Category: Simulator User Group

2024 SL SUG meetings week #7 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Elvion, January 2024 – blog post †

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, February 13th, 2024 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They form a summary of the items discussed, and are not intended to be a full transcript. A video of the meeting is embedded at the end of this summary, my thanks as always to Pantera for recording the meeting and 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):
  • 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

Upcoming Simulator Release

The simulator update that will be following Gingerbread will be Hearts & Flowers (probably named for the time of year!). 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).

Viewer Updates

The Maintenance Y RC viewer (My Outfits folder improvements; ability to remove entries from landmark history) updated to version 6.6.17.6935642049 on February 9th.

The rest of the official viewers in the pipeline remain as:

  • 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 (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself).
    • Maintenance-W RC viewer, version 7.1.3.7701974306, January 31, 2024 – bug and crash fixes.
    • Emoji RC viewer, version 7.1.3.7453691714, January 22, 2024.
    • glTF PBR Materials Maintenance-2 RC viewer, version 7.1.3.7467259489, issued January 12, 2024.
    • Maintenance X RC, version 7.1.1.7088410646, December 7 – usability improvements.
  • Project viewers:

Reminders

Jira End-of-Road

LUA Viewer-Side Scripting

  • On Friday, February 9th, Linden Lab announced an upcoming capability: viewer-side scripting using the Lua scripting language – see Coming soon: client-side scripting with Lua!. Possible areas of use for this capability are test automation, mods/plugins, and potentially supporting things like HUDs.
  • There is a pre-release viewer with the Lua support available on github, but there is little more that the team responsible for Lua is willing to say for the present.

Game Controller Update

  • Leviathan Linden has tweaked the game_control capability so that negated the forward/back directions of the stick axes to align more correctly with local-frame coordinates in SL. Pushing forward is now positive rather than negative.
  • He has also disabled game controller support through the old system (Me Menu –> Preferences Option –> Move & View tab –> Other Devices Button –>) – however, this does not impact 3D SpaceNavigator devices.
  • An updated version of the viewer with the game controller capabilities is now available on Github.

In Brief

  • The meeting quickly turned in part to a further discussion on combat, some of which has already been covered in my summary of the first Combat (Committee) User Group in relation to damage, plus a discussion on cheating using offset, etc. – see that summary for the former and the video below for the latter.
  • The above morphed into a general discussion on making water in SL (Linden and user-defined) as “properly” swimmable (e.g. with natural floating / not zooming into the sky and flying when reaching the water / air boundary, etc.) without the need for scripting  / HUDs, etc.
  • A discussion about raycast results, and making it possible for them to get the texture cords for the area where the ray hit the surface of a face, with the result given in a similar manner to detectedtouchST. A canny feature request was asked for, so that LL can look at the idea.
  • There are reports from some of an uptick in HTTP 499 errors with in-world services communication with external services. Those with specific details of these errors are asked to contact Monty Linden.

† 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.

2024 SL SUG meetings week #6 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
The Forgotten, January 2024 – blog post †

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, February 6th, 2024 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They form a summary of the items discussed, and are not intended to be a full transcript. A video of the meeting is embedded at the end of this summary, my thanks as always to Pantera for recording the meeting and 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):
  • 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

Viewer Updates

No changes at the start of the week, leaving the list of official viewers as:

  • 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 viewer, version 7.1.3.7701974306, January 31, 2024 – bug and crash fixes.
    • Emoji RC viewer, version 7.1.3.7453691714, January 22, 2024.
    • glTF PBR Materials Maintenance-2 RC viewer, version 7.1.3.7467259489, issued January 12, 2024.
    • Maintenance X RC, version 7.1.1.7088410646, December 7 – usability improvements.
    • Maintenance Y RC, version 6.6.17.6935642049, issued November 21 – My Outfits folder improvements; ability to remove entries from landmark history.
  • Project viewers:

Reminders

Jira End-of-Road

New Combat User Group

  • The first meeting of the Combat Committee User Group will be held on Thursday, February 8th, at 13:00 SLT, and so will be alternating with the Content Creation User Group.
  • The venue for the meetings will be:  Longfellow/142/255/30. 
  • The initial format for the meetings will be text-only, but this may become a mix of voice / text according to attendees’ preferences.
  • Further details are available on the SL wiki, and the meeting is now on the SL Public Calendar.
  • As I’ve pointed out to Rider Linden having two alternate meetings on the same weekday at the same time called “CCUG” could cause confusion, this UG may be renamed. Apparently the leading contender as an alternative name is “Pugilist Parliament User Group” (PPUG), as the name “Pew-Pew User Group” has already been nixed internally at the Lab.

