Category: SL User Group Meetings

2020 SL project updates week #22: TPVD summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Endless 58-58N, blog post

The following notes are taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, May 29, 2020. These meetings are generally held every other week, unless otherwise noted in any given summary. The embedded video is provided to Pantera – my thanks to her for recording and providing it. Time stamps are included with the notes will open the video at the point(s) where a specific topic is discussed.

This was a very short meeting!

SL Viewer News

[0:00-5:10]

  • The CEF Update RC viewer, version 6.4.3.542757, released on Wednesday, May 27th (with release notes!). This builds on the CEF “Special”; it has additional codec, improvements for streaming into SL, and a major update to the Chrome Embedded Framework.
  • The FMOD RC viewer updated to version 6.4.3.542964 on Friday, May 29th.

The remainder of the official views currently in progress are as follows:

  • Current Release version 6.4.1.540593, dated April 27th, promoted May 4th. Formerly the Zirbenz Maintenance RC viewer.
  • Release channel cohorts:
  • Project viewers:
    • Mesh uploader project viewer, version 6.4.2.541645, May 15th.
    • Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, December 9th, 2019.
    • Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.532999, November 22nd, 2019.
    • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.3.2.530836, September 17th, 2019. Covers the re-integration of Viewer Profiles.
    • 360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, July 16th, 2019.

General Viewer Notes

  • Currently, it appears that the FMOD Studio RC viewer will be the next to be promoted to de facto release status in week #23 (commencing Monday, June 1st).
  • The Love Me Render RC viewer is also close to being ready for promotion.
  • There are some priority graphics fixes required for EEP, but these have yet to be merged into a viewer pipeline. These may be added to the Love Me Render viewer or may go to the next Maintenance RC viewer.
  • The Legacy Profiles viewer may be close to promotion to RC status, depending on the status on a further web update.
  • The Copy / Paste viewer is going through a further round of UI dates.
  • The Mesh Uploader may be also in a position to be promoted to RC status in the near future.
  • The Build Tools viewer is back with QA. If it passed muster, it may be issued in week #23.

Simulator Notes

[5:17-7:55]

The extended chat range project is now called the Voices Carry project. This is likely to be arriving in a simulator RC update in week #24 (commencing Monday, June  8th).

  • Further details on this update can be found in my Simulator User Group update.
  • It is important to note that this chat is only intended to apply to apply to nearby chat channel 0, so it should not impact scripted objects using other chat channels.

In Brief

[9:36-10:30]

Note: a lot of the following points were the subject of text chat.

The Firestorm team have encountered an issue with Bugsplat that results in the error “unable to create the error report” when a user is trying to send a crash report. Thus far, it appears LL has not seen this reported by users on the official viewer.

Bugs highlighted to the Lab during the meeting:

  • [14:52-21:30]
    • BUG-228752 “[EEP] Sky turns black when render quality is lowered to Low-Mid” is still awaiting a fix.
    • BUG-225784 “[EEP] BUG-225446 regression – HUDs are again affected by environment setting” is also awaiting the Lab.
    • BUG-228821 “Occasional Freeze in Post-EEP Viewers” is also still awaiting investigation.
  • [21:38-30:40] BUG-228592 “[Bakes on Mesh] editing clothing forces undergarments to top of the render stack” This is still to be fully investigated.
  • [31:04-38:50] BUG-227725 “SL Viewer and third party viewers hang while launching – dual monitors” – this appears to be an Nvidia / Windows 10 issue, although it does not appear to impact all systems. There is a lengthy discussion in chat on this issue for those who may have experienced in.
  • [39:57-end] BUG-228838 “Viewer changes have broken my entire outfit system” – this is an issue being experienced by people manually creating sub-folders within the My Outfits system folder / outfit folders within My Outfits in which to sort / copy outfit links.
    • Given that My Outfits is not designed to support sub-folder nests, whether this is a bug / breakage is questionable. H
    • However, LL will look at the issue – although it is unlikely that an “official” means of supporting sub-folders with My Outfits / outfit folders with My Outfits will be implemented in the near-term, as doing so will required server-side changes.

2020 Simulator User Group week #22 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Devil’s Bend National Park, April 2020 – blog post

The following notes were taken at the Simulator User Group meeting held on Tuesday, May 26th. Not a lot was discussed in terms of meaningful reportage (again), so just a short update on server deployments / official viewer updates.

