Category: TPVD / Open Source User Group

The following notes are taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, August 6th, 2021.

These meetings are generally held every other week.  They are recorded by Pantera Północy, and her video of the meeting is embedded at the end of this report – my thanks to her for allowing me to do so – and it is used with a transcript of the chat log from the meeting and my own audio recording to produce this summary, which focuses on the core topics discussed.

SL Viewer

[Video 1:00-2:32]

No updates to the current crop of official viewers this week, leaving them as follows:

• Release viewer: version 6.4.21.561414, Fernet Maintenance RC dated July 14th, promoted July 19th.
• Release channel cohorts:
  • Grappa Maintenance RC, version 6.4.22.561850, issued July 29th.
  • CEF91 RC viewer, version 6.4.22.561752, issued July 24th.
• Project viewers:
  • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.4.11.550519, dated October 26th, 2020.
  • Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, dated December 9th, 2019.
  • Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.532999, dated November 22nd, 2019.
  • 360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, dated July 16th, 2019.

General Viewer Notes

• The CEF update viewer is being looked at as the next possible promotion to de facto release status. A decision on this may be taken on Monday, August 9th.
• The 360 Snapshot viewer update is in progress, but it is still going to be a while before it surfaces.
• [Video: 4:17-5:25] The Legacy Profiles viewer requires a couple of additional caps on the back-end. This work has yet to be queued, as the focus of back-end work remains on the tools update that is currently in progress; so it will be a while before this viewer is updated.
• Both the revised Simplified Cache viewer and the Apple Notarisation viewer are both very close to making an appearance, most likely as RC viewers.
• [Video 5:46-6:18] The new performance controls viewer (ARC, etc.), should be ready for issue as a project viewer in the “not too distant” future.

LOD Generation Viewer

[Video: 2:50-4:15]

A viewer using the mesh optimiser library for automatic LOD model generation for mesh uploads is in development. No date on when it is likely to appear.

This reportedly works better than the GLOD code that is currently in use. For the initial project viewer version(s) of this viewer, once available, creators will have a choice of using either GLOD or the optimiser at upload. Longer-term LL are still discussing whether or not GLOD will be retained as an option, or whether it will be removed (or at the least, made a non-default option).

Beyond this, there is the larger question of using the optimiser library in real time, and what to do with the available content that does not have properly defined LOD models, but this is regarded as “discussion for latter”; the onus at the moment is to make a viewer available that utilises the optimiser library.

Viewer-side Animation Override

[Video: 6:24-6:40]

The ability to run animations normally found in a scripted Animation Override HUD natively from the viewer has been a capability that a number of TPVs offer (animations play viewer-side anyway, so removing the need to operate them via simulator-side scripts helps reduce the script processing load on the latter). It is now the subject of discussions for a viewer-side AO system to be made a part of the official viewer, potentially leveraging what has been done by TPVs.

In Brief

• [Video 6:50-7:49] As noted in my SUG meeting notes, the new simulator console command that let estate managers change the default EEP settings across an entire estate is now available on regions running on the RC channels, and will be grid-wide after the next SLS Main channel deployment (Tuesday, August 10th). This also paves the way for implementing a new default Mainland EEP setting that will be coming in a future update.
• [Video 22:46-24:56] BUG-229227 “Offline group invites not working” this issue was the result of removing reliance on UDP messaging (which is not always reliable) and using a capability instead. While some fixes have been made to try to improve things, the code itself is described as a “Byzantine mess”, and in need of a complete re-write There are no time frames when / if this may happen.
• Caatznip has been continuing investigations in to the cost of rendering Linden Water in cases where it cannot be see (e.g. when standing in the middle of a multi-region estate so it is completely “invisible” under the terrain), and have found that completely ignoring Linden Water rendering via occlusion checks can boost FPS by between 30-50%, with the most notable benefits being with lower-specification systems.

Next Meeting

• The next meeting should be on August 20th, 2021.

The following notes are taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, July 23rd, 2021.

These meetings are generally held every other week.  They are recorded by Pantera Północy, and her video of the meeting is embedded at the end of this report – my thanks to her for allowing me to do so – and it is used with a transcript of the chat log from the meeting and my own audio recording to produce these notes.

SL Viewer

The Fernet Maintenance RC viewer, version  6.4.21.561414 and dated July 14th, was promoted to de facto release status on July 19th. This leaves no current RC viewers in the pipeline and the official project viewers unchanged, thus:

• Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.4.11.550519, dated October 26, 2020.
• Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, dated December 9, 2019.
• Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.532999, dated November 22, 2019.
• 360º Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, dated July 16, 2019.

General Viewer Notes

• The next RC viewer that should be appearing is likely to have the next round of Chrome Embedded Framework (CEF) media handling updates.

360º Snapshot Viewer

Work has now officially re-started on the 360º Snapshot viewer, and there will be some simulator-side updates in support of this will be going out in a simulator RC release in week #30 (commencing Monday, July 27th, 2021). it is to ensure the simulator sends the viewer all of the information it needs to correctly render a 360º field of view around the camera prior to the 6 snapshots being taken (which are then stitched into a completed 360º image). No date is available for when the updated 360º Snapshot viewer will be available.