Game Controller Update

  • A new pre-release version of the game controller updates viewer being developed by Leviathan Linden can be downloaded via Github, although Leviathan is trying to get it listed on the official Alternate Viewers web page.
  • The game controller functions in this viewer will only work on the LeviathanLove, LeviathanLost and KaijuCorner regions on Aditi (the Beta grid).
  • With this update it is possible to remap the “Avatar movement actions” <–> “GameControl Input Channels” via mouse clicks, and it is possible to play with it even if there is no connected controller device. However:
    • Leviathan noted that here are some known oddities in the default mappings between the GameControl <–> Avatar movement actions, which he is hoping to fix soon.
    • If the mappings are customised, they do not currently save to settings as yet, so have to be customised again at the next log-in.
  • This sparked an on-going discussion on avatar movement options (such as having variable avatar speeds when moving  / in accordance with avatar size) which became intertwined with the discussion on animations (below).

In Brief

  • A request was made for a scripted means to sync worn Animesh animations with avatar animations.
    • This sparked a general discussion on animations + limitations of the current SL approach to handling them.
    • Whilst it was noted that there is a rising number of issues / requests related to the animation system, any work would likely be dependent on the glTF project & form a significant tranche of work in its own right.
  • The above segued into various ideas that had been raised within the (still suspended) Puppetry Project.
  • Further details in the video below.

† 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.

2024 SL SUG meetings week #5 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
WQNC Shrine, December 2023 – blog post †

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, January 30th, 2024 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They form a summary of the items discussed, and are not intended to be a full transcript. A video of the meeting is embedded at the end of this summary, my thanks as always to Pantera for recording the meeting and 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):
  • 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

Viewer Updates

No changes at the start of the week, leaving the list of official viewers as:

  • 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 (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself).
    • Emoji RC viewer, version 7.1.3.7453691714, January 22, 2024.
    • glTF PBR Materials Maintenance-2 RC viewer, version 7.1.3.7467259489, issued January 12, 2024.
    • Maintenance-W RC viewer, version 7.1.3.7453541295, January 9, 2024 – bug and crash fixes.
    • Maintenance X RC, version 7.1.1.7088410646, December 7 – usability improvements.
    • Maintenance Y RC, version 6.6.17.6935642049, issued November 21 – My Outfits folder improvements; ability to remove entries from landmark history.
  • Project viewers:

Jira End-of-Road – Reminder

Combat Committee User Group

  • The first meeting of the Combat Committee User Group will be held on Thursday, February 8th, at 13:00 SLT, and so will be alternating with the Content Creation User Group.
  • The venue for the meetings will be:  Longfellow/142/255/30.
  • The initial format for the meetings will be text-only, but this may become a mix of voice / text according to attendees’ preferences.
  • Further details are available on the SL wiki, and the meeting is now on the SL Public Calendar.
  • I have pointed out to Rider Linden that having two meetings abbreviated to “CCUG” (Combat Committee and Content Creation user groups), which are held at the same time on alternating Thursdays could lead to some confusion among attendees of either, even allowing for some cross-over between the two, so the Combat Committee may yet see a change in name.

In Brief

  • A general discussion on the upcoming llGetNotecardLineSync(), including caching (both when and length of time).
  • Further (often negative) feedback on CANNY as the bug / feature release front-end, including news from Signal Linden that the Canny devs are working to take onboard issues raised with them by LL to help improved the system, some of which (such as providing a wider text input field on tickets) will be deployed in the very near future.
  •  A general discussion on a “HUDs/dialogue box 2.0 feature” to replace / improve upon the current dialogue box system and scripted HUDs. Suggestions included enabling / allowing dialogue boxes to be generated with radio buttons, dropdown boxes, and checkboxes; offering a client-side scripting capability to provide HUDs (and idea also being tossed around at recent Content Creation User Group meetings), although this got largely derailed by the hoary old (and highly subjective) “Pie Menu is better than Context Menus” debate.
  • Details of all above in the video, below.

† 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.

