The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, February 9th, 2021 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting.
Server Deployments
At the time of writing,the release notes for the week had yet to be produced. However, deploys can be summarised as:
On Tuesday, February 9th, the SLS Main channel was updated to server release 555570, previously deployed to the RC channels. This update comprises: feature request BUG-230026 Extended error return for llHTTPRequest – see here for documentation – and the following fixes:
BUG-228783 llSitOnLink() is not generating Notifications nor logs in Events in the viewer.
BUG-8265 (BUG-230131) CONTROL_ML_LBUTTON and CONTROL_LBUTTON not working when llTakeControls called in the experience_permissions event
SL-14802 experience notifications are sent to frequently.
There is no deployment to the RC channels planned for Wednesday, February 10th.
The Tuesday 9th Feb deployment means that all simulators should currently be running the same version.
Rider Linden also indicated that additional micro-channels (along the lines of the Cake and Snack, etc., mini-RC channels generally used for specific testing or code and fixes) are to be created, but this work will be done outside of the normal Tuesday / Wednesday deployment time frames. These new channels are described as being need because “We want to run some controlled tests on small manageable numbers of regions at a time.”
SL Viewer
No start-of-week changes to the current list of available official viewer versions, leaving the pipelines as follows:
Current release viewer Dawa Maintenance RC Viewer, version 6.4.12.555248, dated January 25, 2021, promoted February 1st, 2021 – NEW.
Release channel cohorts:
Project Jelly viewer (Jellydoll updates), version 6.4.13.555567, February 5, 2021.
Custom Key Mappings project viewer, version 6.4.12.553437, January 7, 2021.
Project viewers:
Love Me Render (LMR) 5 project viewer, version 6.4.12.553511, issued on January 7, 2021.
Simple Cache project viewer, version 6.4.11.551403, November 12.
Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.4.11.550519, October 26.
Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, December 9, 2019.
Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.532999, November 22, 2019.
360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, July 16, 2019.
In Brief
Work is continuing on trying to get the Map tile updates working, but no ETA.
Questions were (again) raised on the new Linden Research board for directors and things like Town Hall meetings. for the latest available information, see: Linden Lab’s board of directors: snippets of news).
In terms of board members appearing in-world at public meetings, it is worth pointing out that the last time a board member appeared in-world was likely SL5B in 2008, when former board member gave his (in)famous keynote address
The following notes are taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, February 5th, 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.
The Project Jelly viewer updated to version 6.4.13.555567 on Friday, February 5th. This presumably brings it to parity with the current release viewer code base, and moves it closer to potentially being the next viewer to gain promotion to de facto release status, although no decision has been made on this as yet.
Current release viewer Dawa Maintenance RC Viewer, version 6.4.12.555248, dated January 25, 2021, promoted February 1st, 2021 – NEW.
Custom Key Mappings project viewer, version 6.4.12.553437, January 7, 2021.
Project viewers:
Love Me Render (LMR) 5 project viewer, version 6.4.12.553511, issued on January 7, 2021.
Simple Cache project viewer, version 6.4.11.551403, November 12.
Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.4.11.550519, October 26.
Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, December 9, 2019.
Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.532999, November 22, 2019.
360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, July 16, 2019.
General Viewer Notes
With Dawa now at release status, the current RC viewers are being bought up to parity with its code base.
As noted in my most recent CCUG summary, the Love Me Render (LMR) 5 graphics RC viewer is close to being ready for promotion from project to RC status.
The simple cache viewer (VFS replacement viewer) is in “decent shape” for promotion to RC status once updated to the Dawa code base.
There may be further UI work for the Legacy Profile project viewer (returns avatar profiles,etc., back into the viewer, a-la Firestorm) which may delay this viewer from progressing.
For OS X users, a viewer is in the works that will “get Apple’s notarisations working”. This has been something of a long standing issue, and the viewer should be appearing in the near future.
This viewer essentially improves the rendering of Jelly Doll avatars.
The idea behind Jelly Dolls (first introduced in 2015, with various improvements since) was to give users the means to reduce the load of having to render extremely complex avatars on computers with low hardware specifications by:
Explicitly selecting a nearby avatar and set its display value to Do Not Render, reducing them to a simplified, “flat” grey avatar form.
And / or setting a “complexity value” within the viewer that, if exceeded by any avatar in the field of view, will render it as a Jelly Doll.
