Category: Simulator User Group

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday,  August 13th, 2024 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They form a summary of the items discussed, and are not intended to be a full transcript, and were taken from my chat log. Pantera videoed the meeting, and the recording is embedded at the end of this piece – my thanks, as always, for her work.

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):
  • Every Tuesday at 12:00 noon SLT.
  • In text (no Voice)
  • 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.

Simulator Deployments

• There will be no planned deployments for the week, but the channels will be restarted. LL have decided to hold-off deploying the Summer Fun / Combat 2 update to further channels for another week. Rider Linden described the reason thus:

As we rolled out further we encountered a product that had a scripting bug that caused it to misbehave on the new servers. We reached out to the creator and he’s fixed the issue and is issuing updates. We wanted to give him a chance to get those out all across the grid.

SL Viewer Updates

On Tuesday, August 13th, the WebRTC RC viewer updated to version 7.1.9.10325451220.

The rest of the current crop of viewers remains as:

• Release viewer: version 7.1.8.9375512768, formerly the Graphics Featurettes RC viewer dated June 5 and promoted June 10th.
• Release channel cohorts:
  • Atlasaurus RC (object take options; improved MOAP URL handling), version 7.1.9.10220184061, August 7.
  • Maintenance B RC (usability updates / imposter changes) 7.1.9.9555137545, June 21.
  • Maintenance C RC (reset skeleton in all viewers), version 7.1.9.9469671545, June 14.

In Brief

Combat Partnership Reminder

• With Combat 2.0 becoming available, Linden Lab has announced the Combat 2.0 Promotion Partnership Programme has been launched.
  • The intention behind the Promotion Partnership Programme this is to give those actively involved in combat activities in Second Life the “opportunity to help us spread the word across the grid about Combat 2.0 in Second Life”.
  • In particular, this will see some of the LL combat regions (e.g. Concord and Lexington) a facelift and use them to showcase Combat 2.0, with participants in the Programme asked to donate free-to-use combat items for use in the regions.
  • In addition, participants will have their regions / communities included in a Combat section of the Destination Guide. There may be other benefits for participants as well.
  • Those interested can sign-up via this Google form.

General

• Recent bugs / requests under review / potentially to be pulled into upcoming simulator updates (e.g. BBG, which will follow Picnic):
  • [Combat2] Uncap 100 REZ_DAMAGE limit on llRezObjectWithParams.
  • llRezObjectWithParams making objects temp when damage scripted.
• Weird region crossing behaviour:
  • Various reports of a rare and intermittent vehicle region crossing oddity, in which the crossing goes wrong, unseating the rider- but rezzing a grey prim in the rider’s place as a par to of the vehicle’s linkset “created” by the rider. When unlinked, the prim slides around on the ground but has a rotation lock property on it that keeps it upright.
  • Some think this might be a very old bug that can replace the vehicle rider with an agent-sized cube, per [#BUG-3547] Sim Crossing Rezzes Objects Surrounding Individuals.
  •  It is unclear if any report has been filed recently against the problem, so if anyone encounters it, they are asked to raise a bug report with as much details as possible.
  • Leviathan Linden noted:

Avatars ARE prims, but with some meta data and a session that makes them special. The prim should have been deleted when the session was cleaned up or failed…. which suggests the session itself failed to be created on the far side of the region crossing.

• There was a discussion on regex functions, based off of llRegex* functions, of which Rider Liden said:

I’ve just not had time to get to it yet. I think I have the code organized to a point right now where they wouldn’t be too much work to implement.

• Please refer to the video below for further details of the 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 rooftop of people every week. They are taken from my list of region visits, with a link to the post for those interested.

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday,  August 6th, 2024 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They form a summary of the items discussed, and are not intended to be a full transcript, and were taken from my chat log. Pantera videoed the meeting, and the recording is embedded at the end of this piece – my thanks, as always, for her work.

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):
  • Every Tuesday at 12:00 noon SLT.
  • In text (no Voice)
  • 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.

Simulator Deployments

• The SLS Main channel was restarted on Tuesday, August 6th 2024.
• On Wednesday, August 7th:
  • The BlueSteel RC is to be restarted.
  • The remaining RC channels should receive the Summer Fun simulator update, which includes the initial Combat 2 updates from Rider Linden.