Simulator Deployments

Please refer to the simulator deployment thread for updates.

  • On Tuesday, May 26th, the majority of the grid was updated to server maintenance release 542403, comprising the fix for the group notice archive timestamps bug.
  • On Wednesday, May 27th there will be a single RC deployment – maintenance update 542737, comprising infrastructure improvements related to the cloud migration work.

SL Viewer

There have been no updates to the official viewers to mark the start of week #22, leaving them as follows:

  • Current Release viewer version 6.4.2.541639, dated May 11th, promoted May 19th, formerly the Camera Presets RC viewer.
  • Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself):
    • FMOD Studio RC viewer, version 6.4.3.542486, issued May 21st.
    • Love Me Render RC viewer, version 6.4.3.542484, May 19th.
  • Project viewers:
    • Mesh uploader project viewer, version 6.4.2.541645, issued May 15th.
    • Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, December 9th, 2019.
    • Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.532999, November 22nd, 2019.
    • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.3.2.530836, September 17th, 2019. Covers the re-integration of Viewer Profiles.
    • 360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, July 16th, 2019.

New Simulator Chat Range Capability

As noted in my May 16th TPV Developer meeting notes, a new ability is being developed to allow region / estate owners / managers to set the open chat range on a region (see BUG-228333). This update is only intended to affect nearby chat channel 0 (the default open chat channel).

The change has caused a certain amount of confusion. For example, will the chat range be defined by originating region or the recipient region?  For example, if you are in a region with a 100m chat range and are 10m from a neighbouring region, does your chat travel 90-100m into the neighbouring region, or will it be limited to the chat range set within the neighbouring region, if less than 100m?

Or what if you’re 10m from a region boundary, and the region has a chat range of 40m, and the neighbouring region 70m – does it mean people 50m from you in your region cannot hear your chat, but a) your chat will be relayed 70m from the region boundary in the other region,  or b) just 60m (due to the 10m between you and the region edge)?

Replying to questions like these, Rider Linden indicated that it would be the recipient region that would determine the distance chat is relayed within it, where you are close enough to be heard across a region boundary. Oz expanded on this, suggesting it would be a combination: the originating region’s chat range determining which, if any, neighbouring regions can “hear” chat from it, and the chat range in those regions determining which avatars within those regions can then hear the chat.

Rider further indicated that whatever the chat distance set, chat will never be relayed beyond the region(s) immediately adjoining the originating region. So, for example, if you have three region, A, B, and C, arranged in a single line one to the next, chat from A could be relayed in B, but not to C (and vice versa), but, depending on the chat range set in B, it might be relayed by both A and C or only in A or C, depending on the speaker’s location in B.

Hope that clears things up!

Obviously, the new capability won’t override parcel privacy settings. There is still no time frame as to when this feature will be implemented both server-side and in the viewer, which will require an additional UI element to allow the chat range to be adjusted.

2020 Content Creation User Group week #21 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Dya’s Scent of the Caribbean, April 2020 – 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, May 21st 2020 at 13:00 SLT. These meetings are chaired by Vir Linden, and agenda notes, meeting SLurl, etc, are are available on the Content Creation User Group wiki page.

SL Viewer

The CEF Special viewer has been withdrawn from downloads, pending the release of a more rounded CEF RC viewer containing broader support for more options for streaming into SL + more codecs.

The FMOD Studio RC viewer updated to version 6.4.3.542486 on May 19th.

The remainder of the current official viewer pipelines are as follows:

  • Current Release viewer version 6.4.2.541639, dated May 11th, promoted May 19th, formerly the Camera Presets RC viewer – see my Camera Presets tutorial.
  • Release channel cohorts:
  • Project viewers:
    • Mesh uploader project viewer, version 6.4.2.541645, issued May 15th.
    • Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, December 9th, 2019.
    • Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.532999, November 22nd, 2019.
    • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.3.2.530836, September 17th, 2019. Covers the re-integration of Viewer Profiles.
    • 360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, July 16th, 2019.

General Viewer Notes

  • The exact streaming services that will be supported by the next CEF update have yet to be confirmed.
  • The Love Me Render viewer is still being re-worked as a result of being “clobbered” by the EEP updates (presumably during the merge process). It is hoped this will be back on track soon.
  • The first viewer to be built entirely using the new build process using a recent version of Xcode (OS X) or Visual Studio 2017 (Windows) is still waiting to see the light of day.

