Category: Simulator User Group

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, March 7th, 2023 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 entire meeting is embedded at the end of the article for those wishing to review the meeting in full – my thanks to Pantera for recording it.

Server Deployments

• On Tuesday, March 7th, the SLS Main channel servers were restarted without any deployment, leaving them on simulator version 577734.
• On Wednesday, March 8th:
  • The majority of RC servers will be updated to simulator release 578370, first deployed in week #9 to the BlueSteel RC.
  • In addition, there may be a deployment to the Ferrari RC comprising new LSL Functions llList2ListSlice, llSortListStrided, and llListFindListStrided (per BUG-231545). It also has a fix for DATA_SIM_STATUS from llRequestSimulatorData(), and doubles the amount of memory available for Linkset Data (LSD) to 128k.

There have been no official viewer updates to mark the start of the week, leaving the various pipelines as follows:

• Release viewer: Maintenance Q(uality) viewer, version 6.6.9.577968 Thursday, February 2, 2023.
• Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself).
  • Maintenance R RC viewer, version 6.6.10.578285, February 28 – translation updates and the return of slam bits, together with the Group Chat History functionality.
  • Maintenance S RC viewer, version 6.6.10.578270, issued February 24 2023.
  • Performance Floater / Auto FPS RC viewer updated to version 6.6.10.578172, February 21, 2023.
• Project viewers:
  • PBR Materials project viewer, version 7.0.0.578526, March 3, 2023 – This viewer will only function on the following Aditi (beta grid) regions: Materials1; Materials Adult and Rumpus Room 1 through 4.
  • Puppetry project viewer, version 6.6.8.576972, December 8, 2022.

In Brief

• Several general discussions:
  • Camera tracking for one’s own camera.
  • Particle size limits seen as possibly more a Content Creation User Group meeting discussion.
  • An idea to allow mesh vertices to be edited in-world without generating new assets in the process.
  • Using Media on a prim with HUDs, and the limitations therein (also related to the week #9 discussion of sending the contents of notecards in response to HTTP requests.
  • Image uploads and compression.
  • Please refer to the video for more on these.

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, February 28th, 2023 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 entire meeting is embedded at the end of the article for those wishing to review the meeting in full – my thanks to Pantera for recording it.

Server Deployments

• On Tuesday, February 28th, the SLS Main channel servers were restarted without any deployment, leaving them on simulator version 577734.
• On Wednesday, March 1st, the majority of RC servers will be restarted without any change. However, those on the BlueSteel RC will be updated with server release 578370.

Available Official Viewers

On Tuesday, February 28th, the Maintenance R RC viewer updated to version 6.6.10.578285.

The rest of the official viewers currently available remain unchanged from the start of the week:

• Release viewer: Maintenance Q(uality) viewer, version 6.6.9.577968 Thursday, February 2.
• Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself).
  • Maintenance S RC viewer, version 6.6.10.578270, issued February 24.
  • Performance Floater / Auto FPS RC viewer updated to version 6.6.10.578172, February 21.
• Project viewers:
  • PBR Materials project viewer, version 7.0.0.578161, February 14. This viewer will only function on the following Aditi (beta grid) regions: Materials1; Materials Adult and Rumpus Room 1 through 4.
  • Puppetry project viewer, version 6.6.8.576972, December 8, 2022.

In Brief

• BUG-233440 “Add a method for dealing with user-customized keybindings in user-visible text” came under discussion, the Maestro Linden suggesting one approach, per the comments in the Jira.
• The above segued into a general discussion on note card parsing commands in note card (with care!), making things like URIs within note cards clickable, and having an LSL command (e.g. llHTTPResponseNC() ) which could allows scripts to reply to HTTP requests within note cards – so if a HUD is using MoaP, JSON in the HTML could send commands back to it via post.
• Please refer to the view below for other topics.

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, February 21st, 2023 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 entire meeting is embedded at the end of the article for those wishing to review the meeting in full – my thanks to Pantera for recording it.

Server Deployments

• There are no planned deployments for the week, so the various channels will just be restarted.
• Release 578100, made to the BlueSteel RC channel had to be rolled back post-deployment as a result of BUG-233402 “Second Life Server 2023-02-02.578100 – LSO scripts not running on_rez() event.”