Upcoming Releases

• The is an internal discussion going on at the Lab as to the next simulator update. This may either be Picnic or the back-end WebRTC updates – with the most likely order being Picnic first, then WebRTC.

SL Viewer Updates

• Release viewer: version 7.1.8.9375512768, formerly the Graphics Featurettes RC viewer dated June 5 and promoted June 10th.
• Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself).
  • WebRTC Voice RC, version 7.1.9.10084807842, July 26.
  • Atlasaurus RC (object take options; improved MOAP URL handling), version 7.1.9.9981869229, July 22.
  • Maintenance B RC (usability updates / imposter changes) 7.1.9.9555137545, June 21.
  • Maintenance C RC (reset skeleton in all viewers), version 7.1.9.9469671545, June 14.

Game Controller

• As a reminder – Summer Fun includes the Game Controller updates from Leviathan Linden, but these have yet to reach a former viewer release.
• Also, and just as a FYI for those trying the pre-release game control viewer:
  • If the viewer is used on a simulator without the back-end support (e.g. any simulator on the SLS Main channel after toWednesday, August 7th, and Tuesday, August, 13th), the viewer will be logged out in what might look like a crash.
  • This generally only happens the the GameControl option is enabled, but has also been reported on occasion even with the option disabled.

In Brief

• A general and (theoretical) means of cleaning-up the viewer codebase, and the potential risks in doing so (e.g. apparently “unused” code removed or capabilities thought as no longer relevant resulting in content breakage.
• The above extended into the use of APIs in the viewer as well, with encouragement for those with ideas for APIs to file them as feature requests (such as this feature request).
• Rider confirmed that the promised facelift for the LL combat regions will focus on Concord, Lexington and No Man’s Land.
• It’s been noted that outdated map tiles are still appearing on the World Map despite recent updates – apparently, the final updates to the map server have yet to be deployed, hence the delays in updates some might witness.
• Please refer to the video below for further details.

† 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.

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday,  July 30th, 2024 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They form a summary of the items discussed, and are not intended to be a full transcript, and were taken from my chat log. Pantera videoed the meeting, and the recording is embedded at the end of this piece – my thanks, as always, for her work.

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):
  • Every Tuesday at 12:00 noon SLT.
  • In text (no Voice)
  • 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.

Simulator Deployments

• The SLS Main channel was restarted on Tuesday, July 30th 2024.
• On Wednesday, July 24th:
  • The BlueSteel RC is due to (again) receive Summer Fun simulator update, which includes the initial Combat 2 updates from Rider Linden. Hopefully this third attempt will see it stick.
  • The remaining RC channels will be restarted.

SL Viewer Updates

• Release viewer: version 7.1.8.9375512768, formerly the Graphics Featurettes RC viewer dated June 5 and promoted June 10th.
• Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself).
  • WebRTC Voice RC, version 7.1.9.10084807842, July 26.
  • Atlasaurus RC (object take options; improved MOAP URL handling), version 7.1.9.9981869229, July 22.
  • Maintenance B RC (usability updates / imposter changes) 7.1.9.9555137545, June 21.
  • Maintenance C RC (reset skeleton in all viewers), version 7.1.9.9469671545, June 14.

WebRTC Voice Update

Summary

• Replacing the use of Vivox for Voice in SL with WebRTC communications protocol (RTC=”real-time communication”).
• Benefits:
  • WebRTC is something of a “defacto standard”, with features such as automatic echo cancellation, better noise cancellation and automatic gain control, etc., and offers much improved audio sampling rates for improved audio quality
  • WebRTC will be supplied within the viewer using a library and wrapper. This will mean no requirement to run a third-party voice plugin (SLvoice.exe, as supplied by Vivox) going forward.
  • The switch to WebRTC also opens the door to adding new features and capabilities to SL Voice, some of which have been long-requested.
  • Care is being taking to address potential security issues (e.g. preventing eavesdropping, exposing users’ IP address (by using an internal proxy server), etc.).
• Feature requests for WebRTC made via the WebRTC board on the SL Feedback Portal are being evaluated and some are being actioned, together with issues being investigated.
• LL will be looking to Linux devs to help give feedback on how well WebRTC is working on their Linux viewers.

