The following summary notes were taken from the Tuesday, February 1st, 2022 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. No video for this week, as Pantera was unable to attend.
Server Deployments – Restarts Only
All simhosts are being restarted on Tuesday, February 1st, 2022 (SLS Main channel) and Wednesday, and February 2nd, 2022 (SLS RC channels). No deployments will form a part of the re-starts.
There should hopefully be a new simulator version available for the RC deployments in week #6.
Available Official Viewers
This list reflects those official viewers currently available.
Release viewer: version version 6.5.2.567427 – Mac Voice hotfix viewer, January 13 – no change.
Release channel cohorts:
Maintenance RC viewer, version 6.5.3.567451, issued on January 20th, combining the Jenever and Koaliang Maintenance viewers.
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.
In Brief
The core of the meeting was a user-to-user discussion about BUG-231634 “[Feature Request] llGetObjectDetails() constant OBJECT_BODY_SHAPE_HOVER_HEIGHT”, and the exact requirements for calculating and avatar’s position (notably relative to a sit object), where the issues lay, and what needs to be done. However, given the Lab’s response to the feature request, it appears unlikely this will be a focus of work near-term.
Leviathan Linden is compiling a list of feature requests that he will likely be tackling as he eases back into working on Second Life. As s first part of this work, he has been looking at requests related to llGetPrimitiveParams(), noting:
I’ve already overhauled the logic to allow me to call the fundamental logic in llGetPrimitiveParams() via llGetObjectDetails() but will have to translate the parameter values. I’m at the point where I’m wondering which should be supported and which should not.
This sparked a discussion on the parameter should be supported, with suggestions including: PRIM_SIZE, PRIM_TEXT, PRIM_BOUNDING_BOX, etc., leaving Leviathan noting:
Well, my inclination would be to expose a few safe parameters to llGetObjectDetails() and add more later after more discussion/feedback.
So expect this to be a discussion for future SUG meetings.
Grauland, January 2022 – blog postThe following notes were taken from my audio recording and chat log of the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting held on Thursday, January 27th 2022 at 13:00 SLT. These meetings are chaired by Vir Linden, and meeting dates can be obtained from the SL Public Calendar.
Available Viewers
The Performance Improvements project viewer updated to version 6.6.0.567604, on Wednesday, January 26th.
The rest of the official viewers remain thus:
Release viewer: version version 6.5.2.567427 – Mac Voice hotfix viewer, January 13 – no change.
Maintenance RC viewer, version 6.5.3.567451, issued on January 20th, combining the Jenever and Koaliang Maintenance viewers.
The Tracy Integration RC viewer version 6.4.23.563771 (dated Friday, November 5) issued Tuesday, November 9.
Project viewers:
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 remains the most likely RC to move to de facto release status.
Fix for Long-Standing Animations Bug-11194
BUG-11194 “First frame of uploaded animations is triplicated” has been a long-standing issue (with workarounds) for uploaded BVH animations.
Aech Linden (a further transferee from High Fidelity) has been looking at the issue and developing a fix, although it involve a behavioural change for newly-uploaded
The explanation was garbled due to an network issue, but it appears the crux of the matter has been due to the way SL handles .BVH animations at upload, there have been two extra frame intervals added to the animation run-time, leading to errors in playback.
The fix is to remove the addition of these frame intervals (which occur at the start of the animation with zero interpolation.
There is a concern from the Lab that doing it unannounced could cause problems for new BVH uploads that include any workaround in anticipation of hitting the bug. Hence the heads-up on the change.
It was noted that a lot of pose stands BVN animations of just one frame, and the proposed fix might result in these giving “random” results from a pose when new .BVH files are uploaded and placed in them by creators (particularly those using the in-world Anypose tool).
The fix will only impact new BVH animations uploaded to SL; it will not affect existing BH animations that have been uploaded.
The general feeling at the meeting was that most animators in SL use .ANIM rather than .BVH.
Given some of the confusion around the use of .BVH files, it is possible this change will be subject to a project viewer offered up for animators to poke at and provide feedback.
Animation Priorities and Capabilities
The ability to set the animation at run-time (rather than relying on the priority set aby the creator) to allow uses to adjust priorities between the animations that are using to avoid conflicts. Nothing is currently planned on this by the Lab, but it has been noted as a reasonable request.
It was noted that Firestorm has added the priority and other animation information the the animation playback floater.
