Category: SL User Group Meetings

2025 week #25: SL SUG meeting

Posted on by Inara Pey
Semina: The Interactive EP Experience, Silent Melody, April 2025 – blog post

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, June 17th, 2025 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They form a summary of the items discussed, and are not intended to be a full transcript. The notes were taken from my chat log of the meeting. No video this week.

Meeting Overview

  • The Simulator User Group (also referred to by its older name of Server User Group) exists to provide an opportunity for discussion about simulator technology, bugs, and feature ideas.
  • These meetings are conducted (as a rule):
  • Meetings are open to anyone with a concern / interest in the above topics, and form one of a series of regular / semi-regular User Group meetings conducted by Linden Lab.
  • Dates and times of all current meetings can be found on the Second Life Public Calendar, and descriptions of meetings are defined on the SL wiki.

Simulator Deployments

  • There are no planned deployments to any channels this week, only restarts.
  • The stall in simulators releases should be ending soon. It has largely been the result of:
    • Mainly a back-end move from one cloud asset store to another.
    • Coupled with continuing work on setting up github actions to build, store, deploy the various bits and pieces that run the SL backend services.

SL Viewer Updates

In Brief

  • Rider Linden raised the idea of shifting the Simulator User Group meeting to once every two weeks.
    • This was considered fine *if* there were not a lot going on – and with the exception of last few weeks and the end-of-year slow-down, this generally isn’t the case.
    • Most of those at the meeting expressed a desire to keep it on a weekly basis, with one suggestion that if there is not a lot to discuss during any given meeting, it is brought to a close early, rather than always trying to spin it out to an hour.
    • Another suggestion  – from Leviathan Linden – would be to keep the meeting to once a week, but alternate the Linden chairing it (so not always Rider Linden).
  • Questions on Introducing Opacity Control for BOM Layers and Mesh with same material applied to two or more faces but in different slots fail in interesting manner met with pretty much the same response: the ongoing back-end work and updates has more-or-less presented any significant updates involving the simulator.
    • Pepper Linden did indicate there is a desire within LL to do ore with Bakes On Mesh (e.g. PBR support).
  • llGetRegionWorldMapTile is tracked, but currently not on the roadmap for implementation.
  • A discussion on a Canny requesting the ability to trigger animations by UUID: how  / good bad the idea might be; the need to respect content rights (e.g. the The animation asset and the actively playing animation needing separate UUIDs).
    • No conclusions were drawn at the meeting.
  • The above got folded into a discussion on increasing regions sizes, based on this idea, and on a further discussion on UUIDs as a means of storing outfits to “save links” in inventory, uses for “wardrobe2 systems such as CTS, etc.
  • LSL functions to adjust parcel settings was raised and received positive responses from meeting attendees & Lindens (with a due discission on permissions and preventing idiots maliciously using scripts to bugger with other people’s land.

† The header images included in these summaries are not intended to represent anything discussed at the meetings; they are simply here to avoid a repeated image of a rooftop of people every week. They are taken from my list of region visits, with a link to the post for those interested.

2025 week #24: SL SUG meeting

Posted on by Inara Pey
TheNest: Sunbird Featherwish, April 2025 – blog post

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, June 10th, 2025 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They form a summary of the items discussed, and are not intended to be a full transcript. The notes were taken from my chat log of the meeting. No video this week.

Meeting Overview

  • The Simulator User Group (also referred to by its older name of Server User Group) exists to provide an opportunity for discussion about simulator technology, bugs, and feature ideas.
  • These meetings are conducted (as a rule):
  • Meetings are open to anyone with a concern / interest in the above topics, and form one of a series of regular / semi-regular User Group meetings conducted by Linden Lab.
  • Dates and times of all current meetings can be found on the Second Life Public Calendar, and descriptions of meetings are defined on the SL wiki.

Simulator Deployments

  • There are no planned deployments to any channels this week, only restarts.
  • The Preflight RC will likely get a WebRTC update in the week; the simulator version won’t change but the service will be different – the release includes a fix for a file descriptor leak that lead to crashes. This does not require any viewer-side updates.

