Category: Simulator User Group

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, March 26th, 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 embedded below, recorded by Pantera – 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.
• They 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, March 26th without any deployment.
• Wednesday, March 27th, should see the Hearts & Flowers RC update deployed to the rest of the RC channels. This mostly comprises internal (non-user visible) updates, together with these user-visible additions:
  • llSetLinkSitFlags/llGetLinkSitFlags – allow you to adjust the sit flags for a prim. It supports the existing two SIT_FLAG_ALLOW_UNSIT and SCRIPT_ONLY.
    • At some future point, SIT_FLAG_HIDE_AVATAR should also be added, so you don’t need to play an animation that squishes the avatar so they aren’t visible in something like a very small vehicle.
  • A feature for estate managers that will allow them to schedule automatic region restarts (see below).
  • A new constant in llSPP PRIM_SIT_FLAGS it will contain all the sit flag information, (including ALLOW_UNSIT and SCRIPTED_ONLY (the two older constants will still be available).
  • A new capability to load item inventory lists via HTTP (so items with large contents will load faster when accessed, although this will require a viewer update as well).
  • A fix for avatars going into an animation thrash between falling and flying when using llSetHoverHeight() from an attachment.

SL Viewer Updates

• On Tuesday, March 26th, 2024, the glTF PBR Materials Maintenance-2 RC viewer, version 7.1.4.8149792635 was promoted to Release viewer status.
• On Monday, March 25th, 2024, the Materials Featurettes RC viewer, version 7.1.4.8270899680 was issued.

The rest of the current official viewer in the pipeline stand as:

• Release channel cohorts:
  • Maintenance X RC (usability improvements), version 7.1.4.8148263040 , March 11, 2024.
  • Maintenance-W RC (bug and crash fixes), version 7.1.4.8113624779, March 6, 2024.
  • Maintenance Y RC ( My Outfits folder improvements; ability to remove entries from landmark history + Maint Z RC integration) updated to version 7.1.4.8114240508, March 6, 2024.
• Project viewers:
  • Puppetry project viewer, version 6.6.12.579958, May 11.

In Brief

• Was a belated equinox party, so not a lot of discussion.
• Simon Linden threw out a generic request for feedback on the viewer’s text translation capabilities. Nothing really came back from it.

† 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, March 19th, 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 embedded below, recorded by Pantera – 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.
• They 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, March 19th without any deployment.
• Wednesday, March 20th, should see the next RC update deployed to the Bluesteel RC channel. This mostly comprises internal (non-user visible) updates, together with these user-visible additions:
  • llSetLinkSitFlags/llGetLinkSitFlags – allow you to adjust the sit flags for a prim. It supports the existing two SIT_FLAG_ALLOW_UNSIT and SCRIPT_ONLY.
    • At some future point, SIT_FLAG_HIDE_AVATAR should also be added, so you don’t need to play an animation that squishes the avatar so they aren’t visible in something like a very small vehicle.
  • A feature for estate managers that will allow them to schedule automatic region restarts (see below).
  • A new constant in llSPP PRIM_SIT_FLAGS it will contain all the sit flag information, (including ALLOW_UNSIT and SCRIPTED_ONLY (the two older constants will still be available).
  • A new capability to load item inventory lists via HTTP (so items with large contents will load faster when accessed, although this will require a viewer update as well).
  • A fix for avatars going into an animation thrash between falling and flying when using llSetHoverHeight() from an attachment.

SL Viewer Updates

No viewer updates at the start of the week, leaving the current official viewers as:

• Release viewer: version 7.1.3.7878383867, the Emoji Viewer, issued February 15, promoted March 1st, 2024 – NoChange.
• Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself).
  • glTF PBR Materials Maintenance-2 RC viewer, version 7.1.4.8149792635, March 11, 2024.
  • Maintenance X RC (usability improvements), version 7.1.4.8148263040 , March 11, 2024.
  • Maintenance-W RC (bug and crash fixes), version 7.1.4.8113624779, March 6, 2024.
  • Maintenance Y RC ( My Outfits folder improvements; ability to remove entries from landmark history + Maint Z RC integration) updated to version 7.1.4.8114240508, March 6, 2024.
• Project viewers:
  • Puppetry project viewer, version 6.6.12.579958, May 11.