Additional animation information Firestorm added to the animation playback floater
The core of the discussion focused on options for enabling animation priority changes (and other changes – such as animation speed) were discussed.
Changing the animation speed brings with it its own problems, so was tabled.
For priority, a manual capability + scripted capabilities were discussed, together with the potential to have options defined by list parameters supplied via the simulator.
No conclusions were drawn as to what might be attempted in the future (the animation system is not subject to any planned work) – although it was acknowledged that allowing the animation priority to be displayed by the viewer a-la Firestorm, should be a relatively simple change, were LL to opt for it.
In-World Build Tools
There have been numerous requests for the in-world build tools to be updated / improved. Currently, there is no project for this work, but it is something about which feedback was sought.
The request was specifically couched in terms of “limited but powerful” updates – so nothing along the lines of implementing a blender-like toolset within the viewer.
Feedback included, but was not limited to:
A “snap to” option in the existing build tools. (e.g. so a bookcase could be “snapped” against a room wall without having to be manually positioned).
The ability for reactors to offer “snap together” kits users can put together (and presumably mod as they go). This would be a more major capability with the ability to define connection points between items.
Options to amending particle and prim text properties directly (+ pivot points).
More complex asset items that allow “holes” for windows / doors.
A visual node system for in-world to allow people to code anything “super quick” (e.g. elements that contain scripted behaviours that can be put together / used in objects, rather than having to write text scripts).
Terrain as a prim (the prim is a heightmap texture when used).
A form of EEP setting that can be used as a backdrop / “surround” around skyboxes (like a cityscape or mountains in the distance) rather than having to use massive textured sculpties.
Support for Marvelous Designer (MD) clothing manipulation (as used by Sansar) was suggested. However, Runitai Linden, who worked on the MD implementation for Sansar described it as technically “not a great fit” for integration into Second Life on the grounds it didn’t work well in a 2D view using a mouse.
There has been some talk in LL about hidden surface removal on avatars (e.g. if a part of the body is covered by clothing, remove it rather than expecting it to be manually alpha’d out). However, there are complexities in doing this that may not end up as a “win” if some kind of ability were to be implemented.
In Brief
Custom pivot points (note: this was apparently subject to a lengthy discussion at the previous CCUG meeting, which I was unable to attend, so some context from these notes may be missing).
Rider linden has been working on simulator support for custom pivot points in avatar meshes. There is still some work to be dome, so there is no time frame when this work may surface on Agni.
Custom pivots can be set (and accepted) both at mesh upload or via LSL.
The latter part of the meeting was a technical discussion on the avatar skeleton, the morph skeleton, blend shapes, options for overhauling the avatar system, none of which are current projects.
Runitai did indicate LL is thinking about is replacing / augmenting the entire avatar imposter system – which is not particularly performant as it can cause viewer frame spikes when someone is camming around and causing avatars in their view to imposter, etc. This would see avatars + their entire outfit that would be impostered undergo hidden surface removal and have all attached meshes and materials baked into one meh material which would then be decimated down to as few draw calls and triangles as possible and then render that rather than an imposter.
It was confirmed in the meeting that PBR is to be a project, but no time frames on when it will reach a point of visibility.
The Concierge & Land user group meeting is generally held on the 4th Wednesday of the month “intended for discussion & education of SL topics such as current known issues and bugs, project viewers and new features, and general Mainland issues.” Attending the Wednesday, 26th January, 2022 meeting from the Lab were Wendi, Izzy and Vix Linden.
Please note, this is a summary, not a full transcript – so only those topics related to SL services, etc., managed / provided by the Lab on which there is general discussion and feedback from the Lab staff at the meeting are recorded below. For general audience comments, non-LL topics (such as TPVs) please refer to the video by Pantera embedded at the end of this article, and my thanks to her as always for recording the meetings.
Highlighted the upcoming new features – avatar expressiveness, Premium Plus, Mobile solution new user avatar customisation, script improvements, etc.
Noted that there are no ETAs for any of the work (although improvements in scripts running on simulators has been an improvement due to the recent tool update), as it is all either in progress or in the planning stages.
Pointed to the fact that with the Uplift transitional work completed, 2021 allows LL to focus on bedding-in services on AWS and starting to offer performance improvements.
Following the announcement that High Fidelity Inc, has invested in Linden Research (money, skills sets and patents) there was speculation – emphasis intentional, as some of it has been on this blog – that High Fidelity’s spatial audio might at some future point be integrated into Second Life.