Status

• The plan remains to potentially make a switch-over to WebRTC on the back-end in August.
• This is dependent upon third-party viewers picking up the WebRTC updates from LL and incorporating them.
• During the transition period, viewers will connect to either Vivox or WebRTC voice, depending on the service available to them. As such most voice services should be uninterrupted.
• HOWEVER, during the transitional period, there will be some short-term issues around peer-to-peer, Group and ad-hoc voice connections between those on regions running the two different voice services (Vivox and WebRTC).

In Brief

• A further conversation on Lua(u), including supported data types and whether an integer type will be added to LL’s implementation. The answer may be no, going on the Lua FAQ.
• There is a reported uptick in vehicle region crossing issues in the Blake Sea regions, but more than anecdotal reports are required (e.g. information such as timestamps, agents, and regions need to be properly reported which incidents occur.
• Changes related to avatar teleports are due to be included in the Picnic simulator update, which should start deployment as Summer Fun reached the Main SLS channel (or shortly thereafter).
• Monty Linden has some event-queue fixes to bring to life, and would like to get them up on Aditi as a pilot test for various viewers.

This is a re-writing of a fundamental service between viewer and server.  *Not* the LSL scripting event queue – communications event queue between viewers and simulators (we have lots of things called ‘event queue’).  [The] discussion is deep inside this [forum] topic for the interested.

– Monty Linden

• Concern was raised over recent changes to llSensor doubling the number of objects returned, causing some scripts to receive more data than they are designed to manage, resulting in increased stack heap collisions.
  • It was requested that when fundamental changes are made to a function like this, they are used within a new function, rather than changing the existing function. This sparked a conversation on what a new llSensor function (“llSensorPlus” or whatever) might include / work.
  • It was further equested that if llSensor is being updated, news flags / filters are added (e.g. HAS_SIT_TARGET, TOUCH_EVENT, SOUND_EMITTER).
  • A Canny feature request on the latter was requested, with examples of how the flags might be used.

† 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.

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday,  July 23rd, 2024 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They form a summary of the items discussed, and are not intended to be a full transcript, and were taken from my chat log. Pantera videoed the meeting, and the recording is embedded at the end of this piece – my thanks, as always, for her work.

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):
  • Every Tuesday at 12:00 noon SLT.
  • In text (no Voice)
  • 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.

Simulator Deployments

• The SLS Main channel was restarted on Tuesday, July 23rd, 2024.
• On Wednesday, July 24th:
  • The BlueSteel RC is due to (again) receive Summer Fun simulator update, which includes the initial Combat 2 updates from Rider Linden.
  • The remaining RC channels will be restarted.

SL Viewer Updates

• Release viewer: version 7.1.8.9375512768, formerly the Graphics Featurettes RC viewer dated June 5 and promoted June 10th.
• Release channel cohorts:
  • Atlasaurus RC (object take options; improved MOAP URL handling), version 7.1.9.9981869229, July 22.
  • WebRTC Voice RC, version 7.1.9.9688089989, July 1.
  • Maintenance B RC (usability updates / imposter changes) 7.1.9.9555137545, June 21.
  • Maintenance C RC (reset skeleton in all viewers), version 7.1.9.9469671545, June 14.
• Project viewers:
  • None.

In Brief

• Combat:
  • Rider Linden reminded people that Thursday, July 25th will be the final meeting of the Combat User Group, and will take the form of a combat session to take place on the Concord combat region (not Lexington, as previously indicated). Those wishing to participate and who have suitable Combat 2 weapons they are willing to share are asked to bring them to the meet-up.
  • Change defaults for health_regen_rate and damage_throttle has been implemented:
    • The damage throttle is now off by default, the the default for the throttle is 1 point/6 seconds.
  • In addition: post death invulnerable agents should no longer be able to inflict damage directly. However sitting will remove that invulnerability.
• The discussion on possible issues with llGetMass(), wherein a objects mass will not remain constant if it is resized and its density changed (via llSetPhysicsMaterial) to compensate has resulted in a new feature request  – llOverrideMass(float new_mass) – being raised. This triggered a further discussion on mass / density calculations, specifically in reference to vehicles and passengers.
• A general discussion on scripting, rezzing, updating object (/rezzer) contents.