WebRTC Voice

• Officially announced on Tuesday, March 18th, is WebRTC (RTC=”real-time communication”), intended to replace Vivox as the Voice component in Second Life.
• From my TPVD meeting notes from Friday, March 15th (video here) + notes from this meeting:
  • WebRTC is something of a “defacto standard”, being built-in to most web browsers and supporting  wide range of real-time communications tools in common use (e.g. Google Meet), supporting audio, video and data communications.
  • In terms of audio / voice (the primary focus here), WebRTC has a number of standard features expected of audio communications services (such as automatic echo cancellation, better noise cancellation and automatic gain control, etc.) and offers much improved audio sampling rates for improved audio quality.
  • Work has already progress so that WebRTC supports all of the current SL Voice capabilities (e.g. region Voice, parcel Voice, peer-to-peer, ad-hoc and group capabilities, muting, etc.).
    • The service is provided to the viewer as a library with a wrapper – no separate .EXE plug-in.
    • In addition, work has been put into securing the use of WebRTC Voice against attempts to eavesdrop, etc., and to route peer-to-peer communications via an internal server to avoid revealing user’s IP addresses to the risk of doxing, etc.
    • Voice Morphing is not part of the initial implementation.
    • Group voice will be capped at 50 people, but may be extended later.
    • Speech-to-text and text-to-speech  are being looked at by LL, but are not currently part of this project.
  • There are test viewers with the necessary viewer-side WebRTC support (not yet at Project or RC status), and regions on Aditi, the Beta grid (webRTC1 and webRTC2) with the back-end support.
  • Wiki documentation is in progress, and includes links to the test viewers (currently Windows and Mac OS) + a public code repo and other information. Note, this is subject to further update.
  • There is a dedicated WebRTC board on the SL Feedback Portal where issues, etc., can be reported / raised for discussion.
  • There is no backwards compatibility. Regions using the WebRTC back-end will only support voice on viewers using the WebRTC library. Ergo, once fully deployed, older viewer still using Vivox will not be able to access Voice services.
    • LL is working with TPVs to enable the switch to using WebRTC (once deployed to the Main grid) will not be made util there is an assurance that the majority of users will be on viewer supporting WebRTC.
  • The switch to WebRTC also opens the door to adding new features and capabilities to SL Voice, some of which have been long-requested.

In Brief

• The PBR team is going to be changing llSetColor/llSetAlpha so that they behave on PBR in a similar way to legacy materials – just no time frame on when at present.
• A discussion on scripting + notecard reading through the latter part 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, March 12th, 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 a chat log (thank you, Yuzuru!) and the video embedded below, recorded by Pantera – 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.
• They 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 deployment on Tuesday, March 12th was that of the Gingerbread update, containing the llComputeHash(), llGetCameraAspect(), llGetCameraFOV(), llGetNotecardLineSync() and llWorldPosToHUD() updates and previously deployed to all RC channels.
  • This appears to have caused an issue with notecard reading limits.
• There will be a restart of the RC channels on Wednesday, March 13th, but no deployment.

Upcoming Simulator Release

• The next RC update (scheduled for week #12) is Hearts & Flowers, which will go to the BlueSteel RC channel. This mostly comprises internal (non-user visible) updates, together with these user-visible additions:
  • llSetLinkSitFlags/llGetLinkSitFlags – allow you to adjust the sit flags for a prim. It supports the existing two SIT_FLAG_ALLOW_UNSIT and SCRIPT_ONLY.
    • At some future point, SIT_FLAG_HIDE_AVATAR should also be added, so you don’t need to play an animation that squishes the avatar so they aren’t visible in something like a very small vehicle.
  • A feature for estate managers that will allow them to schedule automatic region restarts (see below).
  • A new constant in llSPP PRIM_SIT_FLAGS it will contain all the sit flag information, (including ALLOW_UNSIT and SCRIPTED_ONLY (the two older constants will still be available).
  • A new capability to load item inventory lists via HTTP (so items with large contents will load faster when accessed, although this will require a viewer update as well).
  • A fix for avatars going into an animation thrash between falling and flying when using llSetHoverHeight() from an attachment.
• The next update after that will likely be called Spring Break. This might include notecard searches.