In response to questions on this, the general feedback from the Lindens at the meeting was that this currently isn’t being planned or discussion in-house, and that as such, voice will remain on Vivox for at least the foreseeable future.
Vix re-iterated that the script performance improvements currently being seen is part of an overall “re-tooling” project that has been underway for some time that has involved changes to the hardware configurations used by the simhost servers and changes to the simulator code to better leverage the AWS servers and their supporting infrastructure.
In short: lower script time in the simulator stats (CTRL-SHIFT-1) – so 5ms instead of 15ms = script run improvements.
As noted via the official blog post on the subject and via my weekly Simulator User Group summaries, this change should manifest in better script run times and improved overall performance within a region.
A cautionary note with this is that with these improvements may come increased throttling elsewhere within the code (e.g. such as with, but not limited to, remote services accessed via llHTTPRequest), or where regions were already until a heavy script load.
Also referenced the deprecation of various older protocols (e.g. 1.0 and TLS 1.1, libopenmetaverse).
In Brief
[11:52-12:33] The research questionnaire referenced in this official blog post were mentioned, and the fact that the e-mails containing it (for those who receive them) will be coming from research@secondlife.com, which is a legitimate Lab e-mail address. It was also stressed that the Lab will never request user divulge things like account passwords within this type of e-mail contact.
[16:22-16:50] Mention is made of the Tilia Inc., / Unity partnership announced on Wednesday, January 26th that will see Unity make Tilia’s services available to their community of developers – see the official press release and my own blog post for more.
[17:50-20:00] background was given to the Lab’s approach to employing outside of the United States, having offices elsewhere in the world, etc. The comments were predicated on some noting that Tilia Inc., (a wholly-owned subsidiary of Linden Research) has / has had a registered office in the UK since 2017. This segued into a discussion of LL providing 24/7 coverage by staff and the cost of doing so.
There have been some reports that altering the settings can prevent the receipt of all off-line notifications via e-mail – which may well be confusion over setting the check boxes; a request was made for people to double-check their settings (links in both blog posts above) if they are encountering problems in receiving off-line notifications.
[35:19-36:30] A reminder that the Valentines Shop and Hop event is on the horizon (Wednesday, February 2nd through Tuesday, February 15th, 2022), and that there will likely be the usual Valentines themed Last Names, the Hug a Linden, etc., activities, and so on.
[37:52-42:05] There are currently no known plans to extended the region / parcel ban list to support large numbers of names – those feeling it needs to be extended are asked to file a feature request jira.
Izzy Linden also indicated he has submitted an internal request to have listed automatically updated on the basis of account status (e.g. for accounts flagged as Closed are automatically removed from ban lists).
Izzy also warned about the “airlock” issue (as Izzy calls it) that could accidentally exclude people from region / parcel access (wherein there are allow / ban lists at both the region level and the parcel level, both of which have to be checked, but before the check is complete, users on slower connections time-out on their attempt to reach the region / parcel and so cannot reach it).
[54:50-56:40] In response to a question on the general mood at the Lab in the wake of recent changes / announcement, all they Lindens at the meeting indicated that they are personally “very charged” (positive) towards the direction in which SL is moving (including the move to AWS and what is being planned / implemented).
Hanging Gardens of Babylon, January 2022 – blog post
The following summary notes were taken from the Tuesday, January 18th, 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 need to be reviewed.
Server Deployments – Main SLS Channel Restart Issue
Despite being updated in week #3 with simulator version – 567269 – and with no RC update available for deployment, the SLS Main channel simhosts went through a restart on Tuesday, January 25th – and ran into a problem, with many regions remaining down for far longer than expected.
No detailed explanation for the issue has been given as yet other than, “one of our internal systems got a bit confused about what was started and what needed to be started.”
However, the issue was not in any way related to the simulator version itself, so no danger of the improvements it contains being rolled back.
Wulf Linden noted that the situation has provided LL with a lot of data that will hopefully allow them to “smooth out the pavement for the future.”
At the time of writing, any deployment to the RC channels for Wednesday, January, 26th was still TBA. Check the Second Life Server section of the forums for any possible announcement.
Available Viewers
This list reflects those official viewers available.
Release viewer: version version 6.5.2.567427 – Mac Voice hotfix viewer, January 13 – no change.
Maintenance RC viewer, version 6.5.3.567451 issued on January 20th, combining the Jenever and Koaliang Maintenance viewers.
