Category: SL User Group Meetings

January 2022 Web User Group summary: Premium Plus, Search

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, January 12th, 2022.

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!). Again, the following is a summary of key topics / discussions, not a full transcript of everything mentioned.

2022 “Roadmap”

In the 2021 year-end review blog post the Lab issued in December 2021, several projects for 2022 were mentioned, some of which fall wholly or in part under the Web team’s responsibility. Reed Linden used this meeting to discuss some of them, as summarised below.

Premium Plus

  • The Lab has a full list of features and options they would like to include in Premium Plus. However, what is actually delivered (and I assume when / how it is delivered) is still subject to a number of factors.
  • Because of the above, Reed could not offer definitive statements on what “will” be included, only hints to what might be present when the option is rolled out, such as:
    • The potential for a higher amount of free tier than Premium’s 1024 sq m.
    • The potential for specific Marketplace options to the available to Premium Plus subscribers.
    • The potential for reduced upload and other fees (Name Changes?) for Premium Plus.
    • The potential for a high-than-the-current Premium weekly stipend.
  • Also, because the final list of what is to be released is potentially still subject to change, final pricing has yet to be agreed, although it will be higher than the current Premium subscription fees.
    • The current plan is to introduce Premium Plus as “single level” offering at a set fee level (presumably monthly, quarterly, and annual, as per the current Premium). However, functionality has been provided to allow the Lab to offer further levels of “Premium” options, should this prove to be wanted.
    • However, Reed also indicated that Premium offerings might and in an unspecified future become à la carte, allowing users to pick and pay for the options they want.
  • The introduction of Premium Plus will not see any “downgrading” of current Premium subscription benefits or any changes to the current Premium subscription fees.
  • A major question still to be answered by the Lab is how are upgrades / down grades handled (e.g. a user goes from Premium with grandfathered stipend (L$500) to Premium Plus then back down to Premium; does their stipend revert to the current L$300 a week, or go back to the grandfathered amount?).

Search Improvements

  • The “next few quarters” will be focused on an overhaul of Second Life Search, with the aim of “making it work “the way we expect it to work, with all the little features we all as good Internet residents have come to expect from a robust and well rounded search engine”. This includes, but is not limited to:
    • Making the search filters more universal and offering more options for searching for things (e.g. such as being able to search for a region through Search → Places in addition to via the World Map).
    • Improving both the relevancy and the ranking of Search results.
  • To achieve this, the Lab has hired in specific experts in Search systems to carry out the work.
  • Specifics on precisely how changes will be made and implemented are currently unclear, as a lot is dependent on further metrics gathering on the way Search objectively functions and then working with the incoming expects to recognise where and how things can be improved.

Marketplace Variants and Performance

  • Described as the “big ticket item” for the Marketplace in 2022, is listing variants
    • This will introduce the ability to have variants (e.g. different colours of an article of clothing) within a single listing – perhaps the single longest-running request for Marketplace functionality, reaching back to beyond the days of Pink Linden.
    • The focus for Quarter 1 2022 (January through the end of March) is on putting in place the back-end support for this, including ensuring all of the required infrastructure is in place to support the functionality.
    • Work will then switch to build-out the user-facing aspects of the capability, with the expectations that new features could start surfacing for users in late spring / early summer, with work then continuing.
  • It has been noted that Marketplace performance can be very variable, depending on overall usage at any given time, and it is hoped that time in 2022 can be allotted to making some performance improvements.

In Brief

  • Another aspect of work that will be continuing through 2022 is the revamp of SL web properties to bring them more into line with the flat design seen within the web search pages, splash and log-in pages, etc.
  • Opening grid-wide experience capabilities to users is still under consideration, as is allowing larger script sizes – although technically, neither of these capabilities are the remit of the Web Team.
  • Marketplace:
    • There appears to be some confusion over the current status of commenting on reviews left on the Marketplace after recent changes. It keep things before, at present, only the seller of an item can leave a comment (reply) to a review of their item; all other changes were rolled back.
    • Marketplace Q&A option: as noted in a couple of past meeting summaries, it has been suggested LL provide a facility where questions concerning products on the MP can be asked and responded to by the seller or those who have purchased the item (similar to the “Customer Questions and Answers” section of many Amazon listing pages).  Precisely how this should look and be managed is to be a topic for discussion at the next WUG meeting.
  • Events (including searching events and how they are presented on the Event page) is also something that has been earmarked for possible work during 2022.
  • Date of next meeting: Wednesday, February 2nd, 2022, starting at 14:00 SLT.

2022 SUG meeting week #2 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Florence, January 2022 – blog post

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, January 11th, 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

Please refer to the server deployment thread for the latest updates and information.

  • The planned update to the SLS Main channel (comprising the simulator version deployed to the RC channels prior to the end-of-year break) has been pushed by to week #3. Instead, simhosts on the SLS channel were therefore restated without any deployment.
  • Wednesday, January 12th should see all simhosts on the RC channels updated to a new simulator release built – 566406 – using the updated toolset.

Available Viewers

There have been no updates to the current crop of official SL viewers, leaving them as follows:

  • 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

  • Bug-225288 “llStopAnimation is stopping all animations on detach instead of only the one specified” has by an issue for more than three years, but user Lucia Nightfire has made an interesting discovery.
  • A core part of the meeting involved LSL / HTTP error returns – please refer to BUG-231657 and the video for details.
  • The second half of the meeting includes a discussion of the Map API and llRequestSimulatorData returning region grid coordinates, per BUG-231443. Again, please refer to the video for further information.
  • The last part of the meeting largely revolves around speculation / opinions on the “avatar expressiveness” feature said to be coming in 2022. However, as the Lab is not in a position to discuss this feature further, I’ll again leave it to the video to cover.

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.