2024 SL SUG meetings week #2 summary: Jira end-of-road

Posted on by Inara Pey
Borkum, November 2023 – blog post †

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, January 9th, 2024 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They form a summary of the items discussed, and is not intended to be a full transcript. A video of the meeting is embedded at the end of this summary, my thanks as always to Pantera for recording the meeting and 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):
  • 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 scheduled deployments, just region restarts.
  • It is hoped the issues with the Fall Colours simulator update (e.g. collision sounds reverberating) have now been addressed, and that these fixes will be deployed across all simulator RCs during week #3.
  • A further simulator update – Gingerbread – will be following thereafter.

Viewer Updates

  • The glTF PBR Materials Maintenance RC, version 7.1.2.7215179142 issued December 15th, 2023 and featuring numerous bug fixes and improvements (including haze / fog affecting point lights), was promoted to de facto release status on Monday, January 8th, 2024.
  • The Maintenance-W RC viewer comprising bug and crash fixes was updated to version 7.1.3.7453541295 on January 9th, 2024.

The rest of the official viewers currently in the pipeline remain as follows

  • Release channel cohorts:
    • Maintenance X RC, version 7.1.1.7088410646, December 7 – usability improvements.
    • Maintenance Y, version 6.6.17.6935642049, issued November 21 – My Outfits folder improvements; ability to remove entries from landmark history.
    • Emoji RC viewer, version 6.6.15.581551, August 31.
  • Project viewers:

Jira End-of-Road

  • While yet to be formally announced, as a result of Atlassian changing their licensing model and making it prohibitively expensive for Linden Lab to continue using Jira as  reporting tool open to all users, the decision has been taken to replace Jira as a the bug reporting / featuring request filing toll for Second Life.
  • In the very near future, Jira will be replaced by a two-pronged approach:
    • Bug reports will be taken directly though Github.
    • General feedback and feature requests will be made via Canny, from where they will be imported by the Lab as GitHub issues for the purposes of internal tracking.
  • Work is already underway internally to move existing open and incoming Jira tickets to Github, and it is anticipated that the switch-over to using Canny as well as Github will be made very soon. An official blog post on the switch-over is expected to be made either later this week or early in week #3.
  • The use of Canny has already drawn some strong negative feedback from technical users due to several limitation within the service as it has been developed. These concerns have been noted by LL, who are also providing feedback to the Canny developers.
  • However, it was noted that an advantage with Canny is that the Second Life environment there allows users to log-in to it using their SL credentials (just as is currently the case with Jira). However, Github doe not allow this, but requires uses to have dedicated accounts – with the concern this would like be seen as a objectionable requirement by many SL users.

Scripted Camera Control Updates

  • Leviathan Linden has been working on some LSL updates for camera control, which are expected to be deployed with the Gingerbread update in the next few weeks. These are:
    • float llGetCameraAspect(): returns aspect ratio as known to the camera on the server. Basically width/height of SL window.
    • float llGetCameraFOV(): returns “field of view” of the camera as known to the server, in radians. Is a measure of angle of view of the vertical span of the window.
    • vector llWorldPosToHUD(vector world_pos): returns HUD position that maps to the world-pos as seen by current camera as known by server. HUD attachment point doesn’t matter: the server figures it out.
    • string llComputeHash(string message, string algorithm): returns hash digest of message using the algorithm, without any “nonce salt” as in llMD5String(). Supported algorithms are: md5, md5_sha1, sha1, sha224, sha256, sha384, and sha512.
  • Concerns were raised over the float llGetCameraAspect() being used to “fingerprint” users (e.g. whether two accounts are being used by the same user) through returned information on window size & resolution. In response, it was pointed out the return is only the window aspect ration, which is regarded as more secure against such fingerprinting.

Game Control Update

  • Leviathan also encountered a bug in the game controller code he is developing which meant that sometimes bits could be lost in the button_edges argument supplied to the game_control event.
  • The fix for this has been a change to the game_control event signatures from game_control(key id, integer button_levels, integer button_edges, list axes) to game_control(key id, integer button_levels, list axes).
  • Thus, it will be the responsibility of scripters to compute button_levels as necessary. Scripters who want the edges will have to track a global variable previous_button_levels.

In Brief

  • Questions were asked about LL developing a “scripted UI”. These likely arose out people hearing second-hand some comments made at the first Content Creation User Group meeting. For fuller context, please see my notes from that meeting.
  • For all other topics, please refer to the video below.

† 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.

