Release viewer: Eau de Vie Maintenance viewer, version 6.4.18.558266, dated April 23, promoted April 29 – No change.
Love Me Render (LMR) 5 viewer, version 6.4.19.560171, dated May 27.
Maintenance 2 RC viewer – Fernet, version 6.4.19.559726, dated May 19.
Project UI viewer updated to version 6.4.19.559612, May 14.
Project viewers:
Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.4.11.550519, dated October 26.
Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, dated December 9, 2019.
Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.532999, dated November 22, 2019.
360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, dated July 16, 2019.
General Viewer Notes
The current version of LMR 5, 6.4.19.560171 is set for promotion to de facto release status at the start of week #23 (commencing Monday, June 7th).
This viewer includes a fix for BUG-230789 “[MAINT-E] Alpha failures with Release 6.4.18.558266 (64bit)”.
The New User Experience project viewer will follow LMR 5 as the next viewer on the runway for promotion to de facto relapses.
There is to be a “general push to improve graphics performance over the next few months”.
BUG-5975 “Normal map rendering issue when UV island tangent basis has angular difference and mesh is smooth shaded” is an issue that should be fixed with LMR6. This may cause some content breakage, but will do more to fix an unwanted edge case that can affect content.’
The majority of the meeting focused on a discussion of this issue, which is more fully explained in this document, with Ptolemy Linden from the graphics team noting that investigations in to how best to resolve the problem and those related to it for SL are still on-going,
ARCTan
Summary: An attempt to re-evaluate avatar rendering costs and the cost of in-world scene rendering, with the current focus on avatar rendering cost / impact, with the in-world scene rendering / LI to be tackled at some point in the future.
Work has finally started on the UI refactoring to present people with a “one stop shop” for displaying surrounding avatar complexity information and action upon it.
This work is currently separate to the work on revising that actual formulas used for calculating avatar complexity, but the new UI should work with the existing calculations / values. The idea is to make the UI elements for ARCTan visible in a project / RC viewer whilst work continued on the new calculation formulas, then merging the new formulae into the viewer down the road.
It is currently anticipated that the viewer with the UI work will appear some time in the “next several weeks”.
The following notes cover the key points from the Web User Group (WUG) meeting, held on Wednesday, June 2nd, 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 at the end of this article, and the following is a summary of key topics / discussions.
Most of the month has been spent on implementing a new project workflow, for which the primary focus has been on the back-end systems, as per previous reports (post-uplift work, etc.), most of which has been non-user visible. Members of the team should start pivoting towards other work now this is drawing to a close.
Payments and Purchases:
Work has been carried out on the payment system – but no specifics supplied.
The issue with non-US Dollar purchases of Linden Dollars some experienced at the end of May has been addressed.
Web pages:
The Cookie permissions banner common to SL web pages has been reduced in footprint size (when displayed), so as to be less intrusive.
Further web pages have been updated to use the “new” blue SL logo rather than the older green one. This is low-priority work, so is only being addressed when pages still using the the older logo are worked on for other reasons.
Web page “control panels” for the original Linden Homes received assorted fixes for issues.
No updates on any significant Marketplace projects.
The issue with Quick Fill failing to pull-in the correct information on the non-English tabs for items has been addressed.
Planning / discussions have started with regards to allowing variants in product listings (e.g. a single listing for multiple colour versions on an item, which currently each have to have their own listing).
This is only preliminary discussions and planning, not actual work to implement.
The hope is the work can be formally kicked-off as a project later in 2021.
[6:27-9:27] Keyword searches: reports that Marketplace keyword searches are failing to return expected results, prompting the question whether anything has been changed. The short answer is, not as far as is known.
If there are specific examples that can be cited where this is occurring, the request is for them to be reported via the Jira.
[15:01-15:25] the Marketplace team are also working on ideas for additional MP listing categories. Again, no specifics, but additional categories may start to appear some time in the next 2-3 months.
June will see a further set of Last Names made available.
Some of these will be a general refresh of the available names (e.g. new names replacing some of the less popular names currently on the list).
Some of the new last Names will be themed after the Second Life Birthday and its (somewhat generic / bland) theme.
As with the April “limited edition” names, these will only be available through the period of the birthday and will then be removed from the list.
