Category: SL User Group Meetings

2021 SUG meeting week #24 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Bella’s Glade, March 2021 – blog post

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, June 15th, 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

No deployments are planned for the week, other than those related to the SL18B regions. Restarts will be taking place for those servers that have not done so for the last 10-ish days. The (non-)deployment notes are here.

Week #25 (commencing Monday, June 21st) should include a deployment to the RC channels.

SL Viewer

The Project UI RC viewer updated to version 6.4.20.560520 on June 14th.

The rest of the official viewer pipelines remain as follows:

  • Release viewer: LMR 5 viewer, version 6.4.19.560171, dated May 27, promoted June 7 – no change.
  • 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

  • Group chat remains unsteady, but the Lindens are planning for additional work in an attempt to stabilise things further.
  • The Aditi inventory syncing / log-in issues continue. The root cause appears to have been identified, but fixing it has been referred to as “complex”, although the hope is the issue fixed Soon™. Mazidox Linden further added:
I can’t really get into details because it involves the insides of how logins work. But the best thing you can do on Aditi is log in using an alt with a tiny inventory. That’s more likely to succeed than your account with all the stuff you have on Agni. (The actual issue has nothing to do with inventory, but that’s the only thing you can control from your side to make it more likely to succeed.)
  • Scripts and resources: the core of the meeting revolved around the issue of script usage and its impact on server resource use and simulator performance – notably, but not exclusively – with regards to in-world scripts and the impact of idle scripts. In brief:
    •  Onus tends to be put on avatar scripts (which do have an impact – most notably when an avatar is entering a region and all the data related is being unpacked and all its associated scripts are re-started.
    • However, in-world scripts, even those that are idling, can have an impact on performance. Whilst action has been taken to ease some of this, the impact of have thousands of scripts in a region can and will have a cumulative effect on simulator performance.
    • How better to manage things is a matter of much debate. Should script resources be increased? Would it be better to allow larger scripts rather than making people split functionality across multiple scripts? Do large, multi-function scripts  run better (or worse) than a plethora of smaller scripts doing the same thing? Would it be possible to restructure script handling / LSL capabilities such that scripts that only need to be active in the presence of an avatar can be automatically be disabled when no avatars are within a (creator-defined) proximity, etc.
    • This discussion starts around 22 minutes into the meeting, and full context can be gained through the meeting video below.

Video

The following video of the meeting is courtesy of Pantera Północy.

2021 TPV Developer meeting week #23 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
TokSik Jello, March 2021 – blog post

The following notes are taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, June 11th,, 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 a transcript of the chat log from the meeting and my own audio recording to produce these notes.

SL Viewer

[Video: 0:00-3:26]

There have been no updates for the viewer since the start of the week, leaving the pipelines as follows:

  • Release viewer: LMR 5 viewer, version 6.4.19.560171, dated May 27, promoted June 7 – NEW.
  • Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself):
    • Project UI viewer updated to version 6.4.20.560422, dated June 14.
    • 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.

General Viewer Notes

  • The New User Experience project viewer will be the next viewer to be promoted to de facto release status.
  • The Legacy Profiles viewer is still having UI updates made, but is expected to go to RC status when the next update is issued.
  • The notifications fix for Mac systems is still waiting its turn to be made publicly available.

Land and L$ In-Viewer Purchases Issue

[Video 0:58-2:30]

Wednesday, June 9th saw issues occur with in-viewer Linden Dollar and land purchases. Whilst resolved within hours, the issue was traced back to an overly aggressive series of checks the viewer was carrying on on the various software certificates used by Linden Lab. This caused the viewer to throw a wobbly when encountering a new certificate that did not quite meet the expected format.

The certificate involved was massaged so as not to get the viewer upset, fixing the issue; however, in order to avoid similar situations in the future, the Lab plan to implement a viewer-side change to the way the viewer carries out such checks. This change will be released as a part of the normal Maintenance RC viewer updates.

In Brief

  • There have been some questions raised about Vivox end-of-lifing the current Vivox 4 Voice system in favour of the more recent Vivox 5. Linden Lab is not aware of this happening any time in the future,  but is aware that due to the way Vivox 5.x operates on different platforms, when such a change eventually comes to pass, it might required some significant changes in the manner in which SLvoice.EXE interacts with the viewer.

2021 SUG meeting week #23 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Drune Diesel, March 2021 – blog post

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.

2021 CCUG meeting week #22 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Sheepville, March 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, 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.
  • Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself):
    • 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”.

June 2021 SL Web User Group summary with video

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, 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.

Web Properties Updates

[Video: 0:18-3:20]

  • 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.

Marketplace

[Video: 3:29-3:57 + as indicated by timestamps]

  • 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.

Mobile Client

[Video: 4:05-4:18]

  • The iOS version still has not been passed to Apple for further evaluation, as it is still being worked on by LL.
  • Android: nothing to report.

Name changes / Last Names

[Video: 4:20-5:15]

  • 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”.
  • [38:54-41:00] User-defined grid-wide experiences + larger scripts:
    • 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.

Next Meeting

  • Wednesday, July 7th, 14:00 SLT.

2021 SUG meeting week #22 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
ChicLand, March 2021 – blog post

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.
  • Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself):
    • Love Me Render (LMR) 5 viewer, version 6.4.19.560171, dated May 27th.
    • 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.

Video

The following video of the meeting is courtesy of Pantera Północy.