Both the grey and the Jelly Doll forms are simplified avatar outlines, with the latter rendered as one of a number of solid colours selected by the viewer from a colour map. The term was coined by user Whirly Fizzle after the British Jelly Babies brand of sugared jelly sweets.
There have always been a number of issues with the manner in which these avatars are rendered. For example:
On the visual side, many users have avoided the viewer’s complexity setting (to the detriment of their viewer’s performance) as they do no like seeing solid, brightly coloured avatar forms in their field of view.
On the technical side, the code currently attempts to render all of avatar’s attachments. As these tend to be the most costly to render, this can defeat he object of the code.
Also, the baseline formula for jelly doll calculations doesn’t allow for consistent results.
As a result, the Project Jelly viewer:
Does not attempt to render attachments, but instead renders affected avatars as a simplified, easy-to-render humanoid shape.
Render all such avatars in grey, no longer using the previous colour map, in the hope this will encourage more people on lower-end systems to use the capability, as the grey avatar forms tend to be less intrusive within a scene.
[13:38 via chat] In relation to avatar rendering / Jelly Dolls, it was asked if better global controls for rendering could be provided. In reply, Grumpity indicated that in addressing performance as a whole, such global controls might be considered in the future.
Oz Linden is working on the viewer log-in process that are designed to prevent people logging-in to Second Life when their inventory is “broken” (and potentially making their situation worse).
The updates to the log-in process means there will be additional checking on the status of an avatar inventory data on the back-end as a user logs into Second Life.
If errors within the data are found, the log-in process suspended, in order to prevent the errors being propagated to the viewer, and then viewer then exacerbating the situation by trying to manipulate the inventory database further on the basis of the invalid data.
Should this happen, the user will receive a massage that explicitly states that log-in has failed as a result of inventory issues with the request the user contacts Support. This message will also provide some specific information the user can pass to Support when they contact them.
Support will then use the information supplied to initiate the required corrective action to resolve the issue.
While this may impede users with inventory problems from logging-in, the hope is that these changes will actually make the resolution of inventory-related issues easier to correct at source and thus have less of an overall impact on affected users.
This is seen as a priority change, and the Lab hopes to be in a position to have the back-end changes tested and the viewer-side updates available by the end of the month.
In Brief
[4:17-4:32] The Lab is making some changes to how deployments are managed within the AWS environment. If done correctly, this work should result in no user-visible changes.
There remain some issues still to be fully resolved as a result of the transition to AWS, including (but not necessarily limited to):
The problem with Map tile not being generated. This is being addressed.
The fact that the chat servers currently need to be restarted more frequently than pre-Uplift. This is still being diagnosed.
Teleport failures resulting in an “wrong” or “invalid” region message. This is also being diagnosed.
However, the Lab caution against assuming any issue that is encountered is a result of the AWS transition. The general rule remains, if you’re seeing a specific (and preferably reproducible) issue, raise a bug report.
[14:31-15:33] in response to a question on the avatar skeleton (why 159 bones, but capped at 110 on upload?), vir pointed out the 110 bone cap is per sub-mesh in a character, rather than on a complete character (which can have several sub-mesh components. The reason for the cap is down to older GPUs that can be used in SL being unable to handle the transform matrices.
[19:54-20:28] Premium Plus: internal discussions have resumed on the deployment of Premium Plus, but there is nothing to share in terms of time frame, etc., at the moment.
[21:49-24:15] The recent Marketplace issues are seen as a combination of both the continuing work to improve the Marketplace experience and the work to transition it to AWS.
As the MP involves multiple back-end services, there are a lot of interdependencies that can be impacted particularly as a result of the AWS transition work, and not all of these can be accurately QA’d, as the sheer volume of transaction, etc., the MP sees hourly cannot be easily or accurately replicated.
The current focus is on general MP stability (including its various dependencies) in order to hopefully make future maintenance and update easier / smoother.
The most preferable way to deal with the MP would perhaps be to take the service down entirely for a a period of time and overhaul it, and then re-release it. However, given the impact this would have, it is simply not a viable option.