Schedule Region Restarts

Once fully deployed as a part of the Heart & Flowers simulator update (see above) this:

• Will allow region and estate owners / managers schedule region restarts via the region console in the viewer (when updated).
• Allows schedules to be set on a Daily or Weekly basis (e.g. every day at 06:00 SLT; Monday & Thursday at 17:00, etc.)
• Has “vaccination” period of +/- 5 minutes of the selected restart time, so that all regions in an estate don’t suddenly restart at exactly the same time.
• Allows any scheduled restart to be cancelled in the same manner as existing manual restarts.

Viewer Updates

On Monday March 11th:

• The glTF PBR Materials Maintenance-2 RC viewer updated to version 7.1.4.8149792635.
• The Maintenance X RC (usability improvements) updated to version 7.1.4.8148263040.

The rest of the current official viewers in the pipe remain as:

• Release viewer: version 7.1.3.7878383867, the Emoji Viewer, issued February 15, promoted March 1st, 2024 – No Change.
• Release channel cohorts:
  • Maintenance-W RC (bug and crash fixes) updated to version 7.1.4.8113624779, on March 6th, 2024.
  • Maintenance Y RC ( My Outfits folder improvements; ability to remove entries from landmark history + Maint Z RC integration) updated to version 7.1.4.8114240508, March 6, 2024.
• Project viewers:
  • No updates.

Game Controller Update

• No news from Leviathan Linden – he’s been busy on other tasks.
• Rider has included the simulator support Leviathan has written into his Combat regions on Aditi (regions Gallipoli and Thermopylae) so those engaged in the Rooty Tooty Shooty Society (RTSS) testing his updates to the SLCS (Second Life Combat System) can try things out.

Simulator Main Loop Breakdown

• Monty Linden has published details of the simulator main loop (where time deltas occur and state changes and housekeeping tasks are organised), as a high-level breakdown of the loop and a description that relates simulation back to the viewer’s Statistics floater.

In Brief

• In the previous SUG meeting, there was a request to help solve the problem of cheaters sitting on competition vehicles. Someone sits on the object and uses a HUD with llSetVelocity() or other calls to push the vehicle faster than it would normally go. As there have been wider requests for such a fix for dynamic non-vehicle objects, he sought feedback on other situations wherein objects are messed with by “pusher HUDs”.
• A discussion on scripting hover height changes which also segued into a discussion on swimming within Linden Water and improving the user experience (particularly for new users, who mix expect to start swimming in water, rather than sinking to the sea floor and walking, before morphing into a discussion on Pathfinding and its limitation. This continued through the meeting from around 12:11 SLT through to about the end of the meeting.
• As animations were mentioned, Brad Linden noted that there are features in the GLTF spec for rigged meshes and animations that LL wants to support, and will want to provide some “best effort” interoperability of those assets with existing skeletons and animations (e.g. animation retargeting, individual bone scaling). However, all of the details and schedule for this work are currently TBD.

† 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, March 5th, 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 embedded below, recorded by Pantera – 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.
• They 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 SLS Main channel deployment on Tuesday, February 27th, but the simhosts were restarted.
• Wednesday, March 6th should see the Gingerbread RC update (containing llComputeHash(), llGetCameraAspect(), llGetCameraFOV(), llGetNotecardLineSync() and llWorldPosToHUD() ) deployed to all simhosts on the RC channels.