At the time of writing the list for these “special” names was still being refined.
All of the updates will be blogged when they become available later in June.
In Brief
[36:18-37:04] Premium Plus: no significant news, other than still under consideration, but is very much in the “thinking about it” arena, but may be revisited in the “next couple of months”.
Grid-wide experience by users are still under consideration, but no real movement either way on possible implementation or not.
Offering larger scripts is something the Lab have discussed in the past, and is something the might be offered in the future, once everything is bedded-in to AWS, but nothing planned for the immediate future.
[15:31-23:31] A general discussion on how the marketplace works, various behaviours and feature suggestions (e.g. bulk upload of product images, dynamic keyword – so a creator can specify a set of keywords across their listings, and can then change / remove words dynamically on the basis of how the perform), with the latter again referred to Jira feature requests.
[24:00-27:32] a broader discussion on how to put ideas to LL and where / how creators can make contact with LL. The former remains feature requests through the Jira. The latter is best achieved through LL user group meetings.
The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, June 1st, 2021 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. These notes relate to the core points of discussion; other topics may have ben raised without specific feedback from LL as actionable items, so please refer to the video at the end of this report for the full meeting and all points covered.
Server Deployments
At the time of writing, there had (again) been no server deployment thread available for review. However:
Tuesday, June 1st saw servers on the SLS Main channel updated with simulator release 560002, containing updates to the logging infrastructure.
Wednesday, June 2nd should see the RC channels updated with simulator maintenance release 560108 that includes a new LSL function: llGetInventoryAcquireTime(), which returns the “Acquired” timestamp that inventory name was added to the object’s inventory.
SL Viewer
There have been no viewer updates to mark the start of the week. So the pipelines remain as:
Release viewer: Eau de Vie Maintenance viewer, version 6.4.18.558266, dated April 23rd, promoted April 29th.
The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, May 25th, 2021 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. These notes relate to the core points of discussion; other topics may have ben raised without specific feedback from LL as actionable items, so please refer to the video at the end of this report for the full meeting and all points covered.
Server Deployments
At the time of writing, there had (again) been no server deployment thread available for review. However:
Tuesday, May 25th saw simulator release 599669 deployed to all servers on the Main SLS channel, containing the llOpenFloater() function intended for use with Linden-owned Experiences – see my week #18 SUG summary for more.
Wednesday, May 26th should see the RC channels updated with a simulator release containing internal configuration changes.
SL Viewer
There have been no viewer updates to mark the start of the week. So the pipelines remain as:
Release viewer: Eau de Vie Maintenance viewer, version 6.4.18.558266, dated April 23rd, promoted April 29th.
Love Me Render (LMR) 5 viewer, version 6.4.19.559046, dated May 19th.
Maintenance 2 RC viewer – Fernet, version 6.4.19.559726, dated May 19th.
Project UI viewer updated to version 6.4.19.559612, May 14th.
Project viewers:
Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.4.11.550519, dated October 26th.
Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, dated December 9th, 2019.
Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.532999, dated November 22nd, 2019.
360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, dated July 16th, 2019.
In Brief
During the CCUG meeting on May 20th, the subject of BUG-202864 ‘Change Mesh Uploader to preserve Scene File object names when a full linkset is uploaded’.
As noted in my summary of that meeting, the viewer had been updated to make this possible, but simulator-side changes are also required.
Apparently, the work had slipped through the simulator team’s net, but is now back on their radar, and will be included in an upcoming simulator maintenance update.
The region crossing issue when the avatar is unseated from a vehicle, but cannot move, leaving the camera only able to rotate around it, is likely to be an issue of controls failing to release – essentially, the simulator still thinks the avatar is still seated, while the viewer does not.
A current solution for this is to try to sit on something in the same region that also takes camera / movement controls (if possible), then standing again.
While it has been suggested a viewer-side “release controls” button in the viewer could fix this, it runs the risk of breaking other controls (such as experiences). The ideal solution therefore, is for a simulator-side “fix” to be implemented – although this may take a while.
People are continuing to see assorted teleport issues (e.g. failures within Experiences, and single failures requiring a re-log in order to re-enable teleports anywhere). LL are aware of these issues.