SL Viewer Updates

In Brief

  • Parcel boundaries:
    • a long standing issue is that of people (mostly on Mainland) unexpectedly hitting parcels that are closed to public access (e.g. because the parcel edges onto a public road), and the ensuing confusion of getting bounced / losing the vehicle they are on, etc.
    • Rider Linden is hoping to be able to take another look at this in the near future, in terms of making such events less chaotic.
Just to remind people … the parcel bounce is for vehicles entering a parcel. It would check the permissions of all sitters and deny entry if any one sitter couldn’t enter. Essentially it would “bounce” the whole vehicle.
    • The response from those at the meeting was generally positive to this, in that it would end the situation of avatars being unseated from a vehicle which might still be able to enter / pass through the parcel.
  • SLua event handling proposal is being worked on – but exactly what this means could not be specified at the meeting.
  • A general discussion on mesh, mesh physics, uploads and decomposition, which appeared largely driven by a user seeking clarification, which strayed over into the realm of region crashers.
  • The subject of possibly deprecating pathfinding on the simulator (and potentially removing Havok from the viewer, allowing for an alternation for mesh decomposition came up at the meeting: see the In Brief section of my TPVD Meeting Summary for week #23 2025, for more.
    • In addition, Leviathan Linden indicated that pulling “some” Havok dependencies from the viewer could make it easier for physics engine updates.
    • The led to a lengthy discussion on how pathfinding might be replaced, concerns from those who are using it, with no definitive solutions.

† The header images included in these summaries are not intended to represent anything discussed at the meetings; they are simply here to avoid a repeated image of a rooftop of people every week. They are taken from my list of region visits, with a link to the post for those interested.

2025 week #23: SL TPVD meeting summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
The Quieting, April 2025 – blog post †

The following notes were taken from my chat transcript + the video recording by Pantera (embedded at the end of this summary) of the Third-Party Developer meeting (TPVD) held on Friday, June 6th, 2025. My thanks to Pantera as always for providing it.

Meeting Purpose

  • The TPV Developer meeting provides an opportunity for discussion about the development of, and features for, the Second Life viewer, and for Linden Lab viewer developers and third-party viewer (TPV) / open-source code contributors to discuss general viewer development. This meeting is held once a month on a Friday, at 13:00 SLT at the Hippotropolis Theatre.
  • Dates and times are recorded in the SL Public Calendar, and they are generally conducted in text chat.
  • The notes herein are a summary of topics discussed and are not intended to be a full transcript of the meeting.

Official Viewers

  • Official Viewer: 2025.04 – 7.1.14.15192634334, issued May 25, promoted May 28 – NEW.
    • Chat Mentions (Early Support): Type @ then pick a name. To follow: audible alerts and highlight colour pickers.  This does not support generic mentions such as @everyone or @here.
    • My Outfits subfolders: now supports the use of subfolders.
    • Build Floater improvements: increase to scale boundaries; Physics Material Type now updates when selecting linked objects; Repeats per Meter value no longer incorrect for non-uniform sized objects.
    • Hover height: the minimum/maximum is now +/- 3 meters.
    • Snapshot floater: L$ balances can be hidden independently of the rest of the UI.
    • Preference Search bar: general usability and readability improvements.
    • Refer to the release notes for full updates and fixes.
  • Second Life Project glTF Mesh Import, version 7.1.14.15361077240 June 2 – NEW.
    • This is an early Alpha release with some of the rough edges and already resolved many bugs and crashes, although more are to be found, together with general feedback from the community. Please read the release notes if you intend to test this viewer.
  • Second Life Project Lua Editor Alpha (Aditi only), version 7.1.12.14888088240, May 13 –  No Change.

glTF Mesh Uploader

  • The GLTF Mesh Uploader will be the next viewer release, although it doesn’t as yet have a new-format version number.
  • It is now available on the Alternate Viewers Page (and the version current at the time of writing is linked-to above).
  • The initial release is regarded as a “pretty rough cut”, with fixes already streaming into the code branch such that there is likely to be an update within the week.
    • Those trying the initial release should be aware that rigged mesh import in particular is in an “iffy state” for some of the more complex avatars.
  • As the next planned release, it will be merged-up to the Develop branch shortly – so if anyone would like to get some PRs in now would be a really good time to do that.