Graphics / ALM / Code paths

  • The previous CCUG meeting raised the topic of possibly removing the ability to disable the viewer’s Advanced Lighting Model (ALM).
  • Vir emphasised that the idea is just a point of discussion, and not indicative of any decision having been made.

Graphics support is a whole lot of different possible code paths, which means there are tons and tons of options, [so] you can slice it and dice it lots and lots of different ways which makes it into a maintenance and update nightmare. So the more we can streamline it and say stuff works in particular ways, makes it easier to keep it working and to fix things when they go wrong. So, we don’t have any immediate plans to change Advanced Lighting, it’s just something we raised to gauge what usage patterns there might be.

– Vir Linden

Jelly Dolls / Avatar Rendering

  • Vir’s idea to render jelly dolled avatars as basic human form, sans attachments, is apparently proving more complicated a move than at first thought.
  • He’s not entirely surprised by this, considering all that an avatar made include: animations, shape deformations, etc.
  • Animations can particularly problematic when they are being used to deform the skeleton into a non-human form, and the system wants to render the avatar in a human form.
    • Allowing the animations to run means allowing them to deform the avatar shape.
    • Turning the animations off means leaving the avatar shape in a human form but stuck in the T-pose position.
  • The solution to the above issue would appear to be setting a stand animation that runs locally (i.e. in any viewer that is set to render the avatar as a jelly doll). However, this can require additional adjustments to be rendered correctly in a viewer.
  • Further local animations may be required to cover situation when a jellied avatar uses things like default sits, adding further complexity to the work.

In brief

  • There has been at least one report of the EEP viewer causing periodic freezes as if the texture cache being purged. While EEP should not have altered how the texture cache works, and as no bug reports have been filed on the issue as yet, LL ask that those have similar issues regularly / semi-regularly report them.
  • Some have noticed that EEP has altered how specularity is rendered where materials have been used. This is a known issue LL are investigating, as per BUG-228781 and BUG-228581.
  • The idea of an inventory tagging system was raised (e.g. to easy inventory sorting / searching, etc). Sort form answer: while there are benefits for some form of limited tagging, there are no plans to implement anything in the foreseeable future.
  • The question was asked on why Twitch allows VR Chat streaming but not Second Life. Short form answer: because that is what Twitch has decided (at least at present).
  • Next meeting: Thursday, June 4th, 13:00 SLT.

2020 Simulator User Group week #21 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Sea Brook, April 2020 – blog post

The following notes were taken at the Simulator User Group meeting held on Tuesday, May 19th. Not a lot was discussed in terms of meaningful reportage (again), so just a short update on server deployments / official viewer updates.

Simulator Deployments

Please refer to the simulator deployment thread for updates.

  • On Tuesday, May 19th, the majority of the grid was updated to server maintenance release 541970, comprising:
    • A fix for a bug that disabled the “Acquire an Experience” button for some premium users – see Bug-228676.
    • Internal fixes.
  • On Wednesday, May 20th there should be two RC deployments:
    • 542403, to fix the group notice archive timestamps bug – going to Bluesteel, LeTigra and Preflight.
    • 542391, with further updates related to the cloud migration – going to Magnum and Snack.

SL Viewer

On Tuesday, May 19th:

The remaining official viewer pipelines are as follows:

  • Release channel cohorts:
    • FMOD Studio RC viewer, version 6.4.2.541570, issued May 11th.
    • CEF Special RC viewer, version 6.4.1.541204, dated April 30th.
  • Project viewers:
    • Mesh uploader project viewer, version 6.4.2.541645, issued May 15th.
    • Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, December 9th, 2019.
    • Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.532999, November 22nd, 2019.
    • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.3.2.530836, September 17th, 2019. Covers the re-integration of Viewer Profiles.
    • 360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, July 16th, 2019.

 

2020 SL project updates week #20: TPVD summary; mesh uploader

Posted on by Inara Pey
Silent Melody, March 2020 – blog post

The following notes are taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, May 15, 2020. These meetings are generally held every other week, unless otherwise noted in any given summary. The embedded video is provided to Pantera – my thanks to her for recording and providing it. Time stamps are included with the notes will open the video at the point(s) where a specific topic is discussed.

This was a very short meeting!