BUG-225742 ‘Server side physics shape reverts to “Convex Hull” for un-analysed meshes with “Prim Physics” connected to linksets with subcomponents animated with llTargetOmega / PRIM_OMEGA parameters upon server restart’, has been a long-standing issue. LL has been looking at the problem, but it is proving difficult to ascertain the root cause.
Video
The following video of the meeting is courtesy of Pantera Północy.
The following notes were taken from my audio recording and chat log of the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting held on Thursday, May 20th, 2021. These meetings are chaired by Vir Linden, with dates available via the SL Public Calendar and the venue for the CCUG is the Hippotropolis camp fire.
SL Viewer
Wednesday, May 19th saw two RCs updated:
The Fernet Maintenance RC viewer updated to version 6.4.19.559726. This version includes a set of Voice updates intended to reduce the number of drop-outs experienced when using the Voice plug-in. The full details of these updates can be found in the release notes and in the LL technology blog post.
The Love Me Render 5 (LMR5) viewer updated to version 6.4.19.559046.
The rest of the official viewers in the pipelines remain as:
Release viewer: Eau de Vie Maintenance viewer, version 6.4.18.558266, dated April 23rd, promoted April 29th.
Release channel cohorts:
Project UI viewer, version 6.4.19.559612, issued May 14th.
Project viewers:
Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.4.11.550519, dated October 26th.
Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, dated December 9th, 2019.
Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.532999, dated November 22nd, 2019.
360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, dated July 16th, 2019.
General Viewer Notes
Both the updated Maintenance RC and LMR 5 are the front runners for promotion to de facto release status. From Vir’s comments, there appears to be a lean towards promoting the Maintenance viewer.
Whichever f the above is promoted first may see the Project UI RC viewer leapfrog the other in being the next viewer set for promotion.
LMR 6 is continuing through bug fixing work and being prepared for QA testing. It’s unlikely to appear until LMR 5 has been promoted.
The Legacy Profiles viewer is going through a further UI clean-up, and should be progressing towards either a further project viewer release or possibly an RC release in the not too distant future.
The simplified cache viewer is now being updated with suggestions for improvements submitted via Jira, and a new version should be appearing “pretty soon”.
It’s still hoped the at Apple notifications fixes will be appearing in an RC viewer in the near future as well.
Due to the volume of viewers entering the backlog awaiting release, LL is considering merging some of the upcoming RC versions in a bid to reduce the overall number that could end up in flight, and ease the pressure on the release cycle. This will depend on how suitable different RCs are for merging with one another.
ARCTan
Summary: An attempt to re-evaluate avatar rendering costs and the cost of in-world scene rendering, with the current focus on avatar rendering cost / impact, with the in-world scene rendering / LI to be tackled at some point in the future.
The UI updates for how avatar complexity information is presented to users will likely be made available as a project / RC viewer separately to any updates to the ARC calculations, so when it appears it will display values based on the current calculation formula. The updates to the formula itself will be then be implemented separately as the project progresses.
Jira Note – Reports Failing
There have been instances of reports filed via the Jira erasing the descriptive text when filed. Until the problem is resolved, the recommended workaround is to copy the descriptive text fields to a notepad app or similar, then check the report after submission. If the text is missing, the report can be edited and the information cut-and-pasted back into it.
In Brief
Account / inventory syncing between Agni (the Main grid) and Aditi (the Beta grid) remains broken, but LL are working to fix it. One aspect of the issue appears to be inventory size on Aditi accounts.
As a temporary workaround, it has been suggested that those who can access the beta grid and who have very large inventories, consider deleting unwanted items from their Aditi inventory (not their main grid inventory), as this seems to improve the chances of a successful log-in.
In 2019, a viewer-side change was made to ensure individual objects in a mesh linkset upload would retain their original name (rather than all being converted to “Object” with the exception of the first object in the linkset). However, this change is still awaiting server-side support in order to work, and there is currently no ETA on inplementation.
There have been requests for additional Bakes on Mesh AUXiliary texture channels. However, there is reluctance at the Lab to do so without a substantial use case, as it would require an extensive overhaul of the Bake Service to accommodate the additional channels, which is not something LL wants to contemplate at present.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 