[24:42-25:45] Generally speaking, LL believe SL to be a lot more stable / robust now than previously, simply because it is running on much more recent hardware and within an infrastructure where they no longer have to worry about things like hardware that is well beyond its operational life failing, whilst any underpinning hardware / infrastructure issues are more-or-less immediately addressed by AWS. This in itself allows LL’s engineering and ops teams to be more focused on running the software side of things.
The following notes were taken from my audio recording and chat log of the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting held on Thursday, February 4th 2021 at 13:00 SLT. These meetings are chaired by Vir Linden, with dates available via the SL Public Calendar.
Due to Vir having to depart the meeting early, the majority of the meeting focused on viewer rendering.
SL Viewer
There have been no updates since the promotion of the Dawa Maintenance viewer to de facto release status earlier in the week. the viewer pipelines therefore remain as:
Current release viewer Dawa Maintenance RC Viewer, version 6.4.12.555248, dated January 25, 2021, promoted February 1st, 2021 – NEW.
Release channel cohorts:
Project Jelly viewer (Jellydoll updates), version 6.4.12.553798, January 7, 2021.
Custom Key Mappings project viewer, version 6.4.12.553437, January 7, 2021.
Project viewers:
Love Me Render (LMR) 5 project viewer, version 6.4.12.553511, issued on January 7, 2021.
Simple Cache project viewer, version 6.4.11.551403, November 12.
Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.4.11.550519, October 26.
Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, December 9, 2019.
Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.532999, November 22, 2019.
360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, July 16, 2019.
Viewer Rendering
Love Me Render Viewer
The Graphics team are getting close to an RC release of the Love Me Render 5 (LMR 5) viewer (project viewer version 6.4.12.553511 at the time of writing).
The one remaining issue they addressing with it is the matter of incorrect vertex attribute normals (not normal maps themselves) being rendered with Debug Normals enabled in the viewer (see BUG-228952 “Mesh Debug Normals display incorrectly. Normal Maps on scaled objects appear to use incorrect mesh normals for shading calcs”).
This appears to occur with models created in Maya with normals applied, but which uses non-uniform scaling.
The fix involves updates to both the Debug Normals code and the affected shader code.
The focus of LMR 5 is EEP fixes, apparently including the inverted rainbow issue, going on comments made (although currently that isn’t listed in the release notes), together with more general fixes related to things like specularity renderings, etc. It also includes a number of TPV contributions that fix assorted rendering issues.
It is hoped an RC version of the viewer will be available in the next week or two, with the aim of moving it to release status as rapidly as possible.
Outside of any specific rendering work going on for LMR 5 (or which my be directed into the next Love Me Render viewer, aka LMR 6 (such as BUG-5975 and BUG-229462, which might be investigated as part of LMR 6 work), it was indicated the Graphics Team would like to work on the environment map, if only to reduce the performance load it currently places on rendering.
Rendering API Replacement
No specific updates at present on the replacement of OpenGL as the rendering API.However, it was indicated that consideration is still being given to supporting more than one rendering capability by means of some form of back-end “tool kit” or library. There are a number of reasons for this:
As indicated in my previous CCUG meeting summary, there appears to be a substantial portion of Windows users accessing Second Life on hardware that cannot support more recent APIs like Vulkan (which had been the preferred choice).
Whilst they are set to deprecate OpenGL at some point in the future (prompting the need for the switch away from OpenGL), Apple actually don’t provide native support for Vulkan, thus prompting the need for a second alternative (such as – perhaps – Apple’s own Metal API).
Therefore, the use of an intermediary tool box / library approach would, whilst adding a layer of complexity, allow Linden Lab to potentially leverage more than one rendering API to support a wider range of user hardware.
Looking to Possible Future Options
Some thought is being given to rendering capabilities beyond the replacement of OpenGL, such as physically based rendering (PBR).
It is important to note that none of these are currently being considered for adoption at this point in time; they are simply on the Graphics Team’s wish list of things they would like to look at.
As such, if something like PBR were to be adopted, it would not be until some time after the need to replace OpenGL has been addressed, which itself is liable to be a long-term piece of work.
In terms of PBR in particular, it was noted that in practical terms, it would only be of value on objects that utilise PBR materials.
This likely means that if it were implemented, it would be a opt-in capability: creators would set a flag against content they are importing to indicate it uses PBR, and thus use the required shaders.
Such an approach would prevent any “breakage” of existing content (which would effectively continue to be rendered “as is”, and in turn allows creators to determine which of their products they might like to update to / replace with models utilising PBR.