The Tracy Integration RC viewer version 6.4.23.563771 (dated Friday, November 5) issued Tuesday, November 9.
Project viewers:
Mesh Optimizer project viewer, version 6.5.2.566858, dated January 5, issued after January 10.
Performance Improvements project viewer version 6.5.2.566967, dated December 17.
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.
The Return of Andrew (Leviathan) Linden
The first person Philip Rosedale hired when establishing Linden Research (aka Linden Lab) was one Andrew Meadows. As Andrew Linden, he was pretty much the lead engineer for the server side of things, hosting what was the Tuesday Server and Scripting Meeting, (alongside Simon Linden) which later became the Simulator User Group Meeting. Andrew departed Linden Lab at the end of 2013 to join Rosedale at his (then) new venture, High Fidelity Inc.
Following news that High Fidelity had invested in Linden Lab (in what is increasingly looking like an informal merger) and that around seven High Fidelity staff were moving to work on Second Life, I pondered whether Andrew might be among them – and even publicly mused if indeed he would be in a later post on that subject.
Well, turns out he has, but under a new Linden name, that of Leviathan Linden. Appearing at the Simulator User Group Meeting on Tuesday, January 25th as Leviathan, Andrew has some trying to guess (good naturedly) at the reason for the name change – including having forgotten his old password! However, the explanation was simple, as he indicated whilst also noting the areas he’ll initially be working on.
Leviathan was the name I wish I had picked years ago. It seemed like a good pick for a new beginning. I’ll be working on simulator stuff. I’m getting back on my feet by fixing bugs and implementing small features.
Leviathan Linden (formerly known as Andrew Linden)
His appearance at the SUG meeting was positively received, as was the news he’ll once again be working on simulator-related projects. Which just leaves me room to say, “welcome back, Leviathan!”
In Brief
Following the reports of teleport disconnects / general region crossing issues, a further Jira has been filed noting recent events – BUG-231683 – in keeping with the request made at the last meeting, and this is now being investigated by members of the QA team.
Monty additionally noted other reports on crossings have also been filed and he is digging through them and the associated server-side logs.
User testing around BUG-231582 ” [Simplified Cache] Newly rezzed objects are invisible after relog under certain circumstances” suggests the issue is not cache related, but might be related to the Interest List, with it being noted the problem may have surfaced around the time back-end changes were made to the Interest List in preparation for the 360-degree viewer.
A question was asked on whether the tools update would impact anything with Key Frame Motion (KFM) behaviour on animations, with it being noted – anecdotally at this point in time – that the moving_end event seems to happen while the animation is still underway. None at the Lab appear to be aware as to why the updated server code should impact animation events, and a bug report has been requested if the issue is found to be reproducible.
The latter part of the meeting delving into a discussion involving a future implementation of HTTP/2, updates to libcurl, etc., and issues around them. Again, rather than me mangling things – please refer to the text in the video.
The following notes are taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, January 21st, 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.
The two Maintenance RC viewers Jenever and Koaliang, have been combined into a single Maintenance RC viewer, version 6.5.3.567451, issued on January 20th.
Important note: the above viewer version has a significant issue that may prevent users on this cohort from logging in. See this report for details. The recommendation is for those wishing to avoid the issue is to download and install the current release viewer (or if experiencing issues, to contact Support and request and inventory fix).
The rest of the current list of official viewers remains as:
Release viewer: version version 6.5.2.567427 – Mac Voice hotfix viewer, January 13.
The Tracy Integration RC viewer version 6.4.23.563771 (dated Friday, November 5) issued Tuesday, November 9.
Project viewers:
Mesh Optimizer project viewer, version 6.5.2.566858, dated January 5, issued after January 10.
Performance Improvements project viewer version 6.5.2.566967, dated December 17.
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 combined Maintenance RC viewer is likely the next viewer in line for promotion.
The Graphics improvements viewer still has some bug to be fixed prior to moving to RC status. In particular, Euclid Linden is working on fixing the frame stall issue resulting from a media texture update. Essentially, if vsync is enabled, then command buffer resources aren’t as unbounded as they are with vsync disabled, resulting in textures copied to it a call to update media textures exhausts all available resources, effectively blocking it until it is flushed, rather than the buffer simply being discarded as is with case with vsync disabled.
