Category: Simulator User Group

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.

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday,  July 2nd, 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 and the video by Pantera – my thanks to her as always for providing it.

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

• No deployments for the week, but all channels will be restart per usual schedule.

Coming up as the next simulator update is Summer Fun, which is currently with the Lab’s QA team. Following that will be Picnic, which among other things will include the following LSL functions:

• llFindNotecardText
• llFindNotecardTextSync)

SL Viewer Updates

The webRTC RC viewer updated to version 7.1.9.9688089989 on July 1st, 2024.

The rest of the current official viewers remain 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 7.1.9.9620320242, 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.

Luau Projects

These note are related to 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.

• Signal Linden is putting together a technical FAQ about lua with has more detailed answers about “why lua and not [insert option]” and “how is lua faster than mono” etc.
• Pepper and Rider Linden confirmed part of the work planned will allow for shadow execution of scripts under the Luau and Mono VMs during testing, which will ensure that all output of functions are the same.
  • This shadowing will likely be only be visible to the Lab.
  • Once LL is convinced both behave the same, the switch to using the Luau VM. At that point, the anticipated memory and execution time improvements should become visible.
  • Finally LL will allow a switch to compile either LSL2 or Luau.
• Signal further indicated:
  • That with the switch to lauau on the back-end, code can be written in either LSL2 or Luau.
  • That both the current Lua client-side project and the announced luau back-end work, whilst separate projects will both leverage Luau, not Lau.
• Pepper Linden confirmed LSL functions will continue to be maintained, but using Lua will allow for the creation of versioned functions for Lua scripts, providing a more flexible means to update functions without the worry of breaking content.
• This discussion took up most of the meeting – please refer to the video for more.

In Brief

Please refer to the video for the following and other topics discussed:

• Leviathan Linden is hoping to provide an updated GameControl viewer download. It will contain no additional capabilities, but will be updated to the current viewer development branch. However, GameControl will now be behind a single UI setting which will need to be set in order to see its UI.
• Monty Linden confirmed that the first batch of teleports / region crossings  work will now likely surface in the Picnics simulator update.

† 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,  June 25th, 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 and the video by Pantera – my thanks to her as always for providing it.

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

• No deployments for the week, but all channels will be restart per usual schedule.

Coming up as the next simulator update is Summer Fun, which is currently with the Lab’s QA team. Following that will be Picnic, which is still in the process of being put together.

SL Viewer Updates

No updates to the current official viewers, leaving the list as:

• 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 7.1.9.9604591078, June 21.
  • 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

Please refer to the video for the following and other topics discussed:

• Leviathan Linden is putting the GameControl feature behind a debug settings option, and then rebasing that onto the viewer _develop_ branch. This will help ensure the functionality is available in future viewer updates, ready to be enabled when the corresponding simulator support has been deployed.
• A reported issue with llDetectedTouchPos is is the queue of issues the viewer team will be / are looking at.
• The functionality gap with llSetLinkAlpha() and PBR Materials, and which has workarounds on the wiki using llSetLinkPrimitiveParams() and PRIM_GLTF_BASE_COLOR, is due to be more properly resolved for when controlling larger linksets.
• Monty Linde noted that the first batch of teleports / region crossings  work is in line for the release after the Summer Fun simulator update – however, vehicles are not specifically part of this work.
  • This led to a general discussion on vehicular region crossings.
• A further discussion on the Combat project – this will be covered in the Combat Group update following the meeting on June 27th.
• A general discussion on getting world map tile information, focuses around the request for llGetRegionWorldMapTile.

† 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.

Update: following the publication of this summary, Linden Lab announced changes to texture upload costs (mentioned at the end of this article). In short: the Lab will be reducing the cost of 2K texture uploads for Premium Plus and Lifetime Premium Plus accounts to L$0. See here for more.  

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday,  June 18th, 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 and the video by Pantera – my thanks to her as always for providing it.

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

• On Tuesday, June 18th, the Main SLS channel was updated with the Spring Break simulator update (which has a fix for the hovering-at-login issue) .
• On Wednesday, June 19th, the RC channels were restarted without any update.

Coming up as the next simulator update is Summer Fun, which is currently with the Lab’s QA team. Following that will be Picnic, which is still in the process of being put together.

SL Viewer Updates

No updates to the current official viewers, leaving the list as:

• Release viewer: version 7.1.8.9375512768, formerly the Graphics Featurettes RC viewer dated June 5 and promoted June 10th – NEW.
• Release channel cohorts:
  • Maintenance B RC (usability updates / imposter changes) 7.1.8.9130881608, June 10.
  • Maintenance C RC (reset skeleton in all viewers), version 7.1.7.8820704257, May 6.
• Project viewers:
  • WebRTC Voice project viewer, version 7.1.4.8947030231, May 8.

In Brief

Please refer to the video for the following and other topics discussed:

• This week was a Summer Solstice party, so discussion was semi-limited.
• As per my recent Combat User Group summary, Rider is looking at avatar rotation / aiming and improving llRotateAvatar, but as the former are controller viewer-side and the later in simulator-side, is making this is proving to be an issue.
• Simon Linden is “working on chat”, but would not be drawn on specifics, other than “it should be more useful”.
• The updates required to the Bake Service (and all associated services) to support 2K textures is still on the “to be done” list.
• It was pointed out that the Lab’s Premium Memberships page still states Premium Plus levies no charges for any uploads (click Even More Benefits to view) – despite this not being the case for 2K textures
• General discussions on camera offset and llGetCameraPos().

† 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.