2024 SL SUG meetings week #1 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
The Hamptons, November 2023 – blog post †

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, January 2nd, 2024 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They form a summary of the items discussed, and is not intended to be a full transcript. A video of the meeting is embedded at the end of this summary, my thanks as always to Pantera for recording the meeting and 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):
  • 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 scheduled deployments, just region restarts.

Viewer Updates

The current official viewers list starts the year unchanged from where it saw out the old year.

  • Release viewer: version 7.1.1.7039128750, formerly the Maintenance V(ersatility) RC viewer, issued December 1, promoted December 14 – displaying user-customized keybindings in chat – NO CHANGE.
  • 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 viewer, version 7.1.2.7213596294, December 18 – bug and crash fixes.
    • glTF PBR Materials Maintenance RC, version 7.1.2.7215179142 issued December 15 – numerous bug fixes and improvements.
    • Maintenance X RC, version 7.1.1.7088410646, December 7 – usability improvements.
    • Maintenance Y, version 6.6.17.6935642049, issued November 21 – My Outfits folder improvements; ability to remove entries from landmark history.
    • Emoji RC viewer, version 6.6.15.581551, August 31.
  • Project viewers:

In Brief

  • A quiet meeting as a number of the engineering team are on extended vacation (so no Rider, Leviathan, et al).
  • LL are continuing to work on the issue of repeating collision sounds on the RC channel and the Fall Colors update (see:
  • BUG-234835 “Can hear Collisions “play” on RC channels”). This should have been reverted over the holiday period to minimise the annoyance, but no news on when an actual fix is likely to be deployed.
  • Simon Linden has been poking at the Avatar Appearance message, so that at some point soon it will get both a list of attachments as well as some info on pending attachments. He’s also tweaking ObjectUpdate for root prims so it will  include the number in the linkset.
  • A lot of general conversation on region crossings, PBR (and the issues being experienced by those on PBR-enabled viewers). Please refer to the video below for specifics.

† 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.

2023 SL SUG meetings week #51 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Nom Nom Café Library, November 2023 – blog post †

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, December 19th Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They form a summary of the items discussed, and is not intended to be a full transcript. A video of the meeting is embedded at the end of this summary, my thanks as always to Pantera for recording the meeting and 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):
  • 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 scheduled deployments, just region restarts.

Viewer Updates

On Monday, December 18th, the Maintenance-W RC viewer (bug and crash fixes) updated to version 7.1.2.7213596294.

  • Release viewer: version 7.1.1.7039128750, formerly the Maintenance V(ersatility) RC viewer (displaying user-customized keybindings in chat), issued December 1, promoted December 14.
  • Release channel cohorts:
    • glTF PBR Materials Maintenance RC, version 7.1.2.7215179142 issued December 15 – numerous bug fixes and improvements.
    • Maintenance X RC, version 7.1.1.7088410646, December 7 – usability improvements.
    • Maintenance Y, version 6.6.17.6935642049, issued November 21 – My Outfits folder improvements; ability to remove entries from landmark history.
    • Emoji RC viewer, version 6.6.15.581551, August 31.
  • Project viewers:

Game Controllers Update

From Leviathan Linden:

I had a fresh working game_control viewer [on Github] on Wednesday [Dec 13]. There is an updated viewer that allows avatar control “Actions” to be translated into GameControl input. 
DaveP pointed out that game_control could be hijacked to supply midi input if the number of supported buttons was uncapped. Right now the game_control event is limited to 32 buttons because they are stored in a 32-bit mask. However, that would require button state to be represented in lists, which I had originally proposed, but received feedback saying scripters would prefer the bitwise masks –> much faster to process.

In Brief

  • Party week + No Change window, so not a lot discussed / little news.
  • Leviathan Linden has implemented llGetAspectRatio() for attachments, and is aiming to release it in the new year with the Gingerbread simulator update (likely mid-to-late January).
    • There are no parameters for the function, it just returns horizontal/vertical ratio float value if the scripted object is an attachment.
    • The item doesn’t need to be attached as HUD, any attachment point works.
  • The bug within the current Fall Colors simulator release (currently on all RC channels) which causes repetitive collision sounds has not been completely resolved. See BUG-234835 “Can hear Collisions “play” on RC channels”.
  • The first hour of the meeting focused on a general discussion on possible scripted updates for the SL camera (including whether or not some general camera improvements might be better handled viewer-side).
  • Please refer to the video below for the core meeting – which extended beyond the hour due to the live music; unfortunately, I had to depart for the physical world just after the first hour was up.

† 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.