Alexa Linden offered a peek of playing with the updated viewer via Twitter.

Graphics Work

• The focus for the Graphics team continues to be on integrating the Tracy debugger / system analyser for cross-platform graphics development into the viewer.
• This will be used to look for performance “hot spots” in the rendering code. This is liable to continue to be the case for the next couple of weeks.
• When completed, the work will be compiled into a static library within viewer repositories, but will not be enabled by default – it will require and explicit command line call during a viewer build process.

In Brief

• Apparently, script-to-viewer messages sent via llRegionSayTo that start with “@” are never displayed in local chat. It’s not clear if this is by accident or design, but the request has been made to leave the functionality that way to assist with RLVa-specific commands send via llRegionSayTo not being spammed in open chat.
  • The broad response from Vir and Rider Linden was that the history behind the code in question (CHAT_TYPE_DIRECT) is unclear to them, but if changing it would potentially be damaging to existing content, then it is unlikely to be changed.
• It’s again been noted that there can be a significant performance impact on the viewer due to the presence of Linden Water “that isn’t there” (that is, you cannot see it, because it is overlaid by terrain, for example). It is hoped that improved occlusion capabilities (i.e. “if you can’t see it, just don’t render it”) might eventually be a performance win in overcoming this.
• Not strictly viewer-related, but Rider Linden proposed a new function via the forums – llIsFriend – on July 22nd, which sparked a lot of discussion via the forum thread, specifically around the question of privacy (having scripts from others – say a merchant or club owner  – able to read your Friends list) and the potential for abuse. Having had time to consider it, Rider noted the following during the TPVD meeting:

The more I think about it, the more a perms check is called for on that; [it is] probably not a perm that would be auto-granted in an experience, either. I’d set-up a new permission [that would] ask the person running the script, “may this script have access to your friends list?”

The more I think about it, the more I think it is not something that should be allowed invisibly behind the scenes under any circumstances … the added complexity does push it further back, tho. If a script wants to access your Friends list, it needs to be up-front about it. 

Next Meeting

• The next meeting should be on August 6th, 2021.

The following notes are taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, June 25th,, 2021.

These meetings are generally held every other week.  They are recorded by Pantera Północy, and her video of the meeting is embedded at the end of this report – my thanks to her for allowing me to do so – and it is used with a transcript of the chat log from the meeting and my own audio recording to produce these notes.

SL Viewer

The Project UI RC viewer, version 6.4.20.560520 and dated June 14th, was promoted to de facto release viewer on Wednesday, June 23rd. Note that this viewer also now includes the latest Voice fixes, as recorded in the Fernet RC viewer release notes.

The rest of the official viewers remain as follows:

• Release channel cohorts:
  • Fernet Maintenance RC, version 6.4.20.560398, dated June 22.
• Project viewers:
  • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.4.11.550519, dated October 26.
  • Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, dated December 9, 2019.
  • Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.532999, dated November 22, 2019.
  • 360º Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, dated July 16, 2019.

General Viewer Notes

• The Fernet Maintenance RC viewer (40+ fixes and feature requests) will likely be the next viewer to be promoted.
• Simplified cache viewer and the Mac notifications fix viewer have been held-up in QA.
• Love Me Render 6 (LMR 6), the next graphics update viewer is still in progress. This should include a fix for the long-time “bendy sky” issue (the sky appearing to form a concave bow when at altitude).
• There is an exercise in progress to try to reduce the number of viewers in flight within the Lab and as RC / Project viewers (around 13 in various states of development), in order to reduce the volume of viewers in the various pipelines.

360º Snapshot Viewer

[34:10-40:45]

• Work on the 360º Snapshot viewer will be resuming shortly. Specific improvements that will be a part of the work include:
  • A means to better capture the six directional images (N,S,E,W and up and down) without any Interest list culling. This will require simulator-side support.
  • Improved stitching of images from within the viewer.
  • Inclusion of metadata to allow completed images to be shared via sites such as Flickr, Facebook, etc.
  • A much longer-term goal might be to provide a VR  viewer for 360º images captured by this viewer, for those with VR headsets. However, as a “stretch goal”, this may not become a part of the project.
• No dates are available as to when an updated 360º Snapshot viewer will appear, and some of the required work on the simulator side is still in discussion.

A Note About Mirrors in Second Life

[Video: 22:01-34:10]

• During her Meet the Lindens session, Grumpity Linden indicated that the Lab were discussion with the Firestorm team regarding re-visiting the idea for mirrors in Second Life (see Reflections on a prim: a potential way to create mirrors in SL and STORM-2055 for a background on the Firestorm experiments of a few years ago).