Available Official Viewers

There have been no updates to the current crop of official viewers to mark the start of the week, leaving the pipelines as follows:

• Release viewer: Maintenance Q(uality) viewer, version 6.6.9.577968 Thursday, February 2, 2023.
• Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself).
  • Maintenance R RC viewer, version 6.6.10.578087, February 3 translation updates and the return of slam bits, together with the Group Chat History functionality.
  • Performance Floater / Auto-FPS RC viewer, version 6.6.9.577251, January 4, 2023.
• Project viewers:
  • PBR Materials project viewer, version 7.0.0.578161, February 14, 2023. This viewer will only function on the following Aditi (beta grid) regions: Materials1; Materials Adult and Rumpus Room 1 through 4.
  • Puppetry project viewer, version 6.6.8.576972, December 8, 2022.

In Brief

• Whilst not simulator-related, there have been some additional requests for improvements to the particle system – see: BUG-233438 “Larger particle size limits”, BUG-233439 “Per-generator particle limits” – it is possible these and requests such as BUG-5307 “New Particle texture parameters (repeat/offset/rotation/animation)” might received some attention in the near future – although a request for more information on the first two has been made.
• A possible reason on why objects don’t always rez on login-in / following a teleport has been identified. Essentially, on arrival in a region, the viewer must inform the simulator as to its camera placement and rotation. It does so via an AgentUpdate. However, this in turn requires the viewer to receive an ObjectUpdate confirming the avatar has arrived. As there is a delay in these two events, the interest list can start sending data ahead of the camera position being confirmed, only for the camera to “jump” once its position has been confirmed, and this leads to confusion as to the data the interest list needs to send, resulting in some data being missed, and thus objects failing to render. If this is correct, there needs to be better check on synchronisation between the viewer and simulator before interest list information is sent.

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, February 14th, 2023 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 entire meeting is embedded at the end of the article for those wishing to review the meeting in full – my thanks to Pantera for recording it.

Server Deployments

• On Tuesday, February 14th 2023, the simhosts on the Main SLS channel were restarted without any change to their simulator code, leaving them on release 577734.
• On Wednesday, February 15th, 2023:
  • The majority of simhosts on the RC channel will be restarted without and version change.
  • The BlueSteel RC will be updated with release 578100, comprising:
    • New function llReplaceSubString(): find and replace instances of one substring with another string
    • New function llHMAC(): generate the HMAC hash of a message
    • New function llSignRSA(): generate an RSA signature of a message, given a private key
    • New function llVerifyRSA(): validate whether an RSA signature for a message is valid, given the public key
    • New parameters for llGetEnv(): “grid” and “region_rating”
    • Dozens of new parameters for llGetSimStats().

The BlueSteel deployment further includes a fix for BUG-233288 “Scripts do not operate properly under this new server version 577942”. This was cause of the February 1st, roll-back as described in this official blog post.

Available Official Viewers

On Monday February 13th, 2023, the PBR Materials project viewer updated to version 7.0.0.578161, February 14, 2023. This viewer will only function on the following Aditi (beta grid) regions: Materials1; Materials Adult and Rumpus Room 1 through 4.

The remaining official viewer pipelines stay as follows:

• Release viewer: Maintenance Q(uality) viewer, version 6.6.9.577968 Thursday, February 2, 2023.
• Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself).
  • Maintenance R RC viewer, version 6.6.10.578087, February 3 translation updates and the return of slam bits, together with the Group Chat History functionality, as announced in this official blog post.
  • Performance Floater / Auto-FPS RC viewer, version 6.6.9.577251, January 4, 2023.
• Project viewers:
  • Puppetry project viewer, version 6.6.8.576972, December 8, 2022.

In Brief

• The new Group Chat functionality is currently available in the Maintenance R (above) is also being picked-up by some TPVs. The hope at LL is that once the capability has been available for a while, it will be improved (e.g. allow Group owners set their own parameters for it.
• The code branch which provided the Group Chat history code also contains code which allows for text chat translation. If an external translator is correctly configured, the viewer can send a translation request on receipt of a foreign language group chat.  This has yet to be implemented.
• LL have received requests from residents to be able to submit changes to the XML file used to provide the content for the hover tooltip when writing LSL scripts. This work may be carried out in the next quarter, and the file may be converted to JSON.
• The SL wiki has been unavailable for some, apparently as a result of a CDN issue.
• General discussion on LSL editing, key bindings,

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, February 7th, 2023 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 entire meeting is embedded at the end of the article for those wishing to review the meeting in full – my thanks to Pantera for recording it.