Outside of PBR, it was suggested that High-dynamic-range (HDR) rendering might be something the Graphics Team would like to look at at some point in the future.
Mesh File Formats
Again, not a project under active development or something that will come about in the near future, but the Graphics team are also giving thought to potential mesh model file format support outside of the current .DAE.
In the past, users have expressed a desire for .FBX support; the problem here is potentially that whilst widely used and accepted as a “standard”, it is pretty much close-source by Autodesk.
The open-source Graphics Language Transmission Format (gITF) has been suggested by some as an alternative, particularly given it is already supported by Blender as via a plug-in option, and the Graphics Team have indicated they will have a look at this as and when time allows.
The following notes are taken from my recording of the Web User Group (WUG) meeting, held on Wednesday, February 3rd, 2021. These meetings are generally held on the first Wednesday of the month, with dates and venue details available via the SL public calendar.
When reading these notes, please keep in mind:
This is not intended as a chronological transcript of the meeting. Items are drawn together by topic, although they may have been discussed at different points in the meeting.
Similarly, and if included, any audio extracts appearing in these summaries are presented by topic heading, rather than any chronological order in which they may have been raised during the meeting (e.g. if “topic X” is mentioned early in a meeting and then again half-way through a meeting, any audio comments related to that topic that might be included in these reports will be concatenated into a single audio extract.
Web Properties Updates
Core work remains clean-up post the transition to services to AWS.
Most of the issues arising from the Uplift project for the various web properties (e.g. Marketplace, Destination Guide, etc), appear to have been resolved, although the destination Guide still has a couple of issues to be fully resolved.
Once this has been completed, work will resume on sorting through the web “to do”list (which includes incoming bug reports and feature requests in readiness to start working through items.
There have been some additional non-user visible updates to some web properties.
As of the end of December 2020, there were three software toolsets LL use in relation Second life (none of them user-facing) awaiting a transition to AWS, as of the start of February, one of these has yet to be transitioned.
Single Sign-On
Linden Lab is starting to roll-out single sign-on for web properties (not to be confused with two-factor authentication, which is still being planned, but is not ready for deployment).
This will mean that users with multiple accounts will only be able to sign-in to different properties on a per account basis.
There will be a formal LL blog post to explain this further in due course.
Mobile Client
Linden Lab is dealing with some bugs, so no significant news arising from the past month.
Last Names
The Lab is hoping to have a new batch of Last Names available for around Valentine’s Day, which will include Valentine’s-themed last names.
There is some talk of also providing “normal” last names (for some definition of “normal”, given the likes of “Aphelion”, “Birdwhistle”, “Dankworth”, “Izzard” and “Posey”, among many others are all considered “normal” where I come from!).
For new batches of Last Names, LL tend to select from the list of suggestions that came about from the 2019 Last Names competition, then add a mix of names they’ve selected.
It is also hoped that Last Name updates will happen more “regularly” in the future.
In Brief
There has been intermittent delays in getting items delivered from the Marketplace ( which can last up to several minutes) over the last week(ish). The issue has been hard for LL to reproduce, although they have been aware of it and had tried to make adjustments.
BUG-229713 “Marketplace listing status updates are not being updated between the web and the viewer” and BUG-230107 “Marketplace Listings window in the viewer does not update” have been confirmed by LL as an issue, and the issue is to be investigated.
Profile feed: there had been a series of issues of late (images failing to upload, posts failing to appear, etc.), but as of February 2nd, these should have been resolved. Anyone still experiencing problems should contact support / raise a bug report.
LL are continuing to consider how to improve the new user experience, and have been seeking feedback on what established users see as the “main” problem new users face. In addition, it was notes that in order to better understand new user problems when on-boarding, the Lab:
Has regular internal workshops where staff go through various aspects of being a new users (e.g.building an entire mesh-based avatar from scratch) to better understand the complexities lies, and where particular pain point might be.
Has staff spend time within new user environments (the learning / social islands, etc.)..
Has some of the user-led mentor groups to assist with the on-boarding process through the social and learning islands.
The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, February 2nd, 2021 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting.
Server Deployments
At the time of writing,the release notes for the week had yet to be produced. However, Rider Linden summarised the state of play as follows:
We unfortunately found a bug in last week’s RC so did not promote it to SLS today. We instead will be rolling a new and shinier version back to the RCs tomorrow.