Upcoming Simulator Release

• The simulator update to follow Gingerbread remains  Hearts & Flowers, which will likely be deployed in the next couple of weeks. This mostly comprises internal (non-user visible) updates, together with these user-visible additions:
  • llSetLinkSitFlags/llGetLinkSitFlags – allow you to adjust the sit flags for a prim. It supports the existing two SIT_FLAG_ALLOW_UNSIT and SCRIPT_ONLY.
    • At some future point, SIT_FLAG_HIDE_AVATAR should also be added, so you don’t need to play an animation that squishes the avatar so they aren’t visible in something like a very small vehicle.
  • A feature for estate managers that will allow them to schedule automatic region restarts (see below).
  • A new constant in llSPP PRIM_SIT_FLAGS it will contain all the sit flag information, (including ALLOW_UNSIT and SCRIPTED_ONLY (the two older constants will still be available).
  • A new capability to load item inventory lists via HTTP (so items with large contents will load faster when accessed, although this will require a viewer update as well).
• The next update after that will likely be called Spring Break. This might include notecard searches.

Schedule Region Restarts

Once fully deployed as a part of the Heart & Flowers simulator update (see above) this:

• Will allow region and estate owners / managers schedule region restarts via the region console in the viewer (when updated).
• Allows schedules to be set on a Daily or Weekly basis (e.g. every day at 06:00 SLT; Monday & Thursday at 17:00, etc.)
• Has “vaccination” period of +/- 5 minutes of the selected restart time, so that all regions in an estate don’t suddenly restart at exactly the same time.
• Allows any scheduled restart to be cancelled in the same manner as existing manual restarts.

Viewer Updates

No changes at the start of the week:

• Release viewer: version 7.1.3.7878383867, the Emoji Viewer, issued February 15, promoted March 1st, 2024.
• Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself).
  • Maintenance-W RC (bug and crash fixes), version 7.1.3.7983616888, February 22, 2024.
  • glTF PBR Materials Maintenance-2 RC viewer, version 7.1.3.7821226606, February 20, 2024.
  • Maintenance X RC (usability improvements), version 7.1.3.7721015131 , February 14, 2024.
  • Maintenance Y RC ( My Outfits folder improvements; ability to remove entries from landmark history), version 7.1.3.7790341084, February 9, 2024.
• Project viewers:
  • Puppetry project viewer, version 6.6.12.579958, May 11.

Game Controller Update

• Leviathan Linden has produced a new GameControl viewer.
• This has new logic that detects the game controller device and produces the GameControl data, and can be used to drive a Flycam around.
• The viewer leaves SpaceMouse and other 3Dconnexion devices unchanged, but disables the old game controller logic to drive X-Box style game controllers.

Combat User Group Update

• It appears that after yours truly wibbled about the Combat committee User Group sharing the same acronym as the Content Creation User Group (CCUG), which could cause confusion, it has apparently been agreed the combat User Group will henceforth be know as the RTSS – the Rooty Tooty Shooty Society – which gets a two thumbs-up from me 😀 .
• Rider has established two regions on Aditi (the Beta grid) – Gallipoli and Thermopylae (both being appropriate names) – with combat support so people can start getting a feel for the new features as he gets them written, and provide feedback at the meetings (the next being on Thursday, March 14th, 2024).

Region Crossings

• Monty Linden’s update comprises: “We can now throw avatars into the sea twice as fast as before [so] Developer testing continues 😦 “.

In Brief

• A request was made for functions that could be used to actively detect forces being applied (e.g. in vehicle racing communities its hard to police cheaters using the push or force functions they have in attachments/HUDs). The request was not to change the force/push functions, but detect their usage by another script.
  • This led to an extended discussion on how best to approach this, options, limitations, etc., running through the meeting for around 20 minutes, from the 20:19 SLT time point to the 20:41 SLT time point.
• A further discussion of llHealth and Damage from around the 20:41 SLT point through to close to the end 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, February 27th, 2024 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They form a summary of the items discussed, and are not intended to be a full transcript. No video this week, I’m afraid.