Test Items

Linden Lab is seeking content content creators who would be willing to contribute items for testing. Specifically, the Lab is seeking:

  • Rigged meshes only – unrigged content is not required at this time.
  • Everything from the most basic avatar mesh to complex bento, fitted, etc. meshes, clothing and Animesh is welcome.
    • However, avatars with onion layers should not be submitted. If possible, merge such avatars into a singular mesh with rigging in order to help simplify the Lab’s debugging work.
  • Content should be supplied in both glTF and COLLADA.DAE formats, to allow for A/B testing.
  • Content files should be sent to gltf@lindenlab.com.

glTF Uploader “Phase 2”

  • A “reunification” of the various asset import flows, focused on under-the-hood work with the import pipeline.
    • It used to be that assets like sounds, animations, images, etc., were uploaded through a single API when uploaded, but since the arrival of mesh, new asset upload types have diverged from the “common” flow to use their own.
  • The idea now is to provide a single API to get things from a creator’s computer and in-world to simplify the upload process.
  • According the CCUG meeting, this work will include an improved preview capability, providing more representative of what creators can expect to see under a set of EEP parameters, etc.
    • The ability to preview items in-world on Agni (the main grid) prior to upload will not be provided. However, there is still Aditi (the beta grid) for this.
  • It is also hoped that the import flow can be made easier to understand for existing and new content creators (e.g. providing a better preview; having things laid out in a way that makes potential problems more obvious, etc.).

In Brief

  • Switching away from OpenGL: this has not been mentioned for a while, and currently, it looks like LL is going to use an existing API abstraction, so as to allow Apple Metal to be targeted as well. The API mentioned was “something based off of NVIDIA’s Slang API” – with a note that hopes of getting “something potato friendly” is low.
    • However, there has been no firm decision, and alternatives were suggested in the meeting, so things are still up in the air.
  • Signal Linden requested feedback on the idea of deprecating and removing Navmesh characters / llCreateCharacter (i.e. Pathfinding).
I don’t state the idea lightly, and I understand its low adoption is partially due to a complex and buggy implementation. However, I pulled some data and it appears we have 1,900 navmesh characters across the entire grid. Half of those are ours (Think LL experiences.) There are 6 user-owned regions with more than 10 characters… This is very low usage. I haven’t seen any major merchants release notable content with the system due to its unreliability: but please correct me if I’m wrong.

– Signal Linden

    • Those at the meeting didn’t object to the idea.
    • An alternate approach (“more nuanced” as Signal Linden referred to it, once raised) suggested was to leave server-side the functionality in place and just drop the viewer side, until such time as new ways to handle Pathfinding could be developed.
    • Signal repeated that there are benefits (Pathfinding accounts for a lot of simulator-side code), but that not decision has been made as yet, he is seeking feedback.
    • The subject of Havok in the viewer was raised (used for both Pathfinding and mesh decomposition), with suggestions to replace Havok with the open source HACD library or VHACD (or similar newer implementation), were this to be done.
    • A suggestion was made for TPV developers to bring a HACD / VHACD to the viewer as a code contribution.
  • The above lead to a wider discussion on textures (slightly sidetracked by a complaint over the cost of 2K texture uploads for non-Premium + members), and related issues of texture loads on GPUs with limited VRAM,  texture crushing, etc., which continued through the latter part of the meeting.

Next Meeting

† The header images included in these summaries are not intended to represent anything discussed at the meetings; they are simply here to avoid a repeated image of a gathering of people every week. They are taken from my list of region visits, with a link to the post for those interested.

June 2025 SL Mobile UG meeting summary: latest releases

Posted on by Inara Pey
Campwich Forest grounds: location for the Monthly Mobile User Group (MMUG)
The following notes were taken from the Thursday, June 5th 2025 Monthly Mobile User Group (MMUG) meeting. These notes should not be taken as a full transcript of the meeting, which was largely held in Voice, but rather a summary of the key topics discussed. The meeting was recorded by Pantera, and her video is embedded at the end of this summary – my thanks, as always to her in providing it.
Table of Contents

Meeting Purpose

  • The Mobile User Group provides a platform to share insights on recent mobile updates and upcoming features, and to receive feedback directly from users.
  • These meetings are conducted (as a rule):
    • The last Thursday of every month at 12:00 noon SLT.
    • In Voice and text.
    • At Campwich Forest.
  • Meetings are open to anyone with a concern / interest in the above topics, and form one of a series of regular / semi-regular User Group meetings conducted by Linden Lab.
  • Dates and times of all current meetings can be found on the Second Life Public Calendar, and descriptions of meetings are defined on the SL wiki.

Resources

Release Updates

[Video: 3:34-7:59]

Latest Releases

Version: 2025.5.550 (Android) – June 4; 0.1.548 (iOS) – June 5, 2025.