SL Viewer News

[0:47-4:27]

  • The Mesh Uploader project viewer, version 6.4.2.541645, was issued on May 15th. This both offers a number of fixes to uploader issues, as per the release notes, and incorporates improvements to the uploader layout, etc., as first seen in Firestorm and contributed to Linden Lab.
Mesh Uploader project: the revised LOD tab with the additional information outlined

The remainder of the official views currently in progress remain as follows:

  • Current Release version  version 6.4.1.540593, dated April 27th, promoted May 4th. Formerly the Zirbenz Maintenance RC viewer.
  • Release channel cohorts:
  • Project viewers:
    • Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, December 9th, 2019.
    • Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.532999, November 22nd, 2019.
    • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.3.2.530836, September 17th, 2019. Covers the re-integration of Viewer Profiles.
    • 360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, July 16th, 2019.
The Mesh Uploader project viewer: the new Avatar tab with information taken from the upload options tab (blue) and new joint information panels (red)

General Viewer Notes

  • The Camera Presets viewer is in relatively good shape for promotion to de facto release status in week #21 (commencing Monday, May 18th).
  • The Love Me Render RC viewer is currently experiencing issues in merging with the EEP viewer code base, so is unlikely to be in a position to be promoted.
  • The FMOD RC viewer should offer a fix to one of the most common viewer crashes related to audio.
  • The Build Tools viewer still has some issues awaiting fixing before it sees the light of day..
  • Additional CEF updates are also in the works that will expand on the current CEF Special RC viewer.

New Simulator Chat Range Capability

[5:09-6:30]

A new ability is being developed to allow region / estate owners / managers to set chat ranges.

  • This will require viewer-side UI support, which has yet to be completed.
  • The range set for a region will be reported to the viewer by the simulator as a part of the region information.
  • The server-side support will be appearing real soon now™.

In Brief

  • [4:43-5:09] The RC deployment for Wednesday, May 20th should see a fix for Group notices all showing the same time stamp deployed across two of the RC channels.
  • [7:45-7:57] The fix for the issue off-line inventory losses from objects (see: BUG-227179 “All offline inventory offers from scripted objects are STILL lost”) should be deployed (hopefully!) in the RC deployments of Wednesday, May 27th.
  • [9:12-11:00] The question was asked if LL would skip using Visual Studio 2017 in he viewer build process and go directly to VS 2019.
    • The answer was no, not this close to deploying working viewers using the updated build process, but a project to update to VS 2019 will be started “at some point”.
    • This work should in theory be a lot easier, thanks to the effort up into updating the additional viewer build libraries as a part of this update.
    • This build process is currently using XCode 11.3.1 for OS X, but this may change depending on the frequency of updates from Apple.

2020 Simulator User Group week #20 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Ostoja, March 2020 – blog post

The following notes were taken at the Simulator User Group meeting held on Tuesday, May 12th. Not a lot was discussed (again), so just a short update on server deployments / official viewer updates.

Simulator Deployments

Please refer to the simulator deployment thread for updates.

  • On Tuesday, May 12th, the majority of the grid was updated to server maintenance release 541440, comprising:
    • Updates to fix issues with the Name Change feature still calling avatars by their “old” names for up to a week (see BUG-228565).
    • Internal logging changes and improvements to how the simulator accesses internal servers.
    • A a fix to llBase64ToInteger, the colour space LSL functions.
    • This update could exacerbate issues with group notice time stamps failing to accurately report, which has been an issue on at least one RC channel (see: BUG-228562 Group Notice Timestamps don’t report accurately Server Channel 540369/ now 541440).
  • Updates are planned for the three RC channels, but at the time of writing, had yet to be announced. Commenting on the updates at the meeting, Rider Linden stated:

LeTigre and Magnum are getting competing fixes for the experience purchase problem [see Bug-228676]. BlueSteel, Snack and Preflight [two small-scale RC channels] are all getting an update that just internal fixes and extra logging.

Please refer to the deployment thread for further information / updates.

SL Viewer

On Monday, May 11th:

  • The Camera Presets RC viewer updated to version 6.4.2.541639.
  • The Love Me Render RC viewer updated to version 6.4.2.541651.
  • A new FMOD Studio update RC viewer, version 6.4.2.541570, was issued.

The remaining official viewer pipelines are currently unchanged from the end of week #18:

  • Release channel cohorts:
    • CEF Special RC viewer, version 6.4.1.541204, dated April 30th.
  • Project viewers:
    • 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.
    • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.3.2.530836, September 17, 2019. Covers the re-integration of Viewer Profiles.
    • 360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, July 16, 2019.