Also in tomorrows release the simulator will try and be “nicer” about how often it sends notifications about privileged script calls being made in an experience. It won’t send more than 1 per event per experience per agent every 30 seconds. So, calling llGetCameraPos followed by llGetCameraRot will only generate a single notification. There is an additional key now in the LLSD that comes down from the simulator “EventCount” that will tell the viewer how many times that particular event had occurred.
– Rider Linden
SL Viewer
The Dawa Maintenance RC viewer, version 6.4.12.555248, was promoted to de facto release status on Monday February 1st. All other official viewer pipelines remain as follows:
Current release viewer version 6.4.11.551711, formerly Cachaça Maintenance RC viewer promoted on November 12 – No Change.
Release channel cohorts:
Project Jelly viewer (Jellydoll updates), version 6.4.12.553798, January 7, 2021.
Custom Key Mappings project viewer, version 6.4.12.553437, January 7, 2021.
Project viewers:
Love Me Render (LMR) 5 project viewer, version 6.4.12.553511, issued on January 7, 2021.
Simple Cache project viewer, version 6.4.11.551403, November 12.
Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.4.11.550519, October 26.
Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, December 9, 2019.
Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.532999, November 22, 2019.
360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, July 16, 2019.
In Brief
The lab is working to correct the on-going issues with Group chat (notably BUG-229936 “Group Notices not expiring after 14 days” and BUG-230116 “Sorting group notices by date disconnects the viewer”. A fix for the former should be available very soon, and does not require a simulator-side update (it’s a back-end fix).
What’s the difference between a viewer crash and a disconnect?
The Lab see a “crash” as being “my viewer exited without displaying any message”.
The viewer exiting SL with a message to the user (such as “you have been disconnected”) is not regarded as a viewer crash.
A change intended to fix BUG-228783 “llSitOnLink() is not generating Notifications nor logs in Events in the viewer”, and which improves notifications in general (including for llTakeControls), resulted in breaking a work-around for BUG-8265, affecting certain weapons in SL. This should be resolved following the February 3rd RC deployments.
The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, January 26th, 2021 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting.
Server Deployments
At the time of writing,the release notes for the week had yet to be produced. However, Rider Linden described the RC release planned for the week thus:
So, this week we are rolling to all of the RC channels tomorrow. The main feature we added is the extended error reporting.There is also some extended handling when origin servers return 5XX errors to a script that should reduce some load on the simulator.
– Rider Linden
SL Viewer
The Dawa Maintenance RC viewer updates to version 6.4.12.555248 on Monday, January 25th. The rest of the official viewer pipelines remain as:
Current release viewer version 6.4.11.551711, formerly Cachaça Maintenance RC viewer promoted on November 12 – No Change.
Release channel cohorts:
Dawa Maintenance RC Viewer, version 6.4.12.555248, January 25, 2021.Project Jelly viewer (Jellydoll updates), version 6.4.12.553798, January 7, 2021.
Custom Key Mappings project viewer, version 6.4.12.553437, January 7, 2021.
Project viewers:
Love Me Render (LMR) 5 project viewer, version 6.4.12.553511, issued on January 7, 2021.
Simple Cache project viewer, version 6.4.11.551403, November 12.
Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.4.11.550519, October 26.
Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, December 9, 2019.
Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.532999, November 22, 2019.
360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, July 16, 2019.
Group Notices
BUG-229936 “Group Notices not expiring after 14 days”: this is a known issue for the Lab, which in the words of Mazidox Linden means: “We’re troubleshooting [it]. By which I mean we’re finding the root of the trouble, and shooting it.”
BUG-230116 “Sorting group notices by date disconnects the viewer”: this is a new issue, but one that is potentially causing some serious issues for those who attempt to carry out such searches (which Firestorm apparently does by default).
BUG-229075 “VWR-4137 / SL-13093 Missed opportunity to fix group notice date sorting” has now been accepted.
Beq Janus has been carrying out an extensive investigation into Group notice issues, the short form of which is that notice culling needs to be re-enabled (which the Lab to do “soon”) lest a lot of people start being impacted with failures in handling group notices, and she also have code contributions she may be submitting to the Lab to assist with group notice issues.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 