  • Avatar rendering:
    • A further fix to rotational movement on attachment bones. This will fix some avatars and attachments on avatars.
    • “Pivot” offsets as well as “pos” offsets are now handled when considering when to ignore a deformer. This should fix a few more cases of avatars rendering incorrectly.
  • Improvements to the v-stick controller – size, position and visibility.
  • Addition of a new water shader along with a new setting “Use New Water” that defaults to enabled.
  • A new setting so you can choose to enable or disable automatic log-in.
The new Settings options for automatic log-in (Settings → General) and to use the improved water rendering (Settings → Developer Tools)
  • iOS Specific:
    • SL Mobile now requires iOS 13 or newer
    • A fix for an intermittent crash when opening Second Life Maps links (release 0.1.548).

Comments on the Updates

  • The avatar appearance fixes were the result of issues around deformers identified too late to make the previous update release. These were related to:
    • Meshes having embedded deformers which weren’t being handled correctly.
    • Some of the default deformers which should ignore bone positions being “incorrectly” handled, mainly as a result of “some confusion” within the desktop viewer over which value to read when ignoring deformers, and this had to be replicated in the Mobile app to get it to handle those deformers as expected when compared to the desktop viewer.
  • With the exception one one possible bug fix, there will now be a pause in avatar fixes and updates while the focus of work switches back towards rendering and merging-in / testing a number of changes and improvements, including how long avatars remain in silhouette (transparent), amount of content displayed, etc.
  • Water improvements: the water shader has been updated to more closely match the desktop viewer, notably in low-lighting conditions.

Purchasing Linden Dollars

[Video: 8:16-10:11]

  • A release to iOS in May 2025 added the ability to make Linden Dollar purchases through the App. This includes support for all payment methods supported by Apple.
  • iOS has received this capability first, as Apple required LL to add it within a certain time frame.
  • In-app purchases of Linden Dollars is on the roadmap for Android, but LL would rather focus on feature development, particularly given the limited ways in which L$ can be spent through the app at present.

Chat History and Synching with the Desktop

[Video: 10:42-15:05]

  • LL acknowledge that in order to be a useful companion app, SL Mobile needs to be able to access all of a user’s conversations (chat), IMs, group messages etc., regardless of receipt when using the app, offline or using the desktop viewer.
  • As all of the above are currently locally stored by the viewer on the client computer. In order to be available across both desktop and Mobile, some form of cloud storage needs to be considered, which requires he building of an API and the provisioning of security to ensure only the designated user can access their chat and IM logs, etc.
    • Some cloud storage has been created to handle the same for Mobile, but it is limited.
  • A further complication is the desire to have users be able to log-in to the Lobby on Mobile without and in-world presence, thus potentially allowing for simultaneous access via the desktop viewer, which would require sharing of chat and histories, etc., between the two in order for them to remain in synch.
  • As such, the capability is not easy to implement and requires careful consideration, utilising multiple resources at LL (Mobile team, Server team, the teams that own the chat and IM, etc., services). Given this, while it will be coming in the future, there is currently no time-line as to when.

Tip and Tricks

[Video: 29:36-31:35]

  • The Go To Lobby button is now available from the Mobile menu when users are in-world, allowing for a quick return to the Lobby.
  • Wearing Group tags:
    • Group tags are off by default.
    • To enable: Menu → Settings → General →  set Show Group Titles slider to On (√).
    • To change a Group tag: Menu →  People →  select Groups from the drop down →  select the required Group to display its information tap Wear Group Tag.
Left: The Go to Lobby Button, available from the menu when in-world on Mobile. Centre and right: enabling Group tags and setting a tag.
  • Share Security Data: can be enabled / disabled via Menu Settings Privacy toggle the slider.

In Brief

Please refer to the video for details on the following and other questions which may have had a simple “yes” or “in progress” reply.