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.
• They 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 SLS Main channel deployment on Tuesday, February 27th, but the simhosts were restarted.
• Wednesday, February 28th will see the Gingerbread RC update (containing llComputeHash(), llGetCameraAspect(), llGetCameraFOV(), llGetNotecardLineSync() and llWorldPosToHUD() ) re-deployed  to the Bluesteel RC, together with Ferrari and Preflight. It includes a fix for the issue of scripts being prevented from restarting when crossing into regions running on the update.

Upcoming Simulator Release

• The simulator update to follow Gingerbread remains  Hearts & Flowers, which will likely be deployed in the next couple of weeks. This mostly comprises internal (non-user visible) updates, together with two notably user-visible additions:
  • llSetLinkSitFlags/llGetLinkSitFlags – allow you to adjust the sit flags for a prim. It supports the existing two SIT_FLAG_ALLOW_UNSIT and SCRIPT_ONLY.
  • At some future point, SIT_FLAG_HIDE_AVATAR should also be added, so you don’t need to play an animation that squishes the avatar so they aren’t visible in something like a very small vehicle.
  • A feature for estate managers that will allow them to schedule automatic region restarts.
  • A new constant in llSPP PRIM_SIT_FLAGS it will contain all the sit flag information, (including ALLOW_UNSIT and SCRIPTED_ONLY (the two older constants will still be available).
  • A new capability to load item inventory lists via HTTP (so items with large contents will load faster when accessed, although this will require a viewer update as well).
• The next update after that will likely be called Spring Break. This might include notecard searches.

Viewer Updates

No changes at the start of the week:

• Release viewer: version 7.1.2.7215179142, formerly the glTF PBR Materials Maintenance RC, issued December 15, promoted January 8, 2024 – numerous bug fixes and improvements – No Change.
• Release channel cohorts:
  • Maintenance-W RC (bug and crash fixes), version 7.1.3.7983616888, February 22, 2024.
  • glTF PBR Materials Maintenance-2 RC viewer, version 7.1.3.7821226606, February 20, 2024.
  • Emoji RC viewer, version 7.1.3.7878383867, February 15, 2024.
  • Maintenance X RC (usability improvements), version 7.1.3.7721015131 , February 14, 2024.
  • Maintenance Y RC ( My Outfits folder improvements; ability to remove entries from landmark history), version 7.1.3.7790341084, February 9, 2024.
• Project viewers:
  • Puppetry project viewer, version 6.6.12.579958, May 11.

Game Controller Update

• Leviathan Linden is still working on trying to get the viewer’s Flycam capability (SpaceNavigator) with the new GameControl logic rather than old system.

Region Crossings

• Monty Linden is working on the region crossings code (both physical region crossings and all that goes into them when vehicles, etc., are included, and teleports).
• There has also been independent and on-going investigations by users into crossings. Some of the more recent has been around the issue of the EstablishAgentCommunication (EAC) event between the simulator and viewer (see this forum post for specifics).
• As it turns out, the server engineering team have been working on an entire simulator to address EAC, which is seen as both problematic and potentially hiding other bugs in the code – and potentially causing issues for the SL Mobile app.

In Brief

• The Sever Team has a new member – Pepper Linden.
• There is an upcoming fix to go into a simulator maintenance release for the detach bug stopping all animations started by other attachments or sit objects – see github issue BUG-225288.
• A further confirmation that the client-side scripting environment will be Luau, a Lua VM implementation developed by Roblox.
  • Note that this project does not encompass delivering client side scripts from inside SL simulator; it is purely viewer-side. Any such capability is seen as being so far down the line as to not be on the roadmap, although the use-cases for such interaction were noted.
• Rider Linden is looking at llCloseDialog, allowing a script close a dialog that it had previously opened.
• A general discussion on Experiences – extending the scope of possible controls (not on the immediate roadmap) and making the Join Experience dialogue lees frightening / off-putting to users.

† 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.