A discussion on improving avatar animations through the use of a cap / reliable messaging between the viewer and the server to directly replace the default server-side avatar animations (walk, run, sit, swim, fly, etc), with custom animations – as per a scripted Animation Override – but avoiding the need to use llSetAnimationOverride and scripted HUDs (as is currently the case).
No work is currently planned for this, but interest was expressed in how it might work.
Firestorm has such a capability (adopted by some other TPVs), but the implementation isn’t widely favoured.
Another suggested option would be to make animations assets that define an animation set (e.g. a “Stand” asset that can be a container for a set of animation stands + the timing for running them + defining if they should be randomly or sequentially played).
A further advantage is that as well as removing the need for scripted attachments, it would allow everything to be drive via a viewer UI element, offloading work from the server to the Viewer (and potentially into an off-thread).
A problem in using a cap is that the viewer could hit it fairly readily, particularly if cycling through a large set of animated stands, for example.
There are also edge cases were scripts may still be required, but these are not inimical to the development of a client-side AO system able to work directly with the server-side animation graph.
The discussion lays out the benefits for more of a client-side AO control capability, and I refer you to it for the in-text comment – not that towards the end of the discussion, things turned towards some WIBNIs (as in, “Wouldn’t It Be Nice If the system could dynamically adjust walk speed to avatar size”), although elements like this would require a much more intensive overhaul of the animation system.
Please refer to the video for the full text of the discussion.
In Brief
[52:32-End] A short discussion on the benefits of LL defining an Area Search.
While Firestorm has an Area Search, it tends tow spam an entire region with requests for each individual prim hover properties (and is subject to draw distance and interest list).
ObjectNavMeshProperties, however (with changes and a throttle), could provide an alternative and potentially more preferable solution.
The core of this discussion is in text, with little input from LL – please refer to the video.
It has been reported via the forums that there is Mac OS Monterey performance issue associated with the viewer. At the time of writing, it is not clear how widespread this is or if a bug report has been raised, although the issue appears to be with a Monterrey OS capability, rather than the viewer – please read the forum post for more.
The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, January 18th, 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 need to be reviewed.
In terms of the improvements wrought by the simulator updates, LL states that they have seen a considerable performance increase especially with respect to the number of scripts executed per frame, while Monty Linden added:
I’ve written up some release notes. Relevant points:
More script code executing may engage more throttles and drive external http services harder than previously.
SSL library updates move http-in/out away from sslv3, tls1.0, tls1.1.
This release does move the sims story forward a bit. We have seen http-out targets (llHTTPRequest) that only talk sslv3/tls1.0, for example.
Login is unchanged. Web properties have their own story.
In theory, some day, we’ll line up all our ingress and egress points and actually be able to tell you what’s going on there.
Available Viewers
This list reflects those viewers available via the first four links in the LL Viewer Resources section, below.
Release viewer: version version 6.5.2.567427 – Mac Voice hotfix viewer, January 13 – NEW.
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:
Mesh Optimizer project viewer, version 6.5.2.566858, dated January 5, issued after January 10.
Performance Improvements project viewer version 6.5.2.566967, dated December 17.
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.
In Brief
Some are seeing an uptick in disconnects during teleports, prompting an extended discussion (full context in in the video, interwoven with a discussion on pivot points arising from the previous CCUG meeting). In short:
Frustration has been voiced that Jiras have been raised in the past on specific TP issues and “nothing was fixed”.
Regardless, LL are still requesting reports with information – who, from, to, exact time – of teleports that fail in a specific way, filed in a timely manner so that the relevant server files can be reviewed for possible clues / causes.
It is the specific nature of the failures that is of particular interest to LL, with more than one user reporting them, as Monty Linden noted, also replying to the critique that because “Lindens are in California” (only partially true) “with tiny ping times”:
I want a handful of user events that match their idea of a *specific* type of TP failure and the data so that I can go trawling for insight. As for ping times, this absolutely does colour how lindens understanding networking issues. But I’m in Boston so have poor ping times as well. All TP/region crossing failures are not the same. I want to filter down on a single type – not the rainbow of failures I already know are present.
Logs attached to Jiras for these cases do not necessarily need be be captured using the official viewer.
The issue of Friends lists failing to load (see BUG-231680) should be improved / resolved following a (non-simulator) deploy due on Tuesday, January 18th.
There has been a noticeable uptick of avatars taking longer to rez / remaining as clouds over the last couple of weeks or so. Some have mistakenly seen this as a simulator issue – although assets come via the CDN. Jiras have been raised on this, and the Lab is looking into matters.