  • [Video: 15:10-20:42] Map support:
    • There have been numerous requests for SL Mobile to support maps – both the World map and the Mini-Map.
    • As both the Mini-Map and the World map serve different functions, both were seen by those at the meeting as being useful to have.
    • It was also noted that the major reasons given: finding locations and teleporting (World) and seeing who is nearby (Mini), are use cases that do not necessarily require a map in order to be solved, if alternate mechanisms could be provided (e.g. a “nearby people” list).
    • For provisioning a World map style of solution, one option might be to use the web map system (although, as noted at recent Web User Group meetings, this does need some TLC in its own right), which would avoid the need for in-app map rendering.
      • Web maps already work with Mobile: use them via the browser on your device and TP links will open in Mobile.
  • [Video: 21:51-26:25] Continuous log-in – the ability to have a avatar logged-in Mobile all the time, without necessarily appearing as on-line, and able to receive and respond to messages etc.
    • Seen as positive by those at the meeting, with the caveat that there is the ability to maintain a full chat history, etc., between both Mobile and desktop.
    • This also included the suggestion of allowing users to save their chat logs, etc., to their own cloud storage and access it from both desktop and Mobile.
  • [Video: 26:30-28:23] Switching accounts: there have apparently been requests to make switching between accounts on Mobile “easier”.
    • General consensus was that switching accounts on Mobile is no worse than on the desktop viewer.
    • A suggestion of having multiple account be able to use Mobile and access the Lobby for messaging purposes would be useful.
  • [Video: 28:34-29:25] Clarification was given that the Mobile Team are looking at chat/message histories, continuous log-in and switching accounts as a set of deliverables that could be made together in some form, and were looking for indicators that they would be well-received by users.
  • [Video 33:50-34:55] The Mobile app can (at least for some, myself included) hang when loading the Lobby. The screen will simply freeze for multiple seconds (sometimes into double-digits). There is no clear cause for this, but might be related to network connectivity issues, which are due to be looked at, with those experiencing the problem asked to submit feedback through the app.
  • [Video: 35:44-37:04] PBR support – this is pending the rendering work, which should help optimise memory use to allow PBR support + one other piece of work. When done should be close to the desktop implementation.
  • Via chat: Scripted Rotation Broken on Mobile – to be looked at.

Date of Next Meeting

June 2025 SL Web User Group MP, Zero and a general discussion

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 4th, 2025. These notes form a summary of the items discussed and is not intended to be a full transcript.

A video of the meeting, recorded by Pantera Północy, is embedded at the end of this summary, with sections of this summary times stamped to the relevant points in the video for those wishing to refer to the audio. My thanks as always to Pantera for recording it and making it available.

 Table of Contents

Meeting Overview

  • The Web User Group exists to provide an opportunity for discussion on Second Life web properties and their related functionalities / features. This includes, but is not limited to: the Marketplace, pages surfaced through the secondlife.com dashboard; the available portals (land, support, etc), and the forums.
  • As a rule, these meetings are conducted:
    • On the first Wednesday of the month and 14:00 SLT.
    • In both Voice and text.
    • At this location.
  • Meetings are open to anyone with a concern / interest in the above topics, and form one of a series of regular / semi-regular User Group meetings conducted by Linden Lab.
  • Dates and times of all current meetings can be found on the Second Life Public Calendar, and descriptions of meetings are defined on the SL wiki.

General Work in Progress

[Video: 1:51-7:18]

  • Marketplace: work is continuing on making the Marketplace more responsive, both with product listings and with using Marketplace search options & the category responses.
  • Downloads page:
    • Work is being put into adding further language translations.
    • The current drop-down for viewer system requirements is going to be updated to point to the main system requirements page, rather than being a separate listing.
    • The addition of Firestorm buttons to the page, and there are no plans at presents to do the same for other TPVs.
      • The reason given for this the volume of users running Firestorm compared to other TPVs.
      • The flipside to this is that including Firestorm on the official download page both gives the impression of “official endorsement” of Firestorm & further funnels users towards that TPV over others.
  • Project Zero: updates are being made to make it easier for people who still have time available on their Project Zero use to get back to their session (also see below).
  • Work that had been going into the back-end infrastructure is now nearing completion, and should free-up resources.
  • SL Wiki:
    • As noted at the SUG meeting, LL are planning to move away from using the mediawiki platform for the SL Wiki to a new service.
    • Some SL Wiki pages have been ported to Readme.com as a test, but no formal decision as to which platform will be used has been made.

Project Zero (SL  in a Browser) Update

[Video: 8:26-10:44]

  • The URL for Zero will be changing to web.secondlife.com.
  • The current page link for Project Zero at the top of the secondlife.com dashboard page is to be replaced by an actual button.
  • The link to Firestorm Zero has been removed.
  • General web page design improvements.
  • Largely non-visible changes to the join flow for incoming users.

General Discussion

Please refer to the video for details on the following.