• During the TPVD meeting, further context was added to this:
  • This work is not currently a project within Linden Lab, things are purely at the discussion phase.
  • The Firestorm experiment with mirrors lacks some basic required functionality –  it does not work with Advanced Lighting Model active, which LL  is shooting for as a default for the viewer, for example.
  • To be effective, it requires proper optimisation through the rendering pipe.
  • The code itself has yet to be contributed to LL.
• There are also performance impacts to be considered – although some of these could be dealt with by making mirrors an option, rather than a default “on” setting.
• Currently, LL needs to review the code and determine whether  / how it can be integrated into the viewer, and what additional work will be required. As such, it should not be anticipated that mirrors will be a part of the viewer any time soon (or possibly even Soon™, depending on the outcome of any review of the capability).

In Brief

• [45:25-end  (predominantly chat)] concerning continues to be expressed about Group chat issues causing people to turn away from the functionality and use external services – such as Discord – which may come to impact engagement (if people can socialise on Discord, they may not feel the need to log-in so frequently / for as long, etc.).
  • LL are continuing to give Group chat attention.
  • The subject and ideas were also discussed during Grumpity Linden’s Meet the Lindens session.
• Firestorm and Catznip are moving towards releases.
  • Firestorm had been treating the LMR5 release from the Lab as their cut-off, although this may be extended to incorporate the latest Voice fixes as now released by LL. There are also a Mac issues which may  / may not delay a release.
  • Catznip are working on a “Mac-like” release alongside their update,  but not release date.

 

The following notes are taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, June 11th,, 2021.

These meetings are generally held every other week.  They are recorded by Pantera Północy, and her video of the meeting is embedded at the end of this report – my thanks to her for allowing me to do so – and it is used with a transcript of the chat log from the meeting and my own audio recording to produce these notes.

SL Viewer

[Video: 0:00-3:26]

There have been no updates for the viewer since the start of the week, leaving the pipelines as follows:

• Release viewer: LMR 5 viewer, version 6.4.19.560171, dated May 27, promoted June 7 – NEW.
• Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself):
  • Project UI viewer updated to version 6.4.20.560422, dated June 14.
  • Maintenance 2 RC viewer – Fernet, version 6.4.19.559726, dated May 19.
• Project viewers:
  • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.4.11.550519, dated October 26.
  • Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, dated December 9, 2019.
  • Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.532999, dated November 22, 2019.
  • 360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, dated July 16, 2019.

General Viewer Notes

• The New User Experience project viewer will be the next viewer to be promoted to de facto release status.
• The Legacy Profiles viewer is still having UI updates made, but is expected to go to RC status when the next update is issued.
• The notifications fix for Mac systems is still waiting its turn to be made publicly available.

Land and L$ In-Viewer Purchases Issue

[Video 0:58-2:30]

Wednesday, June 9th saw issues occur with in-viewer Linden Dollar and land purchases. Whilst resolved within hours, the issue was traced back to an overly aggressive series of checks the viewer was carrying on on the various software certificates used by Linden Lab. This caused the viewer to throw a wobbly when encountering a new certificate that did not quite meet the expected format.

The certificate involved was massaged so as not to get the viewer upset, fixing the issue; however, in order to avoid similar situations in the future, the Lab plan to implement a viewer-side change to the way the viewer carries out such checks. This change will be released as a part of the normal Maintenance RC viewer updates.

In Brief

• There have been some questions raised about Vivox end-of-lifing the current Vivox 4 Voice system in favour of the more recent Vivox 5. Linden Lab is not aware of this happening any time in the future,  but is aware that due to the way Vivox 5.x operates on different platforms, when such a change eventually comes to pass, it might required some significant changes in the manner in which SLvoice.EXE interacts with the viewer.

The following notes are taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, May 14th, 2021.

These meetings are generally held every other week.  They are recorded by Pantera Północy, and her video of the meeting is embedded at the end of this report – my thanks to her for allowing me to do so – and it is used with a transcript of the chat log from the meeting and my own audio recording to produce these notes.

This was perhaps the shortest TPVD meeting on record.

SL Viewer

The Project UI RC viewer updated to version 6.4.19.559612 on Friday, May 14th. The remaining viewers in the pipelines remained unchanged through the week:

• Release viewer: Eau de Vie Maintenance viewer, version 6.4.18.558266, dated April 23rd, promoted April 29th.
• Release channel cohorts:
  • Love Me Render (LMR) 5 viewer, version 6.4.18.558365, dated April 22nd.
  • Maintenance 2 RC viewer – Fernet, version 6.4.18.558441, dated April 21rd.
• Project viewers:
  • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.4.11.550519, dated October 26th.
  • Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, dated December 9th, 2019.
  • Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.532999, dated November 22nd, 2019.
  • 360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, dated July 16th, 2019.

General Viewer Notes

• All three RC viewers are pretty much ready to be considered for promotion to de facto release status. Of these, Maintenance Fernet now includes the fixes for helping with Voice updates, and is with the Lab’s QA team, so it could be the next in line to be promoted.
• The Legacy Profiles viewer is finally receiving attention, with some cosmetic UI changes being made, after which it should be appearing as an RC viewer, rather than a project viewer.
• LMR 6 is still gathering graphics bug fixes.
• The Simplified Cache viewer is still awaiting its turn to re-enter the the pipelines.
• The Mac notarisation fixes viewer is also awaiting a time to enter the available viewer pipelines.