† 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.

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday,  July 16th, 2024 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They form a summary of the items discussed, and are not intended to be a full transcript, and were taken from my chat log. 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):
  • Every Tuesday at 12:00 noon SLT.
  • In text (no Voice)
  • 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.

Simulator Deployments

• The SLS Main channel was restarted on Tuesday, July 16th, 2024.
• On Wednesday, July 17th:
  • The BlueSteel RC is due to be updated with the summer Fun simulator update, which includes the initial Combat 2 updates from Rider Linden.
  • The remaining RC channels will be restarted.

Upcoming Simulator Updates

The simulator that we currently have on deck is Picnic, I cut that on Friday and should be getting it deployed onto Aditi in the next day or so. Next up is Barbecue. I believe that it already has a find text for notecards in it. I’m going to be taking another shot at llRotateAvatar.

– Rider Linden on upcoming simulator updates

SL Viewer Updates

• Release viewer: version 7.1.8.9375512768, formerly the Graphics Featurettes RC viewer dated June 5 and promoted June 10th.
• Release channel cohorts:
  • WebRTC Voice RC, version 7.1.9.9688089989, July 1.
  • Atlasaurus RC (object take options; improved MOAP URL handling), version 7.1.9.9620320242, June 27.
  • Maintenance B RC (usability updates / imposter changes) 7.1.9.9555137545, June 21.
  • Maintenance C RC (reset skeleton in all viewers), version 7.1.9.9469671545, June 14.
• Project viewers:
  • None.

Simulator-Side Lua(u) Project Update

• As per the Product and Engineering Town Hall at SL21B,when it was announced Luau VM is to be implemented on the server-side, eventually replacing Mono VM.
• This work is in addition to the viewer-side Luau project.
• Signal Linden has published a technical FAQ on the simulator-side project, addressing some of the most common comments / questions.

In Brief

• Rider Linden reminded people that Thursday, July 25th will be the final meeting of the Combat User Group, and will take the form of a combat session to take place on the Lexington combat region. Those wishing to participate and who have suitable Combat 2 weapons they are willing to share are asked to bring them to the meet-up.
• As per the most recent (to this meeting) TPVD meeting, the project to replace Vivox Voice with WebRTC communications protocol (RTC=”real-time communication”) will  – subject to third-party viewer readiness – be deployed across the Main grid in August and the switch thrown.
• Pepper Linden noted LL has deployed some map server changes which fixes issues with region surrounds in tile generation, as well as old stale tiles.
  • Part of this work has involved fixes to the Akamai cache retention period.
  • This should mean that rather than the system caching region tiles for many days and serving them to viewers, it should now only cache up to 12 hours. This means that in a worse case scenario map tiles displayed in the viewer should be no more than 24 hours behind.
  • The request to be able to call up map tiles via their UUIDs (like textures) was again made. This might be in the work queue.
  • Garfield Linden re-iterated his tangential project to bring maps.sl.com up to parity with Maps-in-the-viewer, and make it Mobile friendly. A Leaflets update for this has just been made, and will be expanded upon at the end Web User Group.
• There is a reported bug in  the core viewer code which causes glTF overrides to be cleared while the cache has not been yet saved by a neighbour region. As the simulator does not resend glTF data after the initial connection, the viewer’s object caches ends up with corrupted glTF cache entries from the affected region.
• There appears to be an issue within llGetMass(), wherein a objects mass will not remain constant if it is resized and its density changed (via llSetPhysicsMaterial) to compensate. This resulted in an extended discussion on the subjects of mass and density under LSL adjustments.
• The subject of implementing a variable walk speed on the simulator locomotion graph was again raised – an request raised a number of times at CCUG meetings. This was crossed with a discussion on avatar rotation by LSL in line with Rider’s hopes around llRotate Avatar and controlling avatar motion in general.

† 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.