Server Deployments

• On Tuesday, February 7th 2023, the simhosts on the Main SLS channel were restarted without any change to their simulator code, leaving them on release 577734.
• On Wednesday, February 8th, 2023, the RC channels will also be restarted without any version update.

Available Official Viewers

There have been no updates to the current list of available official viewers, leaving them as:

• Release viewer: Maintenance Q(uality) viewer, version 6.6.9.577968 Thursday, February 2, 2023.
• Release channel cohorts:
  • Maintenance R RC viewer, version 6.6.10.578087, February 3 – translation updates and the return of slam bits, together with the Group Chat History functionality.
  • Performance Floater / Auto-FPS RC viewer, version 6.6.9.577251, January 4, 2023.
• Project viewers:
  • PBR Materials project viewer, version 7.0.0.577997, February 2, 2023. This viewer will only function on the following Aditi (beta grid) regions: Materials1; Materials Adult and Rumpus Room 1 through 4.
  • Puppetry project viewer, version 6.6.8.576972, December 8, 2022.

In Brief

• The announcement about the Group Chat History gave rise to a discussion on the capability and making it more robust and deeper (e.g. be presenting more than just the last hour of group chat when used), together with general improvements to chat history management (timestamps, etc.). Please refer to the video for the full context.
• BUG-229675 “Stopping llSetKeyframedMotion should always succeed and never shout an error” was again raised and noted as a not unreasonable request. Again, please refer to the video for further details.
• Wednesday February 1st issues: a post-mortem on these was published on Thursday, February 2nd – please read it here for specifics.

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, January 31st, 2023 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 entire meeting is embedded at the end of the article for those wishing to review the meeting in full – my thanks to Pantera for recording it.

Server Deployments

• On Tuesday, January 31st 2023, the simhosts on the Main SLS channel were updated with simulator release 577734, comprising both the HTTP custom headers update described above andthe updates previously deployed to BlueSteel and Le Tigre in week #3), comprising: stability improvements, fixes for a number of bugs, including the one preventing 30-second sound loops from being played back, and introduces new functions to the LSL API to allow for sound playback across any prim in a linkset. The new LSL functions include:
  • llAdjustSoundVolume().
  • llLinkSetSoundRadius().
  • llLinkStopSound().
  • llLinkSetSoundQueueing().
  • llLinkPlaySound().
• On Wednesday, February 1st, 2023, the RC channels should be updated with simulator release 577942. This version adds additional LSL functions for generating RSA and HMAC hashes, and another for replacing a substring of a string, as well as augmenting some existing functions with new parameters.
  • Leviathan has written a wiki page talking about how to do Java Web Tokens from LSL.
  • Detailed documentation to follow.

Available Official Viewers

This list reflects the current status of available official viewers on January 24th, 2023:

• Release viewer: Maintenance P (Preferences, Position and Paste) RC viewer version 6.6.8.576863 Monday, December 12, 2022 – 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 R RC viewer, version 6.6.9.577678, January 30.
  • Maintenance (Q)uality RC viewer, version 6.6.9.577581, January 18, 2023.
  • Performance Floater / Auto-FPS RC viewer, version 6.6.9.577251, January 4, 2023.
• Project viewers:
  • PBR Materials project viewer, version 7.0.0.577780, January 25, 2023 – this viewer will only function on the following Aditi (beta grid) regions: Materials1; Materials Adult and Rumpus Room 1 through 4.
  • Puppetry project viewer, version 6.6.8.576972, December 8, 2022.

In Brief

• Removing the LSO bytecode compiler (non-Mono) / forcing all compilers to use Mono:
  • While this would make it easier for LL to improve the language, after hearing back that LSO was still heavily used (and the uses that it’s put too), nothing is likely to be changed until after BUG-233084 has been implemented.
  • Even then, LSO may not be entirely turned off.
• The above sparked a discussion on BUG-227303 “collisions makes a script stop running and revert its mono status”, float points,  script compiling, and more. Please refer to the video for more.
• Rider Linden is looking into trying to fix BUG-233015 “Objects will fail to rez or attach if LinkSetData has any key/value containing certain characters”, which is seen as an encoding dependency issue.
  • This could lead to a breakage in LSD (Linkset Data) during any fix deployment, as servers using the older formatting will not be able to read the newer formatting.
  • A possible way to avoid this might be update decoding first, and deploy that, then fix the encoding issue.