  • [Video: 12:11-17:09] A discussion on the CasperVend Sales and Coupons options – who uses them and how.
    • Those at the meeting indicated they tend to use both in several ways (e.g. as a means of providing a discount; as a means include a shared item that is bundled across multiple products;  for event sales; for individual item sales in-store, etc.).
    • It was suggested that LL contact the Mainstore Release Discord group to gain broader feedback.
  • [Video 17:36-28:15 – text] Marketplace unavailability: a comments was made about the Marketplace reporting to be “under heavy load” and thus inaccessible to users.
    • This appears to have been the result of the same kind of DDOS / aggressive and improper crawler bots issue has has been affecting the SL Wiki, and steps are being put in place to prevent it recurring.
  • [Video: 28:24-32:10] SL Wiki: syntax highlight is broken (see: [⚠️ URGENT] SL Wiki: syntax highlight is broken *and* in-world access via viewer is down…). This impacts most pages with function pages with example code.
    • This was apparently the result of an update to the version of MediaWiki LL are running, and fixes are in progress.
  • [Video: 32:17-39:51] A questions was asked on why the main image on a Marketplace listing no longer “zooms” when clicked , and why is there are large amount of whitespace between the image and the options on the right side of the listing page.
    • Juniper Linden indicated that previously, the main image was a modal view of the original image uploaded by the merchant, and the “zoom” was simply displaying it at its original size; now the image is displayed directly within it listing at its original size.
    • The image upload size limitation is still, but the hope is to eventually remove it, and simply have a zoom for very large images.
  • General comments on:
  • [Video:54:51-end] A general question: if people had a single poker chip per year to get something in SL fixed, what would they place it on? Responses included: Secondlife.com dashboard refresh; conversations floater overhaul; shape keys; a complete fix for animation constraints.
  • Overlapping with the above were comments on the state of the Events listings (particularly people posting one event multiple times and how to report them), with and agreement from Kali Linden that it is a mess, and could really do with a ground-up rebuild (resources allowing); in terms of reporting, that is to be referred back internally for feedback on the best way to do so.

Next Meeting

  • Wednesday, July 2nd, 2025.

2025 week #23: SL SUG meeting

Posted on by Inara Pey
Soul Deep, March 2025 – blog post

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, June 3rd, 2025 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They form a summary of the items discussed, and are not intended to be a full transcript. The notes were taken from my chat log of the meeting. No video this week.

Meeting Overview

  • The Simulator User Group (also referred to by its older name of Server User Group) exists to provide an opportunity for discussion about simulator technology, bugs, and feature ideas.
  • These meetings are conducted (as a rule):
  • Meetings are open to anyone with a concern / interest in the above topics, and form one of a series of regular / semi-regular User Group meetings conducted by Linden Lab.
  • Dates and times of all current meetings can be found on the Second Life Public Calendar, and descriptions of meetings are defined on the SL wiki.

Simulator Deployments

  • There are no planned deployments to any channels this week, only restarts.

SL Viewer Updates

In Brief

  • As noted in the previous update, the WebRTC “switch on” has been on hold, in part due bugs, performance optimisations, and infrastructure updates.
    • A new version of the code is due to be deployed, aimed at addressing some of the first two of these requirements.
    • There is also the issue of around 21% of Firestorm users not running a WebRTC capable version of that viewer, which is also a potential impact on the switch-over.).
    • In the WebRTC prototype the audio mixing/relaying happens on the same host as the region; there is a project to move that compute onto dedicated server stacks.
  • Given the on-going issues with the SL wiki (the latest being a sustained DDOS-type impact, thought to be caused by “aggressive and improper crawler bots”), it was indicated that LL are planning to move away from using the mediawiki platform to a new service. No details were given on what service this might be,  and the statement was followed by numerous appeals for all existing SL wiki data to be ported and/or not lost.
  • SLua:
    • There is something of a performance bottleneck with SLua in that SLua scripts run so much faster = people want to make content that thrashes prim params quickly = the server struggles to send the updates fast enough, causing the bottleneck.
      • Leviathan Linden had been looking at this and is hoping to get back to it soon, noting that he should be able to offer some gains in the speed with which the server sends the updates.
      • However, he doubts the Lab will “be able to fully unlock the SLua potential for thrashing object properties” without a “major overhaul of the communication protocol”.
    • It has been noted that  some ll.List functions produce SLua run-time errors when working with lists (tables) that contain nil values. This is a known issue at the Lab, and discussion on how to address it are in progress.
  • General, user-led discussions on:
    • Bots (e.g. better account verification).
    • The potential to improve / replace Media on a Prim (MOAP) – such as replacing it with SVG rendering on a prim (seen as handy for use in HUDs and well), or reducing the requirement for every object using MOAP to call its own browser instance. LL do not appear to have any work on the roadmap for either of these, although feature requests for SVG support were noted as having been “seen”.

† The header images included in these summaries are not intended to represent anything discussed at the meetings; they are simply here to avoid a repeated image of a rooftop of people every week. They are taken from my list of region visits, with a link to the post for those interested.